affectionate
JOE.

1862.

NARRATIVE.

At the beginning of this year, Charles Dickens resumed the reading tour
which he had commenced at the close of the previous year and continued
up to Christmas. The first letter which follows, to Mr. Wills, a New
Year's greeting, is written from a railway station between one town and
another on this journey. Mr. Macready, who had married for the second
time not very long before this, was now settled at Cheltenham. Charles
Dickens had arranged to give readings there, chiefly for the pleasure of
visiting him, and of having him as one of his audience.

This reading tour went on until the beginning of February. One of the
last of the series was in his favourite "beautiful room," the St.
George's Hall at Liverpool. In February, he made an exchange of houses
with his friends Mr. and Mrs. Hogge, they going to Gad's Hill, and he
and his family to Mr. Hogge's house in Hyde Park Gate South. In March he
commenced a series of readings at St. James's Hall, which went on until
the middle of June, when he, very gladly, returned to his country home.

A letter beginning "My dear Girls," addressed to some American ladies
who happened to be at Colchester, in the same inn with him when he was
reading there, was published by one of them under the name of "Our
Letter," in the "St. Nicholas Magazine," New York, in 1877. We think it
best to explain it in the young lady's own words, which are, therefore,
appended to the letter.

Mr. Walter Thornbury was one of Charles Dickens's most valuable
contributors to "All the Year Round." His letters to him about the
subjects of his articles for that journal, are specimens of the minute
and careful attention and personal supervision, never neglected or
distracted by any other work on which he might be engaged, were it ever
so hard or engrossing.

The letter addressed to Mr. Baylis we give chiefly because it has, since
Mr. Baylis's death, been added to the collection of MSS. in the British
Museum. He was a very intimate and confidential friend of the late Lord
Lytton, and accompanied him on a visit to Gad's Hill in that year.

We give an extract from another letter from Charles Dickens to his
sister, as a beautiful specimen of a letter of condolence and
encouragement to one who was striving, very bravely, but by very slow
degrees, to recover from the overwhelming grief of her bereavemen