Englishman for using his own eyes? Is not that silent traveller whom
he saw still to be seen in every train sucking the great ivory head of
his cane and taking it out occasionally and looking at it to see how
it is getting on? If we had been a little angry with Lemuel Gulliver
or Robinson Crusoe, could our anger have survived hearing one of them
tell his story of Liliput, or the other the tale of the solitary
island?

After his little winter tour Dickens returned to New York to take
leave of the American public. On the Saturday evening before the final
reading the newspaper fraternity gave him a dinner at Delmonico's,
which was then at the corner of Fifth Avenue and Fourteenth Street,
formerly the hospitable house of Moses H. Grinnell. At this dinner Mr.
Greeley presided, and that the bland and eccentric teetotaler, who was
not supposed to be versed in what Carlyle called the "tea-table
proprieties," should take the chair at a dinner to so roistering a
blade--within discreet limits--and so skilled an artist of all kinds
of beverages as Dickens, was a stroke of extravaganza in his own way.
The dinner was in every way memorable and delightful, but the
enjoyment was sobered by the illness of the guest from one of the
attacks which, as was known soon afterwards, foretold the speedy end.
It was, indeed, doubtful if he could appear, but after an hour he came
limping slowly into the room on the arm of Mr. Greeley.

In his speech, with great delicacy and feeling, Dickens alluded to
some possible misunderstanding, now forever vanished, between him and
his hosts, and declared his purpose of publicly recognizing that fact
in future editions of his works. His words were greeted with great
enthusiasm, and on the following Monday evening he read, at Steinway
Hall, for the last time in this country, and sailed on Wednesday. He