ace-fire. It would have been a good
thing to have opened a new story with, I have been thinking since."

In the middle of October he returned to town, and by the end of the
month he had so far advanced that the close of the story began to be not
far distant. "Tell me what you think," he had written just before his
return, "of 36 and 37? The way is clear for Kit now, and for a great
effect at the last with the Marchioness." The last allusion I could not
in the least understand, until I found, in the numbers just sent me,
those exquisite chapters of the tale, the 57th and 58th, in which Dick
Swiveller realizes his threat to Miss Wackles, discovers the small
creature that his destiny is expressly saving up for him, dubs her
Marchioness, and teaches her the delights of hot purl and cribbage. This
is comedy of the purest kind; its great charm being the good-hearted
fellow's kindness to the poor desolate child hiding itself under cover
of what seems only mirth and fun. Altogether, and because of rather than
in spite of his weakness, Dick is a captivating person. His gayety and
good humor survive such accumulations of "staggerers," he makes such
discoveries of the "rosy" in the very smallest of drinks, and becomes
himself by his solacements of verse such a "perpetual grand Apollo,"
that his failings are all forgiven, and hearts resolutely shut against
victims of destiny in general open themselves freely to Dick Swiveller.

At the opening of November, there seems to have been a wish on Maclise's
part to try his hand at an illustration for the story; but I do not
remember that it bore other fruit than a very pleasant day at Jack
Straw's Castle, where Dickens read one of the later numbers to us.
"Maclise and myself (alone in the carriage)," he wrote, "will be with
you at two exactly. We propose driving out to Hampstead and walking
there, if it don't rain in buckets'-full. I sha'n't send Bradburys' the
MS. of next number till to-morrow, for it contains the shadow of the
number after that, and I want to read it to Mac, as, if he likes the
subject, it will furnish him with one, I think. You can't imagine
(gravely I write and speak) how exhausted I am to-day with yesterday's
labors. I went to bed last night utterly dispirited and done up. All
night I have been pursued by the child; and this morning I am
unrefreshed and miserable. I don't know what to do with myself. . . . I
think the close of the story will be great." Connected with