in the neighbourhood of such a
place as Chatham!

"Mugby Junction" turned, yesterday afternoon, the extraordinary number
of two hundred and fifty thousand!

In the middle of next month I begin a new course of forty-two readings.
If any of them bring me within reach of Cheltenham, with an hour to
spare, I shall come on to you, even for that hour. More of this when I
am afield and have my list, which Dolby (for Chappell) is now
preparing.

Forster and Mrs. Forster were to have come to us next Monday, to stay
until Saturday. I write "were," because I hear that Forster (who had a
touch of bronchitis when he wrote to me on Christmas Eve) is in bed.
Katie, who has been ill of low nervous fever, was brought here yesterday
from London. She bore the journey much better than I expected, and so I
hope will soon recover. This is my little stock of news.

I begin to discover in your riper years, that you have been secretly
vain of your handwriting all your life. For I swear I see no change in
it! What it always was since I first knew it (a year or two!) it _is_.
This I will maintain against all comers.

Ever affectionately, my dearest Macready.

1867.

NARRATIVE.

As the London and provincial readings were to be resumed early in the
year and continued until the end of March, Charles Dickens took no house
in London this spring. He came to his office quarters at intervals, for
the series in town; usually starting off again, on his country tour, the
day after a London reading. From some passages in his letters to his
daughter and sister-in-law during this country course, it will be seen
that (though he made very light of the fact) the great exertion of the
readings, combined with incessant railway travelling, was beginning to
tell upon his health, and he was frequently "heavily beaten" after
reading at his best to an enthusiastic audience in a large hall.

During the short intervals between his journeys, he was as constantly
and carefully at work upon the business of "All the Year Round" as if he
had no other work on hand. A proof of this is given in a letter dated
"5th February." It is written to a young man (the son of a friend), who
wrote a long novel when far too juvenile for such a task, and had
submitted it to Charles Dickens for his opinion, with a view to
publication. In the midst of his own hard and engrossing occupation he
read the book, and the letter which he wrote on the sub