e. Another instant, perhaps, and his eyes would
be full of fun and laughter.

At the beginning of his literary career he suffered a great sorrow in the
death--a very sudden death--of my mother's sister, Mary Hogarth. She was
of a most charming and lovable disposition, as well as being personally
very beautiful. Soon after my parents married, Aunt Mary was constantly
with them. As her nature developed she became my father's ideal of what
a young girl should be. And his own words show how this great affection
and the influence of the girl's loved memory were with him to the end of
his life. The shock of her sudden death so affected and prostrated him
that the publication of "Pickwick" was interrupted for two months.

"I look back," he wrote, "and with unmingled pleasure, to every link
which each ensuing week has added to the chain of our attachment. It
shall go hard I hope ere anything but death impairs the toughness of a
bond now so firmly riveted. That beautiful passage you were so kind and
considerate as to send to me has given me the only feeling akin to
pleasure, sorrowful pleasure it is, that I have yet had connected with
the loss of my dear young friend and companion, for whom my love and
attachment will never diminish, and by whose side, if it please God to
leave me in possession of sense to signify my wishes, my bones whenever
or wherever I die, will one day be laid."

She was buried in Kensal Green Cemetery, and her grave bears the
following inscription, written by my father:

"Young, beautiful, and good, God in His mercy numbered her among His
angels at the early age of seventeen."

A year after her death, in writing to my mother from Yorkshire, he says:
"Is it not extraordinary that the same dreams which have constantly
visited me since poor Mary died follow me everywhere? After all the
change of scene and fatigue I have dreamt of her ever since I left home,
and no doubt shall until I return. I would fain believe, sometimes, that
her spirit may have some influence over them, but their perpetual
repetition is extraordinary."

In the course of years there came changes in our home, inevitable
changes. But no changes could ever alter my father's home-loving nature.
As he wrote to Mr. Forster, as a young man, so it was with him to the
time of his death: "We shall soon meet, please God, and be happier than
ever we were in all our lives. Oh! home--home--home!!!"

CHAPTER II.

Buying Chris