ttle girl--to whom I presented a black doll when I was here
last; and as I have just seen her eye at the keyhole since I began
writing this, I think she and the doll must be outside still. 'When you
sent it up to me by the coloured boy,' she said after receiving it
(coloured boy is the term for black waiter), 'I gave such a cream that
Ma come running in and creamed too, 'cos she fort I'd hurt myself. But I
creamed a cream of joy.' She had a friend to play with her that day, and
brought the friend with her--to my infinite confusion. A friend all
stockings and much too tall, who sat on the sofa very far back with her
stockings sticking stiffly out in front of her, and glared at me, and
never spake a word. Dolby found us confronted in a sort of fascination,
like serpent and bird."

On the 15th he was again at New York, in the thick of more troubles with
the speculators. They involved even charges of fraud in ticket-sales at
Newhaven and Providence; indignation meetings having been held by the
Mayors, and unavailing attempts made by his manager to turn the wrath
aside. "I expect him back here presently half bereft of his senses, and
I should be wholly bereft of mine if the situation were not comical as
well as disagreeable. We can sell at our own box-office to any extent;
but we cannot buy back of the speculators, because we have informed the
public that all the tickets are gone; and even if we made the sacrifice
of buying at their price and selling at ours, we should be accused of
treating with them and of making money by it." It ended in Providence by
his going himself to the town and making a speech; and in Newhaven it
ended by his sending back the money taken, with intimation that he would
not read until there had been a new distribution of the tickets approved
by all the town. Fresh disturbance broke out upon this; but he stuck to
his determination to delay the reading until the heats had cooled down,
and what should have been given in the middle of February he did not
give until the close of March.

The Readings he had promised at the smaller outlying places by the
Canadian frontier and Niagara district, including Syracuse, Rochester,
and Buffalo, were appointed for that same March month which was to be
the interval between the close of the ordinary readings and the
farewells in the two leading cities. All that had been promised in New
York were closed when he returned to Boston on the 23rd of February,
ready for the