Note 115 — IV. EDUCATION FOR RICH AND POOR.
Reading edition
The evil result on Dickens' health of his last series of readings at St. James's Hall, in the early part of 1870, scarcely four months before his death, is thus noted by Mr. Forster: "Little remains to be told that has not in it almost unmixed sorrow and pain. Hardly a day passed, while the readings went on or after they closed, unvisited by some effect or other of the disastrous excitement consequent on them."—"Life of Charles Dickens," vol. iii. p. 493.