Advice on a rough draft: The Pickwick papers' ‘Mr. Weller the Elder delivers some critical sentiments respecting literary composition’1
The author discusses a scene from Dickens's The Pickwick papers wherein the novelist describes and dramatises an inexperienced but earnest and determined young man writing a Valentine's letter under the tutelage of a confident yet incompetent tutor, his father. The author, presenting Dickens's marvellous comic scene, compares Sam Weller's difficulties and satisfactions, as well as his weary trailing off, to those of the author's students at a community college in Brooklyn, New York.