ng, these audiences were habitually wont to hang in breathless
expectation upon every inflection of the author-reader's voice, upon
every glance of his eye,--the words he was about to speak being so
thoroughly well remembered by the majority before their utterance that,
often, the rippling of a smile over a thousand faces simultaneously
anticipated the laughter which an instant afterwards greeted the words
themselves when they were articulated.

Altogether, from first to last, there must have been considerably more
than Four Hundred--very nearly, indeed, Five Hundred--of these Readings,
each one among them in itself a memorable demonstration. Through their
delightful agency, at the very outset, largess was scattered broadcast,
abundantly, and with a wide open hand, among a great variety of
recipients, whose interests, turn by turn, were thus exclusively
subserved, at considerable labour to himself, during a period of several
years, by this large-hearted entertainer. Eventually the time
arrived when it became necessary to decide, whether an exhausting and
unremunerative task should be altogether abandoned, or whether readings
hitherto given solely for the benefit of others, should be thenceforth
adopted as a perfectly legitimate source of income for himself
professionally. The ball was at his feet: should it be rolled on, or
fastidiously turned aside by reason of certain fantastic notions as
to its derogating, in some inconceivable way, from the dignity of
authorship? That was the alternative in regard to which Dickens had to
decide, and upon which he at once, as became him, decided manfully. The
ball was rolled on, and, as it rolled, grew in bulk like a snowball. It
accumulated for him, as it advanced, and that too within a wonderfully
brief interval, a very considerable fortune. It strengthened and
extended his already widely-diffused and intensely personal popularity.
By making him, thus, distinctly a Reader himself, it brought him face to
face with vast multitudes of his own readers in the Old World and in the
New, in all parts of the United Kingdom, and at last, upon the occasion
of his second visit to America, an expedition adventured upon expressly
to that end, in all parts of the United States.

And these Readings were throughout so conspicuously and so radiantly a
success, that even in the recollection of them, now that they are
things of the past, it may be said that they have already beneficially
influenced,