POSTSCRIPT.
AT a Public Dinner given to me on Saturday, the 18th of April,
1868, in the City of New York, by two hundred representatives
of the Press of the United States of America, I made the following
observations among others:—
"So much of my voice has lately been heard in the land, that
I might have been contented with troubling you no further from
my present standing-point, were it not a duty with which I
henceforth charge myself, not only here, but on every suitable
occasion, whatsoever and wheresoever, to express my high and
grateful sense of my second reception in America, and to bear my
honest testimony to the national generosity and magnanimity.
Also, to declare how astounded I have been by the amazing
changes I have seen around me on every side,—changes moral,
changes physical, changes in the amount of land subdued and
peopled, changes in the rise of vast new cities, changes in the
growth of older cities almost out of recognition, changes in
the graces and amenities of life, changes in the Press, without
whose advancement no advancement can take place anywhere.
Nor am I, believe me, so arrogant as to suppose that
in five-and-twenty years there have been no changes in me,
and that I had nothing to learn and no extreme impressions
to correct when I was here first. And this brings me to a
point on which I have, ever since I landed in the United
States last November, observed a strict silence, though sometimes
tempted to break it, but in reference to which I will, with
your good leave, take you into my confidence now. Even the
Press, being human, may be sometimes mistaken or misinformed,
and I rather think that I have in one or two rare
instances observed its information to be not strictly accurate
with reference to myself. Indeed, I have, now and again, been
more surprised by printed news that I have read of myself,
than by any printed news that I have ever read in my present
state of existence. Thus, the vigour and perseverance
with which I have for some months past been collecting materials
for, and hammering away at, a new book on America
has much astonished me; seeing that all that time my declaration
has been perfectly well known to my publishers on both
sides of the Atlantic, that no consideration on earth would
induce me to write one. But what I have intended, what I
have resolved upon (and this is the confidence I seek to place in
you) is, on my return to England, in my own person, in my
own Journal, to bear, for the behoof of my countrymen, such
testimony to the gigantic changes in this country as I have
hinted at to-night. Also, to record that wherever I have
been, in the smallest places equally with the largest, I have been
received with unsurpassable politeness, delicacy, sweet temper,
hospitality, consideration, and with unsurpassable respect for
the privacy daily enforced upon me by the nature of my avocation
here, and the state of my health. This testimony, so
long as I live, and so long as my descendants have any legal
right in my books, I shall cause to be republished, as an appendix
to every copy of those two books of mine in which I have
referred to America. And this I will do and cause to be done,
not in mere love and thankfulness, but because I regard it as
an act of plain justice and honour."
I said these words with the greatest earnestness that I could
lay upon them, and I repeat them in print here with equal
earnestness. So long as this book shall last, I hope that they
will form a part of it, and will be fairly read as inseparable from
my experiences and impressions of America.
CHARLES DICKENS.
May, 1868.