ountry, leaving a new generation of writers to
extend the hand of friendship to him on his second coming."--Let me add
to this that Dickens was pleased, at this second visit, to see his old
secretary who had travelled so agreeably with him through his first tour
of triumph. "He would have known him anywhere."

CHAPTER XVI.

AMERICA REVISITED: JANUARY TO APRIL 1868.

1868.

Speculators and the Public--Republican
Self-help--Receipts affected by
Speculators--Again at Boston--Hit of _Marigold_
and of _Boots at Holly Tree_--Chapel Readings
at Brooklyn--Energy of New York Speculators--At
Philadelphia--Irish Element in New
York--Improved Social Ways--Result of
Thirty-four Readings--Shadow to the
Sunshine--Arrangements for Washington--At
Baltimore--Success in Philadelphia--Value of a
Vote--Objections to Coloured People--At
Washington--With Sumner and Stanton--Lincoln's
last Cabinet Council--Lincoln's
Dream--Interview with President
Johnson--Incident at First Reading--One of the
Audience--A Day at the Readings--Proposed
Walking-match--In his Hotel at
Philadelphia--Providence and New
Haven--North-west Tour--President's
Impeachment--Political Excitement--Boston
Audiences--Struggle for Tickets in Remote
Places--At Rochester--At Syracuse and
Buffalo--American Female Beauty--Suspension
Bridge at Niagara--Final Impression of the
Falls--At Utica--Reading at Albany--New England
Engagements--Again attacked by
Lameness--Reading at New Bedford--"Nearly used
up"--Farewell Readings--Last Boston
Readings--New York Farewells--Receipts
throughout--Public Dinner to Dickens.

THE Reading on the third of January closed a fourth of the entire
series, and on that day Dickens wrote of the trouble brought on them by
the "speculators," which to some extent had affected unfavourably the
three previous nights in New York. When adventurers buy up the best
places, the public resent it by refusing the worst; to prevent it by
first helping themselves, being the last thing they ever think of doing.
"We try to withhold the best seats from the speculators, but the
unaccountable thing is that the great mass of the public buy of them
(prefer it), and the rest of the public are injured if we have not got
t