child and the old
man slept together.

* * * * *

Our Mutual Friend

"Our Mutual Friend" was the last long complete novel Dickens
wrote, and, like all his books, it first appeared in monthly
parts. It was so published in 1864-65. After three numbers had
appeared, the author wrote: "I have grown hard to satisfy, and
write very slowly. Although I have not been wanting in
industry, I have been wanting in imagination." In his
"Postscript in Lieu of Preface," the author points out--in
answer to those who had disputed the probability of Harmon's
will--"that there are hundreds of will cases far more
remarkable than that fancied in this book." In this same
postscript Dickens also renewed his attack on Poor Law
administration, begun in "Oliver Twist." Though "Our Mutual
Friend" is not one of the greatest or most famous of Dickens's
works, for it is somewhat loosely constructed as a story, and
shows signs of laboured composition, it abounds in scenes of
real Dickensian character, and is not without touches of the
genius which had made its author the foremost novelist of his
time, and one of the greatest writers of all ages.

_I.--The Man from Somewhere_

It was at a dinner-party that Mortimer Lightwood, solicitor, at the
request of Lady Tippins, told the story of the Man from Somewhere.

"Upon my life," says Mortimer languidly, "I can't fix him with a local
habitation; but he comes from the place, the name of which escapes me,
where they make the wine.

"The man," Mortimer goes on, "whose name is Harmon, was the only son of
a tremendous old rascal, who made his money by dust, as a dust
contractor. This venerable parent, displeased with his son, turns him
out of doors. The boy takes flight, gets aboard ship, turns up on dry
land among the Cape wine; small proprietor, farmer, grower--whatever you
like to call it. Venerable parent dies. His will is found. It leaves the
lowest of a range of dust mountains, with a dwelling-house, to an old
servant, who is sole executor. And that's all, except that the son's
inheritance is made conditional on his marrying a girl, at the date of
the will a child four or five years old, who is now a marriageable young
woman. Advertisement and inquiry discovered the son in the Man from
Somewhere, and he is now on his way home, after fourteen years' absence,
to suc