in two colours of a medal
which had been struck to commemorate the opening of the Crystal Palace
in Hyde Park. There was a solemn understanding between us that I,
likewise, should make a cast in two colours, and present it to my chum,
and this was to be the symbol and token of an eternity of friendship.
I took home the medal; I saved my infrequent pence for the purchase
of materials; and one night, all being ready, I set to work to melt my
sulphur in a cracked teacup in the kitchen oven. The whole family was
assembled in that apartment, for the sitting-room was never used
save upon unfrequent gala days, and before long there were sniffs of
bewilderment and suspicion at the stench which began to fill the room. I
had not thought of this, and I was afraid for the life of me to withdraw
the teacup. It was a winter night, and a great fire was blazing on the
hearth, so that it was no wonder when the cracked teacup burst asunder,
and let out its contents on to the iron floor of the oven. Then there
arose an odour of mere and perfect Tophet, and the room was filled with
a sulphurous smoke. I confessed myself the author of the mischief by
trying to bolt, and I suffered then and there. We were very near being
driven entirely out of house and home that night, and I was very shy of
reviving the experiment. But my promise lay upon my conscience like
a cloud. I _had_ to keep it. To fail in that would have been an
unspeakable disloyalty, and very tremulously I made a new occasion when,
as I fancied, the coast was clear. It was not so disastrous, in one
respect, as the first, but the burning sulphur again betrayed me, and
the very natural judgment was that I had been guilty of pure contumacy.

CHAPTER IV

A First View of London--Charles Dickens--The Photograph--On
the Coach to Oxford--The Manuscript of _Our Mutual Friend_--
An Unpublished Chapter--Dickens as Reader--The British
Museum Reading Room.

I worked in the ramshackle, bankrupt, old printing office at home until
I was nearly eighteen years of age, and it was then decided to send me
to London to complete my education in the business.

It is like an exhibition of the biograph, in which the scenes depicted
go by at such a racing speed that it is difficult for the eye to follow
them. There is an instantaneous vision of the old kitchen, seen at some
abnormal unaccustomed hour of early morning in the winter-time. Three
o'clock on the morning of January 3