with Dickens and Danson or Tobin walking on
either side of him. I inclose you a copy of a note I received from him
when he was between thirteen and fourteen years of age, perhaps one of
the earliest productions of his pen. The Leg referred to was the Legend
of something, a pamphlet romance I had lent him; the Clavis was of
course the Latin school-book so named."

There is some underlying whim or fun in the "Leg" allusions which Mr.
Thomas appears to have overlooked, and certainly fails to explain; but
the note, which is here given in fac-simile, may be left to speak for
itself; and in the signature the reader will be amused to see the first
faint beginning of a flourish afterwards famous.

"After a lapse of years," Mr. Thomas continues, "I recognized the
celebrated writer as the individual I had known so well as a boy, from
having preserved this note; and upon Mr. Dickens visiting Reading in
December, 1854, to give one of his earliest readings for the benefit of
the literary institute, of which he had become president on Mr. Justice
Talfourd's death, I took the opportunity of showing it to him, when he
was much diverted therewith. On the same occasion we conversed about
mutual schoolfellows, and among others Daniel Tobin was referred to,
whom I remembered to have been Dickens's _most_ intimate companion in
the school-days (1824 to 1826). His reply was that Tobin either was
then, or had previously been, assisting him in the capacity of
amanuensis; but there is a subsequent mystery about Tobin, in connection
with his friend and patron, which I have never been able to comprehend;
for I understood shortly afterwards that there was entire separation
between them, and it must have been an offense of some gravity to have
sundered an acquaintance formed in early youth, and which had endured,
greatly to Tobin's advantage, so long. He resided in our school-days in
one of the now old and grimy-looking stone-fronted houses in George
Street, Euston Road, a few doors from the Orange-tree tavern. It is the
opinion of the other schoolfellow with whom we were intimate, Doctor
Danson, that upon leaving school Mr. Dickens and Tobin entered the same
solicitor's office, and this he thinks was either in or near Lincoln's
Inn Fields."

[Illustration: Handwritten note: Punctuation and capitalization,
retained:

Tim/

I am quite ashamed I have not returned your Leg
but you shall have it by Harry to-morrow If you