By John
Thomas, for two weeks his valet in America.

And so forth, and so on. This isn't half the list. The man who has a
"Toothpick once used by Charles Dickens" will have to have a hearing;
and the man who "once rode in an omnibus with Charles Dickens;" and the
lady to whom Charles Dickens "granted the hospitalities of his umbrella
during a storm;" and the person who "possesses a hole which once
belonged in a handkerchief owned by Charles Dickens." Be patient and
long-suffering, good people, for even this does not fill up the measure
of what you must endure next winter. There is no creature in all this
land who has had any personal relations with the late Mr. Dickens,
however slight or trivial, but will shoulder his way to the rostrum and
inflict his testimony upon his helpless countrymen. To some people it is
fatal to be noticed by greatness.

THE TONE-IMPARTING COMMITTEE

I get old and ponderously respectable, only one thing will be able
to make me truly happy, and that will be to be put on the Venerable
Tone-Imparting committee of the city of New York, and have nothing to do
but sit on the platform, solemn and imposing, along with Peter Cooper,
Horace Greeley, etc., etc., and shed momentary fame at second hand
on obscure lecturers, draw public attention to lectures which would
otherwise clack eloquently to sounding emptiness, and subdue audiences
into respectful hearing of all sorts of unpopular and outlandish dogmas
and isms. That is what I desire for the cheer and gratification of my
gray hairs. Let me but sit up there with those fine relics of the Old
Red Sandstone Period and give Tone to an intellectual entertainment
twice a week, and be so reported, and my happiness will be complete.
Those men have been my envy for long, long time. And no memories of
my life are so pleasant as my reminiscence of their long and honorable
career in the Tone-imparting service. I can recollect that first time I
ever saw them on the platforms just as well as I can remember the events
of yesterday. Horace Greeley sat on the right, Peter Cooper on the left,
and Thomas Jefferson, Red Jacket, Benjamin Franklin, and John Hancock
sat between them. This was on the 22d of December, 1799, on the occasion
of the state' funeral of George Washington in New York. It was a great
day, that--a great day, and a very, very sad one. I remember that
Broadway was one mass of black crape from Castle Garden nearly up to
where the City Hall