David Copperfield quotes

Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show.

To begin my life with the beginning of my life, I record that I was born (as I have been informed and believe) on a Friday, at twelve o’clock at night.

To begin my life with the beginning of my life, I record that I was born (as I have been informed and believe) on a Friday, at twelve o’clock at night.

It was remarked that the clock began to strike, and I began to cry, simultaneously.

In consideration of the day and hour of my birth, it was declared by the nurse, and by some sage women in the neighbourhood who had taken a lively interest in me several months before there was any possibility of our becoming personally acquainted, first, …

I need say nothing here, on the first head, because nothing can show better than my history whether that prediction was verified or falsified by the result.

On the second branch of the question, I will only remark, that unless I ran through that part of my inheritance while I was still a baby, I have not come into it yet.

But I do not at all complain of having been kept out of this property; and if anybody else should be in the present enjoyment of it, he is heartily welcome to keep it.

It was in vain to represent to her that some conveniences, tea perhaps included, resulted from this objectionable practice.

She always returned, with greater emphasis and with an instinctive knowledge of the strength of her objection, “Let us have no meandering.”

Not to meander myself, at present, I will go back to my birth.

It was in vain to represent to her that some conveniences, tea perhaps included, resulted from this objectionable practice. She always returned, with greater emphasis and with an instinctive knowledge of the strength of her objection, “Let us have no meandering.”

Not to meander myself, at present, I will go back to my birth.

I was born at Blunderstone, in Suffolk, or “there by,” as they say in Scotland. I was a posthumous child. My father’s eyes had closed upon the light of this world six months, when mine opened on it.

and now, instead of ringing the bell, she came and looked in at that identical window, pressing the end of her nose against the glass to that extent, that my poor dear mother used to say it became perfectly flat and white in a moment.

She gave my mother such a turn, that I have always been convinced I am indebted to Miss Betsey for having been born on a Friday.

My mother had left her chair in her agitation, and gone behind it in the corner.

“There have not been any since we have lived here,” said my mother. “We thought—Mr. Copperfield thought—it was quite a large rookery; but the nests were very old ones, and the birds have deserted them a long while.”

“David Copperfield all over!” cried Miss Betsey. “David Copperfield from head to foot! Calls a house a rookery when there’s not a rook near it, and takes the birds on trust, because he sees the nests!”

“Mr. Copperfield,” returned my mother, “is dead, and if you dare to speak unkindly of him to me—”

He walked as softly as the Ghost in Hamlet, and more slowly. He carried his head on one side, partly in modest depreciation of himself, partly in modest propitiation of everybody else.

It is nothing to say that he hadn’t a word to throw at a dog. He couldn’t have thrown a word at a mad dog.

He might have offered him one gently, or half a one, or a fragment of one; for he spoke as slowly as he walked; but he wouldn’t have been rude to him, and he couldn’t have been quick with him, for any earthly consideration.

“Ma’am,” returned Mr. Chillip, “I apprehended you had known. It’s a boy.”

My aunt said never a word, but took her bonnet by the strings, in the manner of a sling, aimed a blow at Mr. Chillip’s head with it, put it on bent, walked out, and never came back.

She vanished like a discontented fairy; or like one of those supernatural beings, whom it was popularly supposed I was entitled to see; and never came back any more.

The first objects that assume a distinct presence before me, as I look far back, into the blank of my infancy, are my mother with her pretty hair and youthful shape, and Peggotty with no shape at all, and eyes so dark that they seemed to darken their whole neighbourhood in her face, and cheeks and arms so hard and red that I wondered the birds didn’t peck her in preference to apples.

I believe I can remember these two at a little distance apart, dwarfed to my sight by stooping down or kneeling on the floor, and I going unsteadily from the one to the other.

And I am so frightened that they are afterwards obliged to take me out of bed, and show me the quiet churchyard out of the bedroom window, with the dead all lying in their graves at rest, below the solemn moon.

There is nothing half so green that I know anywhere, as the grass of that churchyard; nothing half so shady as its trees; nothing half so quiet as its tombstones.

The sheep are feeding there, when I kneel up, early in the morning, in my little bed in a closet within my mother’s room, to look out at it;

“Only Brooks of Sheffield,” said Mr. Murdstone.

I was quite relieved to find that it was only Brooks of Sheffield; for, at first, I really thought it was I.

There seemed to be something very comical in the reputation of Mr. Brooks of Sheffield, for both the gentlemen laughed heartily when he was mentioned, and Mr. Murdstone was a good deal amused also. After some laughing, the gentleman whom he had called Quinion, said:

Can I say of her innocent and girlish beauty, that it faded, and was no more, when its breath falls on my cheek now, as it fell that night?

Can I say she ever changed, when my remembrance brings her back to life, thus only; and, truer to its loving youth than I have been, or man ever is, still holds fast what it cherished then?

I write of her just as she was when I had gone to bed after this talk, and she came to bid me good night. She kneeled down playfully by the side of the bed, and laying her chin upon her hands, and laughing, said:

We were to go in a carrier’s cart, which departed in the morning after breakfast. I would have given any money to have been allowed to wrap myself up overnight, and sleep in my hat and boots.

