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 thePress of the United States of America,I made the followingobservations among others:
'So much of my voice has lately been heard in the land,that Imight have been contented with troubling you no further from mypresent standing-point,were it not a duty with which I henceforthcharge myself,not only here but on every suitable occasion,whatsoever and wheresoever,to express my high and grateful senseof my second reception in America,and to bear my honest testimonyto the national generosity and magnanimity.Also,to declare howastounded I have been by the amazing changes I have seen around meon every side,-changes moral,changes physical,changes in theamount of land subdued and peopled,changes in the rise of vast newcities,changes in the growth of older cities almost out ofrecognition,changes in the graces and amenities of life,changesin the Press,without whose advancement no advancement can takeplace anywhere.Nor am I,believe me,so arrogant as to supposethat in five and twenty years there have been no changes in me,andthat I had nothing to learn and no extreme impressions to correctwhen I was here first.And this brings me to a point on which Ihave,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 youinto my confidence now.Even the Press,being human,may besometimes mistaken or misinformed,and I rather think that I havein one or two rare instances observed its information to be notstrictly accurate with reference to myself.Indeed,I have,nowand again,been more surprised by printed news that I have read ofmyself,than by any printed news that I have ever read in mypresent state of existence.Thus,the vigour and perseverance withwhich I have for some months past been collecting materials for,and hammering away at,a new book on America has much astonishedme;seeing that all that time my declaration has been perfectlywell known to my publishers on both sides of the Atlantic,that noconsideration on earth would induce me to write one.But what Ihave intended,what I have resolved upon (and this is theconfidence I seek to place in you)is,on my return to England,inmy own person,in my own journal,to bear,for the behoof of mycountrymen,such testimony to the gigantic changes in this countryas I have hinted at to-night.Also,to record that wherever I havebeen,in the smallest places equally with the largest,I have beenreceived with unsurpassable politeness,delicacy,sweet temper,hospitality,consideration,and with unsurpassable respect for theprivacy daily enforced upon me by the nature of my avocation hereand the state of my health.This testimony,so long as I live,andso long as my descendants have any legal right in my books,I shallcause to be republished,as an appendix to every copy of those twobooks of mine in which I have referred to America.And this I willdo and cause to be done,not in mere love and thankfulness,butbecause I regard it as an act of plain justice and honour.'
I said these words with the greatest earnestness that I could layupon 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 partof it,and will be fairly read as inseparable from my experiencesand impressions of America.
CHARLES DICKENS.
MAY,1868.
Footnotes:
(1)NOTE TO THE ORIGINAL EDITION.-Or let him refer to an able,and perfectly truthful article,in THE FOREIGN QUARTERLY REVIEW,published in the present month of October;to which my attentionhas been attracted,since these sheets have been passing throughthe press.He will find some specimens there,by no meansremarkable to any man who has been in America,but sufficientlystriking to one who has not.
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