When we read these stories for the first time, we must be prepared to become acquainted with Dickens' characters much in the same way as we meet strangers in everyday life. His people are {5} odd, exuberant, amusing, extravagant; they are too strange to be true, we may say to ourselves. But as we read on, we come to know them so well that the oddness and queerness seem to wear off. We look into their hearts and forget to be surprised by their extraordinary looks and characteristics. Sam Weller is odd, but he is the most delightful, amusing young man on his own, once boots at the White Hart Inn. Like Mr. Pickwick, Sam lives in _Pickwick Papers_. No one could imagine a better Sam Weller than Dickens' creation, for the simple reason that to make a better Sam Weller is impossible. It is a great, a glorious adventure to sit out of doors in summer, or in a warm, quiet room in winter, and read one of Dickens' novels. What happenings, what delightful, absorbing people, what a stir of life, what laughter, gaiety, bravery, what wonderful meetings with high and low fortune! The world of Dickens' novels is a world of coaching days, of old English roads and inns, of feasts and conviviality; a sporting world, often hard and cruel, in which existed bad old customs against which Dickens fought with all his might; a boisterous world of strange adventures, great friendships, and measureless laughter. These books are crowded with people, diverting and friendly, grotesque and menacing, or grotesque outside but with golden hearts hidden behind the queer exteriors, loving people, heartless people, beautiful people, brave, true friends, friends of everybody. We have already spoken of Mr. Pickwick and {6} Sam Weller, his man or valet. Mr. Pickwick's benevolence, his goodness of heart, innocence and simplicity make us love him more and more as the story unfolds. Sam's wit and audacity, his extraordinary good humour and high spirits, his devotion to Mr. Pickwick, his independence and self-reliance, make Sam so real that he seems never far away. He is always only round the corner of our minds and will appear jauntily as soon as we think of him. In the one book, _Pickwick Papers_, there are a dozen other characters only less wonderful than these two. Would anyone prove at once how diverting and delightful such a book can be, let him read of Christmas at Dingley Dell in chapter 28, or the Adventure at the Great White Horse Inn, chapter 22, or the trial of Bardell against Pickwick, chapter 34, or for natural feeling simply expressed the lines in which Tony Weller, Sam's father, tells of Mrs. Weller's death in chapter 52, or the downfall of Mr. Stiggins, in the same chapter, or, in the last chapter of all, of Sam's devotion to Mr. Pickwick.