Martin Chuzzlewit
Page 2
POSTSCRIPT
At a Public Dinner given to me on Saturday the 18th of April, 1868, inthe city of New York, by two hundred representatives of the Press ofthe United States of America, I made the following observations, amongothers:--
"So much of my voice has lately been heard in the land, that I mighthave been contented with troubling you no further from my presentstanding-point, were it not a duty with which I henceforth chargemyself, not only here but on every suitable occasion, whatsoeverand wheresoever, to express my high and grateful sense of my secondreception in America, and to bear my honest testimony to the nationalgenerosity and magnanimity. Also, to declare how astounded I have beenby the amazing changes I have seen around me on every side--changesmoral, changes physical, changes in the amount of land subdued andpeopled, changes in the rise of vast new cities, changes in the growthof older cities almost out of recognition, changes in the graces andamenities of life, changes in the Press, without whose advancement noadvancement can take place anywhere. Nor am I, believe me, so arrogantas to suppose that in five-and-twenty years there have been no changesin me, and that I had nothing to learn and no extreme impressions tocorrect when I was here first. And this brings me to a point on which Ihave, ever since I landed in the United States last November, observeda strict silence, though sometimes tempted to break it, but in referenceto 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 observedits information to be not strictly accurate with reference to myself.Indeed, I have, now and again, been more surprised by printed news thatI have read of myself, than by any printed news that I have ever readin my present state of existence. Thus, the vigour and perseverance withwhich I have for some months past been collecting materials for, andhammering away at, a new book on America has much astonished me; seeingthat all that time my declaration has been perfectly well known to mypublishers on both sides of the Atlantic, that no consideration on earthwould induce me to write one. But what I have intended, what I haveresolved 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 changesin this country as I have hinted at to-night. Also, to record thatwherever I have been, in the smallest places equally with the largest,I have been received with unsurpassable politeness, delicacy, sweettemper, hospitality, consideration, and with unsurpassable respect forthe privacy daily enforced upon me by the nature of my avocation hereand the state of my health. This testimony, so long as I live, and solong as my descendants have any legal right in my books, I shall causeto be republished, as an appendix to every copy of those two books ofmine in which I have referred to America. And this I will do and causeto be done, not in mere love and thankfulness, but because I regard itas an act of plain justice and honour."
I said these words with the greatest earnestness that I could lay uponthem, and I repeat them in print here with equal earnestness. So long asthis book shall last, I hope that they will form a part of it, and willbe fairly read as inseparable from my experiences and impressions ofAmerica.
CHARLES DICKENS.
May, 1868.