with so much pathos that the
book served as a valuable aid in removing a great public wrong, while
the satire on foreign missions served to draw the English nation's
attention to the wretched heathen at home in the East Side of London,
of whom Poor Jo was a pitiable specimen. In other novels other good
purposes were also served.

But several pages could be filled with a mere enumeration of Dickens'
stories and their salient features. You cannot go wrong in taking up
any of his novels or his short stories, and when you have finished
with them you will have the satisfaction of having added to your
possessions a number of the real people of fiction, whom it is far
better to know than the best characters of contemporary fiction,
because these will be forgotten in a twelvemonth, if not before. The
hours that you spend with Dickens will be profitable as well as
pleasant, for they will leave the memory of a great-hearted man who
labored through his books to make the world better and happier.

THACKERAY GREATEST MASTER OF FICTION

THE MOST ACCOMPLISHED WRITER OF HIS CENTURY--TENDER PATHOS
UNDER AN AFFECTATION OF CYNICISM AND GREAT ART IN STYLE AND
CHARACTERS.

Of all modern English authors, Thackeray is my favorite. Humor,
pathos, satire, ripe culture, knowledge of the world and of the human
heart, instinctive good taste and a style equaled by none of his
fellows in its clearness, ease, flexibility and winning charm--these
are some of the traits that make the author of _Vanity Fair_ and
_Esmond_ incomparably the first literary artist as well as the
greatest writer of his age. Whether he would have been as fine a
writer had he been given a happy life is a question that no one can
answer. But to my mind it has always seemed as though the dark shadow
that rested on his domestic life for thirty years made him
infinitely tender to the grief and pain of others. Probably it came
as a shock to most lovers of Thackeray to read in a news item from
London only three or four years ago that the widow of Thackeray was
dead, at the great age of ninety years. She had outlived her famous
husband nearly a full half century, but of her we had heard nothing in
all this time. When a beautiful young Irish girl she was married to
the novelist, and she made him an ideal wife for a few years. Then her
mind gave way, and the remainder of her long career was spent within
the walls of a sanatorium--more lost to her loved ones than