Charles Dickens boards his ship to return…

Charles Dickens boards his ship to return to Britain on April 23, barely escaping a Federal Tax Lien against the proceeds of his lecture tour in the northeastern United States.

Dickens had sailed from Liverpool for his second American reading tour on November 9, 1867.

Landing at Boston, he had devoted the rest of the month to a round of dinners with such notables as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and his American publisher James Thomas Fields.

By early December, the readings had begun—he has performed seventy-six readings, netting nineteen thousand pounds, from December 1867 to April 1868—and Dickens spends the month shuttling between Boston and New York, where alone he gives twenty-two readings at Steinway Hall for this period.

Although he had started to suffer from what he called the "true American catarrh", he has kept to a schedule that would have challenged a much younger man, even managing to squeeze in some sleighing in Central Park.

During his travels, he has seen a significant change in the people and the circumstances of America.

His final appearance had been at a banquet the American Press held in his honor at Delmonico's on April 18, when he had promised never to denounce America again.

By the end of the tour, the author can hardly manage solid food, subsisting on champagne and eggs beaten in sherry.