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111 Works of Charles Dickens

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The Schoolboy’s Story

Story type: Literature

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Being rather young at present—I am getting on in years, but still I am rather young—I have no particular adventures of my own to fall back upon. It wouldn’t much interest anybody here, I suppose, to know what a screw the Reverend is, or what a griffin sheis, or how they do stick it into […]

A Christmas Carol

Story type: Literature

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Stave One Marley’s Ghost Marley was dead, to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. The register of his burial was signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker, and the chief mourner. Scrooge signed it. And Scrooge’s name was good upon ’Change for anything he chose to put his hand to. Old […]

The Lamplighter

Story type: Literature

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‘If you talk of Murphy and Francis Moore, gentlemen,’ said the lamplighter who was in the chair, ‘I mean to say that neither of ’em ever had any more to do with the stars than Tom Grig had.’ ‘And what had HE to do with ’em?’ asked the lamplighter who officiated as vice. ‘Nothing at […]

I was apprenticed to the Sea when I was twelve years old, and I have encountered a great deal of rough weather, both literal and metaphorical. It has always been my opinion since I first possessed such a thing as an opinion, that the man who knows only one subject is next tiresome to the […]

Doctor Marigold

Story type: Literature

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I am a Cheap Jack, and my own father’s name was Willum Marigold. It was in his lifetime supposed by some that his name was William, but my own father always consistently said, No, it was Willum. On which point I content myself with looking at the argument this way: If a man is not […]

Going into Society

Story type: Literature

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At one period of its reverses, the House fell into the occupation of a Showman. He was found registered as its occupier, on the parish books of the time when he rented the House, and there was therefore no need of any clue to his name. But, he himself was less easy to be found; […]

The River

Story type: Literature

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‘Are you fond of the water?’ is a question very frequently asked, in hot summer weather, by amphibious-looking young men. ‘Very,’ is the general reply. ‘An’t you?’–‘Hardly ever off it,’ is the response, accompanied by sundry adjectives, expressive of the speaker’s heartfelt admiration of that element. Now, with all respect for the opinion of society […]

Thoughts About People

Story type: Literature

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It is strange with how little notice, good, bad, or indifferent, a man may live and die in London. He awakens no sympathy in the breast of any single person; his existence is a matter of interest to no one save himself; he cannot be said to be forgotten when he dies, for no one […]

A Visit To Newgate

Story type: Literature

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‘The force of habit’ is a trite phrase in everybody’s mouth; and it is not a little remarkable that those who use it most as applied to others, unconsciously afford in their own persons singular examples of the power which habit and custom exercise over the minds of men, and of the little reflection they […]

Criminal Courts

Story type: Literature

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We shall never forget the mingled feelings of awe and respect with which we used to gaze on the exterior of Newgate in our schoolboy days. How dreadful its rough heavy walls, and low massive doors, appeared to us–the latter looking as if they were made for the express purpose of letting people in, and […]

Gin-Shops

Story type: Literature

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It is a remarkable circumstance, that different trades appear to partake of the disease to which elephants and dogs are especially liable, and to run stark, staring, raving mad, periodically. The great distinction between the animals and the trades, is, that the former run mad with a certain degree of propriety–they are very regular in […]

The Pawnbroker’s Shop

Story type: Literature

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Of the numerous receptacles for misery and distress with which the streets of London unhappily abound, there are, perhaps, none which present such striking scenes as the pawnbrokers’ shops. The very nature and description of these places occasions their being but little known, except to the unfortunate beings whose profligacy or misfortune drives them to […]

When we affirm that brokers’ shops are strange places, and that if an authentic history of their contents could be procured, it would furnish many a page of amusement, and many a melancholy tale, it is necessary to explain the class of shops to which we allude. Perhaps when we make use of the term […]

The First Of May

Story type: Literature

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‘Now ladies, up in the sky-parlour: only once a year, if you please!’ YOUNG LADY WITH BRASS LADLE. ‘Sweep–sweep–sw-e-ep!’ ILLEGAL WATCHWORD. The first of May! There is a merry freshness in the sound, calling to our minds a thousand thoughts of all that is pleasant in nature and beautiful in her most delightful form. What […]

