Waterbury Democrat., 1902-03-12
DICKENS AS A. BOY.

Tn Household Words, the publica- tion founded by Charles Dickens. there is a sketch of the novelist, i'll which, dealing with his boyhood, the writer mentions that Dickens was the son of a man whose pecuniary endorsements, easy good nature and utter impracticability furnished the hint out of which was evoked the immortal portrait of Wilkins MicaW- .ber. The bey's early years were saddened by many privations and ey- eryone remembers the thrill which passed over England when the first pages of Forster's life" made known the hidden secret of nature that had been incurably wounded. All the world knew that Dickens had said: ''In my heart of hearts there is fa- vorite child, and his name is David Copperfield," but it was now to real ize that in depicting under that name the suffering that could be crushed into a child's experience the novelist was laying bare the cruel trials of his own boyish years, about which he could write without resentment or anger, for he knew all things had in the end worked together to make him what he was.
 In q temporary lapse of that com placent hopefulness which encouraged Dickens, ST, to believe that something would lin short turn up,' the young Dickens was sent to be a drudge i'll a blacking warehouse. Never came a bird of paradise into a more dismal region. Dickens never wholly es- capped from the fog of the dingy place in ioh 1no If good for him in some respects that his life had this passage i'll it, but the soil ure of the cobwebbed walls clung to him to the last. It was not lightly nor with a sense of depreciation that mained the dreamy, wounded Cock ney boy drudge to the last of his bril- liant life. The late Robert Buchanan says truly that Dickens was great, grown-up, dreamy. impulsive child. He didn't learn all about Mrs Camp and Sammy Weller within the walls of a college, but by q breeding life in stirring streets. He was naturally of a light and cheerful temperament, but his early experience so loaded his soul with sorrow that he could never grow any older, or rightly shake off by a
 
 world full of suffering. His eyes saw everything from a childs point of view; strange, odd, queer and pug zling.
 The one outstanding fact about Dick ens-the one thing that cannot be omitted from any pen portrait of the beloved novelist-is, continues the writer, the love he bore the people. Nothing is more frequently said than that Dickens lived in passionate sym pathy with the world of his imagina- tion, and that when the last page of a book was written he would sometimes indulge in what women call ga good cry" And perhaps it is be- cause the heart of Dickens was so easily and deeply touched-touched with Sympathy for those who toll and suffer. touched with a desire to make their lives more human and beautiful touched with a firm belief that the same divine heart beats in all classes, touched with 8 manly chivalrous love of all women and of fatherly affection for all children, touched with faith i'll all the gentle and good things of life, touched with the joy of birth and the pity of death--perhaps this is why Dickens laid his hand so lastingly on Time with an impress that nothing seems to remove. The world loves Dickens because Dickens loved the world.