h." His
first letter after returning to New York (9th of January) made additions
to the Brooklyn picture. "Each evening an enormous ferry-boat will
convey me and my state-carriage (not to mention half a dozen wagons and
any number of people and a few score of horses) across the river to
Brooklyn, and will bring me back again. The sale of tickets there was an
amazing scene. The noble army of speculators are now furnished (this is
literally true, and I am quite serious) each man with a straw mattress,
a little bag of bread and meat, two blankets, and a bottle of whiskey.
With this outfit, _they lie down in line on the pavement_ the whole of
the night before the tickets are sold: generally taking up their
position at about 10. It being severely cold at Brooklyn, they made an
immense bonfire in the street--a narrow street of wooden houses--which
the police turned out to extinguish. A general fight then took place;
from which the people farthest off in the line rushed bleeding when they
saw any chance of ousting others nearer the door, put their mattresses
in the spots so gained, and held on by the iron rails. At 8 in the
morning Dolby appeared with the tickets in a portmanteau. He was
immediately saluted with a roar of Halloa! Dolby! So Charley has let you
have the carriage, has he, Dolby? How is he, Dolby? Don't drop the
tickets, Dolby! Look alive, Dolby! &c. &c. &c. in the midst of which he
proceeded to business, and concluded (as usual) by giving universal
dissatisfaction. He is now going off upon a little journey to look over
the ground and cut back again. This little journey (to Chicago) is
twelve hundred miles on end, by railway, besides the back again!" It
might tax the Englishman, but was nothing to the native American. It was
part of his New York landlord's ordinary life in a week, Dickens told
me, to go to Chicago and look at his theatre there on a Monday; to pelt
back to Boston and look at his theatre there on a Thursday; and to come
rushing to New York on a Friday, to apostrophize his enormous ballet.

Three days later, still at New York, he wrote to his sister-in-law. "I
am off to Philadelphia this evening for the first of three visits of two
nights each, tickets for all being sold. My cold steadily refuses to
leave me, but otherwise I am as well as I can hope to be under this
heavy work. My New York readings are over (except the farewell nights),
and I look forward to the relief of being out of my hardest hall.