The daily sentinel., 1912-07-08
Associated Press.

London, July 6.-Wnitelaw Reid,
the United States Ambassador, recall
ed some interesting incidents of the
visit to America of Charles Dickens
at a dinner given by the Boz Club in
celebration OF the centenary OF the
birth of the great novelist. The din
ner was presided over by the Bishop
of London and the company included
the surviving children, grandchildren
and other relatives of Dichsns.
As so often happens at functions
of the kind in England, the United
States Ambassador was the chief of
the speakers. After paying "a tribute
to Dickens. who he said was recog-
niZed in America almost as soon as
In his own countsy, Mr.. Reid men,.
toned that he was one of a small
number who remembered and paEtic-
ipated in the farewell banquet to
Charles Dickens in the old Four
teeenth Street Delmonico in New
York at the close of his second visit
to America in April. 1865.
1T was a banquet said Mr.. Reid,
mot only to the great novelist, who
had written many things about our
people too near the truth to be popu-i
lar at the time, but Also to a great
editor in his own country, from great
editors in the country which he Wis
tied; and it was presided over by the
greatest of them, an editor of immor-
tai memory in the history OF the
country which he served in its grav-
est crisis and in its grandest achiev-
ement, Horace Greeley. At his right
sat Charles Dickens, and next to the
guest sat a spotless chevalier in the
warfare of opinion that preceded the
civil war-George William Curtis,
man of letters worthy to be associa-
ted with Mr.. Dickens, and an orator
worthy to speak on the same plat
form. There was a long list OF rep
Iesentatire members of the profession.
and all cordial and eager to make the
honored guest feel welcome and at
home-as eager as if jefferson Brick
had never been painted from the life
of the occupant of a New York ed
itorial office"
Referring to she disregard, in the
absence of international copyright, of
p Dickens moral right to the receipts
from the sale OF his books, Mr.. Reid
asked: Does anyone happen TO re-
member the precise terms of the Brit
ish copyright account with Mrs. Har-
riet Beecher Stowe, for novel that
was read here almost as widely as
some of Mr.. Dickens and was credi
ted with almost as great an effect on
the progress of the world-a work
that was translated into all languages
and sold in all lands? Can we see
the settlement of the English copy
right for the works of poet named
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, who
sold here as widely as Alfred Tenny-
son; or of the similar account for the
contributions to our common noble
English literature by Nathaniel Haw-
thorne, Washington Irving. Ralph
Waldo Emerson, James Russell Low
ell or John Lathrop Motley"
The Ambassador thought it wiser
TO forget these mutual shortcomings
and recall instead the spirit in which
Dickens dealt with them at that ban
quet at Delmonico's forty years ago,
and his promise to have reproduced
in every subsequent edition Of Mar
tin Chuzzlewit and of the American
Notes the words he used on that oc-
casion-''a pledge most honorably
kept by his family and publishers to
this day. The spirit seems to me
still of good omen for both England
and America:
ct would be better for this globe
to be riven by an earthquake, fired
by comet, overrun by an iceburg.
and abandoned to the Arctic fox and
bear. than it should present the spec
tacle OF those two great nations. each
of whom has, in its own way and
hour, striven so hard and successfullv
for freedom, ever again being arrayed
the one against the other.
Cottage life, which used to be
picturesque feature of rural England,
promises to become a thing of the
past. The cottages are falling into
ruinS and no new ones are being