advance sheets from England, so that there may be simultaneous publication in the two countries. And success in England is of so much importance towards the achievement of success in America, that I greatly doubt whether previous publications in America would often be worth more to an American publisher or manager than simultaneous publication. Concerning the literary man in Parliament who would undertake to bring in a Bill for such an amendment of our copyright law, with weight enough to keep his heart unbroken while he should be getting it through its various lingering miseries, all I can say is -I decidedly don't know him.

On that horrible Staplehurst day, I had not the slightest idea that I knew any one in the train out of my own compartment. Mrs. Cowden Clarke 1 wrote me afterwards, telling me in the main what you tell me, and I was astonished. It is remarkable that my watch (a special chronometer) has never gone quite correctly since, and to this day there sometimes comes over me, on a railway-in a hansom cab

or any sort of conveyance for a few seconds, a vague sense of dread that I have no power to check. It comes and passes, but I cannot prevent its coming.

Believe me, always faithfully yours.

DCXLII. W. H. WILLS

Friday, July 31, 1868.

MY DEAR WILLS,

So I

I had such a hard day at the office yesterday, that I had not time to write to you before I left. write to-day.

I am very unwilling to abandon the Christmas number, though even in the case of my little Christmas books (which were immensely profitable) I let the idea go when I thought it was wearing out. Ever since I came home, I have hammered at it, more or less, and have been uneasy about it. I have begun something which is very droll, but it manifestly shapes itself towards a book, and could not in the least admit of even that shadowy approach to a congruous whole on the part of other contributors which they have ever achieved at the best.

1 Mrs. Cowden Clarke wrote to tell Charles Dickens that her sister, Miss Sabilla Novello, and her brother, Mr. Alfred Novello, were also in the train, and escaped without injury.

VOL. II.