was disturbed by hearing that he must attend the levee of the
Governor who had unexpectedly arrived in the city, and who would take it
as an affront, his eccentric friend Fletcher told him, if that courtesy
were not immediately paid. "It was the morning on which I was going to
begin, so I wrote round to our consul,"--praying, of course, that excuse
should be made for him. Don't bother yourself, replied that sensible
functionary, for all the consuls and governors alive; but shut yourself
up by all means. "So," continues Dickens, telling me the tale, "he went
next morning in great state and full costume, to present two English
gentlemen. 'Where's the great poet?' said the Governor. 'I want to see
the great poet.' 'The great poet, your excellency,' said the consul, 'is
at work, writing a book, and begged me to make his excuses.' 'Excuses!'
said the Governor, 'I wouldn't interfere with such an occupation for all
the world. Pray tell him that my house is open to the honour of his
presence when it is perfectly convenient for him; but not otherwise.
And let no gentleman,' said the Governor, a surweyin' of his suite
with a majestic eye, 'call upon Signor Dickens till he is understood
to be disengaged.' And he sent somebody with his own cards next day.
Now I _do_ seriously call this, real politeness and pleasant
consideration--not positively American, but still gentlemanly and
polished. The same spirit pervades the inferior departments; and I have
not been required to observe the usual police regulations, or to put
myself to the slightest trouble about anything." (18th of October.)

The picture I am now to give of him at work should be prefaced by a word
or two that may throw light on the design he was working at. It was a
large theme for so small an instrument; and the disproportion was not
more characteristic of the man, than the throes of suffering and passion
to be presently undergone by him for results that many men would smile
at. He was bent, as he says, on striking a blow for the poor. They had
always been his clients, they had never been forgotten in any of his
books, but here nothing else was to be remembered. He had become, in
short, terribly earnest in the matter. Several months before he left
England, I had noticed in him the habit of more gravely regarding many
things before passed lightly enough; the hopelessness of any true
solution of either political or social problems by the ordinary
Downing-street methods had