d friends in that line.
He had quite a fund of canary-bird anecdotes, and the pert ways of birds
that picked up worms for a living afforded him infinite amusement. He
would give a capital imitation of the way a robin-redbreast cocks his
head on one side preliminary to a dash forward in the direction of a
wriggling victim. There is a small grave at Gad's Hill to which Dickens
would occasionally take a friend, and it was quite a privilege to stand
with him beside the burial-place of little Dick, the family's favorite
canary.

What a treat it was to go with him to the London Zooelogical Gardens, a
place he greatly delighted in at all times! He knew the zooelogical
address of every animal, bird, and fish of any distinction; and he
could, without the slightest hesitation, on entering the grounds,
proceed straightway to the celebrities of claw or foot or fin. The
delight he took in the hippopotamus family was most exhilarating. He
entered familiarly into conversation with the huge, unwieldy creatures,
and they seemed to understand him. Indeed, he spoke to all the
unphilological inhabitants with a directness and tact which went home to
them at once. He chaffed with the monkeys, coaxed the tigers, and
bamboozled the snakes, with a dexterity unapproachable. All the keepers
knew him, he was such a loyal visitor, and I noticed they came up to him
in a friendly way, with the feeling that they had a sympathetic listener
always in Charles Dickens.

There were certain books of which Dickens liked to talk during his walks
Among his especial favorites were the writings of Cobbett, DeQuincey,
the Lectures on Moral Philosophy by Sydney Smith, and Carlyle's French
Revolution. Of this latter Dickens said it was the book of all others
which he read perpetually and of which he never tired,--the book which
always appeared more imaginative in proportion to the fresh imagination
he brought to it, a book for inexhaustibleness to be placed before every
other book. When writing the "Tale of Two Cities," he asked Carlyle if
he might see one of the works to which he referred in his history;
whereupon Carlyle packed up and sent down to Gad's Hill _all_ his
reference volumes, and Dickens read them faithfully. But the more he
read the more he was astonished to find how the facts had passed through
the alembic of Carlyle's brain and had come out and fitted themselves,
each as a part of one great whole, making a compact result,
indestructible and unriva