The Life of Charles DickensUniversity Society, 1908 - 521 pages |
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admirable afterwards American amusing audience Barnaby Rudge Beaucourt beautiful Bleak House Boston Broadstairs called carriage character Charles Dickens child Christmas course David Copperfield dear death delightful Dickens's dinner Dolby Dombey Dombey and Son door England English eyes face fancy father favourite feeling fiction Forster French Gadshill genius Genoa hand happy heart honour humour imagination Kate kind lady last night letter literary Little Dorrit lived London look Lord manner Marshalsea Martin Chuzzlewit master miles morning nature never Nicholas Nickleby Nickleby novel o'clock Old Curiosity Shop Oliver Twist passed pathos Pickwick picture poor popular reader round scene seems seen Sketches spirit story streets tell theatre things thought tion told took travelling turned walk Washington Irving whole Wilkie Collins window wonderful writing written wrote York young
Popular passages
Page 431 - Oh ! but he was a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone, Scrooge! a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous old sinner! Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire ; secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster.
Page 1 - ... into a dark letterbox, in a dark office, up a dark court in Fleet Street — appeared in all the glory of print; on which occasion, by-the-bye, — how well I recollect it!
Page 118 - ... painted The ruddy tints of health On haggard face and form that drooped and fainted In the fierce race for wealth; Till one arose, and from his pack's scant treasure A hoarded volume drew, And cards were dropped from hands of listless leisure To hear the tale anew. And then, while round them shadows gathered faster, And as the firelight fell. He read aloud the book wherein the Master Had writ of "Little Nell.
Page 320 - ... SUNSET and evening star, And one clear call for me! And may there be no moaning of the bar, When I put out to sea, But such a tide as moving seems asleep, Too full for sound and foam, When that which drew from out the boundless deep Turns again home. Twilight and evening bell, And after that the dark! And may there be no sadness of farewell, When I embark; For though from out our bourne of Time and Place The flood may bear me far, I hope to see my Pilot face to face When I have crossed the bar.
Page 431 - 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.
Page 282 - But they didn't devote the whole evening to music. After a while they played at forfeits; for it is good to be children sometimes, and never better than at Christmas, when its mighty Founder was a child himself.
Page 108 - twas boyish fancy — for the reader Was youngest of them all — , But, as he read, from clustering pine and cedar A silence seemed to fall; The nr~trees, gathering closer in the shadows, Listened in every spray, While the whole camp, with "Nell...
Page 269 - From that blessed little room, Roderick Random, Peregrine Pickle, Humphrey Clinker, Tom Jones, the Vicar of Wakefield, Don Quixote, Gil Bias, and Robinson Crusoe, came out, a glorious host, to keep me company. They kept alive my fancy, and my hope of something beyond that place and time, — they, and the Arabian Nights, and the Tales of the Genii...
Page 311 - Its antiquities and ruins are surpassingly beautiful, with a lusty ivy gleaming in the sun, and the rich trees waving in the balmy air. Changes of glorious light from moving boughs, songs of birds, scents from gardens, woods, and fields — or, rather, from the one great garden of the whole cultivated island in its yielding time...
Page 89 - I know that I have lounged about the streets, insufficiently and unsatisfactorily fed. I know that, but for the mercy of God, I might easily have been, for any care that was taken of me, a little robber or a little vagabond.