第67章

NEW YORK, APRIL 18, 1863.

[On the above date Mr.Dickens was entertained at a farewell dinner at Delmonico's Hotel, previous to his return to England.Two hundred gentlemen sat down to it; Mr.Horace Greeley presiding.In acknowledgment of the toast of his health, proposed by the chairman, Mr.Dickens rose and said:-]

GENTLEMEN, - I cannot do better than take my cue to from your distinguished president, and refer in my first remarks to his remarks in connexion with the old, natural, association between you and me.When I received an invitation from a private association of working members of the press of New York to dine with them to-day, I accepted that compliment in grateful remembrance of a calling that was once my own, and in loyal sympathy towards a brotherhood which, in the spirit, I have never quieted.To the wholesome training of severe newspaper work, when I was a very young man, I constantly refer my first successes; and my sons will hereafter testify of their father that he was always steadily proud of that ladder by which he rose.If it were otherwise, I should have but a very poor opinion of their father, which, perhaps, upon the whole, I have not.Hence, gentlemen, under any circumstances, this company would have been exceptionally interesting and gratifying to me.But whereas I supposed that, like the fairies'

pavilion in the "Arabian Nights," it would be but a mere handful, and I find it turn out, like the same elastic pavilion, capable of comprehending a multitude, so much the more proud am I of the honour of being your guest; for you will readily believe that the more widely representative of the press in America my entertainers are, the more I must feel the good-will and the kindly sentiments towards me of that vast institution.

Gentlemen, so much of my voice has lately been heard in the land, and I have for upwards of four hard winter months so contended against what I have been sometimes quite admiringly assured was "a true American catarrh " - a possession which I have throughout highly appreciated, though I might have preferred to be naturalised by any other outward and visible signs - I say, gentlemen, so much of my voice has lately been heard, that I might have been contented with troubling you no further from my present standing-point, were it not a duty with which I henceforth charge myself, not only here but on every suitable occasion whatsoever and wheresoever, to express my high and grateful sense of my second reception in America, and to bear my honest testimony to the national generosity and magnanimity.Also, to declare how astounded I have been by the amazing changes that I have seen around me on every side - changes moral, changes physical, changes in the amount of land subdued and peopled, changes in the rise of vast new cities, changes in the growth of older cities almost out of recognition, changes in the graces and amenities of life, changes in the press, without whose advancement no advancement can be made anywhere.Nor am I, believe me, so arrogant as to suppose that in five-and-twenty years there have been no changes in me, and that I had nothing to learn and no extreme impressions to correct when I was here first.