w men could have endured."
Sleeplessness was on him too. And still he fought on, determined, if
it were physically possible, to fulfil his engagement with Messrs.
Chappell, and complete the hundred nights. But it was not to be.
Symptoms set in that pointed alarmingly towards paralysis of the left
side. At Preston, on the 22nd of April, Mr. Beard, who had come
post-haste from London, put a stop to the readings, and afterwards
decided, in consultation with Sir Thomas Watson, that they ought to be
suspended entirely for the time, and never resumed in connection with
any railway travelling.

Even this, however, was not quite the end; for a summer of comparative
rest, or what Dickens considered rest, seemed so far to have set him
up that he gave a final series of twelve readings in London between
the 11th of January and 15th of March, 1870, thus bringing to its real
conclusion an enterprise by which, at whatever cost to himself, he had
made a sum of about L45,000.

Meanwhile, in the autumn of 1869, he had gone back to the old work,
and was writing a novel, "The Mystery of Edwin Drood." It is a good
novel unquestionably. Without going so far as Longfellow, who had
doubts whether it was not "the most beautiful of all" Dickens' works,
one may admit that there is about it a singular freshness, and no sign
at all of mental decay. As for the "mystery," I do not think _that_
need baffle us altogether. But then I see no particular reason to
believe that Dickens had wished to baffle us, or specially to rival
Edgar Allan Poe or Mr. Wilkie Collins in the construction of criminal
puzzles. Even though only half the case is presented to us, and the
book remains for ever unfinished, we need have, I think, no difficulty
in working out its conclusion. The course pursued by Mr. Jasper, Lay
Precentor of the Cathedral at Cloisterham, is really too suspicious.
No intelligent British jury, seeing the facts as they are presented to
us, the readers, could for a moment think of acquitting him of the
murder of his nephew, Edwin Drood. Take those facts seriatim. First,
we have the motive: he is passionately in love with the girl to whom
his nephew is engaged. Then we have a terrible coil of compromising
circumstances: his extravagant profession of devotion to his nephew,
his attempts to establish a hidden influence over the girl's mind to
his nephew's detriment and his own advantage, his gropings amid the
dark recesses of the Cathedral and inquiries