2o6 RISEN BY PERSEVERANCE. 



from my desk before I want them.' His constitution, too, 

 received a severe shock from a raihvay accident which 

 happened at Staplehurst. The carriage in which he was 

 journeying was thrown off the rails, and for a time hung 

 suspended in the air. He had just time to scramble out of 

 the window unhurt. Although feeling unwell, at the end of 

 February 1866 he closed with an offer for a third series of 

 readings for Messrs. Chappell, Bond Street, of ;Q^o a night for 

 thirty nights. He engaged to read in England, Ireland, 

 Scotland, or Paris, and the fatigue which he afterwards under- 

 went in journeying about so rapidly from place to place was 

 immense. The sum taken amounted to ;^47 20. His success 

 was beyond even his former successes. Writing from Liver- 

 pool about the close of April, he remarked the sudden death 

 of Mrs. Carlyle, which had taken place on the 2d of the same 

 month : ' It was a terrible shock to me, and poor dear Carlyle 

 has been in my mind ever since. How often I have thought of 

 the unfinished novel. No one now to finish it. None of the 

 waiting women come near her at all.' The novel referred to 

 was a story in which the deceased had been engaged. A fresh 

 negotiation was entered into with Messrs. Chappell in August 

 1866 for another course of readings; forty-two nights for ^2500. 



An instance of the cordiality of feeling subsisting between 

 Dickens and the staff of his weekly periodical is furnished in 

 his interesting story regarding the contributions of Miss 

 Adelaide Anne Procter, the daughter of 'Barry Cornwall.' 

 He wrote a touching preface for her Legends and Lyrics, 

 which was issued after her death, and explained how he first 

 gained her acquaintance. 



' In the spring of the year 1853,' he writes, 'I observed, as 

 conductor of tho. weekly journal Household Words, a short 



