Page:The Story of the Cheeryble Grants.djvu/24

4 no blemishes, and in another no virtues, it will seldom admit a very strongly-marked character, either good or bad, in a fictitious narrative, to be within the limits of probability. But those who take an interest in this tale, will be glad to learn that the Brothers Cheeryble live; that their liberal charity, their singleness of heart, their noble nature, and their unbounded benevolence, are no creations of the author's brain; but are prompting every day (and of tenest by stealth) some munificent and generous deed in that town of which they are the pride and honour.”

In the preface, dated “Devonshire Terrace, May, 1848,” after reciting the above paragraph from his original preface, Dickens adds:—

“If I were to attempt to sum up the hundreds upon hundreds of letters, from all sorts of people, in all sorts of latitudes and climates, to which this unlucky paragraph has given rise, I should get into an arithmetical difficulty from which I could not easily extricate myself. Suffice it to say that I believe the application for loans, gifts and offices of profit that I have been requested to forward to the originals of the Brothers Cheeryble (with whom I never interchanged any communication in my life), would have exhausted the combined patronage of all the Lord Chancellors since the accession of the House of Brunswick, and