the roughest kind of companions. This
experience was so bitter and galling to the sensitive boy that years
after, when he was a successful, happy man, he could not look back
upon it without tears in his eyes. Owing to a rupture between his
employer and the elder Mr. Dickens, Charles was removed from this
place and sent to school. At fifteen, however, he had to seek work
again. This time he was employed in an attorney's office at Gray's
Inn.

It was impossible, of course, for this ambitious boy to realize that
he was receiving an education in the dirty streets, the warehouses,
the tenements, and the prisons. Yet, for his peculiar bent of mind,
these furnished far richer stores of learning than either school or
college could have given. He had marvelous powers of observation. He
noted everything, from the saucy street waif to the sorrowful prison
child, from the poor little drudge to the brutal schoolmaster, and he
transplanted them from life to fiction, in such characters as Sam
Weller, Little Dorrit, the Marchioness, Mr. Squeers, and a hundred
others.

While in the attorney's office, Dickens began to study shorthand, in
order to become a reporter. This was the beginning of his success. His
reports were accurate and racy, even when they happened to be written
in the pouring rain, in a shaking stagecoach, or by the light of a
lantern. They were also promptly handed in at the office, despite the
fact that the stages sometimes broke down and left their passengers to
plod on foot through the miry roads leading into London. These reports
and newspaper articles soon attracted attention; and Dickens received
an offer for a series of humorous sketches, which grew into the famous
_Pickwick Papers_, and earned L20,000 for the astonished publishers.
He was able to make his own terms for his future novels. Fame came to
him almost at a bound. He was loved and toasted in England and America
before he had reached the age of thirty. When, late in life, he made
lecture tours through his own country, or through Scotland or America,
they were like triumphal marches.

In his prime Dickens was an energetic, high-spirited, fun-loving man.
He made a charming host, and was never happier than when engineering
theatrical entertainments at his delightful home, Gads Hill. He was
esteemed by all the literary men of London, and idolized by his
children and friends. As his strong personality was communicated to
his audiences and his readers, his d