mor of the "Pickwick Papers,"
and the series dragged until Part IV appeared, and with it the character
of Sam Weller. This original and very entertaining figure turned the
scales, and almost instantly there was the greatest demand for the
"Pickwick Papers." By the time the series was finished the name of "Boz"
was constantly on almost every English tongue. Here again fortune had
had much to do with deciding Dickens' career. Had the series failed, he
might have continued merely a reporter, but the humorous figure of
Weller tipped the scales in favor of his adopting the profession of
novelist.

From that time on one novel after another flowed from Dickens' pen. For
many of their most vivid pictures he was indebted to the hard life of
his boyhood, and the strange people he had known in the days when he
worked in the blacking factory finally grew into some of his greatest
characters. The little maid-of-all-work became the Marchioness in the
"Old Curiosity Shop," Bob Fagin loaned his name to "Oliver Twist," and
in "David Copperfield" we read the story of the small boy who had to
fight his way through London alone.

Those days of boyhood had given him a deep insight into human nature,
into the humor and pathos of other people's lives, and it was that rare
insight that enabled him to become in time one of the greatest of all
English writers, Charles Dickens, the beloved novelist of the
Anglo-Saxon people.

XXI

Otto von Bismarck

The Boy of Goettingen: 1815-1898

A tall, slender boy, followed by a great Danish hound, walked down the
main street of the German town of Goettingen in Hanover one spring
morning in 1832. The small round cap, gay with colors, told the world
that the boy was a student at the University, and also that he belonged
to one of the students' clubs, or fighting corps, as they were called.
But this boy looked quite a dandy. A wide sash was tied about his waist,
high-polished boots came up to his knees, and he wore a knot of colors
on his breast, the same colors he sported in his cap, the emblem that he
belonged to the Brunswick student corps. Moreover he carried himself
with rather a haughty manner, and the big dog, following at his heels,
walked in much the same way.

Presently there came strolling along the street a group of a half dozen
boys who wore the round caps of the Hanoverian Club. Something about the
boy with the dog struck them as comical, and they began to laugh, and
nudge each