Note 288 — Chapter XVIII

I subjoin what has been written to me by an American correspondent. "I went lately with the same inspector who accompanied Dickens to see the room of the opium-smokers, old Eliza and her Lascar or Bengalee friend. There a fancy seized me to buy the bedstead which figures so accurately in Edwin Drood, in narrative and picture. I gave the old woman a pound for it, and have it now packed and ready for shipment to New York. Another American bought a pipe. So you see we have heartily forgiven the novelist his pleasantries at our expense. Many military men who came to England from America refuse to register their titles, especially if they be Colonels; all the result of the basting we got on that score in Martin Chuzzlewit."