Boston--Warmth of the Greeting--Old and New
Friends--Changes since 1842--Sale of Tickets in
New York--First Boston Reading--Profits--Scene
at First New York Sales--A Fire at the
Hotel--Increase of New York City--Story of
_Black Crook_--Local and General
Politics--Railway Travelling--Police of New
York--Again in Boston--More Fires--New York
Newspapers generally--Cities chosen for
Readings--The Webster Murder in 1849--Again at
New York--Illness--Mr. Fields's Account of
Dickens while in America--Miseries of American
Travel.

IT is the intention of this and the following chapter to narrate the
incidents of the visit to America in Dickens's own language, and in that
only. They will consist almost exclusively of extracts from his letters
written home, to members of his family and to myself.

On the night of Tuesday the 19th of November he arrived at Boston, where
he took up his residence at the Parker House hotel; and his first letter
(21st) stated that the tickets for the first four Readings, all to that
time issued, had been sold immediately on their becoming saleable. "An
immense train of people waited in the freezing street for twelve hours,
and passed into the office in their turns, as at a French theatre. The
receipts already taken for these nights exceed our calculation by more
than L250." Up to the last moment, he had not been able to clear off
wholly a shade of misgiving that some of the old grudges might make
themselves felt; but from the instant of his setting foot in Boston not
a vestige of such fear remained. The greeting was to the full as
extraordinary as that of twenty-five years before, and was given now, as
then, to the man who had made himself the most popular writer in the
country. His novels and tales were crowding the shelves of all the
dealers in books in all the cities of the Union. In every house, in
every car, on every steamboat, in every theatre of America, the
characters, the fancies, the phraseology of Dickens were become familiar
beyond those of any other writer of books. "Even in England," said one
of the New York journals, "Dickens is less known than here; and of the
millions here who treasure every word he has written, there are tens of
thousands who would make a large sacrifice to see and hear the man who
has made happy so many hours. Whatever sensitiveness there once was to
adverse or sneer