We Had Been Forty Years In America Then," Soliloquised
Francesca; "And Isn't It Odd That The Long Thanksgivings In Our
Country must all have been for having successfully run away from the
Gunpowder Treason, King Charles the Martyr, and the
Restituted Royal
Family; yet here we are, you and I, the best of friends, talking it
all over."
As we jog along, or walk, by turns, we come to Buckingham Street,
and looking up at Alfred Jingle's lodgings say a grateful word of
Mr. Pickwick. We tell each other that much of what we know of
London and England seems to have been learned from Dickens.
Deny him the right to sit among the elect, if you will; talk of his
tendency to farce and caricature; call his humour low comedy, and
his pathos bathos - although you shall say none of these things in my
presence unchallenged; the fact remains that every child, in America
at least, knows more of England - its almshouses, debtors' prisons,
and law-courts, its villages and villagers, its beadles and cheap-
jacks and hostlers and coachmen and boots, its streets and lanes,
its lodgings and inns and landladies and roastbeef and plum-pudding,
its ways, manners, and customs, - knows more of these things and a
thousand others from Dickens's novels than from all the histories,
geographies, biographies, and essays in the language. Where is
there another novelist who has so peopled a great city with his
imaginary characters that there is hardly room for the living
population, as one walks along the ways?
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 38 of 115
Words from 10318 to 10575
of 31509
