“Miss Tox escorted a plump rosy-cheeked, apple-faced young woman, with an infant in her arms, and a younger woman not so plump but apple-faced also, who led a plump and apple-faced child in each hand, another plump and apple-faced boy who walked by himself, and finally a plump and apple-faced man who carried another plump and apple-faced boy, whom he stood down on the floor and admonished in a husky whisper to ketch hold of his brother Johnny.” When I see the happy apple-faced family together, it makes an impression on me. It’s the same with the descriptions of the scenery or the weather. I might say that the London fog is very disagreeable, and you would answer that you had always heard so. But Dickens takes you out into the fog and you see it and feel it and taste it: “Fog everywhere. Fog up the river where it flows among the green meadows. Fog down the river where it rolls defiled among the tiers of shipping and the waterside pollutions of a great and dirty city. Fog in the Essex marshes, fog on the Kentish heights. Fog creeping into the cabooses of collier brigs, fog lying out on the yards and hovering in the rigging of great ships; fog in the eyes and throats of ancient Greenwich pensioners wheezing by the firesides in their wards; fog in the stem and bowl of the afternoon pipe of the wrathful skipper down in the close cabin.” By this time you get the London fog into your own throat and feel what it was like in November, when “the raw afternoon is rawest and the dense fog is densest and the muddiest streets are muddiest.” When you feel all this, Dickens is ready to go on with his story. DICKENS HIMSELF II DICKENS HIMSELF I ONCE sat with several thousand people on one summer evening to watch an historical pageant at Warwick in England. Back of us were the walls of the great Norman castle, around us were the old trees that had been there for centuries, and through the trees we could see the little River Avon. Then the townspeople acted out for us the romantic scenes that had taken place on that very spot. First we saw the Druids building their altars; then the Romans came; and after them the Saxons. After a while we saw Norman knights riding under the greenwood trees. Warwick the king-maker rode up to his castle. Then there was a stir on the river, and we saw Queen Elizabeth in her barge. When she had been received in state, the officers of the neighboring towns were presented to her. Among them was Mr. Shakespeare from Stratford, who brought with him his young son, William. Then came Cromwell’s soldiers and the men who have made history since Queen Elizabeth’s day.