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Tacts and fancies for the Tireside DICKENS IN CAMP. Charles Dickens died in his home at Gadshill, in Kent, on June 9, 1870. The weeks preceding his death had been weeks of fatigue and illness; but with the coming of the warm summer days he seemed once more to exhibit his old vitality. Many incidents that gave him pleas ure had occurred. A resident of Liverpool had written him a letter describing himself as a self-made man who believed that he owed his success to what Dickens had written about the wisdom of kindness and sympathy for others. The writer en closed a check for five hundred pounds which he begged the author to accept as a slight acknowledgment of the benefits received. This letter greatly touched Dickens, who re turned the check, but said that it would give him pleasure to receive any slight remembrance given in an other form. His correspondent then sent him an elaborate silver basket and a silver centerpiece containing figures representing the four seasons. The donor, however, had shrunk from sending a symbol of winter to one who had-then passed the autumn of his life, and so he had removed this figure from the design. “I never look at it,” said Dick ens, “without thinking most of win ter!” THE MARVEL IN GROWTH AND DEVELOPMENT In South Georgia is MILLTOWN, ”ou NTY Located, in the best Farming section—The healthiest Country—Our town has grown from 175 people to about 1500 in 24 months. We are offering a few reserve lots at SSO each on easy payments—You will never get such an opportunity again. Write Quick-SOUTH GEORGIA LAND & INDUSTRIAL CO., Milltown, Ga. On the day before his death, the novelist had been steadily at work upon his last book, “The Mystery of Edwin Drood”; and had finished a beautiful description of a summer morning. When this was completed, he was taken with a sudden pain, and presently became unconscious. He died the next evening in the fifty eighth year of his age. The news of his death was telegraphed all over the civilized world, and was received everywhere with grief and sympathy. Men and women of every rank and type joined in the expression of sor row; for Dickens, through his in tense humanity, had appealed alike to the noble and the lowly. One of the most touching tributes to the un iversality of his fame was written by the pen of Bret Harte in the poem which is here reprinted, and which shows that in a rough mining-camp of the Far West the creator of “Lit tle Nell” was known and loved no less sincerely than in the stately dwellings of his own country. By Bret Harte. Above the pines the moon was slow ly drifting, The river sang below; The dim Sierras, far beyond, uplift ing Their minarets of snow. WATSON’S WEEKLY JEFFERSONIAN. The roaring camp-fire, with rude hu* mor, painted The ruddy tints of health On haggard face and form that drooped and fainted In the fierce race for wealth; Till one arose, and from his pack’s scant treasure A hoarded volume drew, And cards were dropped from hands of listless leisure To hear the tale anew. And then, while round them shadows gathered faster, And as the firelight fell, He read aloud the book wherein the Master Had writ of Little Nell. Perhaps ’twas boyish fancy—for the reader Was the youngest of them all— But, as he read, from clustering pine and cedar A silence seemed to fall; The pine-trees, gathering closer in the shadowa, Listened in every spray, While the whole camp, with Nell on English meadows, Wandered and lost their way. And so in mountain solitudes —o’er- taken As by some spell divine, Their cares dropped from them like the needles shaken From out the sturdy pine. Lost is that eamp, and wasted all its fire: And he who wrought the spell f Ah, towering pine and stately Kent ish spire, Ye have one tale to tell! Lost is that camp! But let its fra grant story Blend with the heart that thrills With hop-vines’ incense all the pen sive glory That fills the Kentish hills. And on that grave where English oak and holly And laurel-wreaths entwine, Deem it not all a too presumptuous folly— This spray of Western pine! ETERNITY. “Eternity,” said the country ex hort er, who wanted to make things clear, “is forever and forever, and five or six everlastings on top of that. Why, brothers and sisters, after millions and billions of centu ries had rolled away in eternity, it would still be a hundred thousand years to breakfast time.” PAGE ELEVEN