AT a Public Dinner given to me on Saturday the 18th of April,
1868, in the City of New York, by two hundred representatives of the Press of
the United States of America, I made the following observations among others:
'So much of my voice has lately been heard in the land, 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 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 take
place 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. And this brings me
to a point on which I have, ever since I landed in the United States last
November, observed a strict silence, though sometimes tempted to break it, but
in reference to which I will, with your good leave, take you into my confidence
now. Even the Press, being human, may be sometimes mistaken or misinformed, and
I rather think that I have in one or two rare instances observed its information
to be not strictly accurate with reference to myself. Indeed, I have, now and
again, been more surprised by printed news that I have read of myself, than by
any printed news that I have ever read in my present state of existence. Thus,
the vigour and perseverance with which I have for some months past been
collecting materials for, and hammering away at, a new book on America has much
astonished me; seeing that all that time my declaration has been perfectly well
known to my publishers on both sides of the Atlantic, that no consideration on
earth would induce me to write one. But what I have intended, what I have
resolved upon (and this is the confidence I seek to place in you) is, on my
return to England, in my own person, in my own journal, to bear, for the behoof
of my countrymen, such testimony to the gigantic changes in this country as I
have hinted at to-night. Also, to record that wherever I have been, in the
smallest places equally with the largest, I have been received with
unsurpassable politeness, delicacy, sweet temper, hospitality, consideration,
and with unsurpassable respect for the privacy daily enforced upon me by the
nature of my avocation here and the state of my health. This testimony, so long
as I live, and so long as my descendants have any legal right in my books, I
shall cause to be republished, as an appendix to every copy of those two books
of mine in which I have referred to America. And this I will do and cause to be
done, not in mere love and thankfulness, but because I regard it as an act of
plain justice and honour.'
I said these words with the greatest earnestness that I could lay upon them,
and I repeat them in print here with equal earnestness. So long as this book
shall last, I hope that they will form a part of it, and will be fairly read as
inseparable from my experiences and impressions of America.
CHARLES DICKENS.
MAY, 1868.
Footnotes:
(1) NOTE TO THE ORIGINAL EDITION. - Or let him refer to an able, and
perfectly truthful article, in THE FOREIGN QUARTERLY REVIEW, published in the
present month of October; to which my attention has been attracted, since these
sheets have been passing through the press. He will find some specimens there,
by no means remarkable to any man who has been in America, but sufficiently
striking to one who has not.
End
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