at is not the case. A very little indeed would make all this
gayety as sound and wholesome and good-natured in the reader's mind as
it is in the writer's.

Affectionately always.

"THE INFINITE CAPACITY FOR TAKING PAINS"

[_To his sixth son, Henry Fielding Dickens, born in 1849_]

BALTIMORE, U. S.,

TUESDAY, February 11, 1868.

MY DEAR HARRY:

I should have written to you before now but for constant and arduous
occupation. . . . I am very glad to hear of the success of your
reading, and still more glad that you went at it in downright earnest.
I should never have made my success in life if I had been shy of taking
pains, or if I had not bestowed upon the least thing I have ever
undertaken exactly the same attention and care that I have bestowed
upon the greatest. Do everything at your best. It was but this last
year that I set to and learned every word of my readings; and from ten
years ago to last night, I have never read to an audience but I have
watched for an opportunity of striking out something better somewhere.
Look at such of my manuscripts as are in the library at Gad's, and
think of the patient hours devoted year after year to single
lines. . . .

Ever, my dear Harry,

Your affectionate Father.

"FAREWELL? MY BLESSING SEASON THIS IN THEE"

[Dickens's last child, Edward Bulwer Lytton Dickens, was born in 1852.
At sixteen he went to Australia, with this parting word from his
father:]

MY DEAREST PLORN:

I write this note to-day because your going away is much upon my mind,
and because I want you to have a few parting words from me to think of
now and then at quiet times. I need not tell you that I love you
dearly, and am very, very sorry in my heart to part with you. But this
life is half made up of partings, and these pains must be borne. It is
my comfort and my sincere conviction that you are going to try the life
for which you are best fitted. I think its freedom and wildness more
suited to you than any experiment in a study or office would ever have
been; and without that training, you could have followed no other
suitable occupation.

What you have already wanted until now has been a set, steady, constant
purpose. I therefore exhort you to persevere in a thorough
determination to do whatever you have to do as well as you can do it.
I was not so old as you are now when I first had to win my food, and do
this out of this determination, and I have never slackened in it since.