rder to comfort Richard Carstone:--

"It was a night's journey in those coach times;
but we had the mail to ourselves, and did not find
the night very tedious. It passed with me as I
suppose it would with most people under such
circumstances. At one while, my journey looked
hopeful, and at another hopeless. Now, I thought
that I should do some good, and now I wondered how
I could ever have supposed so."

When speaking of Dickens's characters, some critics have said that "he
never drew a gentleman." One ventures to ask, Where is there a more
chivalrous, honourable, or kind-hearted gentleman than Mr. John
Jarndyce? Sir Leicester Dedlock in the same novel too, with some few
peculiarities, is a thoroughly high-minded and noble gentleman of the
old school. This by the way.

[Illustration: "There's Milestones on the Dover Road"]

After walking some distance, we are able to verify one of those sage
experiences of Mr. F.'s aunt:--"There's milestones on the Dover road!"
for, by the light of another match, the darkness closing in, and there
being no moon, we read "4 miles to Rochester." However, we tramp merrily
on, with "the town lights right afore us," our minds being full of
pleasant reminiscences of the scenes we have passed through, and this
expedition, like many a weightier matter, "comes to an end for the
time."

* * * * *

We had on another occasion the pleasure of a long chat with Mrs. Latter
of Shorne, one of the daughters of Mr. W. S. Trood, for many years
landlord of the Sir John Falstaff. She said her family came from
Somersetshire to reside at Gad's Mill in the year 1849, and left in
1872. The Falstaff was then a little homely place, but it has been much
altered since. She knew Charles Dickens very well, and saw him
constantly during his residence at Gad's Hill Place. Mrs. Latter lost
two sisters while she lived at the Falstaff--one died at the age of
eleven, and the other at nineteen. The last-mentioned was named Jane,
and died in 1862 of brain fever. Dickens was very kind to the family at
the time, took great interest in the poor girl, and offered help of
"anything that his house could afford." She remembers her mother asking
Dickens if it would be well to have the windows of the bedroom open. At
those times people were fond of keeping invalids closed up from the air.
Dickens said--"Certainly: giv