“My dear fellow, I remember I asked you in that letter to accept a silver mug in token of our pleasant days together, and to drink a health sometimes in it to a sincere friend....  Smith and Elder write me word they have sent by a Cunard to Boston a packet of paper, stamped etc. in London.  I want it to be taken from the Custom-House, dooties paid etc., and dispatched to Miss ——­, New York.  Hold your tongue, and don’t laugh, you rogue.  Why shouldn’t she have her paper, and I my pleasure, without your wicked, wicked sneers and imperence?  I’m only a cipher in the young lady’s estimation, and why shouldn’t I sigh for her if I like.  I hope I shall see you all at Boston before very long.  I always consider Boston as my native place, you know.”

I wish I could recall half the incidents connected with the dear, dear old Thackeray days, when I saw him so constantly and enjoyed him so hugely; but, alas! many of them are gone, with much more that is lovely and would have been of good report, could they be now remembered;—­they are dead as—­(Holmes always puts your simile quite right for you),—­

“Dead as the bulrushes round little Moses,
On the old banks of the Nile.”

But while I sit here quietly, and have no fear of any bad, unsympathizing listeners who might, if some other subject were up, frown upon my levity, let me walk through the dusky chambers of my memory and report what I find there, just as the records turn up, without regard to method.

I once made a pilgrimage with Thackeray (at my request, of course, the visits were planned) to the various houses where his books had been written; and I remember when we came to Young Street, Kensington, he said, with mock gravity, “Down on your knees, you rogue, for here ‘Vanity Fair’ was penned!  And I will go down with you, for I have a high opinion of that little production myself.”  He was always perfectly honest in his expressions about his own writings, and it was delightful to hear him praise them when he could depend on his listeners.  A friend congratulated him once on that touch in “Vanity Fair” in which Becky “admires” her husband when he is giving Steyne the punishment which ruins her for life.  “Well,” he said, “when I wrote the sentence, I slapped my fist on the table and said, ’That is a touch of genius!’”

He told me he was nearly forty years old before he was recognized in literature as belonging to a class of writers at all above the ordinary magazinists of his day.  “I turned off far better things then than I do now,” said he, “and I wanted money sadly, (my parents were rich but respectable, and I had spent my guineas in my youth,) but how little I got for my work!  It makes me laugh,” he continued, “at what The Times pays me now, when I think of the old days, and how much better I wrote for them then, and got a shilling where I now get ten.”

One day he wanted a little service done for a friend, and I remember his very quizzical expression, as he said, “Please say the favor asked will greatly oblige a man of the name of Thackeray, whose only recommendation is, that he has seen Napoleon and Goethe, and is the owner of Schiller’s sword.”