Tales from Dickens

The Project Gutenberg eBook, Tales from Dickens, by Charles Dickens and Hallie Erminie Rives, Illustrated by Reginald B. Birch
By
Author of The Castaway, Hearts Courageous A Furnace of Earth, etc.
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY
INDIANAPOLIS THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY PUBLISHERS
Copyright 1905 The Bobbs-Merrill Company
November
To GEORGE BAKER ROBBINS, Jr.

Charles John Huffham Dickens, the master story-teller, was born in Landport, England, February 7, 1812. His father was a clerk in one of the offices of the Navy, and he was one of eight children.
When he was four years old, his father moved to the town of Chatham, near the old city of Rochester. Round about are chalk hills, green lanes, forests and marshes, and amid such scenes the little Charles's genius first began to show itself.
He did not like the rougher sports of his school-fellows and preferred to amuse himself in his own way, or to wander about with his older sister, Fanny, whom he especially loved. They loved to watch the stars together, and there was one particular star which they used to pretend was their own. People called him a very queer small boy because he was always thinking or reading instead of playing. The children of the neighborhood would gather around him to listen while he told them stories or sang comic songs to them, and when he was only eight years old he taught them to act in plays which he invented. He was fond of reading books of travel, and most of all he loved The Arabian Nights and Robinson Crusoe .