The  plan  I  had  decided  on  adopting  for  the  sale  of
the  tickets  in  the  church  was  a  little  more  tedious
than  the  plan  adopted  at  other  sales,  and  the  pur-
chasers would  have  been  great  sufferers  from  the  cold,
but  for  their  ardour  in  the  matter.  This  sale  in  about
four  hours  produced  nearly  $20,000,  and  I  returned  to
New  York  to  meet  Mr.  Dickens  on  his  arrival  from
Boston,  to  give  him  an  account  of  the  morning's
proceedings.
Although    appreciative    of   the    humorous    side    of

8


212  CHARLES  DICKENS.
these  transactions,  he  always  entertained  an  opinion
that  the  speculators'  trade  would  eventually  tell  against
the  receipts  of  the  Reading,  and  but  for  the  precautions
we  had  taken  in  the  change  of  our  route,  "  closing  up,"
as  it  were,  in  New  York  and  Boston  at  the  right  time,
and  only  revisiting  those  places  for  the  farewell  Read-
ings, such  would  undoubtedly  have  been  the  case.  The
public  would  not  protect  themselves,  as  they  could
have  done  in  refusing  to  pay  the  exorbitant  demands
of  the  speculators,  and  without  taking  the  trouble  to
go  to  the  root  of  the  evil,  abused  the  system  of  selling
tickets  which  I  had  adopted.
Our  arrangements  did  not  give  satisfaction  to  the
public,  and  great  were  the  complaints  in  the  news-
papers when  the  discovery  was  made  that  there  were
to  be  no  more  Readings  in  New  York  until  the  middle
of  April.
