ge again, and I hope will get a
fellowship in good time.

Wills is much gratified by your remembrance, and sends you his warm
regard. He wishes me to represent that he is very little to be pitied.
That he suffers no pain, scarcely inconvenience, even, so long as he is
idle. That he likes idleness exceedingly. He has bought a country place
by Welwyn in Hertfordshire, near Lytton's, and takes possession
presently.

My boy Sydney is now a second lieutenant, the youngest in the Service, I
believe. He has the highest testimonials as an officer.

You may be quite sure there will be no international racing in American
waters. Oxford knows better, or I am mistaken. The Harvard crew were a
very good set of fellows, and very modest.

Ryland of Birmingham doesn't look a day older, and was full of interest
in you, and asked me to remind you of him. By-the-bye, at Elkington's I
saw a pair of immense tea-urns from a railway station (Stafford), sent
there to be repaired. They were honeycombed within in all directions,
and had been supplying the passengers, under the active agency of hot
water, with decomposed lead, copper, and a few other deadly poisons, for
heaven knows how many years!

I must leave off in a hurry to catch the post, after a hard day's work.

Ever, my dearest Macready,
Your most affectionate and attached.

FOOTNOTES:

[28] Herr Joseph Joachim, the renowned violinist.

[29] His sister-in-law, Mrs. Augustus Dickens, always a welcome visitor
at Gad's Hill.

[30] Of the Guild of Literature and Art.

[31] The housekeeper at the office.

1870.

NARRATIVE.

Charles Dickens passed his last Christmas and New Year's Day at Gad's
Hill, with a party of family and friends, in the usual way, except that
he was suffering again from an attack of the foot trouble, particularly
on Christmas Day, when he was quite disabled by it and unable to walk at
all--able only to join the party in the evening by keeping his room all
day. However, he was better in a day or two, and early in January he
went to London, where he had taken the house of his friends, Mr. and
Mrs. Milner Gibson, for the season.

His series of "Farewell Readings" at St. James's Hall began in January,
and ended on the 16th March. He was writing "Edwin Drood" also, and was,
of course, constantly occupied with "All the Year Round" work. In the
beginning of January, he fulfilled his promise of payin