betrothed had both novelty and nicety of character in them; and
Mr. Grewgious in chambers with his clerk and the two waiters, the
conceited fool Sapsea, and the blustering philanthropist Honeythunder,
were first-rate comedy. Miss Twinkleton was of the family of Miss La
Creevy; and the lodging-house keeper, Miss Billickin, though she gave
Miss Twinkleton but a sorry account of her blood, had that of Mrs.
Todgers in her veins. "I was put in life to a very genteel
boarding-school, the mistress being no less a lady than yourself, of
about your own age, or it may be, some years younger, and a poorness of
blood flowed from the table which has run through my life." Was ever
anything better said of a school-fare of starved gentility?

The last page of _Edwin Drood_ was written in the Chalet in the
afternoon of his last day of consciousness; and I have thought there
might be some interest in a facsimile of the greater part of this final
page of manuscript that ever came from his hand, at which he had worked
unusually late in order to finish the chapter. It has very much the
character, in its excessive care of correction and interlineation, of
all his later manuscripts; and in order that comparison may be made
with his earlier and easier method, I place beside it a portion of a
page of the original of _Oliver Twist_. His greater pains and
elaboration of writing, it may be mentioned, become first very obvious
in the later parts of _Martin Chuzzlewit_; but not the least remarkable
feature in all his manuscripts, is the accuracy with which the portions
of each representing the several numbers are exactly adjusted to the
space the printer had to fill. Whether without erasure or so interlined
as to be illegible, nothing is wanting, and there is nothing in excess.
So assured was the habit, that he has himself remarked upon an instance
the other way, in _Our Mutual Friend_, as not having happened to him for
thirty years. But _Edwin Drood_ more startlingly showed him how
unsettled the habit he most prized had become, in the clashing of old
and new pursuits. "When I had written" (22nd of December 1869) "and, as
I thought, disposed of the first two Numbers of my story, Clowes
informed me to my horror that they were, together, _twelve printed pages
too short_!!! Consequently I had to transpose a chapter from number two
to number one, and remodel number two altogether! This was the more
unlucky, that it came upon me at the time when I was ob