oks so large!" One way at last
seemed to open by which it was possible to get at some settled opinion.
"Dolby sails for America" (2nd of July) "on Saturday the 3rd of August.
It is impossible to come to any reasonable conclusion, without sending
eyes and ears on the actual ground. He will take out my MS. for the
_Children's Magazine_. I hope it is droll, and very child-like; though
the joke is a grown-up one besides. You must try to like the pirate
story, for I am very fond of it." The allusion is to his pleasant
_Holiday Romance_ which he had written for Mr. Fields.

Hardly had Mr. Dolby gone when there came that which should have availed
to dissuade, far more than any of the arguments which continued to
express my objection to the enterprise. "I am laid up," he wrote on the
6th of August, "with another attack in my foot, and was on the sofa all
last night in tortures. I cannot bear to have the fomentations taken off
for a moment. I was so ill with it on Sunday, and it looked so fierce,
that I came up to Henry Thompson. He has gone into the case heartily,
and says that there is no doubt the complaint originates in the action
of the shoe, in walking, on an enlargement in the nature of a bunion.
Erysipelas has supervened upon the injury; and the object is to avoid a
gathering, and to stay the erysipelas where it is. Meantime I am on my
back, and chafing. . . . I didn't improve my foot by going down to
Liverpool to see Dolby off, but I have little doubt of its yielding to
treatment, and repose." A few days later he was chafing still; the
accomplished physician he consulted having dropped other hints that
somewhat troubled him. "I could not walk a quarter of a mile to-night
for L500. I make out so many reasons against supposing it to be gouty
that I really do not think it is."

So momentous in my judgment were the consequences of the American
journey to him that it seemed right to preface thus much of the
inducements and temptations that led to it. My own part in the
discussion was that of steady dissuasion throughout: though this might
perhaps have been less persistent if I could have reconciled myself to
the belief, which I never at any time did, that Public Readings were a
worthy employment for a man of his genius. But it had by this time
become clear to me that nothing could stay the enterprise. The result of
Mr. Dolby's visit to America--drawn up by Dickens himself in a paper
possessing still the interest of having g