ind note, in reference to my
Notes, which has given me true pleasure and gratification.

As I never scrupled to say in America, so I can have no delicacy in
saying to you, that, allowing for the change you worked in many social
features of American society, and for the time that has passed since you
wrote of the country, I am convinced that there is no writer who has so
well and accurately (I need not add so entertainingly) described it, in
many of its aspects, as you have done; and this renders your praise the
more valuable to me. I do not recollect ever to have heard or seen the
charge of exaggeration made against a feeble performance, though, in its
feebleness, it may have been most untrue. It seems to me essentially
natural, and quite inevitable, that common observers should accuse an
uncommon one of this fault, and I have no doubt that you were long ago
of this opinion; very much to your own comfort.

Mrs. Dickens begs me to thank you for your kind remembrance of her, and
to convey to you her best regards. Always believe me,

Faithfully yours.

[Sidenote: Mr. George Cattermole.]

DEVONSHIRE TERRACE, _December 20th, 1842._

MY DEAR GEORGE,

It is impossible for me to tell you how greatly I am charmed with those
beautiful pictures, in which the whole feeling, and thought, and
expression of the little story is rendered to the gratification of my
inmost heart; and on which you have lavished those amazing resources of
yours with a power at which I fairly wondered when I sat down yesterday
before them.

I took them to Mac, straightway, in a cab, and it would have done you
good if you could have seen and heard him. You can't think how moved he
was by the old man in the church, or how pleased I was to have chosen it
before he saw the drawings.

You are such a queer fellow and hold yourself so much aloof, that I am
afraid to say half I would say touching my grateful admiration; so you
shall imagine the rest. I enclose a note from Kate, to which I hope you
will bring the only one acceptable reply. Always, my dear Cattermole,

Faithfully yours.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] The little dog--a white Havana spaniel--_was_ brought home and
renamed, after an incidental character in "Nicholas Nickleby," "Mr.
Snittle Timbery." This was shortened to "Timber," and under that name
the little dog lived