[Illustration: NO. 25.--WRITTEN NOV. 25, 1861.] [Illustration: DICKENS AS "RICHARD WARDOUR" IN "THE FROZEN DEEP."] [Illustration: AGE 49. _From a Photograph_.] [Illustration: AGE 51. _From a Photo. by Alphonse Maze, Paris._] When on a reading tour, Dickens wrote at Bideford the letter from which No. 23 has been copied. After writing that he could get nothing to eat or drink at the small inn, he wrote the sentence facsimiled. The exaggeration of the words is matched by the use of two capital _T_'s in place of two small _t_'s. The letter continues: "The landlady is playing cribbage with the landlord in the next room (behind a thin partition), and they seem quite comfortable." No. 24 is another instance of the variation which, in fact, obtained up to the very day before death. No. 25 was written at Berwick-on-Tweed; it is an amusing letter, and states how the local agents wanted to put the famous reader into "a little lofty crow's nest," and how "I instantly struck, of course, and said I would either read in a room attached to this house ... or not at all. Terrified local agents glowered, but fell prostrate." By the way, notice, in No. 25, the emphasis of gesture on the _me_. [Illustration: NO. 26.--WRITTEN FEB. 3, 1864.] [Illustration: DICKENS IN HIS BASKET CARRIAGE. _From a Photo. by Mason._] No. 26 is written in one continuous stroke with a noticeably good management of the curves. The graceful imagination of this is very striking. [Illustration: NO. 27.--WRITTEN JUNE 7, 1866.] [Illustration: CHARLES DICKENS READING TO HIS DAUGHTERS, 1863. _From a Photograph by R. H. Mason._] No. 27 shows the endorsement on a cheque. [Illustration: NO. 28.--WRITTEN JUNE 6, 1870 (THREE DAYS BEFORE DEATH).] [Illustration: NO. 29.--WRITTEN JUNE 8, 1870 (ONE DAY BEFORE DEATH).] [Illustration: AGE 56. _From a Photograph by Garney, New York._] But we near the end. Doctors had detected the signs of breaking up, which are not less plain in the written gesture, and had strenuously urged Dickens to stop the incessant strain caused by his public readings. The stimulus of facing an appreciative audience would spur him on time after time, and then, late at night, he would write affectionate letters giving details of "the house," etc., but which are painful to see if one notices the constant droop of the words and of the lines across the page. Contrast the writing in No. 28, broken and agitated, with some of the earlier specimens I have shown you. This was written three days before death. The wording of the letter from which No. 29 has been copied tells no tale of weakness, but the gesture which clothes the words is tell-tale. The words, and the lines of words, run downward across the paper, and No. 29 is very suggestive of serious trouble--and it is specially suggestive to those who have studied this form of gesture: look, for example, at the ill-managed flourish.