It touches me nearly now, although I tell it lightly, to recollect how eager I was to leave my happy home; to think how little I suspected what I did leave forever.

I am glad to recollect that when the carrier’s cart was at the gate, and my mother stood there kissing me, a grateful fondness for her and for the old place I had never turned my back upon before, made me cry.

and I could not help wondering, if the world were really as round as my geography book said, how any part of it came to be so flat.

But I reflected that Yarmouth might be situated at one of the poles; which would account for it.

As we drew a little nearer, and saw the whole adjacent prospect lying a straight low line under the sky, I hinted to Peggotty that a mound or so might have improved it;

But I bethought myself that I was in a boat, after all; and that a man like Mr. Peggotty was not a bad person to have on board if anything did happen.

Nothing happened, however, worse than morning.

Almost as soon as it shone upon the oyster-shell frame of my mirror I was out of bed, and out with little Em’ly, picking up stones upon the beach.

I am sure my fancy raised up something round that blue-eyed mite of a child, which etherealized, and made a very angel of her.

If, any sunny forenoon, she had spread a little pair of wings and flown away before my eyes, I don’t think I should have regarded it as much more than I had had reason to expect.

We used to walk about that dim old flat at Yarmouth in a loving manner, hours and hours. The days sported by us, as if Time had not grown up himself yet, but were a child too, and always at play.

We used to walk about that dim old flat at Yarmouth in a loving manner, hours and hours.

The days sported by us, as if Time had not grown up himself yet, but were a child too, and always at play.

I told Em’ly I adored her, and that unless she confessed she adored me I should be reduced to the necessity of killing myself with a sword. She said she did, and I have no doubt she did.

As to any sense of inequality, or youthfulness, or other difficulty in our way, little Em’ly and I had no such trouble, because we had no future.

We made no more provision for growing older, than we did for growing younger.

We were the admiration of Mrs. Gummidge and Peggotty, who used to whisper of an evening when we sat, lovingly, on our little locker side by side, “Lor! wasn’t it beautiful!” Mr.

When she was gone, Mr. Peggotty, who had not exhibited a trace of any feeling but the profoundest sympathy, looked round upon us, and nodding his head with a lively expression of that sentiment still animating his face, said in a whisper:

“She’s been thinking of the old ’un!”

I did not quite understand what old one Mrs. Gummidge was supposed to have fixed her mind upon, until Peggotty, on seeing me to bed, explained that it was the late Mr. Gummidge;

“Clara, my dear,” he said, when I had done his bidding, and he walked me into the parlour, with his hand still on my arm; “you will not be made uncomfortable any more, I hope. We shall soon improve our youthful humours.”

God help me, I might have been improved for my whole life, I might have been made another creature perhaps, for life, by a kind word at that season.

A word of encouragement and explanation, of pity for my childish ignorance, of welcome home, of reassurance to me that it was home, might have made me dutiful to him in my heart henceforth, instead of in my hypocritical outside, and might have made me …

When she paid the coachman she took her money out of a hard steel purse, and she kept the purse in a very jail of a bag which hung upon her arm by a heavy chain, and shut up like a bite.

I had never, at that time, seen such a metallic lady altogether as Miss Murdstone was.

She was brought into the parlour with many tokens of welcome, and there formally recognized my mother as a new and near relation. Then she looked at me, and said:

and for a certain gloomy, arrogant, devil’s humour, that was in them both. The creed, as I should state it now, was this.

Mr. Murdstone was firm; nobody in his world was to be so firm as Mr. Murdstone; nobody else in his world was to be firm at all, for everybody was to be bent to his firmness.

Miss Murdstone was an exception. She might be firm, but only by relationship, and in an inferior and tributary degree. My mother was another exception. She might be firm, and must be;

It seems to me, at this distance of time, as if my unfortunate studies generally took this course.

I could have done very well if I had been without the Murdstones; but the influence of the Murdstones upon me was like the fascination of two snakes on a wretched young bird.

Even when I did get through the morning with tolerable credit, there was not much gained but dinner;

… gone about my region of our house, armed with the centrepiece out of an old set of boot-trees—the perfect realization of Captain Somebody, of the Royal British Navy, in danger of being beset by savages, and resolved to sell his life at a great price.

The Captain never lost dignity, from having his ears boxed with the Latin Grammar. I did; but the Captain was a Captain and a hero, in despite of all the grammars of all the languages in the world, dead or alive.

This was my only and my constant comfort. When I think of it, the picture always rises in my mind, of a summer evening, the boys at play in the churchyard, and I sitting on my bed, reading as if for life.

and, there, I began to wonder fearfully what would be done to me. Whether it was a criminal act that I had committed? Whether I should be taken into custody, and sent to prison? Whether I was at all in danger of being hanged?

I never shall forget the waking, next morning; the being cheerful and fresh for the first moment, and then the being weighed down by the stale and dismal oppression of remembrance.

Miss Murdstone reappeared before I was out of bed; told me, in so many words, that I was free to walk in the garden for half an hour and no longer; and retired, leaving the door open, that I might avail myself of that permission.

I only observed that my mother was as far off from me as she could be, and kept her face another way so that I never saw it; and that Mr. Murdstone’s hand was bound up in a large linen wrapper.

