it
attractive. In this way the little book by Miss M. Dickens is valuable:
it gives in simple and touching words an impression of the affection that
Dickens inspired.

She writes:--"No man was so inclined naturally to derive his happiness
from home affairs. He was full of the kind of interest in a house which
is commonly confined to women, and his care of and for us as wee children
did most certainly 'pass the love of women.' His was a tender and most
affectionate nature."

When he "was arranging and rehearsing his readings from _Dombey_, the
death of 'little Paul' caused him such real anguish, that he told us he
could only master his intense emotion by keeping the picture of Plorn,
{200a} well, strong, and hearty, steadily before his eyes." {200b}

He took the children every 24th December to a toy-shop in Holborn to
choose their own Christmas presents and any that they liked to give to
their friends.

"Although I believe we were often an hour or more in the shop before our
several tastes were satisfied, he never showed the least impatience, was
always interested, and as desirous as we, that we should choose exactly
what we liked best. . . ."

"My father insisted that my sister Katie and I should teach the polka
step to Mr Leech and himself, . . . often he would practise gravely in a
corner, without either partner or music." He once got out of bed having
waked with the fear he had forgotten it, and rehearsed to his own
whistling by the light of a rushlight.

Miss Dickens continues:--"There never existed, I think, in all the world,
a more thoroughly tidy or methodical creature than was my father. He was
tidy in every way--in his mind, in his handsome and graceful person, in
his work, in keeping his writing, table drawers, in his large
correspondence--in fact in his whole life.

"And then his punctuality! It was almost frightful to an unpunctual
mind. This again was another phase of his extreme tidiness; it was also
the outcome of his excessive thoughtfulness and consideration for
others."

Naturally enough Miss Dickens makes no reference to the unhappy
separation of Dickens and his wife, which took place in 1858. In the
article on Dickens in the _Dictionary of National Biography_, Carlyle is
quoted as saying:--"No crime and no misdemeanour specifiable on either
side; _unhappy_ together, these two, good many years past, and they at
length end it."

The father of Charles Dickens was not a successful pe