ome. Next morning, we are told by a spectator, "he had been
round crying in corners; and when the cab finally came, and the luggage
had all been bestowed, and the servants stood in the hall, 'This is the
moment I have dreaded,' said Thackeray, as he entered the dining-room to
embrace his daughters, and when he hastily descended the steps to the
door, he knew that they would be at the window to cast one loving,
lingering look. 'Good-by,' he murmured in a suppressed tone, 'keep close
behind me, and try to let me jump in unseen.' The instant the door of
the vehicle closed behind him, he threw himself back in the corner, and
buried his face in his hands."

His allusion to his little girls, in the poem of "The White Squall," is
well known, and shows how constantly he had them in his thoughts:--

"And when, its force expended,
The harmless storm was ended,
And as the sunrise splendid
Came blushing o'er the sea,
I thought, as day was breaking,
My little girls were waking,
And smiling, and making
A prayer at home for me."

His love for these little girls, to whom he felt he must be both father
and mother, gave him unusual tenderness for all children, and he once
said he never could see a boy without wanting to give him a sovereign.
This he did very often too in England, where children, like servants,
are allowed to receive "tips" from their parents' friends; and when in
this country he felt it quite a hardship that the children of his
friends were not allowed to take his money.

His American visits afforded him much pleasure--and profit too; and he
always spoke kindly of us after his return. His light way of expressing
his feeling towards us was extremely characteristic, as when he said he
hoped he should never be guilty of speaking ill either of the North or
the South, as he had been offered equally good claret by both. His
frequent allusions to eating and drinking give the idea of a much more
convivial person than he really was; he was temperate in both, but he
loved to write of these things. In the "Memorials of Gormandizing," he
writes in the most appetizing manner of all the good dinners he has
eaten in many lands. Each dinner is an epic of the table. They make one
hungry with an inappeasable hunger, and make him long to have Thackeray
at his own board as a most appreciative guest. He was quite a diner-out
in London, and a great favorite wherever he went. He was not one of the
professional talkers, b