ty, be done with "Copperfield"), I had, of course,
given out "Copperfield" to be read again. Conceive my amazement and
dismay when I find the printer to have announced "Little Dombey"!!!
This, I declare, I had no more intention of reading than I had of
reading an account of the solar system. And this, after a sensation last
night, of a really extraordinary nature in its intensity and delight!

Says the unlucky Headland to this first head of misery: "Johnson's
mistake" (Johnson being the printer).

Second, I read at Edinburgh for the first time--observe the day--_next
Wednesday_. Jenny Lind's concert at Edinburgh is to-night. This morning
comes a frantic letter from the Edinburgh agent. "I have no bills, no
tickets; I lose all the announcement I would have made to hundreds upon
hundreds of people to-night, all of the most desirable class to be well
informed beforehand. I can't announce what Mr. Dickens is going to read;
I can answer no question; I have, upon my responsibility, put a dreary
advertisement into the papers announcing that he _is_ going to read so
many times, and that particulars will shortly be ready; and I stand
bound hand and foot." "Johnson's mistake," says the unlucky Headland.

Of course, I know that the man who never made a mistake in poor Arthur's
time is not likely to be always making mistakes now. But I have written
by this post to Wills, to go to him and investigate. I have also
detached Berry from here, and have sent him on by train at a few
minutes' notice to Edinburgh, and then to Glasgow (where I have no doubt
everything is wrong too). Glasgow we may save; Edinburgh I hold to be
irretrievably damaged. If it can be picked up at all, it can only be at
the loss of the two first nights, and by the expenditure of no end of
spirits and force. And this is the harder, because it is impossible not
to see that the last readings polished and prepared the audiences in
general, and that I have not to work them up in any place where I have
been before, but that they start with a London intelligence, and with a
respect and preparation for what they are going to hear.

I hope by the time you and Mamie come to me, we shall have got into some
good method. I must take the thing more into my own hands and look after
it from hour to hour. If such a thing as this Edinburgh business could
have happened under poor Arthur, I really believe he would have fallen
into a fit, or gone distracted. No one can ever know what