Dickens, Charles

Death from Overwork.
The New York Standard thinks that Dickens overworked himself both at the desk and on the platform, taking, besides, too much fatiguing exercise, when perhaps rest would have been more suitable:
"In addition to his ordinary untold labours, Mr. Dickens held no less than thirty literary and friendly executors-ships, to which he attended with the exactness which few merchants bring to bear on their most personal affairs. In fact, it has long been a matter of remark among those who had really lived with him, that his accounts of this description were kept "copper plate," and in a manner which, to their unbusiness-like minds, was incomprehensible. Those of our readers who have administered one estate will best appreciate this one occupation of his life."
"Mr. Dickens probably owes his death to those American and farewell England readings, not the least accessory being his travels here in an unusual stormy, violent season, with exceptionally deep snow, while he was suffering throughout his excursion from a severe cold. To add to this, his ideas of exercise were erroneous. He never walked less than fourteen miles a day while in this country, and this at a great pace, with an exhausted vitality, and in a climate to which he was unaccustomed. Mr. Field, of all others, cannot forget the energy with which Dickens started on his daily "stroll." The pleasure, the delight of his companionship, the glowing warmth of friendship and esteem cannot have quite obliterated the recollection of the feeling, the dreading sense that the giant mind was overdoing it. Mr. Dickens, in America, resolved himself into a tremendous machine, and wore himself out. Mr. Dickens has, too, of late years, exerted himself to buy back the copy rights of books for the benfit of his children (no trifling effort to one unaccustomed to business), and has, out of his savings, paid much larger sums for them than he originally received from the publishers, and that after twenty years of unexampled sale. At the moment of his death, at the suggestion of his literary friends in this country, he was preparing his numerous speeches and addresses (all most interesting) for publication."