'I should like to go to the dance,' said Mr Tupman again.

'So should I,' said the stranger - 'It's so annoying about my luggage - the suitcases are so heavy, yet I have nothing to wear to the dance - isn't that strange?'

Now, behaving well toward everyone was one of the most important ideas of Mr Pickwick and his followers. And of all the people who tried to bring Mr Pickwick's ideas into their own lives, the most enthusiastic was Mr Tracy Tupman. The Pickwick Society's records tell us of the almost unbelievable number of times when the good Mr Tupman sent people asking him for charity to the houses of other members of the society instead, telling them to go there to collect old clothes, or receive a donation of money.

'I should be very happy to lend you a change of clothes for the dance,' said Mr Tracy Tupman, 'but you are quite thin, and I am -

'Rather fat. A grown - up Bacchus - without the vine-leaf crown. You have got down from the wine barrel, and started wearing English clothes, eh? ha! ha! Pass the wine.'