A Parliamentary Sketch

Story type: Literature

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We hope our readers will not be alarmed at this rather ominous title. We assure them that we are not about to become political, neither have we the slightest intention of being more prosy than usual–if we can help it. It has occurred to us that a slight sketch of the general aspect of ‘the […]

Public Dinners

Story type: Literature

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All public dinners in London, from the Lord Mayor’s annual banquet at Guildhall, to the Chimney-sweepers’ anniversary at White Conduit House; from the Goldsmiths’ to the Butchers’, from the Sheriffs’ to the Licensed Victuallers’; are amusing scenes. Of all entertainments of this description, however, we think the annual dinner of some public charity is the […]

Omnibuses

Story type: Literature

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It is very generally allowed that public conveyances afford an extensive field for amusement and observation. Of all the public conveyances that have been constructed since the days of the Ark– we think that is the earliest on record–to the present time, commend us to an omnibus. A long stage is not to be despised, […]

Of all the cabriolet-drivers whom we have ever had the honour and gratification of knowing by sight–and our acquaintance in this way has been most extensive–there is one who made an impression on our mind which can never be effaced, and who awakened in our bosom a feeling of admiration and respect, which we entertain […]

Vauxhall-Gardens By Day

Story type: Literature

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There was a time when if a man ventured to wonder how Vauxhall- gardens would look by day, he was hailed with a shout of derision at the absurdity of the idea. Vauxhall by daylight! A porter-pot without porter, the House of Commons without the Speaker, a gas- lamp without the gas–pooh, nonsense, the thing […]

Early Coaches

Story type: Literature

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We have often wondered how many months’ incessant travelling in a post-chaise it would take to kill a man; and wondering by analogy, we should very much like to know how many months of constant travelling in a succession of early coaches, an unfortunate mortal could endure. Breaking a man alive upon the wheel, would […]

Greenwich Fair

Story type: Literature

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If the Parks be ‘the lungs of London,’ we wonder what Greenwich Fair is–a periodical breaking out, we suppose, a sort of spring- rash: a three days’ fever, which cools the blood for six months afterwards, and at the expiration of which London is restored to its old habits of plodding industry, as suddenly and […]

Private Theatres

Story type: Literature

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‘RICHARD THE THIRD.–DUKE OF GLO’STER 2l.; EARL OF RICHMOND, 1l; DUKE OF BUCKINGHAM, 15s.; CATESBY, 12s.; TRESSEL, 10s. 6d.; LORD STANLEY, 5s.; LORD MAYOR OF LONDON, 2s. 6d.’ Such are the written placards wafered up in the gentlemen’s dressing-room, or the green-room (where there is any), at a private theatre; and such are the sums […]

Astley’s

Story type: Literature

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We never see any very large, staring, black Roman capitals, in a book, or shop-window, or placarded on a wall, without their immediately recalling to our mind an indistinct and confused recollection of the time when we were first initiated in the mysteries of the alphabet. We almost fancy we see the pin’s point following […]

London Recreations

Story type: Literature

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The wish of persons in the humbler classes of life, to ape the manners and customs of those whom fortune has placed above them, is often the subject of remark, and not unfrequently of complaint. The inclination may, and no doubt does, exist to a great extent, among the small gentility–the would-be aristocrats–of the middle […]

Doctors’ Commons

Story type: Literature

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Walking without any definite object through St. Paul’s Churchyard, a little while ago, we happened to turn down a street entitled ‘Paul’s-chain,’ and keeping straight forward for a few hundred yards, found ourself, as a natural consequence, in Doctors’ Commons. Now Doctors’ Commons being familiar by name to everybody, as the place where they grant […]

Hackney-Coach Stands

Story type: Literature

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We maintain that hackney-coaches, properly so called, belong solely to the metropolis. We may be told, that there are hackney-coach stands in Edinburgh; and not to go quite so far for a contradiction to our position, we may be reminded that Liverpool, Manchester, ‘and other large towns’ (as the Parliamentary phrase goes), have THEIR hackney-coach […]

Seven Dials

Story type: Literature

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We have always been of opinion that if Tom King and the Frenchman had not immortalised Seven Dials, Seven Dials would have immortalised itself. Seven Dials! the region of song and poetry– first effusions, and last dying speeches: hallowed by the names of Catnach and of Pitts–names that will entwine themselves with costermongers, and barrel-organs, […]

