“Ever, my dear Fields, heartily and affectionately yours,

    “CHARLES DICKENS.”

Before sailing in November he sent off this note to me from the office of All the Year Round:—­

“I received your more than acceptable letter yesterday morning, and consequently am able to send you this line of acknowledgment by the next mail.  Please God we will have that walk among the autumn leaves, before the readings set in.

“You may have heard from Dolby that a gorgeous repast is to be given to me to-morrow, and that it is expected to be a notable demonstration.  I shall try, in what I say, to state my American case exactly.  I have a strong hope and belief that within the compass of a couple of minutes or so I can put it, with perfect truthfulness, in the light that my American friends would be best pleased to see me place it in.  Either so, or my instinct is at fault.

“My daughters and their aunt unite with me in kindest loves.  As I write, a shrill prolongation of the message comes in from the next room, ’Tell them to take care of you-u-u!’

“Tell Longfellow, with my love, that I am charged by Forster (who has been very ill of diffused gout and bronchitis) with a copy of his Sir John Eliot.

“I will bring you out the early proof of the Christmas number.  We publish it here on the 12th of December.  I am planning it (No Thoroughfare) out into a play for Wilkie Collins to manipulate after I sail, and have arranged for Fechter to go to the Adelphi Theatre and play a Swiss in it.  It will be brought out the day after Christmas day.

“Here, at Boston Wharf, and everywhere else,

“Yours heartily and affectionately,

“C.D.”

On a blustering evening in November, 1867, Dickens arrived in Boston Harbor, on his second visit to America.  A few of his friends, under the guidance of the Collector of the port, steamed down in the custom-house boat to welcome him.  It was pitch dark before we sighted the Cuba and ran alongside.  The great steamer stopped for a few minutes to take us on board, and Dickens’s cheery voice greeted me before I had time to distinguish him on the deck of the vessel.  The news of the excitement the sale of the tickets to his readings had occasioned had been earned to him by the pilot, twenty miles out.  He was in capital spirits over the cheerful account that all was going on so well, and I thought he never looked in better health.  The voyage had been a good one, and the ten days’ rest on shipboard had strengthened him amazingly he said.  As we were told that a crowd had assembled in East Boston, we took him in our little tug and landed him safely at Long Wharf in Boston, where carriages were in waiting.  Rooms had been taken for him at the Parker House, and in half an hour after he had reached the hotel he was sitting down to dinner with half a dozen friends, quite prepared, he said, to give the first reading in America that very night, if desirable.  Assurances