The Birmingham age-herald., 1910-11-13

how many thousand" But other work interfered and Dickens, always saving or name or a title which he had devised or discovered and which jumped with his ideas, determined to use the title for Christmas book. A Fairly Tale of Home he called the story: but 1t grew under his hand into something which had little to do with fairies, but much with human nature. The plot is hackneyed-has been used since the first professional story teller recited his imaginings beside the newly crumbled walls of the Tower of Babel and will be used again and again as long as human hearts are human and respond to the same emotions. But never mind the plot or the wanderings sentences which cause such agonies to people who make grammars and books of rhetoric. "The Cricket on the Hearth" chirps something which has made it one of the most popular of Dickens works and there is hardly one which has in 1t so much pure humanity"
 THHE kettle began iti Don't tell me
 what Mrs. Perrybingle said. know
 4 better. Mrs. Perrybingle may leave it on record to the end Of time that she couldn't say which of them began it. but. I say the kettle did. I ought to know, hope! The kettle began 1t, full five min- utes by the little waxy-faced Dutch clock Tn the corner before the Cricket uttered a ehirp. As If the clock hadn't finished striking and the convulsive little Hay maker on top of it, jerking away right and left with a scythe In front of a Moorish palace hadn't moved down half an acre of Imaginary grass before the Cricket joined in at all. It appears that there was a sort of match, or trial of skill, between the kettle and the Cricket. And this is what led to it and how it came about. Mrs. Perry bingle going out into the raw twilight and clinking over the stones in her pattens that worked innumerable rough impressions of the first proposition in Euclid all about the yard Mrs. Perrybingle filled the kettle at the water-butt. Presently returning, less the pattens-and a good deal less, for they were tall and she was but short-she set the kettle. on the fire.
 In doing this Mrs. Perrybingle lost her temper or mislaid it for an instant, for the kettle was aggravatingly obstinate and would not adjust itself to the top bar nor hear of accommodating itself to the knobs of coal. It would lean forward with drunken air and dribble, very idiot of a kettle on the hearth It was auarrelsome and hissed and spluttered at the fire. To sum up. the lid dropped itself into the interior of the quarrelsome kettle, and the hull of the Royal George never made half the resistance to coming out of the water that that lid did when Mrs. Perrybingle tried to rescue it. When the rescue had finally been accomplished the kettle took an obstinate air and seemed to say, T won't boil, nothing shall induce me"
 But Mrs. Perrybingle had got her tenn per back again and was smiling at the fire So the kettle began to be good natured also, and, the jolly blaze upris- ing, showed the little Haymaker on the top of the Dutch clock undergoing those frightful shakings and trembltngs which agitated him when the clock was going to strike. And when the clock really did strike. and a cuckoo looked out of a trip door and into the palace. and gave note six times to indicate the time of day the
 
 tral voice-or like something wiry pluck ing at his legs. It was o'clock in the home of John Perrybingle, the carrier. Therefore, his plump little wife was be- ginning to expect him home, and the ket- tie, having got all it's good nature back again, just as Mrs. Perrybingle had. be- gan to spend the evening socially. It threw off all nonsense and burst into a stream of song so cozy and hilarious as never yet maudlin nightingale formed the least idea of.
 Its warm breath gushed forth in little cloub that ascended gracefully a few feet and then hung about the chimney corner as its own domestic heaven; while the recently rebellious lid began to dance q sort of jig and clattered like a deaf and dumb young cymbal. That the kettles song was an invitation to somebody who was expected, and was coming out of door, there could be no doubt. Mrs. PerTybingle knew 1t perfectly as she sat before the fire and the kettle sang: It's a dark night and the dead leaves are lying by the way; and above all sis mist and darkness, and below all is nire and clay; and there's only one relief in all thls dark and murky air; and I don't know that 1t is one, for it's nothing but a glare; of deep and angry crimson, where the sun and wind together set brand upon the clouds for being guilty of such weather; and the ice 1t isn't water and the water isn't free, and you cannot say that anything is as 1t ought to be; but he is coming, coming. coming!" And here the Cricket did join in, took first fiddle and kept it. And the burden coming, coming'
 And there was Miss lilly slowboy. with a baby in her arms-a wonderful baby he longing to John, the carrier, and Dot, his wife. Miss Snowboy was chief attendant upon the wonderful baby and was filled with constant and open-mouthed wonder at its perfection, which. however, did not prevent her from getting the infants pre- cious head into jeopardy every few min utes by bringing 1t into violent contact with some article of furniture and into some perilous position from which 1t was only rescued by the prompt and ener- getic action of Mrs. Perrybingle. The pa- ternal and the material Slowboy were alike unknown to face; lilly had been bred foundling-w is very differ ent thing from being a fondling although the words differ by only one voweps length. There was sound of wheels. Dot ran to the door, grabbing up the f>of