We have always entertained a particular attachment towards Monmouth-street, as the only true and real emporium for second-hand wearing apparel. Monmouth-street is venerable from its antiquity, and respectable from its usefulness. Holywell-street we despise; the red-headed and red-whiskered Jews who forcibly haul you into their squalid houses, and thrust you into a suit of clothes, […]

Scotland-Yard

Story type: Literature

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Scotland-yard is a small–a very small-tract of land, bounded on one side by the river Thames, on the other by the gardens of Northumberland House: abutting at one end on the bottom of Northumberland-street, at the other on the back of Whitehall-place. When this territory was first accidentally discovered by a country gentleman who lost […]

Shops And Their Tenants

Story type: Literature

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What inexhaustible food for speculation, do the streets of London afford! We never were able to agree with Sterne in pitying the man who could travel from Dan to Beersheba, and say that all was barren; we have not the slightest commiseration for the man who can take up his hat and stick, and walk […]

The Streets – Night

Story type: Literature

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But the streets of London, to be beheld in the very height of their glory, should be seen on a dark, dull, murky winter’s night, when there is just enough damp gently stealing down to make the pavement greasy, without cleansing it of any of its impurities; and when the heavy lazy mist, which hangs […]

The Streets – Morning

Story type: Literature

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The appearance presented by the streets of London an hour before sunrise, on a summer’s morning, is most striking even to the few whose unfortunate pursuits of pleasure, or scarcely less unfortunate pursuits of business, cause them to be well acquainted with the scene. There is an air of cold, solitary desolation about the noiseless […]

Our Next-Door Neighbour

Story type: Literature

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We are very fond of speculating as we walk through a street, on the character and pursuits of the people who inhabit it; and nothing so materially assists us in these speculations as the appearance of the house doors. The various expressions of the human countenance afford a beautiful and interesting study; but there is […]

The Ladies’ Societies

Story type: Literature

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Our Parish is very prolific in ladies’ charitable institutions. In winter, when wet feet are common, and colds not scarce, we have the ladies’ soup distribution society, the ladies’ coal distribution society, and the ladies’ blanket distribution society; in summer, when stone fruits flourish and stomach aches prevail, we have the ladies’ dispensary, and the […]

The Broker’s Man

Story type: Literature

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The excitement of the late election has subsided, and our parish being once again restored to a state of comparative tranquillity, we are enabled to devote our attention to those parishioners who take little share in our party contests or in the turmoil and bustle of public life. And we feel sincere pleasure in acknowledging […]

The Four Sisters

Story type: Literature

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The row of houses in which the old lady and her troublesome neighbour reside, comprises, beyond all doubt, a greater number of characters within its circumscribed limits, than all the rest of the parish put together. As we cannot, consistently with our present plan, however, extend the number of our parochial sketches beyond six, it […]

The Election For Beadle

Story type: Literature

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A great event has recently occurred in our parish. A contest of paramount interest has just terminated; a parochial convulsion has taken place. It has been succeeded by a glorious triumph, which the country–or at least the parish–it is all the same–will long remember. We have had an election; an election for beadle. The supporters […]

We commenced our last chapter with the beadle of our parish, because we are deeply sensible of the importance and dignity of his office. We will begin the present, with the clergyman. Our curate is a young gentleman of such prepossessing appearance, and fascinating manners, that within one month after his first appearance in the […]

How much is conveyed in those two short words–‘The Parish!’ And with how many tales of distress and misery, of broken fortune and ruined hopes, too often of unrelieved wretchedness and successful knavery, are they associated! A poor man, with small earnings, and a large family, just manages to live on from hand to mouth, […]

The Parlour Orator

Story type: Literature

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We had been lounging one evening, down Oxford-street, Holborn, Cheapside, Coleman-street, Finsbury-square, and so on, with the intention of returning westward, by Pentonville and the New-road, when we began to feel rather thirsty, and disposed to rest for five or ten minutes. So, we turned back towards an old, quiet, decent public-house, which we remembered […]

The Hospital Patient

Story type: Literature

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In our rambles through the streets of London after evening has set in, we often pause beneath the windows of some public hospital, and picture to ourself the gloomy and mournful scenes that are passing within. The sudden moving of a taper as its feeble ray shoots from window to window, until its light gradually […]

