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During the summer of 1868 constant messages and letters came from
Dickens across the seas, containing pleasant references to his visit in
America, and giving charming accounts of his way of life at home. Here
is a letter announcing the fact that he had decided to close forever his
appearance in the reading-desk:--
Liverpool, Friday, October 30, 1868.
My Dear ----: I ought to have written to you long ago. But I have
begun my one hundred and third Farewell Readings, and have been so
busy and so fatigued that my hands have been quite full. Here are
Dolby and I again leading the kind of life that you know so well. We
stop next week (except in London) for the month of November, on
account of the elections, and then go on again, with a short holiday
at Christmas. We have been doing wonders, and the crowds that pour
in upon us in London are beyond all precedent or means of providing
for. I have serious thoughts of doing the murder from Oliver Twist;
but it is so horrible, that I am going to try it on a dozen people
in my London hall one night next month, privately, and see what
effect it makes.
My reason for abandoning the Christmas number was, that I became
weary of having my own writing swamped by that of other people. This
reminds me of the Ghost story. I don't think so well of it my dear
Fields, as you do. It seems to me to be too obviously founded on
Bill Jones (in Monk Lewis's Tales of Terror), and there is also a
remembrance in it of another Sea-Ghost story entitled, I think,
"Stand from Under," and written by I don't know whom. _Stand from
under_ is the cry from aloft when anything is going to be sent down
on deck, and the ghost is aloft on a yard....
You know all about public affairs, Irish churches, and party
squabbles. A vast amount of electioneering is going on about here;
but it has not hurt us; though Gladstone has been making speeches,
north, east, south, and west of us. I hear that C----is on his way
here in the Russia. Gad's Hill must be thrown open.....