hown that "real wit could afford to put off
any airs of pretension to it." He was at Gadshill till the close of the
year; coming up for a few special occasions, such as Procter's
eighty-second birthday; and at my house on new-year's eve he read to us,
again aloud, a fresh number of his book. Yet these very last days of
December had not been without a reminder of the grave warnings of April.
The pains in somewhat modified form had returned in both his left hand
and his left foot a few days before we met; and they were troubling him
still on that day. But he made so light of them himself; so little
thought of connecting them with the uncertainties of touch and tread of
which they were really part; and read with such an overflow of humour
Mr. Honeythunder's boisterous philanthropy; that there was no room,
then, for anything but enjoyment. His only allusion to an effect from
his illness was his mention of a now invincible dislike which he had to
railway travel. This had decided him to take a London house for the
twelve last readings in the early months of 1870, and he had become Mr.
Milner-Gibson's tenant at 5, Hyde Park Place.

St. James's Hall was to be the scene of these Readings, and they were to
occupy the interval from the 11th of January to the 15th of March; two
being given in each week to the close of January, and the remaining
eight on each of the eight Tuesdays following. Nothing was said of any
kind of apprehension as the time approached; but, with a curious absence
of the sense of danger, there was certainly both distrust and fear.
Sufficient precaution was supposed to have been taken[303] by
arrangement for the presence, at each reading, of his friend and medical
attendant, Mr. Carr Beard; but this resolved itself, not into any
measure of safety, the case admitting of none short of stopping the
reading altogether, but simply into ascertainment of the exact amount of
strain and pressure, which, with every fresh exertion, he was placing on
those vessels of the brain where the Preston trouble too surely had
revealed that danger lay. No supposed force in reserve, no dominant
strength of will, can turn aside the penalties sternly exacted for
disregard of such laws of life as were here plainly overlooked; and
though no one may say that it was not already too late for any but the
fatal issue, there will be no presumption in believing that life might
yet have been for some time prolonged if these readings could have be