Meade County news. [volume] (Meade, Kan.) 1900-1918, 1912-02-15
The Popular Author Who Created
So Many Famous Charac-
tiers Was Born Feb.
7, 1912.

~ NE hundred years ago Feb. Z
Charles Dickens was born at
LandpOrt, Portsmouth. He died
at Gadshill, near Rochester,
England, June 8, 1870. English fiction
offers many a name lying close to the
hearts of today's gentle readers" but
none Of them, not even Robert Louis
Stevenson, CHEEKY and gallant, is 80
deeply loved as Charles Dickens.
We know the personages Of Boz
by heart, we play at games with his
incidents and names, while from CRATE
full souls we believe that there never
was such fun and that there never will
be conceived again such inimitabe be-
ings as live today immortal in those
ever fresh, ever varied pages.
His Early Years.
Charles John Huffman Dickens $50
was he baptized) owed nothing to birth
or culture. When he arrived in the
world Feb. 7, 1912, he entered the home
Of procrastinating improvident, hand
to mouth sort of government clerk
at Landport, near Portsmouth. That
fathers failings have been drawn for
all time in Micawber, and Little Dor
rit" still pictures forth wildly that
Marshalsea debtors prison where the
bankrupt parent was set to work when
this second of his eight children was a
lad of ten.
The family moved up to great, gray
London to be near its incompetent
head, and little Charles at an age when
most children are at their games went
to work for the princely salary Of 6
shillings week in n backing fac
tory. Think of the bright, imaginative
little fellow (he had actually written
tragedy" when severn condemned to
fourteen hours of miserable drudgery
in every twenty-four, mental work n
surroundings that are flattered by the
word uncongenial. But that boy was
father of the man that was to be.
Later there CHANGED along a small
legacy to the unworthy father. who
came out Of the Marshalsea and began
life anew as reporter on the Morning
Chronicle. Then the boy was given a
couple of years schooling.
The youth tried a brief hand at the
law, but newspaperdom held more fas-
cinatlon for him than any barrister's
office, and, studying shorthand, he be-
came first one of the True Suns par
liamentary reporters, then serving the
Chronicle in like capacity 1t is in
teresting to note the inbred hankering
after the journalistic life which crop
ped to the surface through all the
mans fifty-eight years.
One autumn day of 1888 young fell
low of twenty-one almost stealthily
dropped into q red mail box on the
strand stoutish envelope addressed
to the old Monthly Magazine fort
night later and the same figure was
buying a copy of the current issue,
looking down its table of contents,
tremblingly, shamefacedly, and then
stepping aside from the unseeing
stream of passerby into some con-
venient vestibule to dash from his
blue eyes the tears that had sprung
there at the sight of title, "a Dinner
at Poplar Walk, by Boz"
His First Try.
So was taken the first doubling step
which was led along the now main
Travelled road whose milestones read
"Pickwick" and "Nickleby" and Dom
hey" and "Copperfleld." BOZ" figured
for year in the Monthly's pages, then
"went over" to the columns Of the
evening edition of his own paper (his
salary was by that raised from to Z
guineas week., and then stood before
the world between covers" with no