but always liable to be forgotten. The
memory is an infirm faculty, and must be humored. It often clings to
mere trifles. The man with the flamboyant necktie whom you saw on the
8.40 train may also be the author of a volume of exquisite lyrics; but
you never saw the lyrics, and you did see the necktie. In the scale of
being, the necktie may be the least important parcel of this good man's
life, but it is the only thing about him which attracts your attention.
When you see it day after day at the same hour you feel that you have a
real, though perhaps not a deep, acquaintance with the man behind it. It
is thus we habitually perceive the human world. We see things, and infer
persons to correspond. One peculiarity attracts us. It is not the whole
man, but it is all of him that is for us. In all this we are very
Dickensy.

We may read an acute character study and straightway forget the person
who was so admirably analyzed; but the lady in the yellow curl-papers is
unforgettable. We really see very little of her, but she is real, and
she would not be so real without her yellow curl-papers. A
yellow-curl-paper-less lady in the Great White Horse Inn would be as
unthinkable to us as a white-plume-less Henry of Navarre at Ivry.

In ecclesiastical art the saints are recognized by their emblems. Why
should not the sinners have the same means of identification? Dickens
has the courage to furnish us these necessary aids to recollection.
Micawber, Mrs. Gummidge, Barkis, Mr. Dick, Uriah Heep, Betsy Trotwood,
Dick Swiveiler, Mr. Mantalini, Harold Skimpole, Sairey Gamp, always
appear with their appropriate insignia. We should remember that it is
for our sakes.

According to the canons of literary art, a fact should be stated clearly
once and for all. It would be quite proper to mention the fact that
Silas Wegg had a wooden leg; but this fact having been made plain, why
should it be referred to again? There is a sufficient reason based on
sound psychology. If the statement were not repeated, we should forget
that Mr. Wegg had a wooden leg, and by and by we should forget Silas
Wegg himself. He would fade away among the host of literary gentlemen
who are able to read "The Decline and Fall," but who are not able to
keep themselves out of the pit of oblivion. But when we repeatedly see
Mr. Wegg as Mr. Boffin saw him, "the literary gentleman _with_ a wooden
leg," we feel that we really have the pleasure of his acquaintance.
There is not on