Speeches: Literary and Social | Page 5

anything of their original nature amidst the trials and distresses
of their condition, be really ten times better;" I believe that to do this is
to pursue a worthy and not useless vocation. Gentlemen, that you think
so too, your fervent greeting sufficiently assures me. That this feeling is
alive in the Old World as well as in the New, no man should know
better than I--I, who have found such wide and ready sympathy in my
own dear land. That in expressing it, we are but treading in the steps of
those great master-spirits who have gone before, we know by reference
to all the bright examples in our literature, from Shakespeare
downward.
There is one other point connected with the labours (if I may call them
so) that you hold in such generous esteem, to which I cannot help
adverting. I cannot help expressing the delight, the more than happiness
it was to me to find so strong an interest awakened on this side of the
water, in favour of that little heroine of mine, to whom your president
has made allusion, who died in her youth. I had letters about that child,
in England, from the dwellers in log-houses among the morasses, and
swamps, and densest forests, and deep solitudes of the far west. Many a
sturdy hand, hard with the axe and spade, and browned by the summer's
sun, has taken up the pen, and written to me a little history of domestic
joy or sorrow, always coupled, I am proud to say, with something of
interest in that little tale, or some comfort or happiness derived from it,
and my correspondent has always addressed me, not as a writer of
books for sale, resident some four or five thousand miles away, but as a
friend to whom he might freely impart the joys and sorrows of his own
fireside. Many a mother--I could reckon them now by dozens, not by
units--has done the like, and has told me how she lost such a child at
such a time, and where she lay buried, and how good she was, and how,
in this or that respect, she resembles Nell. I do assure you that no
circumstance of my life has given me one hundredth part of the
gratification I have derived from this source. I was wavering at the time
whether or not to wind up my Clock, {3} and come and see this

country, and this decided me. I felt as if it were a positive duty, as if I
were bound to pack up my clothes, and come and see my friends; and
even now I have such an odd sensation in connexion with these things,
that you have no chance of spoiling me. I feel as though we were
agreeing--as indeed we are, if we substitute for fictitious characters the
classes from which they are drawn--about third parties, in whom we
had a common interest. At every new act of kindness on your part, I say
to myself "That's for Oliver; I should not wonder if that was meant for
Smike; I have no doubt that is intended for Nell;" and so I become a
much happier, certainly, but a more sober and retiring man than ever I
was before.
Gentlemen, talking of my friends in America, brings me back, naturally
and of course, to you. Coming back to you, and being thereby reminded
of the pleasure we have in store in hearing the gentlemen who sit about
me, I arrive by the easiest, though not by the shortest course in the
world, at the end of what I have to say. But before I sit down, there is
one topic on which I am desirous to lay particular stress. It has, or
should have, a strong interest for us all, since to its literature every
country must look for one great means of refining and improving its
people, and one great source of national pride and honour. You have in
America great writers--great writers--who will live in all time, and are
as familiar to our lips as household words. Deriving (as they all do in a
greater or less degree, in their several walks) their inspiration from the
stupendous country that gave them birth, they diffuse a better
knowledge of it, and a higher love for it, all over the civilized world. I
take leave to say, in the presence of some of those gentleman, that I
hope the time is not far distant when they, in America, will receive of
right some substantial profit and return in England from their labours;
and when we, in England, shall receive some substantial profit and
return in America for ours. Pray do not misunderstand me. Securing to
myself from day to day the means of