The singular thing is that some of the best work that Dickens ever did, better than the work in his best novels, can be found in these slight and composite scraps of journalism. For instance, the solemn and self-satisfied account of the duty and dignity of a waiter given in the opening chapter of _Somebody's Luggage_ is quite as full and fine as anything done anywhere by its author in the same vein of sumptuous satire. It is as good as the account which Mr. Bumble gives of out-door relief, which, "properly understood, is the parochial safeguard. The great thing is to give the paupers what they don't want, and then they never come again." It is as good as Mr. Podsnap's description of the British Constitution, which was bestowed on him by Providence. None of these celebrated passages is more obviously Dickens at his best than this, the admirable description of "the true principles of waitering," or the account of how the waiter's father came back to his mother in broad daylight, "in itself an act of madness on the part of a waiter," and how he expired repeating continually "two and six is three and four is nine." That waiter's explanatory soliloquy might easily have opened an excellent novel, as _Martin Chuzzlewit_ is opened by the clever nonsense about the genealogy of the Chuzzlewits, or as _Bleak House_ is opened by a satiric account of the damp, dim life of a law court. Yet Dickens practically abandoned the scheme of _Somebody's Luggage_; he only wrote two sketches out of those obviously intended. He may almost be said to have only written a brilliant introduction to another man's book.