How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being an Ideal Grace.
I love thee to the level of every day's
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise;
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith;
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints,--I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life!--and if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.
Chops the Dwarf.
By CHARLES DICKENS.
When Charles Dickens visited the United States in 1867 and
gave the course of public readings which netted him two
hundred and fifty thousand dollars in a few months, he
prepared special versions of his popular stories for
platform use. All these versions are more dramatic and more
pointed than the originals, containing as they do more
dialogue and less description. Among them was the tale of
"Chops the Dwarf," first written as a Christmas story. In it
Dickens dwells upon a kind of life which seems greatly to
have attracted him--the career of the traveling showman,
with its oddities, its careless Bohemianism, and its
happy-go-lucky, hand-to-mouth existence.
In "Chops the Dwarf," humor and pathos are reinforced by a
touch of satire, which is directed against the emptiness and
the restraints of fashionable life. For some reason or other
this tale has been overlooked by many of the students and
editors of Dickens. It is not contained in some of the
editions of his works which profess to be complete, and
several of the standard reference-books do not mention it.
At one period of its reverses, the House to Let fell into the hands of a
showman. He was found registered as its occupier, on the parish books of
the time when he rented the House; there was therefore no need of any clew
to his name. But he himself was less easy to find, for he had led a
wandering life, and settled people had lost sight of him, and people who
plumed themselves on being respectable were shy of admitting that they had
ever known him.
At last among the marsh lands near the river's level, that lie about
Deptford and the neighboring market-gardens, a grizzled personage in
velveteen, with a face so cut up by varieties of weather that he looked as
if he had been tattooed, was found smoking a pipe at the door of a wooden
house on wheels.
The wooden house was laid up in ordinary for the winter near the mouth of
a muddy creek; and everything near it--the foggy river, the misty marshes,
and the steaming market-gardens--smoked in company with the grizzled man.
In the midst of the smoking party, the funnel-chimney of the wooden house
on wheels was not remiss, but took its pipe with the rest in a
companionable manner.
On being asked if it were he who had once rented the House to Let,
Grizzled Velveteen looked surprised, and said yes. Then his name was
Magsman. That was it, Toby Magsman--which was lawfully christened Robert;
but called in the line, from an infant, Toby. There was nothing agin Toby
Magsman, he believed? If there was suspicion of such, mention it!
There was no suspicion of such, he might rest assured. But some inquiries
were making about that house, and would he object to say why he left it?
Not at all; why should he? He left it along of a dwarf.
Along of a dwarf?