Evening star., 1902-08-21
A PRESCRIPTION OF DICKENS.
To Help Growing Girls Through the
Self-Conscious Age.

From the New York Tribune.
There is a time" writes a now grown-up
woman of her early days-we all have
known 1t, except a few favored human be-
ings-'of that bewildering experience of be
ing neither one thing nor the other a
time when ones frocks have no permanent
length of skirt or sleeves. but are con-
stantly up and down, being either provi-
IDENTIFY too long that we may grow into
them, or outgrown to a painful and un-
calmly shortness, or-bitter ignominy-worse
than all, having Just been let down and
the creases carefully ironed almost out and
the space below the crease left noticeaby
different We seem to be made of arms
and legs. and the utmost charity of our
fondest friends finds but an apologetc eX-
preston, Poor child! She is just that age"
We were always in the way then, or felt
SO, even when people were very kind and
forgot us altogether-and how to dispose of
ourselves was a sad problem.
Happy are you, growing girl" continues
the writer out of her own experience, .'if
you take a volume of Dickens and go up
into the garret and forget that you are
you, reading yourself into another world.
1t is the great peaceful time of your life;
perhaps in this busy world there will never
come another like it, and happy is the girl
who knows that whatever unhappy sense
the phrase may have just that age is the
golden age of Dickens. No stupid wise
critical inspection bothers you; you know
and care nothing about literature; style
and purpose are unheard Of; words, para
graphs and pages have no real substance
you plunge through them, forgetting that
you read, you live and love and laugh and
hate and weep-and are never SO happy.
'One perhaps never grows too old for
Dickens and is not too young for him very
long. but however great a pleasure he may
always be. from ten to sixteen in the years
of our life he Is one of the joys Of living
1t may not be peculiarly true Of Dickens
it is possible that the pleasure Of doing
anything again that we loved first and best
to do long ago is largely in the memory of
the first delight but true ii certainly is In
re-reading the joys and sorrows Of our old
Dickens friends. We laughed in the garret
absurdities, over Mrs. Bardells anger and
revenge and over all the adventures and
nonsense Of Pickwick and his friends. We
followed poor Oliver Twist breathlessly
through his maze Of burglars and rascals,
we wept and smiled with Peggotty and
David Copperfield; but Of all the lives we
were led and all the sights we saw most Of
all did we vividly feel grief or horror where
some dearly beloved friend or dreaded ras-
cal died. We cannot often weep over them
now-we know them too well perhaps, and
then we have found out, with our prying.
too much Of how II Is done. We have
learned the trick Of analyzing and discov-
ering ways and means. In the garret we
felt the enchantment Of first balcony dis
tance; now we have come down and nearer
and understand too we'll the stage macflin-
cry.
Encourage the girl to read Dickens in
the time when she is neither one thing nor
the other" concludes this wise woman,
''and so give her world of refuge from
herself"