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tion, I very cordially respond to your proposal, and am happy to take my friendly and sponsorial seat at your fireside."

The Porch, Gad's Hill.
From a Photograph.

Mr. Yates's mind wandered back to the place at Gad's Hill. He had cause to remember its one-time occupant, for who could have proved himself a better, a kinder friend than the great novelist to the then young journalist when, perhaps, the most critical chapter of his life came? But of the Thackeray incident—later. It was pleasant to listen to some new Dickensonia. How he was constantly quoting his own characters, acting them out during those Sunday evening walks they had together, and often giving point to a sentence by saying: "As Mr. Sikes might have remarked," or, "As Mr. Micawber would probably have observed."

"Dickens always used to say," Mr. Yates remarked, "when a person, theatrical, literary, or otherwise, was talked about as coming out, 'Yes, it is easy enough to come out—the difficulty is to keep out!"' He was always very anxious to have an opportunity of sleeping in a haunted house. Indeed, his pet subjects were ghosts and haunted houses. I well remember making one of a little party—including the dear man himself and Mr. W. H. Wills, not forgetting 'Turk,' a big dog and a great favourite of Dickens—constituted for the purpose of spending a night in a house that was reputed to be haunted; but it turned out a failure, and proved a great disappointment. Our last outing together was about two months before his death, when we together went to a circus and saw a performing elephant. He positively revelled in a circus and a cheap theatre, and often fidgeted in his seat in expectancy when some very bad actor was playing and seemed likely to forget his part. He would have been a great actor had he not been a great novelist."

The real Dickens's corner of the house, however, may be said to be the bedroom. On the landing outside is a portrait of Sir Rowland Hill—its present possessor's old chief—and a bust of Mrs. Yates by Alexander Monroe. "Dickens's Corner" is opposite the window of the bedroom. Here hang the last portrait of him ever taken, and another, "Charles Dickens to Edmund Yates, 7th February, 1859." A family group of the "Dickens Family" at the porch, Gad's Hill, is eminently interesting. Gathered together we see Dickens himself, with Miss Mamie Dickens, Miss Kate Dickens (Mrs. Perugini), Miss Hogarth (his sister-in-law, to whom he referred in his will as "the best and truest friend man ever had"), Charles Collins, and Henry F. Chorley. Portraits abound here—a sketch by Frith of Edmund Yates in 1862, a delightful miniature of his mother, and an engraving of his father, Mr. Yates soon after his marriage, with his wife and eldest son (now Major Yates), an autographed portrait of Robert Browning, a group of Mr. Yates's