A DICKENS STORY.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXVII, Issue 2405, 21 January 1909, Page 3

A DICKENS STORY.

QUELLING A DISTURBANCE. In Mr. R. C. Lehmann’s “Memories of Had a, Century’’ there are several letters from Dickens, the most interesting of which tells of a disturbance at one of his readings in Edinburgh. The writer relates with justifiable vanity how his own coolness saved the situation.. He is writing to Wills, his assistant editor of “Household Words:]’ —“You know tliat your respected chief has a spice of coolness in him , and is not altogether unaccustomed to public speaking. "Without the oxercise of the two qualities, I think ,we should all have been there now. But when the uproarious spirits (who, as wo strongly suspect, didn’t pay at all) saw that it was quite impossible to disturb me, they gave in, and there was a dead silence. Then I told them, of course in the hest way I could think of, that I ivas heartily sorry, but this was the fault of their own townsmen (it was decidedly the- faultof Wood’s people, with, maybe, a trifle of preliminary assistance from Headland); that I would do anything to set it right; that I would at once adjourn to the Music Hall, if they thought it best ; or that I would ai-t-er my arrangements, and come back, and read jto all Edinburgh if they wished (meantime Goi’jdon, if you please, is softening the crowd outside, and dim reverberations of his stentorian roars -are audible). At this there is great cheering, and they cry ‘Go on, Mr. Dickens; everybody will be quiet now.’ Uproarious spirit exclaims ‘We won’t be quiet. We won’t let the reading be heard. We’re ill-treated.’ Respected chief says, ‘There’s plenty of time, and you (may rely on it that the reading is in no danger of being Heard until we are agreed.’ Therefore good-humor-edly shuts up the book. Laugh turned against uproarious spirit, and uproarious spirit shouldered out.”