prevented by indisposition, and I besought my friend, Mr. Wilkie
Collins, to reign in my stead. He very kindly complied, and made
an excellent speech. Now I tell you the truth, that I read that
speech with considerable uneasiness, for it inspired me with a
strong misgiving that I had better have presided last year with
neuralgia in my face and my subject in my head, rather than preside
this year with my neuralgia all gone and my subject anticipated.
Therefore, I wish to preface the toast this evening by making the
managers of this Institution one very solemn and repentant promise,
and it is, if ever I find myself obliged to provide a substitute
again, they may rely upon my sending the most speechless man of my
acquaintance.
The Chairman last year presented you with an amiable view of the
universality of the newsman’s calling. Nothing, I think, is left
for me but to imagine the newsman’s burden itself, to unfold one of
those wonderful sheets which he every day disseminates, and to take
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Dickens, Charles – Speeches, Literary & Social
a bird’s-eye view of its general character and contents. So, if
you please, choosing my own time – though the newsman cannot choose
his time, for he must be equally active in winter or summer, in
sunshine or sleet, in light or darkness, early or late – but,
choosing my own time, I shall for two or three moments start off
with the newsman on a fine May morning, and take a view of the
wonderful broadsheets which every day he scatters broadcast over
the country. Well, the first thing that occurs to me following the
newsman is, that every day we are born, that every day we are
married – some of us – and that every day we are dead;
consequently, the first thing the newsvendor’s column informs me
is, that Atkins has been born, that Catkins has been married, and
that Datkins is dead. But the most remarkable thing I immediately
discover in the next column, is that Atkins has grown to be
seventeen years old, and that he has run away; for, at last, my eye
lights on the fact that William A., who is seventeen years old, is
adjured immediately to return to his disconsolate parents, and
everything will be arranged to the satisfaction of everyone. I am
afraid he will never return, simply because, if he had meant to
come back, he would never have gone away. Immediately below, I
find a mysterious character in such a mysterious difficulty that it
is only to be expressed by several disjointed letters, by several
figures, and several stars; and then I find the explanation in the
intimation that the writer has given his property over to his
uncle, and that the elephant is on the wing. Then, still glancing
over the shoulder of my industrious friend, the newsman, I find
there are great fleets of ships bound to all parts of the earth,
that they all want a little more stowage, a little more cargo, that
they have a few more berths to let, that they have all the most
spacious decks, that they are all built of teak, and copperbottomed,
that they all carry surgeons of experience, and that they
are all A1 at Lloyds’, and anywhere else. Still glancing over the
shoulder of my friend the newsman, I find I am offered all kinds of
house-lodging, clerks, servants, and situations, which I can
possibly or impossibly want. I learn, to my intense gratification,
that I need never grow old, that I may always preserve the juvenile
bloom of my complexion; that if ever I turn ill it is entirely my
own fault; that if I have any complaint, and want brown cod-liver
oil or Turkish baths, I am told where to get them, and that, if I
want an income of seven pounds a-week, I may have it by sending
half-a-crown in postage-stamps. Then I look to the police
intelligence, and I can discover that I may bite off a human living
nose cheaply, but if I take off the dead nose of a pig or a calf
from a shop-window, it will cost me exceedingly dear. I also find