his "well-known
munificence," to grant them a something towards the drinking of the
royal health. (Ah, with what keen eyes and penetrative genius did
little Charles, from his corner, watch the strange sad stream of
humanity that trickled through the room, and may be said to have
_smeared_ its approval of that petition!) And while Mr. Dickens was
enjoying his prison honours, he was also enjoying his Admiralty
pension,[3] which was not forfeited by his imprisonment; and his wife
and children were consequently enjoying a larger measure of the
necessaries of life than had been theirs for many a month. So all went
on merrily enough at the Marshalsea.

But even under the old law, imprisonment for debt did not always last
for ever. A legacy, and the Insolvent Debtors Act, enabled Mr. Dickens
to march out of durance, in some sort with the honours of war, after a
few months' incarceration--this would be early in 1824;--and he went
with his family, including Charles, to lodge with the "Mrs. Pipchin"
already mentioned. Charles meanwhile still toiled on in the blacking
warehouse, now removed to Chandos Street, Covent Garden; and had
reached such skill in the tying, pasting, and labelling of the
bottles, that small crowds used to collect at the window for the
purpose of watching his deft fingers. There was pride in this, no
doubt, but also humiliation; and release was at hand. His father and
Lamert quarrelled about something--about _what_, Dickens seems never
to have known--and he was sent home. Mrs. Dickens acted the part of
the peacemaker on the next day, probably feeling that amid the shadowy
expectations on which she and her husband had subsisted for so long,
even six or seven shillings a week was something tangible, and not to
be despised. Yet in spite of this, he did not return to the business.
His father decided that he should go to school. "I do not write
resentfully or angrily," said Dickens, in the confidential
communication made long afterwards to Forster, and to which reference
has already been made; "but I never afterwards forgot, I never shall
forget, I never can forget, that my mother was warm for my being sent
back."

The mothers of great men is a subject that has been handled often, and
eloquently. How many of those who have achieved distinction can trace
their inherited gifts to a mother's character, and their acquired
gifts to a mother's teaching and influence. Mrs. Dickens seems not to
have been a mother of th