author’s attachment to the creatures of his own imagination, that
it is a perfect model of constancy and devotion, and is the
blindest of all. But the objects and purposes I have had in view
are very plain and simple, and may be easily told. I have always
had, and always shall have, an earnest and true desire to
contribute, as far as in me lies, to the common stock of healthful
cheerfulness and enjoyment. I have always had, and always shall
have, an invincible repugnance to that mole-eyed philosophy which
loves the darkness, and winks and scowls in the light. I believe
that Virtue shows quite as well in rags and patches, as she does in
purple and fine linen. I believe that she and every beautiful
object in external nature, claims some sympathy in the breast of
the poorest man who breaks his scanty loaf of daily bread. I
believe that she goes barefoot as well as shod. I believe that she
dwells rather oftener in alleys and by-ways than she does in courts
and palaces, and that it is good, and pleasant, and profitable to
track her out, and follow her. I believe that to lay one’s hand
upon some of those rejected ones whom the world has too long
forgotten, and too often misused, and to say to the proudest and
most thoughtless – “These creatures have the same elements and
capacities of goodness as yourselves, they are moulded in the same
form, and made of the same clay; and though ten times worse than
you, may, in having retained anything of their original nature
amidst the trials and distresses of their condition, be really ten
times better;” I believe that to do this is to pursue a worthy and
not useless vocation. Gentlemen, that you think so too, your
fervent greeting sufficiently assures me. That this feeling is
alive in the Old World as well as in the New, no man should know
better than I – I, who have found such wide and ready sympathy in
Page 9
Dickens, Charles – Speeches, Literary & Social
my own dear land. That in expressing it, we are but treading in
the steps of those great master-spirits who have gone before, we
know by reference to all the bright examples in our literature,
from Shakespeare downward.
There is one other point connected with the labours (if I may call
them so) that you hold in such generous esteem, to which I cannot
help adverting. I cannot help expressing the delight, the more
than happiness it was to me to find so strong an interest awakened
on this side of the water, in favour of that little heroine of
mine, to whom your president has made allusion, who died in her
youth. I had letters about that child, in England, from the
dwellers in log-houses among the morasses, and swamps, and densest
forests, and deep solitudes of the far west. Many a sturdy hand,
hard with the axe and spade, and browned by the summer’s sun, has
taken up the pen, and written to me a little history of domestic
joy or sorrow, always coupled, I am proud to say, with something of
interest in that little tale, or some comfort or happiness derived
from it, and my correspondent has always addressed me, not as a
writer of books for sale, resident some four or five thousand miles
away, but as a friend to whom he might freely impart the joys and
sorrows of his own fireside. Many a mother – I could reckon them
now by dozens, not by units – has done the like, and has told me
how she lost such a child at such a time, and where she lay buried,
and how good she was, and how, in this or that respect, she
resembles Nell. I do assure you that no circumstance of my life
has given me one hundredth part of the gratification I have derived
from this source. I was wavering at the time whether or not to
wind up my Clock, and come and see this country, and this decided
me. I felt as if it were a positive duty, as if I were bound to