The New Year

Story type: Literature

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Next to Christmas-day, the most pleasant annual epoch in existence is the advent of the New Year. There are a lachrymose set of people who usher in the New Year with watching and fasting, as if they were bound to attend as chief mourners at the obsequies of the old one. Now, we cannot but […]

Mr. Samuel Wilkins was a carpenter, a journeyman carpenter of small dimensions, decidedly below the middle size–bordering, perhaps, upon the dwarfish. His face was round and shining, and his hair carefully twisted into the outer corner of each eye, till it formed a variety of that description of semi-curls, usually known as ‘aggerawators.’ His earnings […]

Where had he been in his time? he repeated, when I asked him the question, Lord, he had been everywhere! And what had he been? Bless you, he had been everything you could mention, a’most! Seen a good deal? Why, of course he had. I should say so, he could assure me, if I only […]

THE TRIAL OF WILLIAM TINKLING WRITTEN BY HIMSELF AT THE AGE OF 8 YEARS BY CHARLES DICKENS FOREWORD The story contained herein was written by Charles Dickens in 1867. It is the first of four stories entitled “Holiday Romance” and was published originally in a children’s magazine in America. It purports to be written by […]

CHAPTER THE FIRST Matrimony is proverbially a serious undertaking. Like an over- weening predilection for brandy-and-water, it is a misfortune into which a man easily falls, and from which he finds it remarkably difficult to extricate himself. It is of no use telling a man who is timorous on these points, that it is but […]

The Drunkard’s Death

Story type: Literature

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We will be bold to say, that there is scarcely a man in the constant habit of walking, day after day, through any of the crowded thoroughfares of London, who cannot recollect among the people whom he ‘knows by sight,’ to use a familiar phrase, some being of abject and wretched appearance whom he remembers […]

Mr. Nicodemus Dumps, or, as his acquaintance called him, ‘long Dumps,’ was a bachelor, six feet high, and fifty years old: cross, cadaverous, odd, and ill-natured. He was never happy but when he was miserable; and always miserable when he had the best reason to be happy. The only real comfort of his existence was […]

Mrs. Joseph Porter

Story type: Literature

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Most extensive were the preparations at Rose Villa, Clapham Rise, in the occupation of Mr. Gattleton (a stock-broker in especially comfortable circumstances), and great was the anxiety of Mr. Gattleton’s interesting family, as the day fixed for the representation of the Private Play which had been ‘many months in preparation,’ approached. The whole family was […]

The little town of Great Winglebury is exactly forty-two miles and three-quarters from Hyde Park corner. It has a long, straggling, quiet High-street, with a great black and white clock at a small red Town-hall, half-way up–a market-place–a cage–an assembly- room–a church–a bridge–a chapel–a theatre–a library–an inn–a pump–and a Post-office. Tradition tells of a ‘Little […]

The Steam Excursion

Story type: Literature

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Mr. Percy Noakes was a law student, inhabiting a set of chambers on the fourth floor, in one of those houses in Gray’s-inn-square which command an extensive view of the gardens, and their usual adjuncts- -flaunting nursery-maids, and town-made children, with parenthetical legs. Mr. Percy Noakes was what is generally termed- -‘a devilish good fellow.’ […]

The Black Veil

Story type: Literature

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One winter’s evening, towards the close of the year 1800, or within a year or two of that time, a young medical practitioner, recently established in business, was seated by a cheerful fire in his little parlour, listening to the wind which was beating the rain in pattering drops against the window, or rumbling dismally […]

Horatio Sparkins

Story type: Literature

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‘Indeed, my love, he paid Teresa very great attention on the last assembly night,’ said Mrs. Malderton, addressing her spouse, who, after the fatigues of the day in the City, was sitting with a silk handkerchief over his head, and his feet on the fender, drinking his port;–‘very great attention; and I say again, every […]

The Tuggses At Ramsgate

Story type: Literature

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Once upon a time there dwelt, in a narrow street on the Surrey side of the water, within three minutes’ walk of old London Bridge, Mr. Joseph Tuggs–a little dark-faced man, with shiny hair, twinkling eyes, short legs, and a body of very considerable thickness, measuring from the centre button of his waistcoat in front, […]

