Great Expectations

by Charles Dickens

“Drat that boy,” interposed my sister, frowning at me over her work, “what a questioner he is. Ask no questions, and you’ll be told no lies.” It was not very polite to herself, I thought, to imply that I should be told lies by her, even if I did ask questions. But she never was polite, unless there was company.

IT WAS A rimy morning, and very damp. I had seen the damp lying on the outside of my little window, as if some goblin had been crying there all night, and using the window for a pocket-handkerchief.

“It’s the young man!” I thought, feeling my heart shoot as I identified him. I dare say I should have felt a pain in my liver, too, if I had known where it was.

My sister having so much to do, was going to church vicariously; that is to say, Joe and I were going.

In his working clothes, Joe was a well-knit characteristic-looking blacksmith; in his holiday clothes, he was more like a scarecrow in good circumstances than anything else.

I was always treated as if I had insisted on being born in opposition to the dictates of reason, religion, and morality, and against the dissuading arguments of my best friends.

Mr. Wopsle, united to a Roman nose and a large shining bald forehead, had a deep voice which he was uncommonly proud of; indeed it was understood among his acquaintance that if you could only give him his head, he would read the clergyman into fits; he himself confessed that if the Church was “thrown open,” meaning to competition, he would not despair of making his mark in it. The Church not being “thrown open,” he was, as I have said, our clerk. But he punished the amens tremendously; and when he gave out the psalm—always giving the whole verse—he looked all round the congregation first, as much as to say, “You have heard our friend overhead; oblige me with your opinion of this style!”

Uncle Pumblechook—a large hard-breathing middle-aged slow man, with a mouth like a fish, dull staring eyes, and sandy hair standing upright on his head, so that he looked as if he had just been all but choked, and had that moment come to—“

I remember Mr. Hubble as a tough high-shouldered stooping old man, of a sawdusty fragrance, with his legs extraordinarily wide apart; so that in my short days I always saw some miles of open country between them when I met him coming up the lane.

I was regaled with the scaly tips of the drumsticks of the fowls, and with those obscure corners of pork of which the pig, when living, had had the least reason to be vain.

But they wouldn’t leave me alone. They seemed to think the opportunity lost if they failed to point the conversation at me, every now and then, and stick the point into me. I might have been an unfortunate little bull in a Spanish arena, I got so smartingly touched up by these moral goads.

Joe’s station and influence were something feebler (if possible) when there was company than when there was none.

Mr. Wopsle’s great-aunt kept an evening school in the village; that is to say, she was a ridiculous old woman of limited means and unlimited infirmity who used to go to sleep from six to seven every evening in the society of youth who paid twopence per week each for the improving opportunity of seeing her do it.

I struggled through the alphabet as if it had been a bramble bush, getting considerably worried and scratched by every letter.

I derived from this last that Joe’s education, like steam, was yet in its infancy.

(I may here remark that I suppose myself to be better acquainted than any living authority with the ridgy effect of a wedding-ring passing unsympathetically over the human countenance.)

If you can’t get to be oncommon through going straight, you’ll never get to do it through going crooked.

That was a memorable day to me, for it made great changes in me. But it is the same with any life. Imagine one selected day struck out of it, and think how different its course would have been. Pause you who read this, and think for a moment of the long chain of iron or gold, of thorns or flowers, that would never have bound you, but for the formation of the first link on one memorable day.

a large old English D which she had imitated from the heading of some newspaper, and which I supposed, until she told me what it was, to be a design for a buckle.

His head was all on one side, and one of his eyes was half-shut up, as if he were taking aim at something with an invisible gun.

Joe went all the way home with his mouth wide open, to rinse the rum out with as much air as possible.

they somehow conveyed to me that they were all toadies and humbugs, but that each of them pretended not to know that the others were toadies and humbugs, because the admission that he or she did know it would have made him or her out to be a toady and humbug.

He had a large watch-chain, and strong black dots where his beard and whiskers would have been if he had let them.

I saw speckled-legged spiders with blotchy bodies running home to it, and running out from it, as if some circumstance of the greatest public importance had just transpired in the spider community.

I heard the mice too, rattling behind the panels, as if the same occurrence were important to their interests. But, the black beetles took no notice of the agitation, and groped about the hearth in a ponderous elderly way, as if they were shortsighted and hard of hearing, and not on terms with one another.

