kie Collins, Mr. Kent, and Mr. Wills. The next morning
the whole party took a final leave of Charles Dickens on board the
_Cuba_, which sailed that day.

We give a letter which he wrote to Mr. J. L. Toole on the morning of the
dinner, thanking him for a parting gift and an earnest letter. That
excellent comedian was one of his most appreciative admirers, and, in
return, he had for Mr. Toole the greatest admiration and respect.

The Christmas number for this year, "No Thoroughfare," was written by
Charles Dickens and Mr. Wilkie Collins. It was dramatised by Mr. Collins
chiefly. But, in the midst of all the work of preparation for departure,
Charles Dickens gave minute attention to as much of the play as could be
completed before he left England. It was produced, after Christmas, at
the Adelphi Theatre, where M. Fechter was then acting, under the
management of Mr. Benjamin Webster.

[Sidenote: M. de Cerjat.]

GAD'S HILL PLACE, HIGHAM BY ROCHESTER, KENT,
_New Year's Day, 1867._

MY DEAR CERJAT,

Thoroughly determined to be beforehand with "the middle of next summer,"
your penitent friend and remorseful correspondent thus addresses you.

The big dog, on a day last autumn, having seized a little girl (sister
to one of the servants) whom he knew, and was bound to respect, was
flogged by his master, and then sentenced to be shot at seven next
morning. He went out very cheerfully with the half-dozen men told off
for the purpose, evidently thinking that they were going to be the death
of somebody unknown. But observing in the procession an empty
wheelbarrow and a double-barrelled gun, he became meditative, and fixed
the bearer of the gun with his eyes. A stone deftly thrown across him by
the village blackguard (chief mourner) caused him to look round for an
instant, and he then fell dead, shot through the heart. Two posthumous
children are at this moment rolling on the lawn; one will evidently
inherit his ferocity, and will probably inherit the gun. The pheasant
was a little ailing towards Christmas Day, and was found dead under some
ivy in his cage, with his head under his wing, on the morning of the
twenty-seventh of December, one thousand eight hundred and sixty-six. I,
proprietor of the remains of the two deceased, am working hard, getting
up "Barbox" and "The Boy at Mugby," with which I begin a new series of
readings in London on the fifteenth. Next