ctionate father to his own children, and gave much thought to their
happiness and education. In order that they should properly learn of
their own country, he went to the labor of preparing a _Child's History
of England_ for them, and at another time he wrote out the story of the
Gospels, to help them in their study of the New Testament. As the years
went by, his letters to his oldest son told of his own work and plans.
When his youngest son sailed away to live in Australia, he wrote: "Poor
Plorn is gone. It was a hard parting at the last. He seemed to me to
become once more my youngest and favorite child as the day drew near,
and I did not think I could have been so shaken."

When he moved to Gad's Hill it seemed as though Dickens had gained
almost all of the things men strive most for. But he was not to be happy
there--nor, perhaps, was he ever again to be really happy anywhere. He
and his wife were very different in all their tastes and habits, and had
never loved each other as well as people should when they marry.
Perhaps, after all, it would have been better if in his youth he had
married his Dora--the one whom he had pictured in the love-story of
David Copperfield and his child-wife. But, however this may be, Dickens
and his wife had not lived happily together, and now decided to part,
and from that time, though they wrote to each other, he never saw her
again. It is sad to reflect that he who has painted so beautifully for
others the joys and sorrows of perfect love and home, was himself
destined to know neither.

The years that followed this separation were years of constant labor for
Dickens. His restlessness, perhaps also his lack of happiness, drove him
to work without rest. He wrote to a friend: "I am quite confident I
should rust, break and die if I spared myself. Much better to die
doing." The idea of giving public readings from his stories suggested
itself to him, and he was soon engaged in preparation. "I must do
_something_," he wrote, "or I shall wear my heart away." That heart his
physician had declared out of order, and this effort was destined to
wear it away in quite another sense, though for some time Dickens felt
no ill effects.

He gave readings, not only in England, but also in Scotland and Ireland,
and everywhere he met with enormous success. The first series was hardly
over, when he was at work on a new story, and this was scarcely
completed when he was planning more readings. The strain o