And now,
bespeaking your kindest remembrance of our theatres and actors, I
beg to propose that you drink as heartily and freely as ever a
toast was drunk in this toast-drinking city "Prosperity to the
General Theatrical Fund."
SPEECH: LEEDS, DECEMBER 1, 1847.
[On the above evening a Soiree of the Leeds Mechanics' Institution
took place, at which about 1200 persons were present. The chair
was taken by Mr. Dickens, who thus addressed the meeting:]
Ladies and gentlemen,--Believe me, speaking to you with a most
disastrous cold, which makes my own voice sound very strangely in
my ears--that if I were not gratified and honoured beyond
expression by your cordial welcome, I should have considered the
invitation to occupy my present position in this brilliant
assemblage in itself a distinction not easy to be surpassed. The
cause in which we are assembled and the objects we are met to
promote, I take, and always have taken to be, THE cause and THE
objects involving almost all others that are essential to the
welfare and happiness of mankind. And in a celebration like the
present, commemorating the birth and progress of a great
educational establishment, I recognise a something, not limited to
the spectacle of the moment, beautiful and radiant though it be--
not limited even to the success of the particular establishment in
which we are more immediately interested--but extending from this
place and through swarms of toiling men elsewhere, cheering and
stimulating them in the onward, upward path that lies before us
all.
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