Letters Speeches Plays and Poems Author:Charles Dickens, Frederic George Kitton General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1908 Original Publisher: University Society Subjects: English letters Speeches, addresses, etc., English English poetry English drama Drama / English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh Literary Collections / Letters Literary Criticism / European / English, Irish, Scottish,... more » Welsh Literary Criticism / Drama Poetry / English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million books for free. Excerpt: III. Hartford, February 7, 1842 Gentlemen -- To say that I thank you for the earnest manner in which you have drunk the toast just now so eloquently proposed to you -- to say that I give you back your kind wishes and good feelings with more than compound interest; and that I feel how dumb and powerless the best acknowledgments would be beside such genial hospitality as yours, is nothing. To say that in this winter season, flowers have sprung up in every footstep's length of the path which has brought me here; that no country ever smiled more pleasantly than yours has smiled on me, and that I have rarely looked upon a brighter summer prospect than that which lies before me now, is nothing. , ,, . But it is something to be no stranger in a strange place -- to feel, sitting at a board for the first time, the ease and affection of an old guest, and to be at once on such intimate terms with the family as to have a homely, genuine interest in its every member -- it is, I say, something to be in this novel and happy frame of mind. And, as it is of your creation, and owes its being to you, I have no reluctance in urging it as a reason why, in addressing you, I should not so much consult the form and fashion of my speech, as I should employ that universal language of the hea...« less