“Nevertheless I will bear the dog in my mind, and if I can hit him between the eyes so that he shall stagger more than you or I have done this Christmas under the combined effects of punch and turkey, I will. “Thank you cordially for your note. Excuse this scrap of paper. I thought it was a whole sheet until I turned it over. “My dear Sir, “Faithfully yours, “CHARLES DICKENS.” To a collection of Sketches and Tales by a Working Man, published in 1844, {26} Charles Dickens was induced to contribute a preface, from which we select the following passages:— “I do not recommend it as a book of surpassing originality or transcendent merit . . . I do not claim to have discovered, in humble life, an extraordinary and brilliant genius. I cannot charge mankind in general with having entered into a conspiracy to neglect the author of this volume, or to leave him pining in obscurity. I have not the smallest intention of comparing him with Burns, the exciseman; or with Bloomfield, the shoemaker; or with Ebenezer Elliott, the worker in iron; or with James Hogg, the shepherd. I see no reason to be hot, or bitter, or lowering, or sarcastic, or indignant, or fierce, or sour, or sharp, in his behalf. I have nothing to rail at; nothing to exalt; nothing to flourish in the face of a stony-hearted world; and have but a very short and simple story to tell. “John Overs is, as is set forth in the title-page, a working man. A man who earns his weekly wages (or who did when he was strong enough) by plying of the hammer, plane, and chisel. He became known to me nearly six years ago, when he sent me some songs, appropriate to the different months of the year, with a letter, stating under what circumstances they had been composed, and in what manner he was occupied from morning until night. I was just then relinquishing the conduct of a monthly periodical, {27} or I would gladly have published them. As it was, I returned them to him, with a private expression of the interest I felt in such productions. They were afterwards accepted, with much readiness and consideration, by Mr. Tait, of Edinburgh, and were printed in his Magazine. “Finding, after some further correspondence with my new friend, that his authorship had not ceased with his verses, but that he still occupied his leisure moments in writing, I took occasion to remonstrate with him seriously against his pursuing that course. I told him, his persistence in his new calling made me uneasy; and I advised him to abandon it as strongly as I could.