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Show AT BIRTHPLACE OF DICKENS Almost a Shrine, Where Many f the Hurrying Crowds Pauae to Do Revereno. A great slgnbosrd partly cover the" littl house where Charles Uickeu was born. "Charles rxekenu' Hlrtb place," it aay, and all the harrying world entering old Portsmouth pause to look at It. The street, Commercial road, might be a street in any large city, and the bouse is no alien edillce la the vista of ugliness. A hundred years ago the traffic may have been Quieter and the flower in the Iront garden not quite so dusty a century leads u back such a very lotiK road. In the spring of 1812 we picture Mrs. John Dlckena, wife of the humble clerk In the navy pay ofllce, bringing ber baby boy her first son to the mall window for a glimpne of the l.ndon stage coach bound for the Portsmouth dockyard. Little t! ' U the tired mother tbluk as she he'd liiui there that his life would one (!iy affect af-fect some of the passenger ou the coach, the people who walked or rod In the street, the thousands going about their business, In Portsmouth and the ten of thousand upc Miou-aad Miou-aad all over the country. Whoever made so many men laugh and wc-p as Dickens? What pen ha opened the doors Into m many lives? No heart ha every been closer to the facts of human life than that of the beardless beard-less boy who shyly wtused r lsl.4 Ham Weller and sent him forth with laughter laugh-ter that was to blow into a gale. On Weller' footsteps they come, tssos common and yet uncommon typos he drew forth from the bone and sinew of Great llrttaln. The boy born la Commercial road wa to- be the apostle apos-tle of everyday poople, and the multitude multi-tude of tradesmen he wrote of would make a trade' directory. The Ladles' World. - |
