Year: 1868

honest men in Congress besides Senator Rich


The Dickens Dinner In the Country.


The country newspapers are positively ex-
uberant ON the Dickens dinner at Delmonico's.
Some of them report the proceedings in articles
of three or four columns dimensions, and
nearly all of them give pictorial account of
the feast from the pens of their New York cor
respondents. The latter do not content them
selves with relating the facts that transpired
on the occasion-the patronizing speech of
Dickens, the ingeniously contrived bill of fare,
the special emanation of the genius Of Del
monico-but they 60 minutely into Photographic
descriptions of the personnel Of the parties
present at the banquet. Not Bohemian was
there who does not find place in the provincial
story of the Dickens farewell dinner and who
will not recognize his picture drawn by the
hand of a brother, if, indeed, he be not the
artist himself; for every man his own historian
or portrait painter, as the case may be, is the
rule of hungry Bohemianism.


The country papers, however, evidently do





are in quandary as to whether 1t was intended
for treaty of peace between Dickens and the
sighted honor of the American public-so SEN
sitively wounded in the american Notes. and
''Martin Chuzzlewit" tor whether it was simply
a Bohemian feed, got up to soothe the ''thou-
sand natural ills" which the vacant stomachs
of the participants are heir to, and to afford the
guest of the evening an opportunity Of making
the anseaade honorable in the presence of the
representative Bohemian of the age.


When Dickens visited this country twenty
five years ago he was received as type Of the
well educated and accomplished English gem
tleman-a man who had done something for lit
erature and who had contributed not a little to
elevate this poor humanity Of ours, which needs
so many friends to talk and write in its behalf.
1t is true that in his own country he was not
then regarded as deity to be worshipped.
He was simply recognized as clever reporter,
who had put his experience of human nature to
account and transferred his police court studies
from the columns of a daily journal to the
pages of a serial volume and for this he OBJ



commands. But when Mr.. Dickens came to
America quarter of a century ago he got a
reception which was never accorded to him in
his own country. The first gentlemen and the
first ladies of the land were his entertainers.
In Boston and Hartford and New York he was
entertained at balls and dinners of superb
character, the counterparts of which we have
seen at more recent period in the reception
of the Prince of Wales-a demonstration insti-
gated by good-natured bubbling up or eifer
vescence of Anglo-saxon kinsmanship, and so
forth-and the partially insane ovations to
Kossuth, inspired by the idea that the United
States being the retugium peccatorum all sin
ners against despotism were entitled to hearty
welcome and substantial contribution.


Dickens, however, on his second visit did
not seem to understand the different position
which he occupied here twenty-five years ago.
He failed to see that his recent reception was
not the spontaneous welcome of the higher
classes of society, but rather the toadyism
of few who hoped to make something
out of him in the way of reputation by asso-
ciating their names with his. In fact he only
got into the hands of the Jefferson Bricks, and
made his bed with them and dined with them
a class of men who know so little of the
amenities of life as TO denounce Ex-Governor
Seymour as "a liar" and General Grant as "a
drunkard." Dickens probably did not know
that his hosts were composed of the leading
lights of niggerism and copperheadism, who
do not represent the press of America, but its
Bohemian element, and who attempted to dis
guise the leading representative of this class of
discourteous journalists, who deal in such Ian
guage as we have quoted, in decent suit Of
the costume of a gentleman that his friends
could hardly recognize him. An this Dickens
did not probably comprehend, or if he did we
hope that when he arrives at home he will
describe in some future volume or appendix
the experiences of his two visits to this coun-
try-how, on the first occasion, he was re-
ceived by the leading members of society here,
both gentlemen and ladies, under the impress
sion that he was an English gentleman of
culture; how he repaid the hospitality by ridi-
culing his hosts, as no English gentleman
would do, as Lord Morpeth and other English
tourists who visited this country did not stoop
to do, and how, upon his second visit he was
entertained, not by the first classes Of
American society, but by the Jefferson Bricks of
the American press, foremost among whom were
men who publicly denounced their fellow
citizens as 'liars" and ''drunkards." Some
candid statement of this kind will be required
of Dickens when he comes to speak of his re-
cent visit to America


GREELEY AND "OLD BEN WADE's" CABI-
NET.-We perceive that the politicians at Wash
ington are patching up Cabinet for "Od Ben