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Dickens probably wrote the following portion of 'Post-Office Money-Orders': from 'The Central Money-order Office' (p. 3) to 'wealth and laurels!' (p. 4).
Dickens may also have rewritten or added to the following sections: from the opening to 'might be extinguished' (p. 1); from 'All these people' to 'hereditary bondsmen only' (p. 4).
In 1852 the following anonymous pamphlet was published in London: Methods of Employment, Being An Exposure of the unprincipled schemers, who, through the means of Advertisements, profess to give Receipts by which industrious persons of either sex may realize from £1 to £5, and even £10 per week. With Remarks by Charles Dickens, Esq. Most of the pamphlet was given over to reprinting gulling advertisements and recording the responses received when the ads were answered. But before getting down to this business, the author reprinted, under the title 'Post-Office Money-Orders,' a duly labeled extract from Household Words - the extract being that portion of 'Post-Office Money-Orders' which begins with 'A prosaic place enough' and ends with 'restore the orders to the deluded senders' (p. 3). No authority is given for attributing this extract to Dickens, and though the title page says the remarks are by him, the text itself claims only that the passage is from Household Words - a claim that is made in the introduction to the extract and reiterated at the end.

For a discussion of the Dickens-Wills attributions, see note to 'Valentine's Day at the Post-Office'.

Harry Stone; © Bloomington and Indiana University Press, 1968. DJO gratefully acknowledges permission to reproduce this material.

Dickens probably wrote the following portion of 'Drooping Buds': from 'O! Baby's dead' (p. 46) to ''Come up, and see!'' (p.47).
Dickens may also have rewritten or added to the following passages: from the beginning to 'mortality among our children' (p. 45); the paragraph beginning 'London, like a fine old oak' (p. 46); the paragraph beginning 'Many stiff bows' (p. 46); from 'We followed' to 'not easily forget it' (p. 47); from 'So large a piece' (p. 48) to the conclusion.
In addition, Dickens seems to have gone over the entire piece very carefully - editing, interpolating, and emending throughout.
Dickens' most fervent contribution to this piece, the paragraph beginning 'O! Baby's dead,' seems to incorporate memories of the deaths of four young persons close to him: the sudden death of his eight-month-old baby, Dora, on 54 April 1851; the wasting death two years earlier of his crippled nephew, Harry Burnett, a prototype of Paul Dombey; the lingering death in 1848 of his consumptive sister, Fanny, mother of Harry; and still earlier, the death in his arms of his adored sister-in-law, Mary Hogarth.
'Drooping Buds' describes a visit to the newly founded Hospital for Sick Children in Great Ormond Street. Shortly after 'Drooping Buds' appeared, the Hospital, with Dickens' permission, reprinted the piece as a promotional pamphlet. The title page of the pamphlet did not name the authors but did indicate that the piece was 'From Dickens' Household Words' (see also 'A Curious Dance Round a Curious Tree'). Six years later (9 February 1858), Dickens delivered one of his most brilliant speeches at a dinner held to aid the Hospital, and two months after that (15 April 1858) he read A Christmas Carol to raise additional money for the institution.

Harry Stone; © Bloomington and Indiana University Press, 1968. DJO gratefully acknowledges permission to reproduce this material.