American Notes
Dickens, Charles
POSTSCRIPT.
AT a Public Dinner given to me on Saturday,
the 18th of April, 1868, in the City of New York, by two hundred representatives of the Press of
the United States of America, I made the following observations among others: --
"So
much of my voice has lately been heard in the land, that I might have been contented with
troubling you no further from my present standing-point, were it not a duty with which I
henceforth charge myself, not only here, but on every suitable occasion, whatsoever and
wheresoever, to express my high and grateful sense of my second reception in America, and to
bear my honest testimony to the national generosity and magnanimity. Also, to declare how
astounded I have been by the amazing changes I have seen around me on every side, -- changes
moral, changes physical, changes in the amount of land subdued and peopled, changes in the rise
of vast new cities, changes in the growth of older cities almost out of recognition, changes in the
graces and amenities of life, changes in the Press, without whose advancement no advancement
can take place anywhere. Nor am I, believe me, so arrogant as to suppose that in five-and-twenty
years there have been no changes in me, and that I had nothing to learn and no extreme
impressions to correct when I was here first. And this brings me to a
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point on which I have, ever since I landed in the United States last November,
observed a strict silence, though sometimes tempted to break it, but in reference to 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
observed its information to be not strictly accurate with reference to myself. Indeed, I have, now
and again, been more surprised by printed news that I have read of myself, than by any printed
news that I have ever read in my present state of existence. Thus, the vigour and perseverance
with which I have for some months past been collecting materials for, and hammering away at, a
new book on America has much astonished me; seeing that all that time my declaration has been
perfectly well known to my publishers on both sides of the Atlantic, that no consideration on
earth would induce me to write one. But what I have intended, what I have resolved 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
changes in this country as I have hinted at to-night. 1 Also, to record that wherever I
have been, in
the smallest places equally with the largest, I have been received with unsurpassable politeness,
delicacy, sweet temper, hospitality, consideration, and with unsurpassable respect for the privacy
daily enforced upon me by the nature of my avocation here, and the state of my health. This
testimony, so long as I live, and so long as my descendants have any legal right in my books, I
shall cause to be republished, as an appendix to every copy of those two books of mine in which
I have referred to America. And this I will do and cause to be done,
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not in mere love and thankfulness, but because I regard it as an act of plain justice
and honour." I said these words with the greatest earnestness that I could lay upon
them, and I repeat them in print here with equal earnestness. So long as this book shall last, I
hope that they will form a part of it, and will be fairly read as inseparable from my experiences
and impressions of America.
CHARLES DICKENS.
May , 1868.
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