Containing a Faithful Account of the Fortunes,
Misfortunes, Uprisings, Downfallings, and Complete
Career of the Nickleby Family. "I went down into
Yorkshire before I began this book, in very severe
winter time which is pretty faithfully described herein.
As I wanted to see a schoolmaster or two, and was
forewarned that those gentlemen might, in their modesty,
be shy of receiving a visit from the author of the
_Pickwick Papers,_ I consulted with a professional
friend who had a Yorkshire connection, and with whom I
concerted a pious fraud. He gave me some letters of
introduction, in the name, I think, of my traveling
companion; they bore reference to a supposititious
little boy who had been left with a widowed mother who
didn't know what to do with him; the poor lady had
thought, as a means of thawing the tardy compassion of
her relations in his behalf, of sending him to a
Yorkshire school; I was the poor lady's friend,
traveling that way; and if the recipient of the letter
could inform me of a school in his neighborhood, the
writer would be very much obliged. I went to several
places in that part of the country where I understood
the schools to be most plentifully sprinkled, and had no
occasion to deliver a letter until I came to a certain
town which shall be nameless. The person to whom it was
addressed, was not at home; but he came down at night,
through the snow, to the inn where I was staying. It was
after dinner; and he needed little persuasion to sit
down by the fire in a warm corner, and take his share of
the wine that was on the table. I am afraid he is dead
now. . . . -- Charles Dickens
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