you on your then approaching marriage, and to assure you of my most
cordial and affectionate interest in all that nearly concerns you, had
I known how best to address you.

"No friend that you have can be more truly attached to you than I am.
I congratulate you with all my heart, and believe that your marriage
will stand high upon the list of happy ones. As to your wife's winning
a high reputation out of your house--if you care for that; it is not
much as an addition to the delights of love and peace and a suitable
companion for life--I have not the least doubt of her power to make
herself famous.

"I little thought what an important master of the ceremonies I was
when I first gave your present wife an introduction to your mother.
Bear me in your mind then as the unconscious instrument of your having
given your best affection to a worthy object, and I shall be the best
paid master of the ceremonies since Nash drove his coach and six
through the streets of Bath.

"Faithfully yours,

"CHARLES DICKENS."

* * * * *

Among a heap of others I find a note of invitation written on the 9th
of July, 1867, in which he says: "My 'readings' secretary, whom I am
despatching to America at the end of this week, will dine with me at
Verey's in Regent Street at six exact to be wished God-speed. There
will only be besides, Wills, Wilkie Collins, and Mr. Arthur Chappell.
Will you come? No dress. Evening left quite free."

I went, and the God-speed party was a very pleasant one. But I liked
best to have him, as I frequently had, all to myself. I suppose I
am not, as Johnson said, a "clubbable" man. At all events I highly
appreciate what the Irishman called a tatur-tatur dinner, whether the
gender in the case be masculine or feminine; and I incline to give
my adherence to the philosophy of the axiom that declares "two to
be company, and three none." But then I am very deaf, and that has
doubtless much to do with it.

On the 10th of September, 1868, Dickens writes:--

* * * * *

"The madness and general political bestiality of the General Elections
will come off in the appropriate Guy Fawkes days. It was proposed to
me, under very flattering circumstances indeed, to come in as the
third member for Birmingham; I replied in what is now my stereotyped
phrase, 'that no consideration on earth would induce me to become
a candidate for the representation of any place in the