to Europe keen for lion hunting, and
with an eager desire to see some of the men who had been my literary
benefactors. On my arrival in London, having a letter of introduction to
Charles Dickens, which a mutual friend had given to me, I resolved to
present it. Charles Dickens was an idol of my college days, and I had
spent a few minutes with him in Philadelphia during his recent visit to
the United States. He had returned from his triumphal tour about a month
before I landed in Liverpool. I called at his house, but he was not at
home. The next day he did me the honor to call on me at Morley's Hotel,
and, not finding me in, invited me up to his house near York Gate,
Regents Park. It was a dingy, brick house surrounded by a high wall, but
cheerful and cozy within. I found him in his sanctum, a singularly
shaped room, with statuettes of Sam Weller and others of his creations
on the mantelpiece. A portrait of his beautiful wife was upon the
wall--that wife, the separation from whom threw a strange, sad shadow
over his home. How handsome he was then! With his deep, dark, lustrous
eyes, that you saw yourself in, and the merry mouth wreathed with
laughter, and the luxuriant mass of dark hair that he wore in a sort of
stack over his lofty forehead! He had a slight lisp in his pleasant
voice, and ran on in rapid talk for an hour, with a shy reluctance to
talk about his own works, but with the most superabounding vivacity I
have ever met with in any man. His two daughters, one of whom afterward
married the younger Collins, a brother novelist, were then schoolgirls
of eight and ten years, came in, with books in their hands, to give
their father a good-morning kiss. After parting with him, when I had
reached his gate, he called after me in a very loud voice, "If you see
Mrs. Lucretia Mott, tell her that I have not forgotten the slave." His
"American Notes" appeared the next week. There were some things in that
hasty and faulty volume for which I sent him a cordial note of thanks,
and I speedily received the following characteristic reply, which I
still prize as a precious relic of the man:

I DEVONSHIRE TERRACE,
REGENTS PARK, Oct. 26th, 1842.

MY DEAR SIR:--I am heartily obliged to you for your
frank and manly letter. I shall always remember it in connection
with my American book; and never--believe me--save
in the foremost rank of its pleasant and honorable
associations.
Let me subscribe myself, as I re