, and perhaps
there may be some things not familiar to you.

A great many writers have taken it upon themselves to write lives of my
father, to tell anecdotes of him, and to print all manner of things about
him. Of all these published books I have read but one, the only genuine
"Life" thus far written of him, the one sanctioned by my father himself,
namely: "The Life of Charles Dickens," by John Forster.

But in what I write about my father I shall depend chiefly upon my own
memory of him, for I wish no other or dearer remembrance. My love for my
father has never been touched or approached by any other love. I hold
him in my heart of hearts as a man apart from all other men, as one apart
from all other beings.

Of my father's childhood it is but natural that I should know very little
more than the knowledge possessed by the great public. But I never
remember hearing him allude at any time, or under any circumstances, to
those unhappy days in his life except in the one instance of his childish
love and admiration for "Gad's Hill," which was destined to become so
closely associated with his name and works.

He had a very strong and faithful attachment for places: Chatham, I
think, being his first love in this respect. For it was here, when a
child, and a very sickly child, poor little fellow, that he found in an
old spare room a store of books, among which were "Roderick Random,"
"Peregrine Pickle," "Humphrey Clinker," "Tom Jones," "The Vicar of
Wakefield," "Don Quixote," "Gil Blas," "Robinson Crusoe," "The Arabian
Nights," and other volumes. "They were," as Mr. Forster wrote, "a host
of friends when he had no single friend." And it was while living at
Chatham that he first saw "Gad's Hill."

As a "very queer small boy" he used to walk up to the house--it stood on
the summit of a high hill--on holidays, or when his heart ached for a
"great treat." He would stand and look at it, for as a little fellow he
had a wonderful liking and admiration for the house, and it was, to him,
like no other house he had ever seen. He would walk up and down before
it with his father, gazing at it with delight, and the latter would tell
him that perhaps if he worked hard, was industrious, and grew up to be a
good man, he might some day come to live in that very house. His love
for this place went through his whole life, and was with him until his
death. He takes "Mr. Pickwick" and his friends from Rochester to Cobham
by the be