The length of those five days I can convey no idea of to anyone. They occupy the place of years in my remembrance.

The way in which I listened to all the incidents of the house that made themselves audible to me; the ringing of bells, the opening and shutting of doors, the murmuring of voices, the footsteps on the stairs;

From that night there grew up in my breast a feeling for Peggotty which I cannot very well define.

She did not replace my mother; no one could do that; but she came into a vacancy in my heart, which closed upon her, and I felt towards her something I have never felt for any other human being.

It was a sort of comical affection, too; and yet if she had died, I cannot think what I should have done, or how I should have acted out the tragedy it would have been to me.

“Oh, Davy!” she said. “That you could hurt anyone I love! Try to be better, pray to be better! I forgive you; but I am so grieved, Davy, that you should have such bad passions in your heart.”

They had persuaded her that I was a wicked fellow, and she was more sorry for that than for my going away.

I felt it sorely. I tried to eat my parting breakfast, but my tears dropped upon my bread-and-butter, and trickled into my tea.

The Master, upon this, put his hand underneath the skirts of his coat, and brought out his flute in three pieces, which he screwed together, and began immediately to play.

My impression is, after many years of consideration, that there never can have been anybody in the world who played worse.

He made the most dismal sounds I have ever heard produced by any means, natural or artificial.

My impression is, after many years of consideration, that there never can have been anybody in the world who played worse.

He made the most dismal sounds I have ever heard produced by any means, natural or artificial.

I don’t know what the tunes were—if there were such things in the performance at all, which I doubt—but the influence of the strain upon me was, first, to make me think of all my sorrows until I could hardly keep my tears back;

Half the establishment was writhing and crying, before the day’s work began; and how much of it had writhed and cried before the day’s work was over, I am really afraid to recollect, lest I should seem to exaggerate.

I should think there never can have been a man who enjoyed his profession more than Mr. Creakle did.

He had a delight in cutting at the boys, which was like the satisfaction of a craving appetite. I am confident that he couldn’t resist a chubby boy, especially;

… know him to have been an incapable brute, who had no more right to be possessed of the great trust he held, than to be Lord High Admiral, or Commander-in-Chief—in either of which capacities it is probable that he would have done infinitely less mischief.

Miserable little propitiators of a remorseless Idol, how abject we were to him!

What a launch in life I think it now, on looking back, to be so mean and servile to a man of such parts and pretensions!

I used at first to wonder what comfort Traddles found in drawing skeletons; and for some time looked upon him as a sort of hermit, who reminded himself by those symbols of mortality that caning couldn’t last forever.

But I believe he only did it because they were easy, and didn’t want any features.

He was very honourable, Traddles was, and held it as a solemn duty in the boys to stand by one another. He suffered for this on several occasions;

He never said who was the real offender, though he smarted for it next day, and was imprisoned so many hours that he came forth with a whole churchyard-full of skeletons swarming all over his Latin dictionary. But he had his reward.

Steerforth said there was nothing of the sneak in Traddles, and we all felt that to be the highest praise.

For my part, I could have gone through a good deal (though I was much less brave than Traddles, and nothing like so old) to have won such a recompense.

When Steerforth, in white trousers, carried her parasol for her, I felt proud to know him; and believed that she could not choose but adore him with all her heart.

Mr. Sharp and Mr. Mell were both notable personages in my eyes; but Steerforth was to them what the sun was to two stars.

Steerforth continued his protection of me, and proved a very useful friend; since nobody dared to annoy one whom he honoured with his countenance. He couldn’t—or at all events he didn’t—defend me from Mr. Creakle, who was very severe with me;

But the being cherished as a kind of plaything in my room, and the consciousness that this accomplishment of mine was bruited about among the boys, and attracted a good deal of notice to me though I was the youngest there, stimulated me to exertion.

In a school carried on by sheer cruelty, whether it is presided over by a dunce or not, there is not likely to be much learnt.

I believe our boys were, generally, as ignorant a set as any schoolboys in existence; they were too much troubled and knocked about to learn;

“There was an answer expected, was there, Mr. Barkis?” said I, opening my eyes. For this was a new light to me.

“When a man says he’s willin’,” said Mr. Barkis, turning his glance slowly on me again, “it’s as much as to say, that man’s a-waitin’ for a answer.”

“Well,” said Mr. Barkis, carrying his eyes back to his horse’s ears; “that man’s been a-waitin’ for a answer ever since.”

“See what, my dear Jane?” said my mother; “where?”

“He’s got it!” cried Miss Murdstone. “The boy has got the baby!”

She was limp with horror; but stiffened herself to make a dart at me, and take it out of my arms. Then, she turned faint; and was so very ill that they were obliged to give her cherry brandy.

“I will have a respectful, prompt, and ready bearing towards myself,” he continued, “and towards Jane Murdstone, and towards your mother. I will not have this room shunned as if it were infected, at the pleasure of a child. Sit down.”

He ordered me like a dog, and I obeyed like a dog.

