through the mud of country roads on its dark way to London town.  It was largely during this period that he gained his extraordinary knowledge of inns and stables and “horsey” persons, which is reflected in his novels.  He also grew ambitious, and began to write on his own account.  At the age of twenty-one he dropped his first little sketch “stealthily, with fear and trembling, into a dark letter-box, in a dark office up a dark court in Fleet Street.”  The name of this first sketch was “Mr. Minns and his Cousin,” and it appeared with other stories in his first book, Sketches by Boz, in 1835.  One who reads these sketches now, with their intimate knowledge of the hidden life of London, can understand Dickens’s first newspaper success perfectly.  His best known work, Pickwick, was published serially in 1836-1837, and Dickens’s fame and fortune were made.  Never before had a novel appeared so full of vitality and merriment.  Though crude in design, a mere jumble of exaggerated characters and incidents, it fairly bubbled over with the kind of humor in which the British public delights, and it still remains, after three quarters of a century, one of our most care-dispelling books.

The remainder of Dickens’s life is largely a record of personal triumphs. Pickwick was followed rapidly by Oliver Twist, Nicholas Nickleby, Old Curiosity Shop, and by many other works which seemed to indicate that there was no limit to the new author’s invention of odd, grotesque, uproarious, and sentimental characters.  In the intervals of his novel writing he attempted several times to edit a weekly paper; but his power lay in other directions, and with the exception of Household Words, his journalistic ventures were not a marked success.  Again the actor came to the surface, and after managing a company of amateur actors successfully, Dickens began to give dramatic readings from his own works.  As he was already the most popular writer in the English language, these readings were very successful.  Crowds thronged to hear him, and his journeys became a continuous ovation.  Money poured into his pockets from his novels and from his readings, and he bought for himself a home, Gadshill Place, which he had always desired, and which is forever associated with his memory.  Though he spent the greater part of his time and strength in travel at this period, nothing is more characteristic of the man than the intense energy with which he turned from his lecturing to his novels, and then, for relaxation, gave himself up to what he called the magic lantern of the London streets.