The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1870-06-18 00:00:00

(From The Times.)

In the last novel which Mr. Dickens ever completed, and to
the last paragraph of its last page, he wrote words which cow
posaest remarkable interest

" On Friday. the ninth of June, In the present year (ISO),
Mr. and Mrs. Bun ,iu their manuscript dreas of receiving-
Mr. and Mrs. bowel@ at breakfast) were en the S..uth
Raritan Railway with me in a terribly-destructive accident.
When I had done what I could to help others, I climbed
back Into my carriage—nearly turned over a viaduct, and
caught aslant upon the turn--to extricate the worthy couple.
They were much soiled, but otherwise unhurt The same
happy result attended Miss Bella Wilier on her wedding-day,
and Mr. Elderhood Inspecting Bradley Headstone's red
neckerchief as he lay asleep. I remember with devout
that that I Call never be much nearer parting com-
pany with my readers for ever than I was then, until there
shall be written against my life the two words with which I
have this day closed this book—TUE END."
It Is now strange to observe that Just five years later, on
the very same day of the very same month, THE END Came,
and the reader will probably beimpressed with Mr. Dickens's
own account of its first approach in the spring of last year :
" Once upon a time (no matter when), I was engaged in
a pursuit ;oo matter what,, which could be transacted by
myself alone, In which I could have no help; which imposed
a constant strain on the attention, memory, observation, and
physical powers, arid which involved an almost fabulous
amount of change of place and rapid railway travelling. I
had followed this pursuit through an exceptionally trying
winter in an always trying climate, and had resumed it is
England after bat a brief repose. Thug it came to he pro-
longed until at length—and, suit seemed, allot a sudden—it
so wore me out that I could not rely, with my usual cheerful
confidence, upon niyaelf to achieve the conetautly recurring
task, arid began to feel ,for the first time in nip life; giddy,
Jarred, shaken, faint, uncertain of voice and eight, sill tread
and touch, and dull of spirit. The medical advice I sought
within a few hours was given in two words, ' Instant rest.'
Being accustomed t., observe myself as curiously as if I were
another man, and knowing the advice to meet my only need,
I instantly halted in the pumult of which I speak, and rested
" My intention was to interpose, as it were, ally leaf in the
book of icy life, In which nothing should be m ritten from
without for a brief season of a few weeks. But some very
singular experiences recorded th,mselves on this same fly-
leaf, and lam going to relate them literally. I repeat the
word, literally.
"My first odd experience was of the remarkable coincidence
between niy case, in the general mind, ...a .S,,clni,Un It
no I find it rem-Tiled in a work of fiction called Little
To be sure, Mr. Menne was a swindler, forger, and thief, and
my calling had been of a less harmful And less remunerative)
nature, but it was all one for that.
"Here is Mr. Merdle's case

"At first he was dead of all the diseases that ever were
known, and of several brand-new maladies invented with
Ike speed of Ught to meet the demand of the occasion. He
hail o mcealed a dropsy from infancy ; he had inherited a
large estate of water on the chest from his grandfather; he
had had an operation performed upon him every morning of
his life for 18 years; lie had Mee subject to the explosion
of important veins in Ms body after the manner of fire-
works, he had something the matter with his lungs, he had
had ttttt tithing the Clatter with his heart, he had had
something the matter witti his brain. Five hundred people
who sat down to breakfast entirely uninformed on the sub-
ject believed before they had done breakfast that they pri-
vately and personally knew Physicians to have said to Mr.
Merdle, • You Crust exdect to go out, some day, like the
snuff of a candle ; ' and that they knew Mr. Menge to
have said to Physic,an, 'A man can die but once.' By
about eleven o'clock in the forenoon, something the matter
with the brain became the favourite theory &gannet the
field ; and by twelve the something had been distinctly
ascertained to be 'Pres..vire '

" Pressure Wag to entirely satisfactory to the public mind
anti seemed to make everyone so comfortable, ill st It might
have lasted all day but for Bar's having taken the real state
of the case into Court at half-past nine. Pressure, however,
no far from being over thrown p the ditcovery, lemma a
greater taw unite than ever. There was • general mu...dialog
upon Pressure in every street All the people who had tried
to make money and had not been able to do it, said, "There
you were !" You no sooner began to devote yourself to the
pursuit of wealth than you got Pressure. 1 lie idle People
improved the ore talon in a similar manner. 'See,' said
they, 'what you brought y, urtelf to by work, work, work.
You persisted to workiog, you overdid it. Prelim.e came on
and you were &motor !' Ihrs consideration was very potent
In many quarters, but nowhere more so than among the
young clerks and partners who had never been in the slighted
danger of overdoing it These, one and all, declared, quite
piously, thattthey hoped they would never forget the warn.
tog as long as they lived, and that their conduct might be so
regulated as to keep di Pressure, and preserve them, a
comfort to their friends, for many years.
" Just my case—if I had only known it—when I WU
quietly bankrog in the sunshine in my Kentish meadow !

