paper, and the new publishers were eager to point out that Dixon no longer had anything to do with its production. By August, rumors were circulating that Dixon had started up another paper called the News Letter and was selling it in Lowell and Boston. If he did, no copies are known to have survived. By February 1836, Dixon was touring again. He played many well-attended shows in Boston that month and did a play at the Tremont Theatre. His recent forays into publishing had soured his image in the popular press, however, and The New York Times satirized his lower-class audience: Tremont Teatre. At this classical establishment, Mr Dixon, "the American Buffo singer," is at present the star. His third night is announced! Will some of the enlightened citizens of the emporium favor us with their opinion of his performance? Is his Zip Coon as thrilling as Mr Wood's "Still so gently o'er me stealing?" On 16 and April 30, Dixon played the Masonic Temple in Boston. There he included material to appeal to his lower-class audience, such as a popular tune that he had adapted with lyrics about the Boston Fire Department. Nevertheless, he also reached out to a richer, middle-class patronage. For example, he played alongside a classically trained pianist, and he billed the performance as a "concert", a word typically reserved for high-class, non-blackface entertainment. Dixon earned a third of the gross from this engagement: $23.50. He still owed money to the printer of Dixon's Daily Review, so these earnings were put in trust for the conductor of the orchestra to pick up at a later date. Dixon and the printer grew impatient and presented a forged note to the trustee to collect early. Within a few days, Dixon was arrested and jailed in Boston. The press took the opportunity to castigate him again: "George Washington Dixon, now cormorant of Boston jail, and ex-publisher, ex-editor, ex-broker, ex-melodist, &c., is quite out of tune." The Boston Courier called Dixon "the most miserable apology for a vocalist that ever bored the public ear." At the trial, held in mid-June, character witnesses testified that Dixon was "a harmless, inoffensive man, but destitute of business capacity" and "in reply to the question whether Dixon was non compos mentis, I consider him as being on the frontier line—sometimes on one side, and sometimes on the other, just as the breeze of