er.
"'Will you let me in, Fred?' _Let him in! It is a mercy he didn't shake
his arm off._" The turkey that "never could have stood upon its legs,
that bird," but must have "snapped 'em short off in a minute, like
sticks of sealing-wax!"--the remarkable boy who was just about its
size, and who, when told to go and buy it, cried out "Walk-ER!"--Bob
Cratchit's trying to overtake nine o'clock with his pen on his arriving
nearly twenty minutes afterwards; his trembling and getting a little
nearer the ruler when regenerated Scrooge talks about raising his
salary, prior to calling him Bob, and, with a clap on the back, wishing
him a merry Christmas!--brought, hilariously, the whole radiant Reading
of this wonderful story to its conclusion. It was a feast of humour
and a flow of fun, better than all the yule-tide fare that ever was
provided--fuller of good things than any Christmas pudding of plums and
candied fruit-peel--more warming to the cockles of one's heart,
whatever those may be, than the mellowest wassail-bowl ever brimmed to
over-flowing. No wonder those two friends of Thackeray, who have been
already mentioned, and who were both of them women, said of the Author
of the "Carol," by way of criticism, "God bless him!" This being
exclaimed by them, as will be remembered, simply after reading it to
themselves. If only they had heard him read it!

THE TRIAL FROM PICKWICK.

Reader and audience about equally, one may say, revelled in the "Trial
from Pickwick." Every well-known person in the comic drama was looked
for eagerly, and when at last Serjeant Buzfuz, as we were told, "rose
with more importance than he had yet exhibited, if that were possible,
and said, 'Call Samuel Weller,'" a round of applause invariably greeted
the announcement of perhaps the greatest of all Dickens's purely
humorous characters. The Reading copy of this abbreviated report of
the great case of _Bardell v. Pickwick_ has, among the complete set of
Readings, one very striking peculiarity. Half-bound in scarlet morocco
like all the other thin octavos in the collection, its leaves though
yellow and worn with constant turning like the rest, are wholly _un_like
those of the others in this, that the text is untouched by pen or
pencil. Beyond the first condensation of that memorable 34th chapter
of Pickwick, there is introduced not one single alteration by way of
after-thought. Struck off at a heat, as it was, that first humorous
report of the actio