Despite all this, it is doubtful "Sandford and Merton" will ever} be forgotten, That is to say, Mr. Barlow must endure. The two boys, of course, are utterly impossible. They should have been, drowned at. birth, ike superfluous kittens, On the other hand, without them, that "instructive monomaniac," as Charles Dickens names Mr, Barlow, would have had no one to lecture to. It is inconceivable that any normal adult could have heard him for five minutes without throwing something heavy at him, if not actually slaying him out of hand.
Dickens' complaint is that Mr. Barlow never saw and never took a joke: that his intrusion upon the Arabian Nights of our boyhood was altogether unwarranted: that had No. 35/39 QUEENS GARDENS,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.