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2 sooner. They already began reading on the way back, some looking over the shoulders of others, some reading aloud; and only the noblest hurried back on the run to bring the bounty quicker to wife and child. In towns and cities throughout the entire country, and beyond this to all corners of the world where there were Englishmen, Charles Dickens was similarly loved, loved from the first striking of acquaintanceship until the day of his death. There is no other instance in the nineteenth century of such a stable and cordial relationship between a poet and his nation. His fame shot up like a rocket, but it did not go out; it continued to illuminate the world with a steady light, like the sun. Four hundred copies of the first of the Pickwick Papers were printed; by the fifteenth this figure had reached forty thousand—which goes to show the landslide of his fame. He soon began penetrating into Germany. Hundreds and thousands of little penny editions sowed happiness and laughter in the furrows of even the most hardened hearts; little Nicholas Nickleby, poor Oliver Twist, and the thousands of other characters from this inexhaustible pen have made their way to America, Australia, and Canada. By now there are millions of Dickens' books in circulation: big and little volumes, thick and thin, cheap editions for the poor, and in America the most expensive edition which has ever been published of any writer—it costs nearly one-hundred thousand dollars, this edition for millionaires. But these books still retain all of their former felicitous laughter; it is ready to flutter up like a twittering bird as soon as one turns the first page. This author was loved to an unequalled degree; and if his appeal did not grow even greater in the course of years it was solely because the emotions had no further possibilities of extension. When Dickens decided to give public readings, when he appeared face to face with the public for the first time, England was in a turmoil. The halls were packed and jammed; enthusiasts climbed up the pillars, or crept under his platform, simply to be able to hear their beloved poet. In America, in the bitterest winter weather, people brought along mattresses and slept in front of the ticket office, waiters brought them food from nearby restaurants; but the crush was beyond control. Every hall proved to be too small, and finally a church was secured in Brooklyn. From the pulpit he read the adventures of Oliver Twist and the story of little Nell. Fame for him was not capricious. It pressed Walter Scott to one side; it overshadowed Thackeray's genius for a whole life-