THE LITTLE DICKENSES.

Akaroa Mail and Banks Peninsula Advertiser, Volume I, Issue 63, 23 February 1877, Page 3

THE LITTLE DICKENSES.

A paragraph is going the round of the papers just now about a little nephew and niece of the late Charles Dickens, who are only kept from the work-house at Amboy, Illinois,. by\ a poor old couple who have found the children a home since their motherdied. Nearly everybody who reads this paragraph gushes over it, and says, " What a pity! what a shame! that the poor little children of such an uncle should be allowed to be fed, lodged, and clothed by the charity of strangers." Yet the same paragraph goes on to state that their late father was a drunken, unprincipled scoundrel, who deserted his wife in England when she lost her eye-sight, and eloped with a school girl to America. As he was a brother of the great novelist, however, interest Avas brought to bear, and a good billet was found him in the Land Department of the Illinois Central Railroad. But he spentjhis money as fast as he got it, sponged on his brother, and everybody else within reach, got discharged from his billet for misconduct, and at length deserted his second wife and the two children above referred to. He sponged his way through the States, and to Australia here, his brother's great reputation being his only capital ; but it was sufficient : it procured him free quarters in every town and township he visited ; pound-notes, half-sovereigns, half-crowns, and unlimited drinks at bush public-houses —for the poorest bushman knows and appreciates Charles Dickens. This Augustus Dickens was at Brisbane here for a few days twelve or thirteen years ago, I remember, a bloated, shabby, dirty loafer. He died a pauper and an outcast—as he was bound to be, in spite of fate and all the help of all the people in the world. The poor victim whom he seduced and took to America with him, lived in utter misery for a number of years, and at last poisoned herself, and her two children have been with this old couple at Amboy, Illinois, ever since. The " pity" and the " shame" of the whole matter is that such a man should find people foolish enough to show him kindness of which he was unworthy—simply'because hisbrother was a great genius. It is the best thing that could happen to the two children at Amboy, Illinois, that they are no longer under the blighting influence of such a father; and it will be the worst thing that could happen them if they are deluded into the idea that because their uncle was a great and gifted man, therefore they have a claim on the reading public of the whole world, and ought not to be compelled to earn their own living by hard, honest work. The sooner we learn to call things by their right names the better — " Bohemian" in the Queenslander.