altogether, showing how very little of
the original story the then unpractised hand of the Reader had as
yet eliminated. Notwithstanding the length of the entertainment, the
unflagging interest, more even than the hearty and reiterated applause
of those who were assembled, showed the lively sense the author's
first audience had of his newly-revealed powers as a narrator and
impersonator. On the next day but one, Thursday, the 29th of December,
he read there, to an equally large concourse, the "Cricket on the
Hearth." Upon the following evening, Friday, the 30th of December, he
repeated the "Carol" to another densely packed throng of listeners,
mainly composed, this time, according to his own express stipulation, of
workpeople. So delighted were these unsophisticated hearers with their
entertainer--himself so long familiarly known to them, but then for the
first time seen and heard--that, at the end of the Reading, they greeted
him with repeated rounds of cheering.

Those three Readings at Birmingham added considerably to the funds of
the Institute, enhancing them at least to the extent of L400 sterling.
In recognition of the good service thus effectively and delightfully
rendered to a local institution, to the presidency of which Charles
Dickens himself was unanimously elected, an exquisitely designed silver
flower-basket was afterwards presented to the novelist's wife. This
graceful souvenir had engraved upon it the following inscription:
"Presented to Mrs. Charles Dickens by the Committee of the Birmingham
and Midland Institute, as a slight acknowledgment of the debt of
gratitude due to her husband, for his generous liberality in reading
the 'Christmas Carol,' and the 'Cricket on the Hearth,' to nearly
six thousand persons, in the Town Hall, Birmingham, on the nights-of
December 27, 29, and 30, 1853, in aid of the funds for the establishment
of the Institute." The incident of these three highly successful
Readings entailed upon the Reader, as events proved, an enormous amount
of toil, none of which, however, did he ever grudge, in affording the
like good service to others, at uncertain intervals, in all parts,
sometimes the remotest parts, of the United Kingdom.

It would be beside our present purpose to catalogue, one after another,
the various Readings given in this-way by the Novelist, before he was
driven to the necessity at last of either giving up reading altogether,
or coming to the determination to adopt it,