“One thing more,” he said. “I observe that you have an attachment to low and common company. You are not to associate with servants. The kitchen will not improve you, in the many respects in which you need improvement.

and Miss Murdstone in it, everywhere: a monstrous load that I was obliged to bear, a daymare that there was no possibility of breaking in, a weight that brooded on my wits, and blunted them!

What meals I had in silence and embarrassment, always feeling that there were a knife and fork too many, and that mine; an appetite too many, and that mine; a plate and chair too many, and those mine; a somebody too many, and that I!

What evenings, when the candles came, and I was expected to employ myself, but, not daring to read an entertaining book, pored over some hardheaded, harder-hearted treatise on arithmetic;

“And by that sort of thing we very often lose a little mint of money,” said Mr. Omer. “

But fashions are like human beings. They come in, nobody knows when, why, or how; and they go out, nobody knows when, why, or how.

Everything is like life, in my opinion, if you look at it in that point of view.”

All this, I say, is yesterday’s event.

Events of later date have floated from me to the shore where all forgotten things will reappear, but this stands like a high rock in the ocean.

I knew that Peggotty would come to me in my room. The Sabbath stillness of the time (the day was so like Sunday! I have forgotten that) was suited to us both. She sat down by my side upon my little bed;

What Peggotty had told me now, was so far from bringing me back to the later period, that it rooted the earlier image in my mind. It may be curious, but it is true.

In her death she winged her way back to her calm untroubled youth, and cancelled all the rest.

The mother who lay in the grave, was the mother of my infancy; the little creature in her arms, was myself, as I had once been, hushed forever on her bosom.

It may be curious, but it is true. In her death she winged her way back to her calm untroubled youth, and cancelled all the rest.

The mother who lay in the grave, was the mother of my infancy; the little creature in her arms, was myself, as I had once been, hushed forever on her bosom.

Peggotty calling his attention to my sufferings, Mr. Barkis gave me a little more room at once, and got away by degrees.

But I could not help observing that he seemed to think he had hit upon a wonderful expedient for expressing himself in a neat, agreeable, and pointed manner, without the inconvenience of inventing conversation.

He manifestly chuckled over it for some time. By and by he turned to Peggotty again, and repeating, “Are you pretty comfortable though?” bore down upon us as before, until the breath was nearly edged out of my body.

“No. It had better be done by somebody else, Dan’l,” said Mrs. Gummidge.

“I’m a lone lorn creetur’ myself, and everythink that reminds me of creetur’s that ain’t lone and lorn, goes contrary with me.”

“Come, old gal!” cried Mr. Peggotty. “Take and heave it.”

I know enough of the world now, to have almost lost the capacity of being much surprised by anything; but it is matter of some surprise to me, even now, that I can have been so easily thrown away at such an age.

A child of excellent abilities, and with strong powers of observation, quick, eager, delicate, and soon hurt bodily or mentally, it seems wonderful to me that nobody should have made any sign in my behalf. But none was made;

Micawber, a thin and faded lady, not at all young, who was sitting in the parlour (the first floor was altogether unfurnished, and the blinds were kept down to delude the neighbours), with a baby at her breast.

This baby was one of twins; and I may remark here that I hardly ever, in all my experience of the family, saw both the twins detached from Mrs. Micawber at the same time. One of them was always taking refreshment.

There were two other children; Master Micawber, aged about four, and Miss Micawber, aged about three.

but within half-an-hour afterwards, he would polish up his shoes with extraordinary pains, and go out, humming a tune with a greater air of gentility than ever. Mrs. Micawber was quite as elastic.

I have known her to be thrown into fainting fits by the king’s taxes at three o’clock, and to eat lamb chops, breaded, and drink warm ale (paid for with two teaspoons that had gone to the pawnbroker’s) at four.

On one occasion, when an execution had just been put in, coming home through some chance as early as six o’clock, I saw her lying (of course with a twin) under the grate in a swoon, with her hair all torn about her face;

Quinion at any time, I spent it in a dinner or a tea. I know that I worked, from morning until night, with common men and boys, a shabby child. I know that I 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.

Yet I held some station at Murdstone and Grinby’s too. Besides that Mr.

It was nothing at all unusual for Mr. Micawber to sob violently at the beginning of one of these Saturday night conversations, and sing about Jack’s delight being his lovely Nan, towards the end of it.

I have known him come home to supper with a flood of tears, and a declaration that nothing was now left but a jail; and go to bed making a calculation of the expense of putting bow-windows to the house, “in case anything turned up,” which was his favourite expression.

And Mrs. Micawber was just the same.

At last Mr. Micawber’s difficulties came to a crisis, and he was arrested early one morning, and carried over to the King’s Bench Prison in the Borough.

He told me, as he went out of the house, that the God of day had now gone down upon him⁠—and I really thought his heart was broken and mine too. But I heard, afterwards, that he was seen to play a lively game at skittles, before noon.

On the first Sunday after he was taken there, I was to go and see him, and have dinner with him.

Captain Hopkins lent me the knife and fork, with his compliments to Mr. Micawber. There was a very dirty lady in his little room, and two wan girls, his daughters, with shock heads of hair.

I thought it was better to borrow Captain Hopkins’s knife and fork, than Captain Hopkins’s comb.

