sir.' And so we shake
hands and go our ways. . . . Of course many of my impressions come through
the readings. Thus I find the people lighter and more humorous than
formerly; and there must be a great deal of innocent imagination among
every class, or they never could pet with such extraordinary pleasure as
they do, the Boots' story of the elopement of the two little children.
They seem to see the children; and the women set up a shrill
undercurrent of half-pity and half-pleasure that is quite affecting.
To-night's reading is my 26th; but as all the Philadelphia tickets for
four more are sold, as well as four at Brooklyn, you must assume that I
am at--say--my 35th reading. I have remitted to Coutts's in English gold
L10,000 odd; and I roughly calculate that on this number Dolby will have
another thousand pounds profit to pay me. These figures are of course
between ourselves, at present; but are they not magnificent? The
expenses, always recollect, are enormous. On the other hand we never
have occasion to print a bill of any sort (bill-printing and posting are
great charges at home); and have just now sold off L90 worth of
bill-paper, provided beforehand, as a wholly useless incumbrance."

Then came, as ever, the constant shadow that still attended him, the
slave in the chariot of his triumph. "The work is very severe. There is
now no chance of my being rid of this American catarrh until I embark
for England. It is very distressing. It likewise happens, not seldom,
that I am so dead beat when I come off that they lay me down on a sofa
after I have been washed and dressed, and I lie there, extremely faint,
for a quarter of an hour. In that time I rally and come right." One week
later from New York, where he had become due on the 16th for the first
of his four Brooklyn readings, he wrote to his sister-in-law. "My cold
sticks to me, and I can scarcely exaggerate what I undergo from
sleeplessness. I rarely take any breakfast but an egg and a cup of
tea--not even toast or bread and butter. My small dinner at 3, and a
little quail or some such light thing when I come home at night, is my
daily fare; and at the hall I have established the custom of taking an
egg beaten up in sherry before going in, and another between the parts,
which I think pulls me up. . . . It is snowing hard now, and I begin to
move to-morrow. There is so much floating ice in the river, that we are
obliged to have a pretty wide margin of time for getting o