ily News_ he began the publication of a
new magazine which he called _Household Words_. His aim was to make it
cheerful, useful and at the same time cheap, so that the poor could
afford to buy it as well as the rich. His own story, _Hard Times_, first
appeared in this, with the earliest work of more than one writer who
later became celebrated. Dickens loved to encourage young writers, and
would just as quickly accept a good story or poem from an unknown author
as from the most famous.

It was while engaged in this work that Dickens wrote the best one of all
his tales--_David Copperfield_, the one which is in so large a part the
history of his own early life.

This book brought Dickens to the height of his career. He was now both
famous and rich. He bought a house on Gad's Hill--a place near Chatham,
where he had spent the happiest part of his childhood--and settled down
to a life of comfort and labor. When he was a little boy his father had
pointed out this fine house to him, and told him he might even come to
live there some day, if he were very persevering and worked hard. And
so, indeed, it had proved.

Perhaps it is in connection with this house on Gad's Hill that the world
oftenest remembers Dickens now. Everyone, old and young throughout the
neighborhood, liked him. Children, dogs and horses were his friends. His
hand was open for charity, and he was always the champion of the poor,
the helpless and the outcast. Everyone, he thought, had some good in
him, and in all he met he was on the lookout to find it. The great
purpose underneath all his writings was after all to teach that every
man and woman, however degraded, has his or her better side. So earnest
was he in this that he was not pleased at all when a person praised one
of his stories, unless the other showed that he had grasped the lesson
that lay beneath it. The text of Dickens's whole life and work is best
expressed in his own words: "I hope to do some solid good, and I mean to
be as cheery and pleasant as I can." The wrongs and sufferings of the
young especially appealed to him, and perhaps the most beautiful speech
he ever made was one asking for money for the support of the London
Hospital for Sick Children. He spoke often in behalf of workingmen, and
once he spoke for the benefit of a company of poor actors, when, unknown
to him, a little child of his own was lying dead at home.

With such a tender heart for all the world, he was more than an
affe