Oliver Twist

by Charles Dickens

Oliver roused himself, and made his best obeisance. He had been wondering, with his eyes fixed on the magistrates’ powder, whether all boards were born with that white stuff on their heads, and were boards from thenceforth on that account.

Mr. Bumble was stupefied with astonishment. A beadle ordered to hold his tongue! A moral revolution!

A minute ago the boy had looked the quiet, mild, dejected creature that harsh treatment had made him. But his spirit was roused at last; the cruel insult to his dead mother had set his blood on fire. His breast heaved; his attitude was erect, his eye bright and vivid; his whole person changed, as he stood glaring over the cowardly tormentor who now lay crouching at his feet, and defied him with an energy he had never known before.

The blessing was from a young child’s lips, but it was the first that Oliver had ever heard invoked upon his head; and through the struggles and sufferings, and troubles and changes of his after life he never once forgot it.

A dirtier or more wretched place he had never seen.

“Stop thief! Stop thief!” There is a passion for hunting something deeply implanted in the human breast. One wretched breathless child, panting with exhaustion; terror in-his looks, agony in his eyes, large drops of perspiration streaming down his face, strains every nerve to make head upon his pursuers; and as they follow on his track, and gain upon him every instant, they hail his decreasing strength with still louder shouts, and whoop and scream with joy. “Stop thief!” Ay, stop him for God’s sake, were it only in mercy!

Mr. Fang was a lean, long-backed, stiff-necked, middle-sized man, with no great quantity of hair, and what he had, growing on the back and sides of his head. His face was stem, and much flushed. If he were really not in the habit of drinking rather more than was exactly good for him, he might have brought an action against his countenance for libel, and have recovered heavy damages.

har har har

Mr. Bumble emerged at early morning from the workhouse gate, and walked with portly carriage and commanding steps up the High Street. He was in the full bloom and pride of beadlehood; his cocked hat and coat were dazzling in the morning sun; he clutched his cane with the vigorous tenacity of health and power.

The boy was lying, fast asleep, on a rude bed upon the floor, so pale with anxiety, and sadness, and the closeness of his prison, that he looked like death—not death as it shows in shroud and coffin, but in the guise it wears when life has just departed, when a young and gentle spirit has, but an instant, fled to Heaven, and the gross air of the world has not had time to breathe upon the changing dust it hallowed.

It was market-morning. The ground was covered, nearly ankle-deep, with filth and mire; a thick steam, perpetually rising from the reeking bodies of the cattle and mingling with the fog, which seemed to rest upon the chimney-tops, hung heavily above. All the pens in the centre of the large area, and as many temporary pens as could be crowded into the vacant space, were filled with sheep; tied up to posts by the gutter side were long lines of beasts and oxen, three or four deep. Countrymen, butchers, drovers, hawkers, boys, thieves, idlers, and vagabonds of every low grade, were mingled together in a , mass; the whistling of drovers, the barking of dogs, the bellowing and plunging of oxen, the bleating of sheep, the grunting and squeaking of pigs, the cries of hawkers, the shouts, oaths, and quarrelling on all sides; the ringing of bells and roar of voices that issued from every public-house; the crowding, pushing, driving, beating, whooping, and yelling; the hideous and discordant din that resounded from every corner of the market; and the unwashed, unshaven, squalid, and dirty figures constantly running to and fro, and bursting in and out of the throng, rendered it a stunning and bewildering scene, which quite confounded the senses.

Near to the spot on which Snow Hill and Holborn Hill meet, there opens, upon the right hand as you come out of the City, a narrow and dismal alley leading to Saffron Hill. In its filthy shops are exposed for sale huge bunches of second-hand silk handkerchiefs of all sizes and patterns; for here reside the traders who purchase them from pickpockets. Hundreds of these handkerchiefs hang dangling from pegs outside the windows or flaunting from the door-posts; and the shelves, within, are piled with them. Confined as the limits of Field Lane are, it has its barber, its coffee-shop, its beer-shop, and its fried-fish warehouse. It is a commercial colony of itself, the emporium of petty larceny, visited at early morning, and setting-in of dusk, by silent merchants who traffic in dark back-parlours and who go as strangely as they come. Here the clothesman, the shoe-vamper, and the rag-merchant display their goods, as signboards to the petty thief; there, stores of old iron and bones, and heaps of mildewy fragments of woollen-stuff and linen, rust and rot in the grimy cellars.

“Don’t play booty with me.”

This is was one of my son’s favorite lines

Mr. Bumble was no longer a beadle.

Dignity, and even holiness too, sometimes, are more questions of coat and waistcoat than some people imagine.

“Are you going to sit snoring there all day?” inquired Mrs. Bumble. “I am going to sit here, as long as I think proper, ma‘am,” rejoined Mr. Bumble; “and although I was not snoring, I shall snore, gape, sneeze, laugh, or cry, as the humour strikes me, such being my prerogative.”

Love this - someone should have warned Mr. Bumble about marriage

But tears were not the things to find their way to Mr. Bumble’s soul; his heart was waterproof.

Mr. Bumble was fairly taken by surprise, and fairly beaten. He had a decided propensity for bullying, derived no inconsiderable pleasure from the exercise of petty cruelty, and consequently was (it is needless to say) a coward. This is by no means a disparagement to his character; for many official personages who are held in high respect and admiration are the victims of similar infirmities. The remark is made, indeed, rather in his favour than otherwise, and with a view of impressing the reader with a just sense of his qualifications for office.

“I’m only sixty-one,” said Mr. Grimwig, with the same rigid face. “And, as the devil’s in it if this Oliver is not twelve years old at least, I don’t see the application of that remark.” “Do not heed my friend. Miss Maylie.” said Mr. Brownlow; “he does not mean what he says.” “Yes, he does.” growled Mr. Grimwig. “No, he does not,” said Mr. Brownlow. obviously rising in wrath as he spoke. “He’ll eat his head, if he doesn‘t,” growled Mr. Grimwig. “He would deserve to have it knocked off, if he does,” said Mr. Brownlow. “And he’d uncommonly like to see any man offer to do it,” responded Mr. Grimwig, knocking his stick upon the floor. Having gone thus far, the two old gentlemen severally took snuff, and afterwards shook hands, according to their invariable custom.

Love this back and forth

THE COURT WAS PAVED, FROM FLOOR TO ROOF, WITH HUMAN faces.