y CAN NOT be got to comprehend, seeing me able to do
the two hours when the time comes round, that it may also involve much
misery." To myself on the 30th he wrote from the same place, making like
confession. No comment could deepen the sadness of the story of
suffering, revealed in his own simple language. "I write in a town three
parts of which were burnt down in a tremendous fire three years ago. The
people lived in tents while their city was rebuilding. The charred
trunks of the trees with which the streets of the old city were planted,
yet stand here and there in the new thoroughfares like black spectres.
The rebuilding is still in progress everywhere. Yet such is the
astonishing energy of the people that the large hall in which I am to
read to-night (its predecessor was burnt) would compare very favourably
with the Free Trade Hall at Manchester! . . . I am nearly used up. Climate,
distance, catarrh, travelling, and hard work, have begun (I may say so,
now they are nearly all over) to tell heavily upon me. Sleeplessness
besets me; and if I had engaged to go on into May, I think I must have
broken down. It was well that I cut off the Far West and Canada when I
did. There would else have been a sad complication. It is impossible to
make the people about one understand, however zealous and devoted (it is
impossible even to make Dolby understand until the pinch comes), that
the power of coming up to the mark every night, with spirits and spirit,
may coexist with the nearest approach to sinking under it. When I got
back to Boston on Thursday, after a very hard three weeks, I saw that
Fields was very grave about my going on to New Bedford (55 miles) next
day, and then coming on here (180 miles) _next_ day. But the stress is
over, and so I can afford to look back upon it, and think about it, and
write about it." On the 31st he closed his letter at Boston, and he was
at home when I heard of him again. "The latest intelligence, my dear old
fellow, is, that I have arrived here safely, and that I am certainly
better. I consider my work virtually over, now. My impression is, that
the political crisis will damage the farewells by about one half. I
cannot yet speak by the card; but my predictions here, as to our
proceedings, have thus far been invariably right. We took last night at
Portland, L360 English; where a costly Italian troupe, using the same
hall to-night, had not booked L14! It is the same all over the country,
and the