nd that
tomfoolery would not be frowned upon or gazed at with astonishment, he
gave himself up without reserve to healthy amusement and strengthening
mirth. It was his mission to make people happy. Words of good cheer were
native to his lips, and he was always doing what he could to lighten the
lot of all who came into his beautiful presence. His talk was simple,
natural, and direct, never dropping into circumlocution nor elocution.
Now that he is gone, whoever has known him intimately for any
considerable period of time will linger over his tender regard for, and
his engaging manner with, children; his cheery "Good Day" to poor people
he happened to be passing in the road; his trustful and earnest "Please
God," when he was promising himself any special pleasure, like rejoining
an old friend or returning again to scenes he loved. At such times his
voice had an irresistible pathos in it, and his smile diffused a
sensation like music. When he came into the presence of squalid or
degraded persons, such as one sometimes encounters in almshouses or
prisons, he had such soothing words to scatter here and there, that
those who had been "most hurt by the archers" listened gladly, and loved
him without knowing who it was that found it in his heart to speak so
kindly to them.

Oftentimes during long walks in the streets and by-ways of London, or
through the pleasant Kentish lanes, or among the localities he has
rendered forever famous in his books, I have recalled the sweet words
in which Shakespeare has embalmed one of the characters in Love's
Labor's Lost:--

"A merrier man,
Within the limit of becoming mirth,
I never spent an hour's talk withal:
His eye begets occasion for his wit;
For every object that the one doth catch
The other turns to a mirth-moving jest,
Which his fair tongue, conceit's expositor,
Delivers in such apt and gracious words
That aged ears play truant at his tales,
And younger hearings are quite ravished;
So sweet and voluble is his discourse."

Twenty years ago Daniel Webster said that Dickens had already done more
to ameliorate the condition of the English poor than all the statesmen
Great Britain had sent into Parliament. During the unceasing demands
upon his time and thought, he found opportunities of visiting personally
those haunts of suffering in London which needed the keen eye and
sympathetic heart to bring them before the public for relief. Whoever