ve been meant for some
incident in it. If so, it is the only passage in the volume which can be
in any way connected with the piece of writing on which he was last
engaged. Some names were taken for it from the lists, but there is
otherwise nothing to recall _Edwin Drood_.

FOOTNOTES:

[250] From the same authority proceeded, in answer to a casual question
one day, a description of the condition of his wardrobe of which he has
also made note in the Memoranda. "Well, sir, your clothes is all shabby,
and your boots is all burst."

[251] The date when this fancy dropped into his Memoranda is fixed by
the following passage in a letter to me of the 25th of August 1862. "I
am trying to coerce my thoughts into hammering out the Christmas number.
And I have an idea of opening a book (not the Christmas number--a book)
by bringing together two strongly contrasted places and two strongly
contrasted sets of people, with which and with whom the story is to
rest, through the agency of an electric message. I think a fine thing
might be made of the message itself shooting over the land and under the
sea, and it would be a curious way of sounding the key note."

[252] Following this in the "Memoranda" is an advertisement cut from the
_Times_: of a kind that always expressed to Dickens a child-farming that
deserved the gallows quite as much as the worst kind of starving, by way
of farming, babies. The fourteen guineas a-year, "tender" age of the
"dear" ones, maternal care, and no vacations or extras, to him had only
one meaning.

EDUCATION FOR LITTLE CHILDREN.--Terms 14 to 18
guineas per annum; no extras or vacations. The
system of education embraces the wide range of
each useful and ornamental study suited to the
tender age of the dear children. Maternal care
and kindness may be relied on.--X., Heald's
Library, Fulham-road.

CHAPTER XIII.

THIRD SERIES OF READINGS.

1864-1867.

Death of Thackeray--Dickens on
Thackeray--Mother's Death--Death of his Second
Son--_Our Mutual Friend_--Revising a
Play--Sorrowful New Year--Lameness--Fatal
Anniversary--New Readings undertaken--Offer of
Messrs. Chappell--Relieved from
Management--Greater Fatigues involved--A
Memorable Evening--Mrs. Carlyle--Offer for more
Readings--Result of the Last--Grave
Warnings--At Liverpool--At Manchester--At