Evening Republican, Volume 17, Number 208, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 September 1913 — MANKIND’S DEBT TO DICKENS [ARTICLE]

MANKIND’S DEBT TO DICKENS

English Municipal Authority Well Said the World Is Better Because He Passed Through it. That the memory of Charles Dickens and his tender sympathy with mankind have great influence in the world today was touchingly shown in an address recently made at Hull, England, by W. C. Dawson, a magistrate of that city who, in response to a toast, "The Trade and Commerce of Hull,” said he liked to think what would most have Interested Dickens could he have visited the city that day. It seemed to him that Dickens might not have been greatly Interested in commercial prosperity, that he would not have wished first to visit the public buildings and art gallery, but would have asked to be taken to the workhouses of the city, and there should have found the spirit of humanity had displaced the Bplrit of Bumbledom; that if he had asked for his little Oliver Twist they could have taken him not to the workhouse, but to tho cottage houses at Hessle (a suburb of Hull) where the orphan children breathed pure air and ate good food; that Dickens would have found similar changes at the police court, the industrial school apd the day schools. And what an (interest he would have taken in the efforts of the watch committee to protect the "Little Emilys" from the “Bteerforths” of society and to seek out those poor misguided “Nancys” and try with kindness to win them back to the paths of virtue. He thought Dickeins would say: “This is a better, sweeter and [brighter world than the world I knew,” and they would say; "Even, so, matter, because you passed through it”