Sentiment

Story type: Literature

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The Miss Crumptons, or to quote the authority of the inscription on the garden-gate of Minerva House, Hammersmith, ‘The Misses Crumpton,’ were two unusually tall, particularly thin, and exceedingly skinny personages: very upright, and very yellow. Miss Amelia Crumpton owned to thirty-eight, and Miss Maria Crumpton admitted she was forty; an admission which was rendered […]

Mr. Augustus Minns was a bachelor, of about forty as he said–of about eight-and-forty as his friends said. He was always exceedingly clean, precise, and tidy; perhaps somewhat priggish, and the most retiring man in the world. He usually wore a brown frock-coat without a wrinkle, light inexplicables without a spot, a neat neckerchief with […]

The Boarding-House

Story type: Literature

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CHAPTER I. Mrs. Tibbs was, beyond all dispute, the most tidy, fidgety, thrifty little personage that ever inhaled the smoke of London; and the house of Mrs. Tibbs was, decidedly, the neatest in all Great Coram- street. The area and the area-steps, and the street-door and the street-door steps, and the brass handle, and the […]

The Prisoners’ Van

Story type: Literature

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We were passing the corner of Bow-street, on our return from a lounging excursion the other afternoon, when a crowd, assembled round the door of the Police-office, attracted our attention. We turned up the street accordingly. There were thirty or forty people, standing on the pavement and half across the road; and a few stragglers […]

Making A Night Of It

Story type: Literature

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Damon and Pythias were undoubtedly very good fellows in their way: the former for his extreme readiness to put in special bail for a friend: and the latter for a certain trump-like punctuality in turning up just in the very nick of time, scarcely less remarkable. Many points in their character have, however, grown obsolete. […]

Shabby-Genteel People

Story type: Literature

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There are certain descriptions of people who, oddly enough, appear to appertain exclusively to the metropolis. You meet them, every day, in the streets of London, but no one ever encounters them elsewhere; they seem indigenous to the soil, and to belong as exclusively to London as its own smoke, or the dingy bricks and […]

Miss Amelia Martin was pale, tallish, thin, and two-and-thirty– what ill-natured people would call plain, and police reports interesting. She was a milliner and dressmaker, living on her business and not above it. If you had been a young lady in service, and had wanted Miss Martin, as a great many young ladies in service […]

The Dancing Academy

Story type: Literature

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Of all the dancing academies that ever were established, there never was one more popular in its immediate vicinity than Signor Billsmethi’s, of the ‘King’s Theatre.’ It was not in Spring- gardens, or Newman-street, or Berners-street, or Gower-street, or Charlotte-street, or Percy-street, or any other of the numerous streets which have been devoted time out […]

If we had to make a classification of society, there is a particular kind of men whom we should immediately set down under the head of ‘Old Boys;’ and a column of most extensive dimensions the old boys would require. To what precise causes the rapid advance of old-boy population is to be traced, we […]

THERE was once a child, and he strolled about a good deal, and thought of a number of things. He had a sister, who was a child too, and his constant companion. These two used to wonder all day long. They wondered at the beauty of the flowers; they wondered at the height and blueness […]

THE amount of money he annually diverts from wholesome and useful purposes in the United Kingdom, would be a set-off against the Window Tax. He is one of the most shameless frauds and impositions of this time. In his idleness, his mendacity, and the immeasurable harm he does to the deserving, – dirtying the stream […]

IN the Autumn-time of the year, when the great metropolis is so much hotter, so much noisier, so much more dusty or so much more water-carted, so much more crowded, so much more disturbing and distracting in all respects, than it usually is, a quiet sea-beach becomes indeed a blessed spot. Half awake and half […]

HAVING earned, by many years of fidelity, the right to be sometimes inconstant to our English watering-place, we have dallied for two or three seasons with a French watering-place: once solely known to us as a town with a very long street, beginning with an abattoir and ending with a steam-boat, which it seemed our […]

Bill-Sticking

Story type: Literature

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IF I had an enemy whom I hated – which Heaven forbid! – and if I knew of something which sat heavy on his conscience, I think I would introduce that something into a Posting-Bill, and place a large impression in the hands of an active sticker. I can scarcely imagine a more terrible revenge. […]

MY name is Meek. I am, in fact, Mr. Meek. That son is mine and Mrs. Meek’s. When I saw the announcement in the Times, I dropped the paper. I had put it in, myself, and paid for it, but it looked so noble that it overpowered me. As soon as I could compose my […]

