[Illustration: CHARLES DICKENS READING TO HIS DAUGHTERS, 1863.
_From a Photograph by R. H. Mason._]

No. 27 shows the endorsement on a cheque.

[Illustration: NO. 28.--WRITTEN JUNE 6, 1870 (THREE DAYS BEFORE DEATH).]

[Illustration: NO. 29.--WRITTEN JUNE 8, 1870 (ONE DAY BEFORE DEATH).]

[Illustration: AGE 56.
_From a Photograph by Garney, New York._]

But we near the end. Doctors had detected the signs of breaking up,
which are not less plain in the written gesture, and had strenuously
urged Dickens to stop the incessant strain caused by his public
readings. The stimulus of facing an appreciative audience would spur him
on time after time, and then, late at night, he would write affectionate
letters giving details of "the house," etc., but which are painful to
see if one notices the constant droop of the words and of the lines
across the page. Contrast the writing in No. 28, broken and agitated,
with some of the earlier specimens I have shown you. This was written
three days before death. The wording of the letter from which No. 29 has
been copied tells no tale of weakness, but the gesture which clothes the
words is tell-tale. The words, and the lines of words, run downward
across the paper, and No. 29 is very suggestive of serious trouble--and
it is specially suggestive to those who have studied this form of
gesture: look, for example, at the ill-managed flourish.

[Illustration: NO. 30.--WRITTEN JUNE 8, 1870 (ONE DAY BEFORE DEATH.)