A story I liked

From Dickens' Fur Coat and Charlotte's Unanswered Letters by Daniel Pool. Dickens was touring America in 1868.

When a twelve-year-old admirer named Kate Douglas Wiggin (later to be the author of Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm) materialized beside his seat on the train from Portland, Maine, to Boston, a brief light moment was provided. After rhapsodizing over Dickens' novels, she admitted that she did now and then omit "some of the very dull parts." Dickens roared with laughter and pressed for details as to which parts were the the clunkers. She helpfully enumerated them, she later recalled, "dealing these infant blows, under the delusion that I was flinging him bouquets."