. It was a queer book to have absorbed
the time and attention of a boy of eight or nine, who had to skip the
big words, who did not understand it all, but who cried, as he has cried
but once since, whenever he came to that dreadful chapter which tells
the story of the taking away of David's mother, and of David's utter,
hopeless desolation over his loss.

How the book came into The Boy's possession he cannot now remember, nor
is he sure that his parents realized how much, or how often, he was
engrossed in its contents. It cheered him in the measles, it comforted
him in the mumps. He took it to school with him, and he took it to bed
with him; and he read it, over and over again, especially the early
chapters; for he did not care so much for David after David became
Trotwood, and fell in love.

When, in 1852, after his grandfather's death, The Boy first saw London,
it was not the London of the Romans, the Saxons, or the Normans, or the
London of the Plantagenets or the Tudors, but the London of the
Micawbers and the Traddleses, the London of Murdstone and Grinby, the
London of Dora's Aunt and of Jip. On his arrival at Euston Station the
first object upon which his eyes fell was a donkey-cart, a large wooden
tray on wheels, driven, at a rapid pace, by a long-legged young man, and
followed, at a pace hardly so rapid, by a boy of about his own age, who
seemed in great mental distress. This was the opening scene. And London,
from that moment, became to him, and still remains, a great moving
panorama of David Copperfield.

He saw the Orfling, that first evening, snorting along Tottenham Court
Road; he saw Mealy Potatoes, in a ragged apron and a paper cap, lounging
along Broad Street; he saw Martha disappear swiftly and silently into
one of the dirty streets leading from Seven Dials; he saw innumerable
public-houses--the Lion, or the Lion and something else--in anyone of
which David might have consumed that memorable glass of Genuine Stunning
ale with a good head on it. As they drove through St. Martin's Lane, and
past a court at the back of the church, he even got a glimpse of the
exterior of the shop where was sold a special pudding, made of currants,
but dear; a two-pennyworth being no larger than a pennyworth of more
ordinary pudding at any other establishment in the neighborhood. And, to
crown all, when he looked out of his back bedroom window, at Morley's
Hotel, he discovered that he was looking at the actual bedroom wi