The Captain himself was in the last extremity of shabbiness, with large whiskers, and an old, old brown greatcoat with no other coat below it. I saw his bed rolled up in a corner;

“I shall never, Master Copperfield,” said Mrs. Micawber, “revert to the period when Mr. Micawber was in difficulties, without thinking of you. Your conduct has always been of the most delicate and obliging description.

You have never been a lodger. You have been a friend.

”

“My dear Micawber!” urged his wife.

“I say,” returned Mr. Micawber, quite forgetting himself, and smiling again, “the miserable wretch you behold. My advice is, never do tomorrow what you can do today. Procrastination is the thief of time. Collar him!”

“My poor papa’s maxim,” Mrs. Micawber observed.

“My other piece of advice, Copperfield,” said Mr. Micawber, “you know.

Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen and six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery.

The blossom is blighted, the leaf is withered, the god of day goes down upon the dreary scene, and—and in short you are forever floored. As I am!”

The master of this shop was sitting at the door in his shirtsleeves, smoking; and as there were a great many coats and pairs of trousers dangling from the low ceiling, and only two feeble candles burning inside to show what they were,

I fancied that he looked like a man of a revengeful disposition, who had hung all his enemies, and was enjoying himself.

My late experiences with Mr. and Mrs. Micawber suggested to me that here might be a means of keeping off the wolf for a little while.

but I found it, and I found a haystack in the corner, and I lay down by it; having first walked round the wall, and looked up at the windows, and seen that all was dark and silent within.

Never shall I forget the lonely sensation of first lying down, without a roof above my head!

Sleep came upon me as it came on many other outcasts, against whom house-doors were locked, and house-dogs barked, that night—and I dreamed of lying on my old school-bed, talking to the boys in my room;

… two where the congregation were inside, and the sound of singing came out into the sunshine, while the beadle sat and cooled himself in the shade of the porch, or stood beneath the yew-tree, with his hand to his forehead, glowering at me going by.

But the peace and rest of the old Sunday morning were on everything, except me. That was the difference.

I felt quite wicked in my dirt and dust, with my tangled hair.

So I went outside, and sat down in the shade in a corner.

And I sat there so many hours, that the shade became sunlight, and the sunlight became shade again, and still I sat there waiting for the money.

There never was such another drunken madman in that line of business, I hope.

“If you please, aunt, I am your nephew.”

“Oh, Lord!” said my aunt. And sat flat down in the garden-path.

“I am David Copperfield, of Blunderstone, in Suffolk—where you came, on the night when I was born, and saw my dear mama. I have been very unhappy since she died.

“Perhaps she fell in love with her second husband,” Mr. Dick suggested.

“Fell in love!” repeated my aunt. “What do you mean? What business had she to do it?”

“Perhaps,” Mr. Dick simpered, after thinking a little, “she did it for pleasure.”

I remember how the solemn feeling with which at length I turned my eyes away, yielded to the sensation of gratitude and rest which the sight of the white-curtained bed—and how much more the lying softly down upon it, nestling in the snow-white sheets!—inspired.

I remember how I thought of all the solitary places under the night sky where I had slept, and how I prayed that I never might be houseless any more, and never might forget the houseless.

I remember how I seemed to float, then, down the melancholy glory of that track upon the sea, away into the world of dreams.

“I so far agree with what Miss Trotwood has remarked,” observed Miss Murdstone, bridling, “that I consider our lamented Clara to have been, in all essential respects, a mere child.”

“It is a comfort to you and me, ma’am,” said my aunt, “who are getting on in life, and are not likely to be made unhappy by our personal attractions, that nobody can say the same of us.”

“No doubt!” returned Miss Murdstone, though, I thought, not with a very ready or gracious assent. “And it certainly might have been, as you say, a better and happier thing for my brother if he had never entered into such a marriage.

“Mr. Dick,” said my aunt, “what shall I do with this child?”

Mr. Dick considered, hesitated, brightened, and rejoined, “Have him measured for a suit of clothes directly.”

“Mr. Dick,” said my aunt triumphantly, “give me your hand, for your common sense is invaluable.” Having shaken it with great cordiality, she pulled me towards her and said to Mr. Murdstone:

Mr. Dick considered, hesitated, brightened, and rejoined, “Have him measured for a suit of clothes directly.”

“Mr. Dick,” said my aunt triumphantly, “give me your hand, for your common sense is invaluable.”

Having shaken it with great cordiality, she pulled me towards her and said to Mr. Murdstone:

I was greatly overcome, and could only thank her, again and again, and send my love to Mr. Dick.

“Never,” said my aunt, “be mean in anything; never be false; never be cruel. Avoid those three vices, Trot, and I can always be hopeful of you.”

I promised, as well as I could, that I would not abuse her kindness or forget her admonition.

As I came back, I saw Uriah Heep shutting up the office; and feeling friendly towards everybody, went in and spoke to him, and at parting, gave him my hand.

But oh, what a clammy hand his was! as ghostly to the touch as to the sight!

I rubbed mine afterwards, to warm it, and to rub his off.

“Egad, Doctor,” returned Mr. Wickfield, “if Doctor Watts knew mankind, he might have written, with as much truth, ‘Satan finds some mischief still, for busy hands to do.’

