Thackeray and Real Men by Henry Van Dyke — Read

In that fragrant bunch of _Theodore Roosevelt's Letters to His Children_ / which has just brightened and sweetened our too sadly strenuous times / there are some passages on novel-reading which are full of spirited good / sense. He says that he can read _Pendennis_, and _The Newcomes_, and / _Vanity Fair_ over and over again; he agrees with his boy in preferring / Thackeray to Dickens, and then he gives the reason-or at least _a_ / reason-for this preference:

"Of course one fundamental difference. is that Thackeray was a / gentleman and Dickens was not."