erday
afternoon. They made no attempt whatever to hide it, and certainly cried
more than the women. As to the 'Boots' [at the Holly Tree Inn] at night,
and 'Mrs Gamp' too, it was just one roar with me and them, for they made
me laugh so that sometimes _I could not_ compose my face to go on."

With regard to the crowds at his readings he wrote to Miss Dickens:
"Arthur {221} told you, I suppose, that he had his shirt-front and
waistcoat torn off last night. He was perfectly enraptured in
consequence. Our men got so knocked about that he gave them five
shillings apiece on the spot. John passed several minutes upside against
a wall, with his head among the people's boots."

We hear of his readings in a letter to John Forster: "I cannot tell you
what the demonstrations of personal regard and respect are; how the
densest and most uncomfortably packed crowd will be hushed in an instant
when I show my face."

And again to the same friend:--"At Aberdeen we were crammed to the street
twice every day. . . And at the end of _Dombey_ yesterday afternoon at
Perth, in the cold light of day, they all got up . . . and thundered and
waved their hats with that astonishing heartiness and fondness for me . . .
that they took me completely off my legs."

Elsewhere he speaks of being overwhelmed with proposals to read in
America, and adds, "Will never go, unless a small fortune be first paid
down in money on this side of the Atlantic."

In the autumn he writes to Regnier, enclosing proofs of _A Tale of Two
Cities_: "I want you to read it for two reasons. Firstly, because I hope
it is the best story I have written. Secondly, because it treats of a
very remarkable time in France; and I should very much like to know what
you think of its being dramatised for a French theatre. . . . The story
is an extraordinary success here" (15th Oct. 1859).

He felt strongly about public executions. Forster describes how Dickens
saw the hanging of the Mannings, and says that "with the letter which
Dickens wrote next day to the _Times_ descriptive of what we had
witnessed on that memorable morning, there began an active agitation
against public executions," which was finally successful. But in 1860
the evil still existed; he wrote, 4th September 1860, to W. H. Wills:
"Coming here from the station this morning, I met, coming from the
execution of the Wentworth murderer, such a tide of ruffians as never
could have flowed from any point but the ga