In
after years she was never able to pick up a volume of
Dickens without having her mind hark back to those long,
quiet evenings. She read a great deal of Dickens at that
time. She had a fine contempt for his sentiment, and his
great ladies bored her. She did not know that this was
because they were badly drawn. The humor she loved, and she
read and reread the passages dealing with Samuel Weller, and
Mr. Micawber, and Sairey Gamp, and Fanny Squeers. It was
rather trying to read Dickens before supper, she had
discovered. Pickwick Papers was fatal, she had found. It
sent one to the pantry in a sort of trance, to ransack for
food--cookies, apples, cold meat, anything. But whatever
one found, it always fell short of the succulent sounding
beefsteak pies, and saddles of mutton, and hot pineapple
toddy of the printed page.
To-night Mrs. Brandeis, coming in from the kitchen after a
conference with Mattie, found her daughter in conversational
mood, though book in hand.
"Mother, did you ever read this?" She held up "The Ladies'
Paradise.
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