himself shorthand with the resolution--even the
rage--which he always threw into everything he undertook; and he
frequented the British Museum daily in order to supplement some of the
shortcomings of his reading. In his seventeenth year he became a
reporter at Doctors' Commons. At this period all his ambitions were
for the stage. He would be an actor. All his life, indeed, he loved
acting and the theatre above all things. As an actor, one feels
certain that he would have succeeded. He would have made an excellent
comedian. Fortunately, he was saved for better work.

It was not until he was two-and-twenty that he succeeded in getting
permanent employment on the staff of a London paper, as a reporter. In
this capacity he was sent about the country to do work which is now
mainly supplied by local reporters. It must be remembered that there
were as yet no railways. He had to travel by stage-coach, by post, by
any means that offered. "I have been upset," he said years afterward,
speaking of this time, "in almost every description of vehicle used in
this country."

About this time he began the real work of his life. In December, 1833,
the _Monthly Magazine_ published his first original paper, called "A
Dinner at Poplar Walk." Other papers followed, but produced nothing
for the contributor except the gratification of seeing them in print,
because the magazine could not afford to pay for anything. However,
they did the writer the best service possible, in enabling him to
prove his power, and he presently made an arrangement with the editor
of the _Evening Chronicle_ to contribute papers and sketches
regularly, continuing to act as reporter for the _Morning Chronicle_,
and getting his salary increased from five guineas to seven guineas a
week. To be making an income of nearly four hundred pounds a year at
the age of two or three and twenty, would be considered fortunate in
any line of life. Sixty years ago, such an income represented a much
more solid success than would now be the case. The sketches were
collected and published in the beginning of the year 1836, the author
receiving a hundred and fifty pounds for the copyright. He afterward
bought it back for eleven times that amount. In the last week of March
in the same year appeared the first number of the "Pickwick Papers;"
three days afterward Dickens married the daughter of his friend,
George Hogarth, editor of the _Evening Chronicle_, and his early
struggles were finish