Lying Awake

Story type: Literature

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‘MY uncle lay with his eyes half closed, and his nightcap drawn almost down to his nose. His fancy was already wandering, and began to mingle up the present scene with the crater of Vesuvius, the French Opera, the Coliseum at Rome, Dolly’s Chop-house in London, and all the farrago of noted places with which […]

The Ghost of Art

Story type: Literature

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I AM a bachelor, residing in rather a dreary set of chambers in the Temple. They are situated in a square court of high houses, which would be a complete well, but for the want of water and the absence of a bucket. I live at the top of the house, among the tiles and […]

I AM not used to writing for print. What working-man, that never labours less (some Mondays, and Christmas Time and Easter Time excepted) than twelve or fourteen hours a day, is? But I have been asked to put down, plain, what I have got to say; and so I take pen-and-ink, and do it to […]

Out of the Season

Story type: Literature

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IT fell to my lot, this last bleak Spring, to find myself in a watering-place out of the Season. A vicious north-east squall blew me into it from foreign parts, and I tarried in it alone for three days, resolved to be exceedingly busy. On the first day, I began business by looking for two […]

Out of Town

Story type: Literature

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SITTING, on a bright September morning, among my books and papers at my open window on the cliff overhanging the sea-beach, I have the sky and ocean framed before me like a beautiful picture. A beautiful picture, but with such movement in it, such changes of light upon the sails of ships and wake of […]

HOW goes the night? Saint Giles’s clock is striking nine. The weather is dull and wet, and the long lines of street lamps are blurred, as if we saw them through tears. A damp wind blows and rakes the pieman’s fire out, when he opens the door of his little furnace, carrying away an eddy […]

The Detective Police

Story type: Literature

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WE are not by any means devout believers in the old Bow Street Police. To say the truth, we think there was a vast amount of humbug about those worthies. Apart from many of them being men of very indifferent character, and far too much in the habit of consorting with thieves and the like, […]

I. THE PAIR OF GLOVES ‘IT’S a singler story, sir,’ said Inspector Wield, of the Detective Police, who, in company with Sergeants Dornton and Mith, paid us another twilight visit, one July evening; ‘and I’ve been thinking you might like to know it. ‘It’s concerning the murder of the young woman, Eliza Grimwood, some years […]

The Noble Savage

Story type: Literature

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TO come to the point at once, I beg to say that I have not the least belief in the Noble Savage. I consider him a prodigious nuisance, and an enormous superstition. His calling rum fire- water, and me a pale face, wholly fail to reconcile me to him. I don’t care what he calls […]

A Flight

Story type: Literature

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WHEN Don Diego de – I forget his name – the inventor of the last new Flying Machines, price so many francs for ladies, so many more for gentlemen – when Don Diego, by permission of Deputy Chaff-wax and his noble band, shall have taken out a Patent for the Queen’s dominions, and shall have […]

Prince Bull

Story type: Literature

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ONCE upon a time, and of course it was in the Golden Age, and I hope you may know when that was, for I am sure I don’t, though I have tried hard to find out, there lived in a rich and fertile country, a powerful Prince whose name was BULL. He had gone through […]

A Walk in a Workhouse

Story type: Literature

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ON a certain Sunday, I formed one of the congregation assembled in the chapel of a large metropolitan Workhouse. With the exception of the clergyman and clerk, and a very few officials, there were none but paupers present. The children sat in the galleries; the women in the body of the chapel, and in one […]

Down with the Tide

Story type: Literature

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A VERY dark night it was, and bitter cold; the east wind blowing bleak, and bringing with it stinging particles from marsh, and moor, and fen – from the Great Desert and Old Egypt, may be. Some of the component parts of the sharp-edged vapour that came flying up the Thames at London might be […]

Our Bore

Story type: Literature

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IT is unnecessary to say that we keep a bore. Everybody does. But, the bore whom we have the pleasure and honour of enumerating among our particular friends, is such a generic bore, and has so many traits (as it appears to us) in common with the great bore family, that we are tempted to […]

