relish for a few
volumes of Voyages and Travels--I forget what, now--that were on those
shelves; and for days and days I can remember to have gone about my
region of our house, armed with the center piece out of an old set of
boot-trees--the perfect realization of Captain Somebody, of the Royal
British Navy, in danger of being beset by savages, and resolved to sell
his life at a great price."

Not only did the little Charles read all he could lay hands upon; he
made up stories, too, which he told to his small playmates, winning
thereby their wondering admiration. Some of these tales he wrote down,
and thus he became an author in a small way while he was yet a very
small boy. His making believe to be the characters out of books shows
another trait which clung to him all his life--his fondness for
"play-acting." It was, in fact, often said of the mature Dickens that
he would have made as good an actor as he was a novelist, and Dickens's
father seems to have recognized in his little son decided traces of
ability; for often, when there was company at the house, little Charles,
with his face flushed and his eyes shining, would be placed on a table
to sing a comic song, amid the applause of all present.

His early days were thus very happy; but when he was about eleven years
old, money difficulties beset the family, and they were obliged to move
to a poor part of London. Mrs. Dickens made persistent efforts to open a
school for young ladies, but no one ever showed the slightest intention
of coming. Matters went from bad to worse, and finally Mr. Dickens was
arrested for debt and taken to the Marshalsea prison. The time that
followed was a most painful one to the sensitive boy--far more painful,
it would seem, than to the "Prodigal Father," as Dickens later called
him. This father, whom Dickens long afterward described, in _David
Copperfield_, as Mr. Micawber, was, as his son was always most willing
to testify, a kind, generous man; but he was improvident to the last
degree; and when in difficulties which would have made melancholy any
other man, he was able, by the mere force of his rhetoric, to lift
himself above circumstances or to make himself happy in them.

At length all the family except the oldest sister, who was at school,
and Charles, went to live in the prison; and Charles was given work in a
blacking-warehouse of which a relative of his mother's was manager. The
sufferings which the boy endured at this time were