"You are perfectly right in your construction of my meaning at Birmingham. If a capital P be put to the word People in its second use in the sentence, and not in its first, I should suppose the passage next to impossible to be mistaken, even if it were read without any reference to the whole spirit of my speech and the whole tenor of my writings. "Faithfully yours, "CHARLES DICKENS. "H. S. PEARSON, ESQUIRE." Dr. Steele had dined several times at Gad's Hill Place, and was impressed with Dickens's wonderful powers as a host. He never absorbed the whole of the conversation to himself, but listened attentively when his guests were speaking, and endeavoured, as it were, to draw out any friends who were not generally talkative. He liked each one to chat about his own hobby in which he took most interest. Our informant was also present at Gad's Hill Place at several theatrical entertainments, and especially remembers some charades being given. After the performance of the latter was over, Dickens walked round among his guests in the drawing-room, and enquired if any one could guess the "word." Says the doctor, "We never seemed to do so, but there was always a hearty laugh when we were told what it was. There was a good deal of company at Gad's Hill at Christmas time." _A propos_ of private theatricals at Gad's Hill Place, Mr. T. Edgar Pemberton, in _Charles Dickens and the Stage_, calls attention to the fact that "Mr. Clarkson Stanfield's _Lighthouse_ Act drop subsequently decorated the walls of Gad's Hill Place; and although it took the painter less than a couple of days to execute, fetched a thousand guineas at the famous Dickens Sale in 1870." A cloth painted for _The Frozen Deep_, which was the next and last of these productions, also had a foremost place in the Gad's Hill picture-gallery. Dr. Steele mentions a conversation once with Dickens about Gad's Hill and Shakespeare's description of it. He (the doctor) considers that Shakespeare could not have described it so accurately if he had not been there, and Dickens agreed with him in this opinion. Possibly he may have stayed at the "Plough," which was an inn on the same spot as, or close to, the "Falstaff." The place must have been much wooded at that time, and Shakespeare might have been there on his way to Dover. A note in the _Rochester and Chatham Journal_, 1883, states that "Shakespeare's company made a tour in Sussex and Kent in the summer of 1597." Dr. Steele, in common with his friend Charles Dickens, strongly deprecated the action of certain parties in Rochester, by voting at a public meeting something to this effect:--"That the Theatre was an irreligious kind of institution, and, in the opinion of the meeting, it ought to be closed."