llows. Without any figure of
speech it turned one white and sick to behold them" (4th Sept. 1860).

In December he wrote:--"Pray read _Great Expectations_. I think it is
very droll. It is a very great success, and seems universally liked--I
suppose because it opens funnily, and with an interest too."

In July 1861 he writes to Forster, telling him that he has altered the
end of _Great Expectations_. This was done at the suggestion of Bulwer
Lytton, who objected to Pip being left "a solitary man." The curious may
read the original ending in Forster's _Life_, vol. iv., p. 336.

We meet many instances of Dickens' sensitiveness to the character of his
audience. Thus he writes:--"I could have done perfectly if the audience
had been bright, but they were an intent and staring audience."

"An excellent house to-night, and an audience positively perfect . . . an
intelligent and delightful response in them, like the touch of a
beautiful instrument."

He showed presence of mind, too, on an occasion. "The gas batten came
down and it looked as if the room were falling. A lady in front row of
stalls screamed and ran out wildly. He addressed her laughing, and
saying 'no danger,' and she sat down to a thunder of applause."

I like his references to his children. He writes: "Why a boy of that age
should seem to have on at all times a hundred and fifty pair of
double-soled boots, and be always jumping a bottom stair with the whole
hundred and fifty, I don't know."

"Will you give my small Admiral, on his personal application, one
sovereign? I have told him to come to you for that recognition of his
meritorious services."

And to Miss Boyle: "The little Admiral has gone to visit America in the
_Orlando_ . . . he went away much gamer than any giant, attented by a
chest in which he could easily have stowed himself and a wife and family
of his own proportions" (28th Dec. 1861).

Dogs were to Dickens almost as dear as children. In 1863 he writes to
Percy Fitzgerald like a flattered parent: "I have been most heartily
gratified by the perusal of your article on my dogs. It has given me an
amount and a kind of pleasure very unusual, and for which I thank you
earnestly. . . . I should be delighted to see you here. . . . I and my
two latest dogs, a St Bernard and a bloodhound, would be charmed with
your company."

At Boulogne, in 1856, he received a present of "the nicest of little
dogs," which its master, a cobbler, cou