eople who are in your power. Try to do to
others as you would have them do to you, and do not be
discouraged if they fail sometimes. It is much better for you
that they should fail in obeying the greatest rule laid down
by our Saviour than that you should. I put a New Testament
among your books for the very same reasons, and with the very
same hopes, that made me write an easy account of it for you,
when you were a little child. Because it is the best book that
ever was, or will be, known in the world; and because it
teaches you the best lessons by which any human creature, who
tries to be truthful and faithful to duty, can possibly be
guided.... You will remember that you have never at home been
harassed about religious observances, or mere formalities--I
have always been anxious not to weary my children with such
things, before they are old enough to have opinions respecting
them. You will therefore understand the better that I now most
solemnly impress upon you the truth and beauty of the
Christian Religion, as it came from Christ Himself, and the
impossibility of your going far wrong if you humbly but
heartily respect it.... Never abandon the wholesome practice
of saying your own private prayers, night and morning. I have
never abandoned it myself, and I know the comfort of it.

[Illustration: CHARLES DICKENS]

XXV

CHARLES DICKENS AS READER

My first sight of Dickens, writes Herman Merivale in a gossipy article
in an English magazine, was characteristic enough. I was in the second
or third row of seats with some friends, at one of his readings of
_Oliver Twist_. As Thackeray was a gossip on the platform, so Dickens
was an actor. Like all speakers and actors, he longed for sympathy
somewhere; an unanswering audience kills us, on whichever side the
fault may lie. In the days of my political measles I have harangued a
London audience for an hour and twenty minutes when I have meant to
speak for a quarter of an hour; and in an out-of-the-way Hampshire
district, where I had gone on purpose to address the rurals for a set
hour, I have sate down, covered with confusion, in ten minutes, not
being able to hit on anything that interested them at all. I saw too
plainly, in all their good-natured faces, that they regarded me as the
greatest ass they had ever seen, or as an odd kind of cow gone wrong,
and of no use to the three