Our School

Story type: Literature

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WE went to look at it, only this last Midsummer, and found that the Railway had cut it up root and branch. A great trunk-line had swallowed the playground, sliced away the schoolroom, and pared off the corner of the house: which, thus curtailed of its proportions, presented itself, in a green stage of stucco, […]

Our Vestry

Story type: Literature

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WE have the glorious privilege of being always in hot water if we like. We are a shareholder in a Great Parochial British Joint Stock Bank of Balderdash. We have a Vestry in our borough, and can vote for a vestryman – might even BE a vestryman, mayhap, if we were inspired by a lofty […]

Plated Article

Story type: Literature

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PUTTING up for the night in one of the chiefest towns of Staffordshire, I find it to be by no means a lively town. In fact, it is as dull and dead a town as any one could desire not to see. It seems as if its whole population might be imprisoned in its Railway […]

Our Honourable Friend

Story type: Literature

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WE are delighted to find that he has got in! Our honourable friend is triumphantly returned to serve in the next Parliament. He is the honourable member for Verbosity – the best represented place in England. Our honourable friend has issued an address of congratulation to the Electors, which is worthy of that noble constituency, […]

To The Right ReverendTHE BISHOP OF LONDON MY LORD, You were among the first, some years ago, to expatiate on the vicious addiction of the lower classes of society to Sunday excursions; and were thus instrumental in calling forth occasional demonstrations of those extreme opinions on the subject, which are very generally received with derision, […]

IT was profoundly observed by a witty member of the Court of Common Council, in Council assembled in the City of London, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and fifty, that the French are a frog-eating people, who wear wooden shoes. We are credibly informed, in reference to the nation whom […]

TO THE YOUNG LADIESOF THE UNITED KINGDOMOF GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND;ALSO THE YOUNG LADIES OF THE PRINCIPALITY OF WALES,AND LIKEWISETHE YOUNG LADIES RESIDENT IN THE ISLESOF GUERNSEY, JERSEY, ALDERNEY, AND SARK,THE HUMBLE DEDICATION OF THEIR DEVOTED ADMIRER,SHEWETH, – THAT your Dedicator has perused, with feelings of virtuous indignation, a work purporting to be ‘Sketches of […]

Somebody’s Luggage

Story type: Literature

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CHAPTER I. HIS LEAVING IT TILL CALLED FOR The writer of these humble lines being a Waiter, and having come of a family of Waiters, and owning at the present time five brothers who are all Waiters, and likewise an only sister who is a Waitress, would wish to offer a few words respecting his […]

Tom Tiddler’s Ground

Story type: Literature

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CHAPTER I. PICKING UP SOOT AND CINDERS “And why Tom Tiddler’s ground?” said the Traveller. “Because he scatters halfpence to Tramps and such-like,” returned the Landlord, “and of course they pick ’em up. And this being done on his own land (which it IS his own land, you observe, and were his family’s before him), […]

To Be Read At Dusk

Story type: Literature

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One, two, three, four, five. There were five of them. Five couriers, sitting on a bench outside the convent on the summit of the Great St. Bernard in Switzerland, looking at the remote heights, stained by the setting sun as if a mighty quantity of red wine had been broached upon the mountain top, and […]

Mugby Junction

Story type: Literature

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CHAPTER I. BARBOX BROTHERS “Guard! What place is this?” “Mugby Junction, sir.” “A windy place!” “Yes, it mostly is, sir.” “And looks comfortless indeed!” “Yes, it generally does, sir.” “Is it a rainy night still?” “Pours, sir.” “Open the door. I’ll get out.” “You’ll have, sir,” said the guard, glistening with drops of wet, and […]

CHAPTER I. IN THE OLD CITY OF ROCHESTER Strictly speaking, there were only six Poor Travellers; but, being a Traveller myself, though an idle one, and being withal as poor as I hope to be, I brought the number up to seven. This word of explanation is due at once, for what says the inscription […]

AN URGENT REMONSTRANCE, &c; TO THE GENTLEMEN OF ENGLAND, (BEING BACHELORS OR WIDOWERS,) THE REMONSTRANCE OF THEIR FAITHFUL FELLOW-SUBJECT, SHEWETH,- THAT Her Most Gracious Majesty, Victoria, by the Grace of God of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland Queen, Defender of the Faith, did, on the 23rd day of November last past, declare […]

