f many thoughtful hours, is the
source of the purest delight and pride to me; and believe me that your
expressions of affectionate remembrance and approval, sounding from the
green forests of the Mississippi, sink deeper into my heart and gratify
it more than all the honorary distinctions that all the courts of Europe
could confer. It is such things as these that make one hope one does not
live in vain, and that are the highest rewards of an author's life."

His genius for character sketching needs no proof--his characters live to
vouch for themselves, for their reality. It is ever amazing to me that
the hand which drew the pathetic and beautiful creations, the kindly
humored men, the lovely women, the unfortunate little ones, could portray
also with such marvellous accuracy the villainy and craftiness of such
characters as Bumble, Bill Sykes, Pecksniff, Uriah Heep and Squeers.
Undoubtedly from his earliest childhood he had possessed the quick
perception, the instinct, which could read in people's characters their
tendencies toward good and evil, and throughout his life he valued this
ability above literary skill and finish. Mr. Forster makes a point of
this in his biography, speaking of the noticeable traits in him: "What I
had most, indeed, to notice in him at the very outset of his career, was
his indifference to any praise of his performances on their merely
literary merit, compared with the higher recognition of them as bits of
actual life, with the meaning and purpose on their part, and the
responsibility on his, of realities rather than creatures of fancy."

But he was always pleased with praise, and always modest and grateful in
returning it. "How can I thank you?" he writes to a friend who was
expressing his pleasure at "Oliver Twist." "Can I do better than by
saying that the sense of poor Oliver's reality, which I know you have had
from the first, has been the highest of all praise to me? None that has
been lavished upon me have I felt half so much as that appreciation of my
intent and meaning. Your notices make me very grateful, but very proud,
so have a care."

The impressions which were later converted into motives and plots for his
stories he imbibed often in his earliest childhood. The crusade against
the Yorkshire schools which is waged in "Nicholas Nickleby," is the
working out of some of these childish impressions. He writes himself of
them: "I cannot call to mind how I came to hear about Yor