d if he ever felt nervous while speaking in public, is
known to have replied, "Not in the least "--adding, that "when first he
took the chair he felt as much confidence as though he had already done
the like a hundred times!" As corroborative of which remark, the present
writer recalls to recollection very clearly the fact of Dickens saying
to him one day,--saying it with a most whimsical air by-the-bye,
but very earnestly,--"Once, and but once only in my life, I
was--frightened!" The occasion he referred to was simply this, as he
immediately went on to explain, that somewhere about the middle of
the serial publication of David Copperfield, happening to be out of
writing-paper, he sallied forth one morning to get a fresh supply at the
stationer's. He was living then in his favourite haunt, at Fort House,
in Broadstairs. As he was about to enter the stationer's shop, with
the intention of buying the needful writing-paper, for the purpose
of returning home with it, and at once setting to work upon his next
number, not one word of which was yet written, he stood aside for a
moment at the threshold to allow a lady to pass in before him. He
then went on to relate--with a vivid sense still upon him of mingled
enjoyment and dismay in the mere recollection--how the next instant he
had overheard this strange lady asking the person behind the counter for
the new green number. When it was handed to her, "Oh, this," said she,
"I have read. I want the next one." The next one she was thereupon told
would be out by the end of the month. "Listening to this, unrecognised,"
he added, in conclusion, "knowing the purpose for which I was there, and
remembering that not one word of the number she was asking for was yet
written, for the first and only time in my life, I felt--frightened!"
So much for the circumstantial account put forth of this Reading at
Peterborough, and of the purely imaginary nervousness displayed by
the Reader, who, on the contrary, there, as elsewhere, was throughout
perfectly self-possessed.

On Saturday, the 22nd December, 1855, in the Mechanics' Hall at
Sheffield, another of these Readings was given, it being the "Carol," as
usual, and the proceeds being in aid of the funds of that institution.
The Mayor of Sheffield, who presided upon the occasion, at the close of
the proceedings, presented to the author, as a suitable testimonial
from a number of his admirers in that locality, a complete set of table
cutlery.

An