ire.

"Think of reading in America? Lord bless you, I think of reading in
the deepest depth of the lowest crater in the Moon, on my way there!

"There is no sun-picture of my Falstaff House as yet; but it shall
be done, and you shall have it. It has been much improved internally
since you saw it....

"I expect Macready at Gad's Hill on Saturday. You know that his
second wife (an excellent one) presented him lately with a little
boy? I was staying with him for a day or two last winter, and,
seizing an umbrella when he had the audacity to tell me he was
growing old, made at him with Macduff's defiance. Upon which he fell
into the old fierce guard, with the desperation of thirty years ago.

"Kind remembrances to all friends who kindly remember me.

"Ever heartily yours,

"CHARLES DICKENS."

Every time I had occasion to write to him after the war, I stirred up
the subject of the readings. On the 2d of May, 1866, he says:--

"Your letter is an excessively difficult one to answer, because I
really do not know that any sum of money that could be laid down
would induce me to cross the Atlantic to read. Nor do I think it
likely that any one on your side of the great water can be prepared
to understand the state of the case. For example, I am now just
finishing a series of thirty readings. The crowds attending them
have been so astounding, and the relish for them has so far outgone
all previous experience, that if I were to set myself the task, 'I
will make such or such a sum of money by devoting myself to readings
for a certain time,' I should have to go no further than Bond
Street or Regent Street, to have it secured to me in a day.
Therefore, if a specific offer, and a very large one indeed, were
made to me from America, I should naturally ask myself, 'Why go
through this wear and tear, merely to pluck fruit that grows on
every bough at home?' It is a delightful sensation to move a new
people; but I have but to go to Paris, and I find the brightest
people in the world quite ready for me. I say thus much in a sort of
desperate endeavor to explain myself to you. I can put no price upon
fifty readings in America, because I do not know that any possible
price could pay me for them. And I really cannot say to any one
disposed towards the enterprise, 'Tempt me,' because I have too
s