Miss Sarah Pocket, whom I now saw to be a little dry brown corrugated old woman, with a small face that might have been made of walnut shells, and a large mouth like a cat’s without the whiskers,

George Barnwell,

Mr. Wopsle’s great-aunt conquered a confirmed habit of living into which she had fallen,

“Do you want to be a gentleman to spite her or to gain her over?” Biddy quietly asked me, after a pause. “I don’t know,” I moodily answered. “Because, if it is to spite her,” Biddy pursued, “I should think—but you know best—that might be better and more independently done by caring nothing for her words. And if it is to gain her over, I should think—but you know best—she was not worth gaining over.”

Joe laid his hand upon my shoulder with the touch of a woman. I have often thought him since, like the steam-hammer that can crush a man or pat an egg-shell, in his combination of strength with gentleness.

I promised myself that I would do something for them one of these days, and formed a plan in outline for bestowing a dinner of roast beef and plum pudding, a pint of ale, and a gallon of condescension upon everybody in the village.

Finally, I went out into the air, with a dim perception that there was something unwonted in the conduct of the sunshine, and found that I had slumberously got to the turnpike without having taken any account of the road.

I had scant luggage to take with me to London, for little of the little I possessed was adapted to my new station.

THE PALE YOUNG gentleman and I stood contemplating one another in Barnard’s Inn, until we both burst out laughing. “The idea of its being you!” said he. “The idea of its being you!” said I. And then we contemplated one another afresh, and laughed again. “Well!” said the pale young gentleman, reaching out his hand good-humouredly, “it’s all over now, I hope, and it will be magnanimous in you if you’ll forgive me for having knocked you about so.” I derived from this speech that Mr. Herbert Pocket (for Herbert was the pale young gentleman’s name) still rather confounded his intention with his execution.

It appeared to me that the eggs from which young insurers were hatched were incubated in dust and heat, like the eggs of ostriches, judging from the places to which those incipient giants repaired on a Monday morning.

himself some inches out of his chair. “Hear this!” he helplessly exclaimed to the elements. “Babies are to be nutcrackered dead for people’s poor grandpapa’s positions!”

There was a sofa where Mr. Pocket stood, and he dropped upon it in the attitude of a dying gladiator.

Wemmick was at his desk, lunching—and crunching—on a dry hard biscuit, pieces of which he threw from time to time into his slit of a mouth, as if he were posting them.

All other swindlers upon earth are nothing to the self-swindlers, and with such pretences did I cheat myself.

I arrived on the ground with a quarter of an hour to spare, attended by the Avenger—if I may connect that expression with one who never attended on me if he could possibly help it.

I, trembling in spirit and worshipping the very hem of her dress; she, quite composed and most decidedly not worshipping the hem of mine.

He was very much pleased by my asking if I might sleep in my own little room, and I was pleased, too, for, I felt that I had done rather a great thing in making the request.

Mr. Jaggers made not me alone intensely melancholy, because, after he was gone, Herbert said of himself, with his eyes fixed on the fire, that he thought he must have committed a felony and forgotten the details of it, he felt so dejected and guilty.

So furious had been the gusts that high buildings in town had had the lead stripped off their roofs;

Lead in the roofs!,,

He turned his eyes on Mr. Jaggers whenever he raised them from the table, and was as dry and distant to me as if there were twin Wemmicks and this was the wrong one.

“Now look here, my man,” said Mr. Jaggers, advancing a step, and pointing to the door. “Get out of this office. I’ll have no feelings here. Get out.” “It serves you right,” said Wemmick. “Get out.” So the unfortunate Mike very humbly withdrew, and Mr. Jaggers and Wemmick appeared to have re-established their good understanding, and went to work again with an air of refreshment upon them as if they had just had lunch.

IT WAS ONE of those March days when the sun shines hot and the wind blows cold—when it is summer in the light, and winter in the shade.

he was not disposed to be passive or resigned, as I understood it; but he had no notion of meeting danger halfway. When it came upon him, he confronted it, but it must come before he troubled himself.

He spoke in a slushy voice, as if much mud had washed into his throat.

He did this with the air of a Jack who was so right that he could afford to do anything.