Acknowledgments

We beg to tender courteous acknowledgment to the following authors and publishers for the use of extracts appearing in this volume:

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS: Pinkerton, Artist and Optimist, from R. L. STEVENSON'S "The Wrecker."

GEORGE MEREDITH: Short citations from the novels.

SIR CHARLES BURNAND: A Rubber at Whist, from "Happy Thoughts."

W. S. GILBERT: The Ruler of the Queen's Navee, from "Pinafore"; Lords and Commons, from "Iolanthe"; The Penalty for Beheading the Heir Apparent, from "The Mikado"; The Bishop of Rum-Ti-Foo, and Lorenzo de Lardy, from the "Bab Ballads."

W. H. MALLOCK: A Lay Sermon and a Shipwreck, from "The New Paul and Virginia."

THE REVEREND JOHN WATSON, "IAN MACLAREN": Our Sermon Taster, from "Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush."

RIDER HAGGARD and CASSELL & CO.: The Bare Legs, the Movable Teeth, and the Transparent Eye, from "King Solomon's Mines."

J. B. GUTHRIE, “F. ANSTEY," and ARROWSMITH & CO.: Venus Visits the Hairdresser, from "The Tinted Venus."

G. BERNARD SHAW, H. STONE & CO., and BRENTANO'S: Lines from the Plays.

JEROME K. JEROME: The Stage Lawyer, from "Stageland."

J. M. BARRIE: A Humourist on his Calling, and A Home for Geniuses, from "A Window in Thrums"; Postal Facilities at Thrums, from "Auld Licht Idylls."

A. H. HAWKINS, "ANTHONY HOPE," and HENRY HOLT & CO.: Cordial Relations, from "The Dolly Dialogues."

RUDYARD KIPLING and DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & CO.: Study of an Elevation and A Code of Morals, from "Departmental Ditties"; Oonts and Gunga Din, from "Barrack Room Ballads"; The Courting of Dinah Shadd, from "Life's Handicap."

E. O. SOMERVILLE and MARTIN ROSS and THE BADMINTON MAGAZINE: Pleasures of a Tenant, The Lough Lonen Regatta, and The Wreck, from "Some Experiences of an Irish R.M."

Charles Dickens

Mr. Micawber's Pecuniary Difficulties

MR. MICAWBER's difficulties were an addition to my distressed state of mind. In my forlorn state I became quite attached to the family, and used to walk about, busy with Mrs. Micawber's calculations of ways and means, and heavy with the weight of Mr. Micawber's debts. On a Saturday night, which was my grand treat-partly because it was a great thing to walk home with six or seven shillings in my pocket, looking into the shops, and thinking what such a sum would buy, and partly because I went home early— Mrs. Micawber would make the most heart-rending confidences to me; also on a Sunday morning, when I mixed the portion of tea or coffee I had bought overnight, in a little shaving-pot, and sat late at my breakfast. It was nothing at all unusual for Mr. Micawber to sob violently at the beginning of one of these Saturday-night conversations, and sing about Jack's delight being his lovely Nan, toward the end of it. I have known him to come home to supper with a flood of tears, and a declaration that nothing was now left but a jail; and go to bed making a calculation of the expense of putting bow-windows to the house, "in case anything turned up," which was his favourite expression. And Mrs. Micawber was just the same.

A curious equality of friendship, originating, I suppose, in our respective circumstances, sprung up between me and these people, notwithstanding the ludicrous disparity in our years. But I never allowed myself to be prevailed upon to