The busy people achieve their full share of mischief in the world, you may rely upon it.

What have the people been about, who have been the busiest in getting money, and in getting power, this century or two? No mischief?”

Adams, our head-boy, who had a turn for mathematics, had made a calculation, I was informed, of the time this Dictionary would take in completing, on the Doctor’s plan, and at the Doctor’s rate of going.

He considered that it might be done in one thousand six hundred and forty-nine years, counting from the Doctor’s last, or sixty-second, birthday.

But the Doctor himself was the idol of the whole school: and it must have been a badly composed school if he had been anything else, for he was the kindest of men;

which was sometimes happily effected within a few yards of him, without his knowing anything of the matter, as he jogged to and fro.

Outside his own domain, and unprotected, he was a very sheep for the shearers.

He would have taken his gaiters off his legs, to give away.

Four sides of incoherent and interjectional beginnings of sentences, that had no end, except blots, were inadequate to afford her any relief.

But the blots were more expressive to me than the best composition; for they showed me that Peggotty had been crying all over the paper, and what could I have desired more?

I made out, without much difficulty, that she could not take quite kindly to my aunt yet. The notice was too short after so long a prepossession the other way. We never knew a person, she wrote;

“Why, really,” said Mr. Dick, “I don’t see how it can have been in that year, Trotwood. Did you get that date out of history?”

“I suppose history never lies, does it?” said Mr. Dick, with a gleam of hope.

“Oh dear, no, sir!” I replied, most decisively. I was ingenuous and young, and I thought so.

and Mr. Dick listening, enchained by interest, with his poor wits calmly wandering God knows where, upon the wings of hard words—I think of it as one of the pleasantest things, in a quiet way, that I have ever seen.

I feel as if they might go walking to and fro forever, and the world might somehow be the better for it⁠—as if a thousand things it makes a noise about, were not one half so good for it, or me.

Agnes was one of Mr. Dick’s friends, very soon; and in often coming to the house, he made acquaintance with Uriah. The friendship between himself and me increased continually, and it was maintained on this odd footing: that, while Mr.

and about fathers and mothers, and then I told them about mine; and then Mrs. Heep began to talk about fathers-in-law, and then I began to tell her about mine—but stopped, because my aunt had advised me to observe a silence on that subject.

A tender young cork, however, would have had no more chance against a pair of corkscrews, or a tender young tooth against a pair of dentists, or a little shuttlecock against two battledores, than I had against Uriah and Mrs. Heep.

They did just what they liked with me;

“We all came back again,” replied Mrs. Micawber. “Since then, I have consulted other branches of my family on the course which it is most expedient for Mr. Micawber to take—for I maintain that he must take some course, Master Copperfield,” said Mrs. Micawber, argumentatively.

“It is clear that a family of six, not including a domestic, cannot live upon air.”

“The opinion of those other branches of my family,” pursued Mrs. Micawber, “is, that Mr. Micawber should immediately turn his attention to coals.”

“We came,” repeated Mrs. Micawber, “and saw the Medway. My opinion of the coal trade on that river is, that it may require talent, but that it certainly requires capital.

Talent, Mr. Micawber has; capital, Mr. Micawber has not.

We saw, I think, the greater part of the Medway; and that is my individual conclusion. Being so near here, Mr. Micawber was of opinion that it would be rash not to come on, and see the Cathedral.

Micawber, who now returned: adding that I only wished I had money enough, to lend them the amount they needed. Mr. Micawber’s answer expressed the disturbance of his mind. He said, shaking hands with me,

“Copperfield, you are a true friend; but when the worst comes to the worst, no man is without a friend who is possessed of shaving materials.”

At this dreadful hint Mrs. Micawber threw her arms round Mr. Micawber’s neck and entreated him to be calm. He wept;

For some time, I am doubtful of Miss Shepherd’s feelings, but, at length, Fate being propitious, we meet at the dancing-school. I have Miss Shepherd for my partner.

I touch Miss Shepherd’s glove, and feel a thrill go up the right arm of my jacket, and come out at my hair.

I say nothing to Miss Shepherd, but we understand each other. Miss Shepherd and myself live but to be united.

At last, one day, I meet the Misses Nettingalls’ establishment out walking. Miss Shepherd makes a face as she goes by, and laughs to her companion. All is over. The devotion of a life—it seems a life, it is all the same—is at an end;

Miss Shepherd comes out of the morning service, and the Royal Family know her no more.

I am higher in the school, and no one breaks my peace. I am not at all polite, now, to the Misses Nettingalls’ young ladies, and shouldn’t dote on any of them, if they were twice as many and twenty times as beautiful.

I meet the butcher by appointment. I am attended by a select body of our boys; the butcher, by two other butchers, a young publican, and a sweep. The preliminaries are adjusted, and the butcher and myself stand face to face.

In a moment the butcher lights ten thousand candles out of my left eyebrow.

In another moment, I don’t know where the wall is, or where I am, or where anybody is. I hardly know which is myself and which the butcher, we are always in such a tangle and tussle, knocking about upon the trodden grass.

