vely I write and
speak) how exhausted I am to-day with yesterday's labors. I went to bed
last night utterly dispirited and done up. All night I have been pursued
by the child; and this morning I am unrefreshed and miserable. I do not
know what to do with myself."

His love and care for this little one are shown most pathetically in the
suggestions which he gave to Mr. George Cattermole for his illustrations
of the "Old Curiosity Shop." "Kit, the single gentleman, and Mr. Garland
go down to the place where the child is and arrive there at night. There
has been a fall of snow. Kit, leaving them behind, runs to the old
house, and with a lantern in one hand, and the bird in its cage in the
other, stops for a moment at a little distance, with a natural
hesitation, before he goes up to make his presence known. In a
window--supposed to be that of the child's little room--a light is
burning, and in that room the child (unknown, of course, to her visitors,
who are full of hope), lies dead."

Again: "The child lying dead in the little sleeping room, behind the open
screen. It is winter time, so there are no flowers, but upon her breast
and pillow there may be strips of holly and berries and such green
things. A window, overgrown with ivy. The little boy who had that talk
with her about the angels may be by the bedside, if you like it so; but I
think it will be quieter and more peaceful if she is quite alone. I want
the scene to express the most beautiful repose and tranquillity, and to
have something of a happy look, if death can do this."

Another: "The child has been buried within the church, and the old man,
who cannot be made to understand that she is dead repairs to the grave
and sits there all day long, waiting for her arrival to begin another
journey. His staff and knapsack, her little bonnet and basket, lie
beside him. 'She'll come to-morrow,' he says, when it gets dark, and
then goes sorrowfully home. I think an hour glass running out would keep
up the notion; perhaps her little things upon his knee or in his hand. I
am breaking my heart over this story, and cannot bear to finish it."

In acknowledging the receipt of a letter concerning this book from Mr.
John Tomlin, an American, he wrote: "I thank you cordially and heartily
for your letter, and for its kind and courteous terms. To think that I
have awakened among the vast solitudes in which you dwell a fellow
feeling and sympathy with the creatures o