easily have
become, for any care that was taken of him, a little robber or a little
vagabond." The earlier history of David in _David Copperfield_ is really
and truly a history of the real Charles Dickens in London. He was left
to the city streets, or to earn a hard and scanty living in a dirty
warehouse, by pasting labels on pots of blacking. All of this wretched
experience he has written in _David Copperfield_, and the sad scenes of
the debtors' prison he has put into _Pickwick Papers_ and into _Little
Dorrit_. Even Mrs. Pipchin, of whom he told in _Dombey and Son_, and Mr.
Micawber in _David Copperfield_, were real people whom he knew in these
years of poverty and despair. Dickens's life at this time was so
miserable that always afterward he dreaded to speak of it, and never
could bear even to walk in the street where the blacking warehouse of
his boyhood had stood.

Better days, however, came at last. He was able to begin school again,
and though the head-master was ignorant and brutal (just such a one as
Mr. Creakle in _David Copperfield_) yet Dickens profited by such
teaching as he received.

After two or three years of school, he found employment as clerk in a
lawyer's office. This did not content him and he made up his mind to
learn to write shorthand so as to become a reporter, in the Houses of
Parliament, for a newspaper. This was by no means an easy task. But
Dickens had great strength of will and a determination to do well
whatever he did at all, and he succeeded, just as David Copperfield did
in the story.

And like the latter, too, about this time Dickens fell in love. He did
not marry on this occasion, as did David, but how much he was in love
one may see by the story of David's Dora.

The theater had always a great attraction for Dickens. Throughout his
life he loved to act in plays got up and often written, too, by himself
and his friends. Some of his early experiences of this kind he has told
in the adventures of Nicholas Nickleby at Mr. Crummles's theater. But
his acting was for his own amusement, and it is doubtful if he ever
thought seriously of adopting the stage as a profession. If he did, his
success as a reporter soon determined him otherwise.

When he was twenty-one he saw his first printed sketch in a monthly
magazine. He had dropped it into a letter-box with mingled hope and
fear, and read it now through tears of joy and pride. He followed this
with others as successful, signed "Boz"--t