Adams is going to be called to the bar almost directly, and is to be an advocate, and to wear a wig. I am surprised to find him a meeker man than I had thought, and less imposing in appearance.

He has not staggered the world yet, either; for it goes on (as well as I can make out) pretty much the same as if he had never joined it.

A blank, through which the warriors of poetry and history march on in stately hosts that seem to have no end—and what comes next! I am the head-boy, now!

The separation has not made the impression on me, that other separations have. I try in vain to recall how I felt about it, and what its circumstances were; but it is not momentous in my recollection. I suppose the opening prospect confused me.

I know that my juvenile experiences went for little or nothing then; and that life was more like a great fairy story, which I was just about to begin to read, than anything else.

My aunt and I had held many grave deliberations on the calling to which I should be devoted. For a year or more I had endeavoured to find a satisfactory answer to her often-repeated question, “What I would like to be?”

“Well, if you don’t mind, sir,” said William, “I think it would be more correct.”

I have always considered this as the first fall I had in life.

When I booked my place at the coach office I had had “Box Seat” written against the entry, and had given the bookkeeper half-a-crown. I was got up in a special greatcoat and shawl, expressly to do honour to that distinguished eminence;

It was in vain to take refuge in gruffness of speech.

I spoke from the pit of my stomach for the rest of the journey, but I felt completely extinguished, and dreadfully young.

It was curious and interesting, nevertheless, to be sitting up there behind four horses: well educated, well dressed, and with plenty of money in my pocket; and to look out for the places where I had slept on my weary journey.

When the wine came, too, I thought it flat; and it certainly had more English crumbs in it, than were to be expected in a foreign wine in anything like a pure state, but I was bashful enough to drink it, and say nothing.

Being then in a pleasant frame of mind (from which I infer that poisoning is not always disagreeable in some stages of the process), I resolved to go to the play.

It was Covent Garden Theatre that I chose; and there, from the back of a centre box, I saw Julius Caesar and the new Pantomime.

“Clever! She brings everything to a grindstone,” said Steerforth, “and sharpens it, as she has sharpened her own face and figure these years past.

She has worn herself away by constant sharpening. She is all edge.

”

but every peculiarity that he had he made respectable.

If his nose had been upside-down, he would have made that respectable.

He surrounded himself with an atmosphere of respectability, and walked secure in it. It would have been next to impossible to suspect him of anything wrong, he was so thoroughly respectable.

but every peculiarity that he had he made respectable. If his nose had been upside-down, he would have made that respectable. He surrounded himself with an atmosphere of respectability, and walked secure in it.

It would have been next to impossible to suspect him of anything wrong, he was so thoroughly respectable.

Nobody could have thought of putting him in a livery, he was so highly respectable. To have imposed any derogatory work upon him, would have been to inflict a wanton insult on the feelings of a most respectable man.

Even the fact that no one knew his Christian name, seemed to form a part of his respectability. Nothing could be objected against his surname, Littimer, by which he was known.

Peter might have been hanged, or Tom transported; but Littimer was perfectly respectable.

It was occasioned, I suppose, by the reverend nature of respectability in the abstract, but I felt particularly young in this man’s presence. How old he was himself, I could not guess—and that again went to his credit on the same score;

and, on this understanding, went out alone. There was a sharp bracing air; the ground was dry; the sea was crisp and clear; the sun was diffusing abundance of light, if not much warmth; and everything was fresh and lively.

I was so fresh and lively myself, in the pleasure of being there, that I could have stopped the people in the streets and shaken hands with them.

The streets looked small, of course. The streets that we have only seen as children always do, I believe, when we go back to them. But I had forgotten nothing in them, and found nothing changed, until I came to Mr. Omer’s shop.

the sun was diffusing abundance of light, if not much warmth; and everything was fresh and lively. I was so fresh and lively myself, in the pleasure of being there, that I could have stopped the people in the streets and shaken hands with them.

The streets looked small, of course. The streets that we have only seen as children always do, I believe, when we go back to them.

But I had forgotten nothing in them, and found nothing changed, until I came to Mr. Omer’s shop. Omer and Joram was now written up, where Omer used to be; but the inscription, Draper, Tailor, Haberdasher, Funeral Furnisher, etc., remained as it was.

“Oh! nothing to grumble at, you know,” said Mr. Omer. “

I find my breath gets short, but it seldom gets longer as a man gets older. I take it as it comes, and make the most of it.

That’s the best way, ain’t it?”

He stayed there with me to dinner—if I were to say willingly, I should not half express how readily and gaily.

He went into Mr. Barkis’s room like light and air, brightening and refreshing it as if he were healthy weather.

There was no noise, no effort, no consciousness, in anything he did;

… sitting here,” said Steerforth, glancing round the room, “thinking that all the people we found so glad on the night of our coming down, might—to judge from the present wasted air of the place—be dispersed, or dead, or come to I don’t know what harm.

David, I wish to God I had had a judicious father these last twenty years!

”

“Oh, my goodness, how polite we are!” exclaimed Miss Mowcher, making a preposterous attempt to cover her large face with her morsel of a hand. “

What a world of gammon and spinach it is, though, ain’t it!

”

“That I am sure he will,” said I.

