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.
And, gentlemen, this brings me to a point on which I have, ever
since I landed here last November, observed a strict silence,
though tempted sometimes 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 known
its information to be not perfectly 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 have much astonished me, seeing that all that time it has
been perfectly well known to my publishers on both sides of the
Atlantic that I positively declared that no consideration on earth
should 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, 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
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Dickens, Charles – Speeches, Literary & Social