I did what you would probably have done in my place. I modestly declared myself to be quite unequal to the task imposed upon me – and I privately felt, all the time, that I was quite clever enough to perform it.
And then he said – not bitterly – that he would die as he had lived, forgotten and unknown. He maintained that resolution to the last. There is no hope now of making any discoveries concerning him. His story is a blank.
Let my grave be forgotten. Give me your word of honour that you will allow no monument of any sort – not even the commonest tombstone – to mark the place of my burial. Let me sleep, nameless. Let me rest, unknown.
When we are isolated and poor, we are not infrequently forgotten.
It is plain that she has loved him, throughout the estrangement between them.
Fancy and Imagination, Grace and Beauty, all those qualities which are to the work of Art what scent and colour are to the flower, can only grow towards heaven by taking root in earth.
Nothing in this world, Betteredge, is probable unless it appeals to our own trumpery experience; and we only believe in a romance when we see it in a newspaper.
When things are at the worst, they’re sure to mend. Things can’t be much worse, Mr. Franklin, than they are now.
But then I am an imaginative man; and the butcher, the baker, and the tax-gatherer are not the only credible realities in existence to my mind.
The past and present rose side by side, at that supreme moment – and the contrast shook me.
Ha, Mr. Betteredge, the day is not far off when the poor will rise against the rich. I pray Heaven they may begin with him. I pray Heaven they may begin with him.
Many men, many opinions, as one of the ancients said, before my time.
I think it will end here. When I can bear it no longer, I think it will end here.
Cultivate a superiority to reason, and see how you pare the claws of all the sensible people when they try to scratch you for your own good!
That detestable product of the folly of our fore-fathers – a feather-bed.
If you are as tired of reading this narrative as I am of writing it – Lord, how we shall enjoy ourselves on both sides a few pages further on!
I wonder how Blackwater Park will look in the daytime? I don’t altogether like it by night.
On hearing these dreadful words my daughter Penelope said she didn’t know what prevented her heart from flying straight out of her. I thought privately it might have been her stays.
I found her at the head of the sofa when I returned. She was just touching his forehead with her lips. I shook my head as soberly as I could and pointed to her chair. She looked back at me with a bright smile and a charming colour in her face. “You would have done it,” she whispered. “In my place.
On the next day, the established Sunday tyranny which is one of the institutions of this free country, so times the trains as to make it impossible to ask anybody to travel to us from London.
I saw the pony harnessed myself. In the infernal network of mysteries and uncertainties that now surrounded us, I declare it was a relief to observe how well the buckles and straps understood each other! When you had seen the pony backed into the shafts of the chaise, you had seen something there was no doubt about. And that, let me tell you, was becoming a treat of the rarest kind in our household.