you were here, and a tunnel under the high road connects this shrubbery with the front garden), to ask, with their compliments, how I find myself now.

“If I come to America this next November, even you can hardly imagine with what interest I shall try Copperfield on an American audience, or, if they give me their heart, how freely and fully I shall give them mine.  We will ask Dolby then whether he ever heard it before.

    “I cannot thank you enough for your invaluable help to Dolby.  He
    writes that at every turn and moment the sense and knowledge and
    tact of Mr. Osgood are inestimable to him.

    “Ever, my dear Fields, faithfully yours,

    “CHARLES DICKENS.”

Here is a little note dated the 3d of October:—­

“I cannot tell you how much I thank you for your kind little letter, which is like a pleasant voice coming across the Atlantic, with that domestic welcome in it which has no substitute on earth.  If you knew how strongly I am inclined to allow myself the pleasure of staying at your house, you would look upon me as a kind of ancient Roman (which, I trust in Heaven, I am not) for having the courage to say no.  But if I gave myself that gratification in the beginning, I could scarcely hope to get on in the hard ‘reading’ life, without offending some kindly disposed and hospitable American friend afterwards; whereas if I observe my English principle on such occasions, of having no abiding-place but an hotel, and stick to it from the first, I may perhaps count on being consistently uncomfortable.

“The nightly exertion necessitates meals at odd hours, silence and rest at impossible times of the day, a general Spartan behavior so utterly inconsistent with my nature, that if you were to give me a happy inch, I should take an ell, and frightfully disappoint you in public.  I don’t want to do that, if I can help it, and so I will be good in spite of myself.

    “Ever your affectionate friend,

    “CHARLES DICKENS.”

A ridiculous paragraph in the papers following close on the public announcement that Dickens was coming to America in November, drew from him this letter to me, dated also early in October:—­

“I hope the telegraph clerks did not mutilate out of recognition or reasonable guess the words I added to Dolby’s last telegram to Boston.  ‘Tribune London correspondent totally false.’  Not only is there not a word of truth in the pretended conversation, but it is so absurdly unlike me that I cannot suppose it to be even invented by any one who ever heard me exchange a word with mortal creature.  For twenty years I am perfectly certain that I have never made any other allusion to the republication of my books in America than the good-humored remark, ’that if there had been international copyright between England and the States, I should have been