Mrs. Dickens unites with me in best regards to Mrs. Felton and your
little daughter, and I am always, my dear Felton,

Affectionately your friend,

CHARLES DICKENS.

P.S. I saw a good deal of Walker at Cincinnati. I like him very
much. We took to him mightily at first, because he resembled you in
face and figure, we thought. You will be glad to hear that our news
from home is cheering from first to last, all well, happy, and
loving. My friend Forster says in his last letter that he "wants to
know you," and looks forward to Longfellow.

When Dickens arrived in Montreal he had, it seems, a busy time of it,
and I have often heard of his capital acting in private theatricals
while in that city.

Montreal, Saturday, 21st May, 1842.

My Dear Felton: I was delighted to receive your letter yesterday,
and was well pleased with its contents. I anticipated objection to
Carlyle's letter. I called particular attention to it for three
reasons. Firstly, because he boldly _said_ what all the others
_think_, and therefore deserved to be manfully supported. Secondly,
because it is my deliberate opinion that I have been assailed on
this subject in a manner in which no man with any pretensions to
public respect or with the remotest right to express an opinion on
a subject of universal literary interest would be assailed in any
other country.....

I really cannot sufficiently thank you, dear Felton, for your warm
and hearty interest in these proceedings. But it would be idle to
pursue that theme, so let it pass.

The wig and whiskers are in a state of the highest preservation. The
play comes off next Wednesday night, the 25th. What would I give to
see you in the front row of the centre box, your spectacles gleaming
not unlike those of my dear friend Pickwick, your face radiant with
as broad a grin as a staid professor may indulge in, and your very
coat, waistcoat, and shoulders expressive of what we should take
together when the performance was over! I would give something (not
so much, but still a good round sum) if you could only stumble into
that very dark and dusty theatre in the daytime (at any minute
between twelve and three), and see me with my coat off, the stage
manager and universal director, urging impracticable ladies and
impossible gentlemen on to the very confines of insanity