Here on the head of an empty barrel stood on end were an ink-bottle, some old stumps of pens, and some dirty playbills; and against the wall were pasted several large printed alphabets in several plain hands. “What are you doing here?” asked my guardian. “Trying to learn myself to read and write,” said Krook.
You!’ said the old man contemptuously. ‘What do you know of the time when young men shut themselves up in those lonely rooms, and read and read, hour after hour, and night after night, till their reason wandered beneath their midnight studies; till their mental powers were exhausted; till morning’s light brought no freshness or health to them; and they sank beneath the unnatural devotion of their youthful energies to their dry old books?
Scanty and insufficient suppers those, and innocent of meat, as if most other sauce to wretched bread. Yet, human fellowship infused some nourishment into the flinty viands, and struck some sparks of cheerfulness out of them. Fathers and mothers who had had their full share in the worst of the day, played gently with their meager children; and lovers, with such a word around then and before them, loved and hoped.
I resolved to tell my guardian that I doubted Orlick being the right sort of man to fill a post of trust at Miss Havisham’s. ‘Why of course he is not the right sort of man, Pip,’ said my guardian, comfortably satisfied beforehand on the general head, ’because the man who fills the post of trust never is the right sort of man.
Foul weather didn’t know where to have him.
The time was to come, when that wine too would be spilled on the street-stones, and when the stain of it would be red upon many there.
You dogs!” said the Marquis, but smoothly, and with an unchanged front, except as to the spots on his nose: “I would ride over any of you very willingly, and exterminate you from the earth. If I knew which rascal threw at the carriage, and if that brigand were sufficiently near it, he should be crushed under the wheels.
There is nothing I would not have given you to have had you deserve my old opinion of you; nothing!
There could not well be more ink splashed about it, if it had been roofless from its first construction, and the skies had rained, snowed, hailed, and blown ink through the varying seasons of the year.
No. I lay in my basket, and my mother lay in her bed; but Betsey Trotwood Copperfield was for ever in the land of dreams and shadows, the tremendous region whence I had so lately travelled; and the light upon the window of our room shone out upon the earthly bourne of all such travellers, and the mound above the ashes and the dust that once was he, without whom I had never been.
Confused by the emotion of the day, and feeling his being there with this Double of coarse deportment, to be like a dream, Charles Darnay was at a loss how to answer; finally, answered not at all. “Now your dinner is done,” Carton presently said, “why don’t you call a health, Mr. Darnay; why don’t you give your toast?” “What health? What toast?” “Why, it’s on the tip.
O Miss Manette, when the little picture of a happy father’s face looks up in yours, when you see your own bright beauty springing up anew at your feet, think now and then that there is a man who would give his life, to keep a life you love beside you!
That, they never could lay their heads upon their pillows; that, they never could tolerate the idea of their wives laying their heads upon their pillows; that, they never could endure the notion of their children laying their heads upon their pillows; in short, that there never more could be, for them or theirs, any laying of heads upon pillows at all, unless the prisoner’s head was taken off.
The last burst carried the mail to the summit of the hill. The horses stopped to breathe again, and the guard got down to skid the wheel for the descent, and open the coach-door to let the passengers in.
On this matter I’m inclined to agree with the French, who gaze upon any personal dietary prohibition as bad manners.
It is one of the easiest achievements in life to offend your family when your family want to get rid of you.
Thus, with no one to advise her – for she could advise with no one without seeming to complain against him – gentle Florence tossed on an uneasy sea of doubt and hope; and Mr. Carker, like a scaly monster of the deep, swam down below, and kept his shining eye upon her.
Hunger was shred into atomics in every farthing porringer of husky chips of potato, fried with some reluctant drops of oil.
I have been able to raise my thoughts to Him who was put to death, that we might have hope and comfort here to-day. I think you were sent to me by Heaven.
He takes out his anger by having his carriage speed through the streets, scattering the commoners in the way.