Your affectionate Father.


"FAREWELL? MY BLESSING SEASON THIS IN THEE"

[Dickens's last child, Edward Bulwer Lytton Dickens, was born in 1852.
At sixteen he went to Australia, with this parting word from his
father:]

MY DEAREST PLORN:

I write this note to-day because your going away is much upon my mind,
and because I want you to have a few parting words from me to think of
now and then at quiet times. I need not tell you that I love you
dearly, and am very, very sorry in my heart to part with you. But this
life is half made up of partings, and these pains must be borne. It is
my comfort and my sincere conviction that you are going to try the life
for which you are best fitted. I think its freedom and wildness more
suited to you than any experiment in a study or office would ever have
been; and without that training, you could have followed no other
suitable occupation.

What you have already wanted until now has been a set, steady, constant
purpose. I therefore exhort you to persevere in a thorough
determination to do whatever you have to do as well as you can do it.
I was not so old as you are now when I first had to win my food, and do
this out of this determination, and I have never slackened in it since.

Never take a mean advantage of any one in any transaction, and never be