income of four hundred dollars. As time went
on, the value of the first fellowship increased until it was worth
twenty-five hundred dollars. Therefore, as with many Oxford men of
his time, Charles Reade, who had no other fortune, was placed in this
position--if he refrained from marrying, he had a home and a moderate
income for life, without any duties whatsoever. If he married, he must
give up his income and his comfortable apartments, and go out into the
world and struggle for existence.

There was the further temptation that the possession of his fellowship
did not even necessitate his living at Oxford. He might spend his time
in London, or even outside of England, knowing that his chambers at
Magdalen were kept in order for him, as a resting-place to which he
might return whenever he chose.

Reade remained a while at Oxford, studying books and men--especially the
latter. He was a great favorite with the undergraduates, though less so
with the dons. He loved the boat-races on the river; he was a prodigious
cricket-player, and one of the best bowlers of his time. He utterly
refused to put on any of the academic dignity which his associates
affected. He wore loud clothes. His flaring scarfs were viewed as being
almost scandalous, very much as Longfellow's parti-colored waistcoats
were regarded when he first came to Harvard as a professor.

Charles Reade pushed originality to eccentricity. He had a passion for
violins, and ran himself into debt because he bought so many and such
good ones. Once, when visiting his father's house at Ipsden, he shocked
the punctilious old gentleman by dancing on the dining-table to the
accompaniment of a fiddle, which he scraped delightedly. Dancing,
indeed, was another of his diversions, and, in spite of the fact that he
was a fellow of Magdalen and a D.C.L. of Oxford, he was always ready to
caper and to display the new steps.

In the course of time, he went up to London; and at once plunged into
the seething tide of the metropolis. He made friends far and wide, and
in every class and station--among authors and politicians, bishops and
bargees, artists and musicians. Charles Reade learned much from all of
them, and all of them were fond of him.

But it was the theater that interested him most. Nothing else seemed to
him quite so fine as to be a successful writer for the stage. He viewed
the drama with all the reverence of an ancient Greek. On his tombstone
he caused himself to be de