Dickens in America (Missouri). They are reading "Great Expectations" and some think the novel is too long. Miriam explains to them how the book originally came out in installments. She then does a short performance of Miss Havisham talking about love. Dickens had a chance encounter with Chief Pitchlynn of the Choctaw tribe and discussed American Indian conditions with him. Miriam meets two American Indians, from separate nations, Dana Klar and Noel Frazer, both from the Buder Center for American Indian Studies. They meet at an Indian burial mound and compare conditions now and what they were like in 1842. Dickens wanted to
Miss Havisham Pip rushes back in and saves her. However, she has suffered severe burns to the front of her torso (she is laid on her back), up to the throat. The last words she speaks in the novel are (in a delirium) to Pip, referencing both Estella and a note she, Miss Havisham, has given him with her signature: "Take the pencil and write under my name, 'I forgive her!'" A surgeon dresses her burns, and says that they are "far from hopeless". However, despite rallying for a time, she dies a few weeks later, leaving Estella as her chief beneficiary,