ens
during the course of this tour read for the first time at Bristol, at
Greenwich, and in the Crystal Palace at Sydenham.

The inauguration of the series of Readings now referred to had a
peculiar interest imparted to it by the circumstance that, on the
evening of Tuesday, the 10th of April, 1866, there was first of all
introduced to public notice the comic patter and pathetic recollections
of the Cheap Jack, Doctor Marigold.

Half a year afterwards a longer series of the Readings began under the
organisation of the Messrs. Chappell, and under the direction of
Mr. Dolby as their business manager. It took place altogether under
precisely similar circumstances as the last, with this only difference
that the handsome terms of remuneration originally guaranteed to
the author were, as already intimated, considerably and voluntarily
increased by the projectors of the enterprise, the pecuniary results of
the first series having been so very largely beyond their expectations.
Fifty Readings instead of thirty were now arranged for--Ireland being
visited as well as the principal towns and cities of England and
Scotland. Six Readings were given at Dublin, and one at Belfast; four
were given at Glasgow, and two at Edinburgh. Bath, for the first time,
had the opportunity of according a public welcome to the great humorist,
some of the drollest scenes in whose earliest masterpiece occur in the
city of Bladud, as every true Pickwickian very well remembers. Then,
also, for the first time, he was welcomed--by old admirers of his in his
capacity as an author, new admirers of his thenceforth in his later
and minor capacity as a Reader--at Swansea and Gloucester, at Stoke and
Blackburn, at Hanley and Warrington. Tuesday, the 15th of January, 1867,
was the inaugural night of the series, when "Barbox, Brothers," and
"The Boy at Mugby," were read for the first time at St. James's Hall,
Piccadilly. Monday, the 13th of May, was the date of the last night of
the season, which was brought to a close upon the same platform, the
success of every Reading, without exception, both in London and in the
provinces, having been simply unexampled.

It was shortly after this that the notion was first entertained by the
Novelist of entering upon that Reading Tour in America, which has since
become so widely celebrated. Overtures had been made to him repeatedly
from the opposite shores of the Atlantic, with a view to induce him
to give a course of Readin