Low Expectations

Charles Dickens' decision to become an author of sentimental fantasies was a great loss to the boot blacking industry. With the possible exception of the appearance of brown boots upon the gentleman's footwear market, the day Dickens concluded that the ink pen was mightier than the boot blacking applicator is without doubt the blackest day ever recorded in the annals of boot blacking. And this disastrous undertaking did not merely affect the boot blacking trade. Charles Dickens himself surely suffered as a result of such rash and eccentric behavior also.
For boot blacking is, I'm sure you will agree, a far superior occupation compared to the idle and effeminate pastime of writing whimsical novels. It is extremely significant, I believe, that Dickens was able to draw upon his wealth of experiences in the boot blacking factory to provide substance for his comical books, whereas lounging around in a smoking jacket all day contriving those ridiculous stories could in no way have prepared him for an exciting and challenging career at the cutting edge of modern boot blacking technology.
If only Dickens had brought his substantial imagination to bear on the production of boot blacking productivity, rather than abusing it so profligately on the composition of penny romances and so-called Christmas "numbers," then who know what tremendous advances could have been made in the art of blacking of gentlemen's boots.
Instead the world is left with precariously stacked shelves crammed full of enormous leatherbound classics whose only function is to frighten children out of their minds. I thought Dickens was supposed to be against that sort of thing?