I would rather have seen
it than the best play ever played; and I thought about it afterwards,
over the pots of paste-blacking, often and often. When I looked, with my
mind's eye, into the Fleet prison during Mr. Pickwick's incarceration, I
wonder whether half a dozen men were wanting from the Marshalsea crowd
that came filing in again, to the sound of Captain Porter's voice!"

When the family left the Marshalsea they all went to lodge with the lady
in Little College Street, a Mrs. Roylance, who has obtained unexpected
immortality as Mrs. Pipchin; and they afterwards occupied a small house
in Somers-town. But, before this time, Charles was present with some of
them in Tenterden Street to see his sister. Fanny received one of the
prizes given to the pupils of the Royal Academy of Music. "I could not
bear to think of myself--beyond the reach of all such honorable
emulation and success. The tears ran down my face. I felt as if my heart
were rent. I prayed, when I went to bed that night, to be lifted out of
the humiliation and neglect in which I was. I never had suffered so much
before. There was no envy in this." There was little need that he should
say so. Extreme enjoyment in witnessing the exercise of her talents, the
utmost pride in every success obtained by them, he manifested always to
a degree otherwise quite unusual with him; and on the day of her
funeral, which we passed together, I had most affecting proof of his
tender and grateful memory of her in these childish days. A few more
sentences, certainly not less touching than any that have gone before,
will bring the story of them to its close. They stand here exactly as
written by him:

"I am not sure that it was before this time, or after it, that the
blacking-warehouse was removed to Chandos Street, Covent Garden. It is
no matter. Next to the shop at the corner of Bedford Street in Chandos
Street are two rather old-fashioned houses and shops adjoining one
another. They were one then, or thrown into one, for the
blacking-business; and had been a butter-shop. Opposite to them was, and
is, a public-house, where I got my ale, under these new circumstances.
The stones in the street may be smoothed by my small feet going across
to it at dinner-time, and back again. The establishment was larger now,
and we had one or two new boys. Bob Fagin and I had attained to great
dexterity in tying up the pots. I forget how many we could do in five
minutes. We worked, for the li