But while I so rested, thankfully rec.wering every hour.
I had experience more odd than this. I had r xperiencea of
spiritual conceit, for which, as giving me a hew warning
against that curse of mankind, I shall always feel grateful to
the supposition that I was too for gone to protest against
playing sick lion to any stray donkey with an itching hoof.
All sorts of people seemed to become vicariously religious at
nip expense. I received the most unconipr,miaing warning
that I was a heathen; on the conclusive authority of afield
preacher, who, like the most of his ignorant and vain and
daring class, could not construct a tolerable sentence in his
native tongue or pen a fair letter. This inspired individual
called me to order roundly, and knew bathe freest and easiest
way where I was going to, and what would become of me if I
fated to [Ashton myself on his bright example, and was on
terms of blasphemous confidence with the heavenly Host.
Ile was in the secrets of my heart and in the lowest sound-
ings of my soul—he i—sad could read the depths of my
nature better than his A B C, and could turn me inside out,
like his own clammy glove. But what Is far more extra-
ordinary than this—for sugi dirty water as this could alone
he drawn from such a shallow anti muddy source—l found
from the information of a beneficed clergyman, of whom I

never heard and whom I never saw, that I had not, as I
rather supposed I had, lived a life of some reading, contem.
plation, and inquiry; that I had not studied, as I rather sup-
posed I had, to inculcate some Christians lessons in books
that! had never tried, a.! rather supposed I had, to turn a
chiller two tenderly towarls the knowledge and love of our
Saviour ; that I had never had, as I rather supposed I had
had, departed friends, or stood beside open gravel; but that
I had lived a life of 'uninterrupted prosperity,' and that I
needed this .ohecit, overmuch,' and that the way to turn It
to acccunt was to read these sermons and these poems en-
closed, and written and leaned by my correspondent ! I beg
It may be Understood that I relate facts of my uncommercial
experience, and no vain Imaginings. The documents in
proof lie near my hand.
" Another odd entry on the fly-leaf, of a more entertaining
character, was the wonderful persists. cy with which and
sympathisers assumed that I had injuriously coupled with
the so suddenly relinquished pursuit, those personal habits
of mine most obviously incompatible with it, and most plainly
impossible of being maintained, along with it. As, all that
exercise, all that cold bathing, all that wind and weather,
all that uphill training—all that everything else, say, which
is usually carried about by express trains in a portmanteau
and hat-box, and partaken of under a flaming row of gas-
lights in the company of 2,000 people. This assuming of a
whole case against all fact and likelihood struck me as
particularly droll, and was an oddity of which I certainly
had bail no adequate experience In life until I turned that
curious fly-leal.
"My old acquaintances the begging-letter writer' came
out on the fly-leaf, very plornly indeed. They were glad, at
such a serious crisis, to lira,' me soother opportunity of send-
ing that Post-othce order. I needn't make its pound, as pre-
viously insisted on; 109. tri,ht cane my mind. And Heaven
forbid that they abould refuse, at such an insignificant 11.:ure,
to take a weieht nit the memory of an erring fellow-creature!
One gentleman, of an artiatic turn ,and copiously illustrating
the ihmks of the Alendicity Swiety), thought it might soothe
my conscience in the tender respect of gifts misused, if I
would immediately each up in aid of his looly talent for
original design—as a specimen of which he enclosed me a
work of art which! recognized as a tracing from a woodcut
originally published in toe late Mrs. Trollope's book on
Ann-rice. 40 or 50 years ago. The number of people who were
prepared to live long years after me, untiring benefactors to
their themes, for 4EO a piece, down, was utordahing. Also
of those who wanted banknotes tor stiff pentitenttal amounts
to give away,—not to keep, on any account.

_
" livers wonderful medicines and machines insinuated re-
commendations of themselves into the fly-leaf that was to
hare been so blank. It was specially observable that every
prescriber, whether in a moral or physical direction, knew
me th,roughly—knew me from head to heel, In and out,
through and through, upside down. I was a glass piece of
gent-al property, and everybody wita on the most surpris-
ingly Intimate terms with me A few public inatitutions had
complimentary perceptions of carters in my mind, of which,
after considerable self-examination, I have not discovered
any indication. Neat little printed tornis were addressed to
those corner., beginning with the words, 'I give and be-
queath.'
" Will it seem etsgrerative to state my belief that the moat
honest, the moat modest, and the least vainglorious of all
the records upon this strange fly.leaf, was a letter from the
self-deceived discoverer of the recondite secret 'flow to live
400 or 100 years ?' Doubtless it will seem so, yet the state-
ment is not exaggerative by any means, hull, made in my
serious and sincere conviction. With this, and with a laugh
at the rest that shall not to cynical, I turn the fly-leaf and go
on again."