A head waiter finds a guest's abandoned luggage stuffed with manuscripts and, after seven years, sells them to a publisher - which is Dickens's excuse for a set of stories, including His Boots, one of the best things he wrote about a child. Sent at twelve to work in a blacking factory while his father sat in a debtors' prison, Dickens made these Christmas numbers of All the Year Round with a stable of contributors, and this one is the funniest.
