but it was not long before he found his true vocation, and abandoned all
thought of the stage as a means of livelihood. In 1833 he published a
sketch in the _Old Monthly Magazine_, and this was the first of those
_Sketches by Boz_ which were published at intervals for the next two
years.

The year 1836 was a noteworthy one for Dickens, for in that year he
married Catherine Hogarth, the daughter of an associate on the
_Chronicle_; and in that year began the publication of _The Posthumous
Papers of the Pickwick Club_. The publication of the first few numbers
wakened no great enthusiasm, but with the appearance of the fifth
number, in which Sam Weller is introduced, began that popularity which
did not decline until Dickens's death. In fact, as one writer has said,
"In dealing with Dickens, we are dealing with a man whose public success
was a marvel and almost a monstrosity." Every one, old and young,
serious and flippant, talked of _Pickwick_, and it was actually
reported, by no less an authority than Thomas Carlyle, that a solemn
clergyman, being told that he had not long to live, exclaimed, "Well,
thank God, _Pickwick_ will be out in ten days anyway!"

_Oliver Twist_ followed, and then _Nicholas Nickleby_; and by this time
Dickens began to get, what he did not receive from his first work,
something like his fair share of the enormous profits, so that his
growing family lived in comfort, if not in luxury. When the _Old
Curiosity Shop_, and, later, _Barnaby Rudge_, appeared, the number of
purchasers of the serials rose as high as seventy thousand.

Early in 1842 Dickens and his wife made a journey to America, leaving
their children in the care of a friend. Shortly after arriving in the
United States he wrote to a friend, "I can give you no conception of my
welcome here. There was never a king or emperor upon the earth so
cheered and followed by crowds, and entertained in public at splendid
balls and dinners, and waited on by public bodies and deputations of all
kinds;" and again, "In every town where we stay, though it be only for a
day, we hold a regular levee or drawing-room, where I shake hands on an
average with five or six hundred people."

Dickens had come prepared to like America and Americans--and in many
ways he did like them. But in other ways he was disappointed. He
ventured to object, in various speeches, to the pirating, in America, of
English literature, and fierce were the denunciations which this course