lilSEN B V FERSE VERANCE. 



Dickens.' The reports given of the banquet described how 

 the company rose as one man to do honour to the toast, 

 and drank it with such expressions of enthusiasm and goodwill 

 as are rarely to be seen in any public assembly. Again and 

 again the cheers burst forth, and it was some minutes 

 before silence was restored. 



Mr. Dickens replied in a speech such as no one else could 

 have deUvered, and towards its conclusion he said : — ' The 

 story of my going to America is very easily and briefly told. 

 Since I was there before, a vast and entirely new generation 

 has arisen in the United States. Since that time, too, most 

 of the best known of my books have been written and 

 published. The new generation and the books have come 

 together, and have kept together, until at length numbers of 

 those who have so widely and constantly read me, naturally 

 desiring a httle variety in the relations between us, have 

 expressed a strong wish that I should read myself. This 

 wish, at first conveyed to me through public as well as 

 through business channels, has gradually become enforced by 

 an immense accumulation of letters from private individuals 

 and associations of individuals, all expressing in the same 

 hearty, homely, cordial, unaffected way a kind of personal 

 affection for me, which I am sure you will agree with me that 

 it would be downright insensibility on my part not to prize. 

 Little by little this pressure has become so great that, although, 

 as Charles Lamb says, " My household gods strike a terribly 

 deep root," I have driven them from their places, and this day 

 week, at this hour, shall be upon the sea. You will readily 

 conceive that I am inspired besides by a natural desire to see 

 for myself the astonishing progress of a quarter of a century 

 over there ; to grasp the hands of many faithiul friends 



