I will not detain you any longer at this late
hour; let it suffice to assure you, that for taking the part with
which I have been honoured in this festival, I have been repaid a
thousand-fold by your abundant kindness, and by the unspeakable
gratification it has afforded me. I hope that, before many years
are past, we may have another meeting in public, when we shall
rejoice at the immense progress your institution will have made in
the meantime, and look back upon this night with new pleasure and
satisfaction. I shall now, in conclusion, repeat most heartily and
fervently the quotation of Dr. Ewing, the late Provost of Glasgow,
which Bailie Nicol Jarvie, himself "a Glasgow body," observed was
"elegantly putten round the town's arms."
SPEECH: LONDON, APRIL 14, 1851.
[The Sixth Annual Dinner of the General Theatrical Fund was held at
the London Tavern on the above date. Mr. Charles Dickens occupied
the chair, and in giving the toast of the evening said:-]
I have so often had the satisfaction of bearing my testimony, in
this place, to the usefulness of the excellent Institution in whose
behalf we are assembled, that I should be really sensible of the
disadvantage of having now nothing to say in proposing the toast
you all anticipate, if I were not well assured that there is really
nothing which needs be said. I have to appeal to you on the old
grounds, and no ingenuity of mine could render those grounds of
greater weight than they have hitherto successfully proved to you.
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