It was not long after the flood in Florence--it seems to me, as I write, that I might almost leave out the two last words!--that I saw Dickens for the first time.

One morning in Casa Berti my mother was most agreeably surprised by a card brought in to her with "Mr.and Mrs.Charles Dickens" on it.

We had been among his heartiest admirers from the early days of _Pickwick_.

I don't think we had happened to see the _Sketches by Boz_.

But my uncle Milton used to come to Hadley full of "the last _Pickwick_," and swearing that each number out-Pickwicked Pickwick.