words as these would have moved any heart not absolutely dead to just or generous feeling, but the fossil whom she had, for her sins, married, was quite dead to both justice and generosity.

The woman was the only one who suffered and who was left out in the cold by everybody. The way in which Dickens describes the scene where Edith makes her appeal, proves that he appreciated her fine character and was wholly on her side. He writes, 'Blind idiot, rushing to a precipice, he thought he saw tears in her eyes though none fell—and he exulted in the thought that he had brought them there.'

The behavior of Florence toward the woman through whom she had experienced the only happiness she had ever known, was execrable. There are many I presume, who would call Florence's extraordinary outburst of affection for the father who had never in one single instance shown her a father's love, natural! I call it hideously unnatural, and Dickens himself in Nicholas Nickleby speaks very plainly about the absurdity of what is called natural affection. It is natural to show love to those who love and befriend us, and to show it to those who show us none is absurd.

In the case of Lady Dedlock I have very little to say, it is hard to forgive her deliberate deception of her splendid husband. If it could have coincided with Dickens's views to have turned Lady Dedlock's footsteps aside on that fatal night when she left her home, into the room where her stricken husband lay, stricken down for love of her, all might have been well. It would have been easy to have reunited them, because the only witness against her Tulkinghorn, the lawyer, was dead, shot by the Frenchwoman. One's heart goes out in a great wave of sympathy to the still, silent figure of

Sir Leicester in the library, to the agony of that noble heart. Lady Dedlock never realized what she possessed in the man she married. There can be no greater happiness in the world than to be the wife of a noble, high-minded, chivalrous man, as Sir Leicester undoubtedly was. Certainly Lady Dedlock did not deserve it.

The name of Esther Summerson comes naturally in connection with her mother, Lady Dedlock. Esther, who bore so bravely the stigma on her birth, who was the life and soul of the house of her guardian, Mr. Jarndyce, who had taken her under his special protection. Wherever Esther went she brought sunshine and sweetness; a most unselfish character, always thinking of others, never of herself. In the neglected house of Mrs. Jellyby, who never saw anything nearer than Borrio-Boola Gha, Esther came to the rescue of Mrs. Jellyby's unhappy children and completely transformed the life of Caroline Caddy as she was called the forlorn eldest daughter. Mr. Jellyby would come home at nights and spend the most of his time with his 'dejected head' against one or other of the walls of the house; there was the mark of his head on almost every wall in the lower part of the house.

Esther brought renewed hope into the home of the drunken brickmaker when she was escorted thither by Mrs. Pardiggle and the five boys. Mrs. Pardiggle never could go into a room, large or small, without knocking down everything within range. On this occasion she sat on one stool and knocked down another. She imme diately seemed to take the whole family into custody. The brickmaker was lying across the fireplace; he did not rise. He told Mrs. Pardiggle that he would save her the trouble of prying and cross-questioning. Is my daugh

ter a-washin'? yes, she is a-washin', you can taste the water and smell it and tell me how you would like beer instead. Don't I never mean for to go to church? No, I don't never mean to go to church, the parson's too genteel for me. Who gave my wife that black eye? I did, and if she says I did n't she's a liar. Mrs. Pardiggle swept out, knocking down in her transit everything she came near. Then Esther and Ada Clare approached timidly. Ada went up to the poor, unhappy, beaten wife who sat at the fireplace with a dead baby, a thin little body on her lap.

The poor mother was shading her bruised eye as if she would like to keep all signs of violence from the little thing on her lap. Ada and Esther took the little dead child off its mother's knee, laid it tenderly on the bed and put clean things on the helpless thing, Esther spread her handkerchief over its face, and after many kind, gentle words to the unhappy mother and pressing some money into her hand, they left. When they turned to go they found that the brickmaker, who would not move for Mrs. Pardiggle, had got up from the floor and was standing outside. The daughter at the washtub had left off washing and was standing respectfully and quietly beside it. So much more successful is the power of love than patronage.

Consider the little girl called Charlie, who worked at the age of thirteen for a little brother and baby sister. The whole family was cared for by Mr. Jarndyce for Esther's sake. Esther's brave ride with Inspector Bucket to try to rescue her mother, Lady Dedlock, is also noteworthy. But happiness came to dear Esther when she married the kind young doctor, Allan Woodcourt. Esther was gentle and sweet, but it was the sweetness of strength.

as re

The time of Dickens was gards a certain class of female essentially a tearful time. Crying was a favorite weapon for the subjugating of obdurate husbands and, in Dickens's period, it never failed. The women who practised this seem to have been able to turn on tears like a spout and to turn them off again, when, with one eye on the victim, they saw they had won. Nothing is more disagreeable and wet-blankety than a tearful woman. Somehow it was always good men who were completely knocked out of time by the too ready tears. Mr. Bumble, however, not being by any means a good man, was quite unmoved by Mrs. Bumble's tears; he told her that tears were good for the head and that they washed the countenance, and he recommended her to 'cry away.' Those husbands who did not care a bit, escaped the deluge.