A Message From the Sea

Story type: Literature

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CHAPTER I. THE VILLAGE “And a mighty sing’lar and pretty place it is, as ever I saw in all the days of my life!” said Captain Jorgan, looking up at it. Captain Jorgan had to look high to look at it, for the village was built sheer up the face of a steep and lofty […]

CHAPTER I. HOW MRS. LIRRIPER CARRIED ON THE BUSINESS Whoever would begin to be worried with letting Lodgings that wasn’t a lone woman with a living to get is a thing inconceivable to me, my dear; excuse the familiarity, but it comes natural to me in my own little room, when wishing to open my […]

CHAPTER I–MRS. LIRRIPER RELATES HOW SHE WENT ON, AND WENT OVER Ah! It’s pleasant to drop into my own easy-chair my dear though a little palpitating what with trotting up-stairs and what with trotting down, and why kitchen stairs should all be corner stairs is for the builders to justify though I do not think […]

We have a great respect for lions in the abstract. In common with most other people, we have heard and read of many instances of their bravery and generosity. We have duly admired that heroic self-denial and charming philanthropy which prompts them never to eat people except when they are hungry, and we have been […]

In the parlour of the Green Dragon, a public-house in the immediate neighbourhood of Westminster Bridge, everybody talks politics, every evening, the great political authority being Mr. Robert Bolton, an individual who defines himself as ‘a gentleman connected with the press,’ which is a definition of peculiar indefiniteness. Mr. Robert Bolton’s regular circle of admirers […]

MY CHILD, To recount with what trouble I have brought you up–with what an anxious eye I have regarded your progress,–how late and how often I have sat up at night working for you,–and how many thousand letters I have received from, and written to your various relations and friends, many of whom have been […]

CHAPTER I. THE ISLAND OF SILVER-STORE It was in the year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and forty- four, that I, Gill Davis to command, His Mark, having then the honour to be a private in the Royal Marines, stood a-leaning over the bulwarks of the armed sloop Christopher Columbus, in the South […]

The Long Voyage

Story type: Literature

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WHEN the wind is blowing and the sleet or rain is driving against the dark windows, I love to sit by the fire, thinking of what I have read in books of voyage and travel. Such books have had a strong fascination for my mind from my earliest childhood; and I wonder it should have […]

Mudfog is a pleasant town–a remarkably pleasant town–situated in a charming hollow by the side of a river, from which river, Mudfog derives an agreeable scent of pitch, tar, coals, and rope-yarn, a roving population in oilskin hats, a pretty steady influx of drunken bargemen, and a great many other maritime advantages. There is a […]

We have made the most unparalleled and extraordinary exertions to place before our readers a complete and accurate account of the proceedings at the late grand meeting of the Mudfog Association, holden in the town of Mudfog; it affords us great happiness to lay the result before them, in the shape of various communications received […]

In October last, we did ourselves the immortal credit of recording, at an enormous expense, and by dint of exertions unnpralleled in the history of periodical publication, the proceedings of the Mudfog Association for the Advancement of Everything, which in that month held its first great half-yearly meeting, to the wonder and delight of the […]

The Pantomime Of Life

Story type: Literature

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Before we plunge headlong into this paper, let us at once confess to a fondness for pantomimes–to a gentle sympathy with clowns and pantaloons–to an unqualified admiration of harlequins and columbines–to a chaste delight in every action of their brief existence, varied and many-coloured as those actions are, and inconsistent though they occasionally be with […]

The Trial For Murder

Story type: Literature

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I have always noticed a prevalent want of courage, even among persons of superior intelligence and culture, as to imparting their own psychological experiences when those have been of a strange sort. Almost all men are afraid that what they could relate in such wise would find no parallel or response in a listener’s internal […]

The Signal-Man

Story type: Literature

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“Halloa! Below there!” When he heard a voice thus calling to him, he was standing at the door of his box, with a flag in his hand, furled round its short pole. One would have thought, considering the nature of the ground, that he could not have doubted from what quarter the voice came; but […]

The Haunted House

Story type: Horror

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CHAPTER I–THE MORTALS IN THE HOUSE Under none of the accredited ghostly circumstances, and environed by none of the conventional ghostly surroundings, did I first make acquaintance with the house which is the subject of this Christmas piece. I saw it in the daylight, with the sun upon it. There was no wind, no rain, […]