He was alternately a rattling lawyer of the Middle Temple, a boots, an eccentric pedestrian and cold-water drinker, a deaf sexton, an invalid captain, and an old woman.  What fun it was, to be sure, and how we roared over the performance!  Here is the playbill which I held in my hand nineteen years ago, while the great writer was proving himself to be as pre-eminent an actor as he was an author.  One can see by reading the bill that Dickens was manager of the company, and that it was under his direction that the plays were produced.  Observe the clear evidence of his hand in the very wording of the bill:—­

“On Wednesday evening, September 1, 1852.

“THE AMATEUR COMPANY
OF THE
GUILD OF LITERATURE AND ART;

To encourage Life Assurance and other provident habits among Authors and Artists; to render such assistance to both as shall never compromise their independence; and to found a new Institution where honorable rest from arduous labors shall still be associated with the discharge of congenial duties;

“Will have the honor of presenting,” etc., etc.,

But let us go on with the letters.  Here is the first one to his friend after Dickens arrived home again in England.  It is delightful, through and through.

    London, 1 Devonshire Terrace, York Gate, Regent’s Park, Sunday, July
    31, 1842.

My Dear Felton:  Of all the monstrous and incalculable amount of occupation that ever beset one unfortunate man, mine has been the most stupendous since I came home.  The dinners I have had to eat, the places I have had to go to, the letters I have had to answer, the sea of business and of pleasure in which I have been plunged, not even the genius of an ——­ or the pen of a ——­ could describe.

Wherefore I indite a monstrously short and wildly uninteresting epistle to the American Dando, but perhaps you don’t know who Dando was.  He was an oyster-eater, my dear Felton.  He used to go into oyster-shops, without a farthing of money, and stand at the counter eating natives, until the man who opened them grew pale, cast down his knife, staggered backward, struck his white forehead with his open hand, and cried, “You are Dando!!!” He has been known to eat twenty dozen at one sitting, and would have eaten forty, if the truth had not flashed upon the shopkeeper.  For these offences he was constantly committed to the House of Correction.  During his last imprisonment he was taken ill, got worse and worse, and at last began knocking violent double-knocks at Death’s door.  The doctor stood beside his bed, with his fingers on his pulse.  “He is going,” says the doctor.  “I see it in his eye.  There is only one thing that would keep life in him for another hour, and that is—­oysters.”  They were immediately brought.  Dando swallowed eight, and feebly took a ninth.  He held it in his mouth and looked round the bed strangely.  “Not a bad one, is it?” says the doctor.