The subject of age, and especially a woman's age, in Dickens's day, was also a very serious matter. It was a pity that age by itself should have been a disability, because it spoiled the lives of women and sometimes of men. If such undue importance were not given to the mere accumulation of years, and if so much time were not occupied in talking about it, we should all be much freer and happier. We may accuse each other of being oversensitive on this matter, but everyone is sensitive, and that is why they have so much to say about it. If it were not considered a disability and something to be concealed, we should have no hesitation in alluding to it. Mr. Bellamy, in his Looking Backward, maintains that extreme youth is not the time of real enjoyment; that the eagerness of youth, constantly looking forward to something in the future, prevents real enjoyment in the present, whereas at early middle age one lives almost entirely in the present. He

contends that the time when real enjoyment begins is from about forty onward, and that then enjoyment is keener than at an earlier age.

An eminent man, Bishop Potter, has written that, 'The older we grow the younger we grow because as we grow older we develop faculties which the young do not possess, we lose as we grow older, but we gain as much as we lose.' There can be no greater mistake than to suppose that life is not full of beauty and enjoyment and happiness for all of us at every period of our existence. The only complaint I have against Dickens is, that he seemed to find it impossible to bring any man and woman together without making them fall in love with each other. Friendship without sexual love seems not to have been understood by him. This propensity reaches its height of absurdity when he makes Smike fall in love with Kate Nickleby. When Dickens selected his characters from the middle and lower walks of life, he wrote of these with knowledge and what he says rang true. It was when he wrote of aristocrats that he lost himself, and did not do them anything like justice. Sir Leicester Dedlock, for instance, could not have come out so magnificently as he did in the most supreme moment of his life, if he had been the pompous idiot which Dickens represents him to have been in the beginning.

I hope my readers will not be shocked if I make a heroine of Nancy in Oliver Twist. She was a brave girl, who, at the risk of being beaten to death, saved Oliver. Twice she came in between him and Sikes and the Jew. She went to meet Rose Maylie and Mr. Brownlow in order to save him, and although she could not foresee that Sikes would murder her if he found it out, she did know that she would be beaten almost to death, if he did dis

cover the part she played. Nancy was true to the brute; she did not give him away; the spy told lies as spies always do. Nancy was terribly sinned against; she never knew any other life than that of the streets and the thieves' den. In the most adverse circumstances she was strong, brave, and true. What she would have been in more favorable circumstances it is easy to imagine. 'You're a pretty object,' sneered Sikes, 'for the child, as you call him, to make a friend of!'

'I am, God help me,' cried poor Nancy. 'I thieved for you,' she said to the Jew, 'when I was only half as high as this,' pointing to Oliver.

'Well,' hissed Fagin, 'it is your living.'

'Yes, it is my living, and the wet, cold streets are my home, and you 're the wretch that drove me there and that will keep me there till I die.'

When Nancy went to see Rose Maylie in the interests of Oliver, that sweet and pure girl received her so very kindly and without a trace of condescension or drawing aside of skirts, that Nancy burst into tears and said, 'Dear lady, if there were more like you, there would be fewer like me, there would indeed.'

It would do some of us good to look down into London life in all its hideousness and then ask ourselves if it is not well that women have political power, in order to remedy, even a little, some social evils. It is up to all women to express the same sentiment in regard to those like poor Nancy. These women are our sisters, and it is our duty to help them. We do not hear so much bleating nowadays about keeping our girls innocent by not telling them anything. They are innocent now but not ignorant. Well, we all know Nancy's ultimate fate and we know what it might have been had there been more women like Mrs. Maylie and Rose.

One of the many splendid qualities of Dickens was his tender compassion for a class which receives scant pity. The shadow of this sin does not interfere with a man's social position in society, while it ostracizes the woman.

Dickens hit straight from the shoulder about all social evils, and we do not realize yet what we owe to him. Miss Trotwood was a very fine woman, but wanted knowing; her adoption of David from a life of misery, and indeed her whole character, was as good as it was strong.

My two particular favorites, however, are Lizzie Hexam in Our Mutual Friend and Lucie Manette in A Tale of Two Cities. From the first meeting with Lizzie to the final consummation, we find her always acting a noble, unselfish part. First with her father whom she loved so fondly, and her selfish brother for whom she slaved that he might get an education which she herself longed to have. Her father was a riverside character who used to fish for dead bodies, but he was not a bad man. Then came her father's death and the breaking up of her little home. All through her noble, unselfish life we find her the strong, high-minded girl and woman. It was at the time of her father's death that Lizzie first met Eugene Wrayburn; he came on some legal business connected with the death of her father.

