ve to say before
I go out for a little air. I had a very hard day yesterday, and am
tired.

Ever your most affectionate.

[Sidenote: Mr. John Forster.]

TAVISTOCK HOUSE, TAVISTOCK SQUARE, LONDON,
_Sunday, Oct. 10th, 1858._

MY DEAR FORSTER,

As to the truth of the readings, I cannot tell you what the
demonstrations of personal regard and respect are. How the densest and
most uncomfortably-packed crowd will be hushed in an instant when I show
my face. How the youth of colleges, and the old men of business in the
town, seem equally unable to get near enough to me when they cheer me
away at night. How common people and gentlefolks will stop me in the
streets and say: "Mr. Dickens, will you let me touch the hand that has
filled my home with so many friends?" And if you saw the mothers, and
fathers, and sisters, and brothers in mourning, who invariably come to
"Little Dombey," and if you studied the wonderful expression of comfort
and reliance with which they hang about me, as if I had been with them,
all kindness and delicacy, at their own little death-bed, you would
think it one of the strangest things in the world.

As to the mere effect, of course I don't go on doing the thing so often
without carefully observing myself and the people too in every little
thing, and without (in consequence) greatly improving in it.

At Aberdeen, we were crammed to the street twice in one day. At Perth
(where I thought when I arrived there literally could be nobody to
come), the nobility came posting in from thirty miles round, and the
whole town came and filled an immense hall. As to the effect, if you had
seen them after Lilian died, in "The Chimes," or when Scrooge woke and
talked to the boy outside the window, I doubt if you would ever have
forgotten it. And at the end of "Dombey" yesterday afternoon, in the
cold light of day, they all got up, after a short pause, gentle and
simple, and thundered and waved their hats with that astonishing
heartiness and fondness for me, that for the first time in all my public
career they took me completely off my legs, and I saw the whole eighteen
hundred of them reel on one side as if a shock from without had shaken
the hall.

The dear girls have enjoyed themselves immensely, and their trip has
been a great success. I hope I told you (but I forget whether I did or
no) how splendidl