CHARLES DICKENS

1812-1870

CHARLES DICKENS was born at Landport in 1812. His childhood was unhappy. He was small and sickly, and had a very hard time generally, for the first twenty-five years of his life. He had but little schooling. "David Copperfield" is largely autobiographical. Dickens seems to have been fond of putting himself and his own people into his books, and of drawing from real life his scenes and characters, which he disguised but faintly.

66

Sketches by Boz Illustrative of Every-day Life and Every-day People" was the first book published by Dickens. It attracted great attention, and the fact that a new genius had appeared was generally recognized. "Pickwick Papers" and "Oliver Twist” were the next books published by him. In this brief sketch it is not possible to name all his works. In addition to those already mentioned, “Nicholas Nickleby," "The Old Curiosity Shop," "Bleak House," "Martin Chuzzlewit," "Christmas Carol," "Dombey and Son," " David Copperfield," "A Tale of Two Cities," and "Our Mutual Friend" are the most noted.

Dickens wrote of the common people, the poor people, the wretched and suffering, and awakened pity for the poor and made charity fashionable.

No author since Shakespeare has created so many characters who will live as has Dickens. Uriah Heep, Pecksniff, Dora, Pickwick, Bob Sawyer, Oliver Twist, Fagan, Artful Dodger, Mr. Squeers, Sairey Gamp, Paul Dombey, Captain Cuttle, Micawber, Peggotty, are household words, well known to thousands who have never read a work of Dickens.

Laurence Hutton says, "Pecksniff will live almost as long as hypocrisy lasts; and Uriah Heep will not be forgotten while mock humility exists."

THE MISER

From "Christmas Carol"

NOTE TO THE PUPIL.

CHARLES DICKENS

Charles Dickens, the most popular English novelist, with the possible exception of Scott, was born in 1812. Whether you like his writings or not, you cannot afford to be igno

rant of all his works. Read, at least, "David Copperfield," "Oliver Twist," and "Christmas Carol." If you care for more, you can

scarcely go amiss in your choice.

MA

ARLEY was dead, to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. The register of his burial was signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker, and the chief mourner. Scrooge signed it, and Scrooge's name was good upon' Change, for anything he chose to put his hand to. Old Marley was dead as a doornail. Mind! I don't mean to say that I know, of my own knowledge, what there is particularly dead about a doornail. I might have been inclined myself to regard a coffin nail as the deadest piece of ironmongery in the trade. But the wisdom of our ancestors is in the simile; and my unhallowed hands shall not disturb it, or the country's done for. You will, therefore, permit me to repeat, emphatically, that Marley was as dead as a doornail.

Scrooge knew he was dead? Of course he did. How could it be otherwise? Scrooge and he were partners for I don't know how many years. Scrooge was his sole executor, his sole administrator, his sole assign, his sole residuary legatee, his sole friend, and sole mourner. And even Scrooge was not so dreadfully cut up by the sad event but that he was an excellent man of business on the very day of the funeral, and solemnized it with an undoubted bargain.

Scrooge never painted out old Marley's name. There it stood, years afterwards, above the warehouse door: Scrooge and Marley. The firm was known as Scrooge and Marley. Sometimes people new to the business

called Scrooge, Scrooge, and sometimes Marley, but he answered to both names. It was all the same to him.

Oh! but he was a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone, Scrooge! a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous old sinner! Hard and sharp as flint from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire; secret and self-contained and solitary as an oyster. The cold within him froze his little features, nipped his pointed nose, shriveled his cheek, stiffened his gait; made his eyes red, his thin lips blue; and spoke out shrewdly in his grating voice. A frosty rime was on his head, and on his eyebrows, and his wiry chin. He carried his own low temperature always about with him; iced his office in the dog days, and didn't thaw it one degree at Christmas.

External heat and cold had little influence on Scrooge. No warmth could warm, no wintry weather chill him. No wind that blew was bitterer than he, no falling snow was more intent upon its purpose, no pelting rain less open to entreaty. Foul weather didn't know where to have him. The heaviest rain and snow and hail and sleet could boast of the advantage over him in only one respect. They often came down handsomely, and Scrooge never did.

Nobody ever stopped him in the street to say, with gladsome looks, "My dear Scrooge, how are you! When will you come to see me?" No beggars implored him to bestow a trifle, no children asked him what it was o'clock, no man or woman ever once in all his life inquired the way to such and such a place of Scrooge. Even the blindmen's dogs appeared to know him; and when they saw him coming on, would tug their owners into doorways and up courts; and then would wag their tails as though

they said, "No eye at all is better than an evil eye, dark master!

But what did Scrooge care ! It was the very thing he liked. To edge his way along the crowded paths of life, warning all human sympathy to keep its distance, was what the knowing ones called "nuts" to Scrooge.

Once upon a time-of all the good days in the year, upon Christmas Eve-old Scrooge sat busy in his countinghouse. It was cold, bleak, biting weather; foggy withal; and he could hear the people in the court outside, go wheezing up and down, beating their hands upon their breasts, and stamping their feet upon the pavement stones to warm them. The city clocks had only just gone three, but it was quite dark alreadyit had not been light all day-and candles were flaring in the windows of the neighboring offices, like ruddy smears upon the palpable brown air. The fog came pouring in at every chink and keyhole, and was so dense without that, although the court was of the narrowest, the houses opposite were mere phantoms. To see the dingy cloud come drooping down, obscuring everything, one might have thought that Nature lived hard by, and was brewing on a large scale.

The door of Scrooge's countinghouse was open, that he might keep his eye upon his clerk, who in a dismal little cell beyond, a sort of tank, was copying letters. Scrooge had a very small fire, but the clerk's fire was so very much smaller that it looked like one coal. But he could not replenish it, for Scrooge kept the coal box in his own room; and so surely as the clerk came in with the shovel, the master predicted that it would be neces

sary for them to part. Wherefore the clerk put on his comforter, and tried to warm himself at the candle; in which effort, not being a man of strong imagination, he failed.

"A merry Christmas, uncle! God save you!" cried a cheerful voice. It was the voice of Scrooge's nephew, who came upon him so quickly that this was the first intimation he had of his approach.

"Bah!" said Scrooge.

66

Humbug!"

He had so heated himself with rapid walking in the fog and frost, this nephew of Scrooge's, that he was all in a glow; his face was ruddy and handsome; his eyes sparkled, and his breath smoked again.

"Christmas a humbug, uncle!" said Scrooge's nephew. "You don't mean that, I am sure?"

"Merry Christmas!

What

"I do," said Scrooge. right have you to be merry? Out upon Merry Christmas! What's Christmas time to you but a time for paying bills without money; a time for finding yourself a year older, and not an hour richer; a time for balancing your books and having every item in 'em through a round dozen of months presented dead against you? If I could work my will," said Scrooge, indignantly, "every idiot who goes about with 'Merry Christmas' on his lips, should be boiled with his own pudding, and buried with a stake of holly run through his heart. He should!" "Uncle!" pleaded the nephew.

"Nephew!" returned the uncle, sternly, "keep Christmas in your own way, and let me keep it in mine.” "Keep it!" repeated Scrooge's nephew.

don't keep it."

"But you