Finally, gentlemen, and I say this subject to your correction, I do
believe that from the great majority of honest minds on both sides,
there cannot be absent the conviction that it would be better for
this globe to be riven by an earthquake, fired by a comet, overrun
by an iceberg, and abandoned to the Arctic fox and bear, than that
it should present the spectacle of these two great nations, each of
which has, in its own way and hour, striven so hard and so
successfully for freedom, ever again being arrayed the one against
the other. Gentlemen, I cannot thank your president enough or you
enough for your kind reception of my health, and of my poor
remarks, but, believe me, I do thank you with the utmost fervour of
which my soul is capable.
SPEECH: NEW YORK, APRIL 20, 1868.
[Mr. Dickens's last Reading in the United States was given at the
Steinway Hall on the above date. The task finished he was about to
retire, but a tremendous burst of applause stopped him. He came
forward and spoke thus:-]
Ladies and gentlemen,--The shadow of one word has impended over me
this evening, and the time has come at length when the shadow must
fall. It is but a very short one, but the weight of such things is
not measured by their length, and two much shorter words express
the round of our human existence. When I was reading "David
Copperfield" a few evenings since, I felt there was more than usual
significance in the words of Peggotty, "My future life lies over
the sea.
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