Many people have considered Wrayburn a very fine fellow, but he had all the instincts of a scoundrel in him. He thought he was in love with Lizzie, but if his love had been worth anything he would have had some regard for her good name. She had to leave her quiet room with the doll's dressmaker at Smith Square because Wrayburn would not cease his visits there. Every time she succeeded in securing a new place he followed her and she had to give that place up. If it had not been for

her noble resistance he would have ruined her, and if it had not been for the final tragedy, which I will refer to later on, he would never have married her. It was exceedingly hard on Lizzie, because she loved him from the beginning and it is very hard to assume indifference in such a case. At last she found a situation in a paper mill, somewhere on the river, and it was here that another of her numerous good deeds was done.

Dear Betty Higden, a poor hardworking woman and another heroine, kept herself independent in various humble ways, until she became too weak for work. She always kept concealed in her breast a sufficient sum of money to save herself from being buried by the parish. The poor thing, worn out with pain and hard work, wandered close to the place where Lizzie was working, crawled to the trunk of a tree and sank against it, tired out. It seemed to her as though she was at the foot of the Cross and she thought of Him who died upon it; then she knew no more until she saw the beautiful face of Lizzie bending over her. Lizzie tried to raise her, but she whispered 'not yet,' her voice so faint that Lizzie could hardly hear her. Betty, however, managed to draw Lizzie's attention to the paper in her dress; she asked Lizzie to take care of it and try to get it into the hands of the person to whom it was addressed and implored Lizzie not to give it to the parish. 'No, certainly not, nor let the parish touch me, nor so much as look at me.'

'No, most faithfully.'

'Now, dearie, raise me up.' Very tenderly, very softly did Lizzie lift the weather-beaten gray head and 'lifted her as high as heaven.'

Shortly after this came the climax in Lizzie's brave life. Wrayburn again found her out and managed to let her

know, and asked her to meet him. In fear that if he came to the mill, which would have meant ruin to her, Lizzie went to meet him, and implored him to go away or she would have to leave this place also.

'Mr. Wrayburn,' she said, 'if I thought, which I do not, that you would follow me about to wear me out, you would drive me to death, but you would not do it.'

The two handsome faces looked into each other, then after a little more argument from him he left her. He went back along the riverside closely followed by Bradley Headstone.

Eugene stopped for a few minutes by the riverside, asking himself why he was there and trying to make up his mind to be a man, when suddenly there came an awful crash and then another. This was Bradley Headstone's cowardly way of taking his revenge. Wrayburn turned to grapple with his assailant, but he was almost blinded by his own blood and fell senseless into the river. Lizzie, who was going home in the opposite direction, heard the splash, and did not hesitate a moment. 'All the old instincts and experiences of her boating life with her father came back to her and without a moment's delay she ran to where the boats were kept. Her practiced hand soon enabled her to get one of them and launch it; she rowed very swiftly to the place from whence came the sound she soon saw the body floating on the water.' Perhaps the water had revived him a little for she saw him turn on his back and float. When she came up to the body and saw who it was, the banks rang to the cry she gave. But not for one moment did it stop her. She managed to fasten the body to her boat, then rowed swiftly to the bank. Then, unaided by anyone, she carried him, a dead weight, to the inn.

During the long, long months that followed, all readers of Dickens will remember, Wrayburn lay between life and death. They were married before it was certain that Wrayburn would recover, as an act of expiation on his part, I presume. If I have not made the story of Lizzie too long, I would like to quote Wrayburn's own words to substantiate my statements as to his intentions. Speaking from his bed of pain to Mortimer Lightwood, he said, 'Mortimer, while I lie here and when I have ceased to lie here, the perpetrator "of this deed" must never be brought to justice. Her innocent reputation would suffer, my friend, she would be punished, not I. I have wronged her enough in fact, have wronged her still more in intention. The man must never be pursued, don't think of avenging me, think only of hushing the story and protecting her. You can confuse the case and turn aside the circumstances. There is an inquiry on foot, stay it, divert it, yes, stay it, divert it. Don't let her be brought in question, the guilty man brought to justice would poison her name. Lizzie and my reparation before all, promise me.'

'I do, Eugene, I promise you.'

We all know how Wrayburn atoned for his bad behavior.

Lucie Manette was the sweetest character in any of Dickens's books. From the beginning of the time when her father was restored to her from a life of solitary confinement extending over eighteen years, to the time of her marriage and after, she devoted herself to the task of bringing him back to his mental life. Lucie did not know that her father lived, because her mother, having no hope that her husband would be restored to her, had allowed her daughter to think him dead. The mother died of the sorrow of her husband's fate while Lucie was