rey's favorite passage in all the writings
of Dickens; and certainly, if any one would learn the secret of their
popularity, it is to be read in the observation and description of this
little incident.

"There was a little woman on board, with a little baby; and both little
woman and little child were cheerful, good-looking, bright-eyed, and
fair to see. The little woman had been passing a long time with a sick
mother in New York, and had left her home in St. Louis in that condition
in which ladies who truly love their lords desire to be. The baby had
been born in her mother's house, and she had not seen her husband (to
whom she was now returning) for twelve months: having left him a month
or two after their marriage. Well, to be sure, there never was a little
woman so full of hope, and tenderness, and love, and anxiety, as this
little woman was: and there she was, all the livelong day, wondering
whether 'he' would be at the wharf; and whether 'he' had got her letter;
and whether, if she sent the baby on shore by somebody else, _'he' would
know it, meeting it in the street_: which, seeing that he had never set
eyes upon it in his life, was not very likely in the abstract, but was
probable enough to the young mother. She was such an artless little
creature; and was in such a sunny, beaming, hopeful state; and let out
all this matter, clinging close about her heart, so freely; that all the
other lady passengers entered into the spirit of it as much as she: and
the captain (who heard all about it from his wife) was wondrous sly, I
promise you: inquiring, every time we met at table, whether she expected
anybody to meet her at St. Louis, and supposing she wouldn't want to go
ashore the night we reached it, and cutting many other dry jokes which
convulsed all his hearers, but especially the ladies. There was one
little, weazen, dried-apple old woman among them, who took occasion to
doubt the constancy of husbands under such circumstances of bereavement;
and there was another lady (with a lap-dog), old enough to moralize on
the lightness of human affections, and yet not so old that she could
help nursing the baby now and then, or laughing with the rest when the
little woman called it by its father's name, and asked it all manner of
fantastic questions concerning him, in the joy of her heart. It was
something of a blow to the little woman that when we were within twenty
miles of our destination it became clearly necessary to put