The Montgomery advertiser., 1902-08-27
DICKENS
RECOMMENDED TO GROWING
GIRLS By ONE GROWN UP.
Will Carry Them Successfully
Through the self-Conscious Age
One Never Grows Too Old
For Dickens.
New York Tribune.

NGW AoTh IFlDune.
grown up woman OF her early days-we
all have known It, except a few favored
human beings-"of what bewildering ex-
perience of being neither one thing nor
the other; time when ones frocks have
no permanent length Of skirts or sleeves,
but are constantly up and down, being
either providentally too long that we may
grow into them, or outgrown to a painful
and unsalnly shortness, or-Bitter igno-
miny-worse than all, having just been let
down" and tho creases carefully ironed
almost out and the space below the
'crease left noticeably different. We
seem to be made of arms and legs. and
the utmost charity Of our fondest friends
1nds but an apologize expression. 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 our
selves was a sad problem.
Happy are you, growing girl" con-
tinues the writer out of her own expe-
rierce, If you take volume of Dickens
you are you. reading yourself into another
world. 1t Is tbs great peaceful time of
your life: perhaps In this busy world
there Will never come another like ii. and
happy is the girl who knows that what
ever unhappy sense the phrase may have
Just that age is the golden age of Dick
ems. No stupid-wise critical inspection
bothers you; you know and care nothing
doout uteTdtuTel style anu purpose are
unheard of; words. paragraphs 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 be. from 10 to Is In the years of
our life he Is one of the joys OF living.
1t may not be peculiarly true of Dickens
lit ~ 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 1t
certainly IL in re-reading the joys and
sorrows OF our old Dickens friends. We
laugh in the garnet and we laugh again
over Sam Weller's wise absurdities, over
Mrs. Bardelfs 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 ad rascals. we wept
and smiled with Peggotty and David Cop
perfield. But of all the lives we were
led, and all the sights we saw most of
all did we wildly feel grief or horror
where some dearly beloved friend or
dreaded rascal died. We cannot often
well, perhaps. and then we have found
out with our prying, too much of how 1t
is done. We have learned the trick of
analyzing and discovering ways and
means. In the garnet we felt the en-
chantment of the first balcony distance
now we have come down and nearer. and
understand too we'll the stage machinery.
Encourage the girl to read Dickens
in the time when she is neither one thing
nor the other concludes this wise wo-
man. land so give her world of refuge
from herself"