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. _

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