I was still but a small creature, and not very strong, when I went to Evans’s, so I was put into the private part of the house, and Miss Jennie Evans, then a tall young lady of about twenty, took me under her wing. About fifty years afterwards, when she had succeeded to her good old father’s damery, and I took my boy to be in her house, she said to him, pointing to the staircase: “Many and many a time I have carried your father pick-a-back up those stairs.” When she died in January, 1906, the last of the dames, her loss meant the close of a long chapter in the history of Eton. She was a beloved lady. By degrees I sprouted and grew, and so I was moved into the main body of the house, where I had a snug little room with young Charles Dickens for my next-door neighbour. We soon became allies, and with half a dozen other boys started a little newspaper club which developed into a big success. In the “Dictionary of National Biography” his name is given as “Charles” only. He was christened, as he told me, Charles Boz Dickens. When he was taken to the font on his baptism, and the parson told the godfather to “name this child,” the sponsor said “Charles,” but the old grandfather, the prototype of Mr. Micawber, as proud as Punch of his already famous son, cried out “Boz,” and “Charles Boz” he became accordingly. My friendship with him led to my first acquaintance with his great father, who came down to Eton one fine summer’s day, with Mark Lemon and, I think, Shirley Brooks, and took several of us up the river to Maidenhead. What a day that was! The great man was full of life, bubbling over with fun, the youngest boy of the party. I often met him in after life, but then, wonderful as he was upon occasions, his face when at rest already showed signs of fatigue; the strenuous work had told upon him; he looked careworn and older than his years. I like to think of him as he was on that day at Maidenhead, brilliant, young and gay, the spirit of joy incarnate. It was at the time when he was writing “Bleak House.” I never saw his son after our Eton days. He was a clever boy, but he did not achieve as much in life as he might have done; perhaps he never quite found his legs. In letters, no doubt, he felt crushed by his own great name; he went into business, for which it seems he had no aptitude, and he died when still in the prime of life.