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Bright flames of fire shot up from earth to heaven, and reeled before
his eyes, while the water thundered in his ears, und stunned him with
its furious roar."
BEE NUMBER THREE COLD VERSUS WARMTH
Dickens made great capital out of his readers' desire to be snug.
We all know how delightful it is to lie warm in bed while the wind is
howling outside and the rain is lashing against the windows. Dickens
conjured up this delightful sensation again and again. The Christmas
scenes at Dingley Dell rely for much of their cosiness on this contrast
between the cold outside and the warmth inside.
"The sat down by a huge fire of blazing logs, and drank a mighty bowl
of wassail "This" said Mr Pickwick, lookling round him "This
is, indeed, comfort!
But then, almost immediately afterwards, we read
"How it snows! said one of the men in a low tone.
"Snows, does it?" said Wardle.
"Rough cold night, sir. And there's a wind got up, that drifts it accross
the field in a thick white cloud."
A few years later, Dickens wrote this dramatic description in BARNABY
RUDGE
"One wintry evening, early in the year of our Lord one thousand seven
hundred and eighty, a keen north wind arose as it grew dark, and night came
on with black and dismal looks. A bitter storm of sleet, sharp, dense,
and icy-cold, swept the wet streets and rattled on the trembling windows...
In coffee-houses of the better sort guest crowded round the fire
In private dwellings, children clustered near the blaze, listening with
timid pleasure to tales of ghosts and goblins From time to time
these happy indoor people stopped to listen, or one held up his finger
and cried "Hark! and then, above the rumbling in the chimney and the
fast patterings on the glass, was heard a wailing, rushing sound, which
shook the walls as though a giant's hand were on them."
In one of his later short pieces THE SEVEN POOR TRAVELLERS, Dickens
describes the Common Room at Watts's Charity in Rochester High Street:
"I am sure it is warm in winter and cool in summer. It has a look of