Littimer touched his hat in acknowledgement of my good opinion, and I felt about eight years old.

He touched it once more, wishing us a good journey; and we left him standing on the pavement, as respectable a mystery as any pyramid in Egypt.

“I suppose this unfortunate fowl was born and brought up in a cellar,” said my aunt, “and never took the air except on a hackney coach-stand. I hope the steak may be beef, but I don’t believe it.

Nothing’s genuine in the place, in my opinion, but the dirt.

”

“Certainly not,” returned my aunt. “

It would be no pleasure to a London tradesman to sell anything which was what he pretended it was.

”

“

It’s in vain, Trot, to recall the past, unless it works some influence upon the present.

Perhaps I might have been better friends with your poor father. Perhaps I might have been better friends with that poor child your mother, even after your sister Betsey Trotwood disappointed me.

If a client were slow to settle his bill of costs, Mr. Jorkins was resolved to have it paid; and however painful these things might be (and always were) to the feelings of Mr. Spenlow, Mr. Jorkins would have his bond.

The heart and hand of the good angel Spenlow would have been always open, but for the restraining demon Jorkins. As I have grown older, I think I have had experience of some other houses doing business on the principle of Spenlow and Jorkins!

It was settled that I should begin my month’s probation as soon as I pleased, and that my aunt need neither remain in town nor return at its expiration, as the articles of agreement, of which I was to be the subject, could easily be …

it seldom looked well by candlelight. I wanted somebody to talk to, then. I missed Agnes. I found a tremendous blank, in the place of that smiling repository of my confidence. Mrs. Crupp appeared to be a long way off.

I thought about my predecessor, who had died of drink and smoke; and I could have wished he had been so good as to live, and not bother me with his decease.

After two days and nights, I felt as if I had lived there for a year, and yet I was not an hour older, but was quite as much tormented by my own youthfulness as ever.

Mrs. Crupp appeared to be a long way off. I thought about my predecessor, who had died of drink and smoke; and I could have wished he had been so good as to live, and not bother me with his decease.

After two days and nights, I felt as if I had lived there for a year, and yet I was not an hour older, but was quite as much tormented by my own youthfulness as ever.

Steerforth not yet appearing, which induced me to apprehend that he must be ill, I left the Commons early on the third day, and walked out to Highgate. Mrs.

I felt called upon to propose an individual. I would give them my aunt. Miss Betsey Trotwood, the best of her sex!

Somebody was leaning out of my bedroom window, refreshing his forehead against the cool stone of the parapet, and feeling the air upon his face. It was myself.

I was addressing myself as “Copperfield,” and saying, “Why did you try to smoke? You might have known you couldn’t do it.” Now, somebody was unsteadily contemplating his features in the looking-glass. That was I too. I was very pale in the looking-glass;

“Sit down,” said Agnes, cheerfully. “Don’t be unhappy, Trotwood.

If you cannot confidently trust me, whom will you trust?

”

He looked, to the best of his ability, when he asked me for it confidentially, as if he had never seen me before; but well did I know him, and well did he know me.

Conscience made cowards of us both.

I found Mr. Waterbrook to be a middle-aged gentleman, with a short throat, and a good deal of shirt-collar, who only wanted a black nose to be the portrait of a pug-dog.

Traddles and I were separated at table, being billeted in two remote corners: he in the glare of a red velvet lady; I, in the gloom of Hamlet’s aunt. The dinner was very long, and the conversation was about the Aristocracy—and Blood.

Mrs. Waterbrook repeatedly told us, that if she had a weakness, it was Blood.

It occurred to me several times that we should have got on better, if we had not been quite so genteel. We were so exceedingly genteel, that our scope was very limited. A Mr. and Mrs.

These were few enough, to be sure; but as we always fell back upon Blood, she had as wide a field for abstract speculation as her nephew himself.

We might have been a party of Ogres, the conversation assumed such a sanguine complexion.

“I confess I am of Mrs. Waterbrook’s opinion,” said Mr. Waterbrook, with his wineglass at his eye. “Other things are all very well in their way, but give me Blood!”

Spenlow made out, I respectfully deferred to his opinion. That about the price of wheat per bushel, I modestly felt was too much for my strength, and quite settled the question.

I have never, to this hour, got the better of that bushel of wheat.

It has reappeared to annihilate me, all through my life, in connection with all kinds of subjects. I don’t know now, exactly, what it has to do with me, or what right it has to crush me, on an infinite variety of occasions;

Copperfield, my daughter Dora, and my daughter Dora’s confidential friend!” It was, no doubt, Mr. Spenlow’s voice, but I didn’t know it, and I didn’t care whose it was. All was over in a moment. I had fulfilled my destiny.

I was a captive and a slave. I loved Dora Spenlow to distraction!

She was more than human to me. She was a Fairy, a Sylph, I don’t know what she was—anything that no one ever saw, and everything that everybody ever wanted. I was swallowed up in an abyss of love in an instant.

“Miss Murdstone has had the goodness,” said Mr. Spenlow to me, “to accept the office—if I may so describe it—of my daughter Dora’s confidential friend. My daughter Dora having, unhappily, no mother, Miss Murdstone is obliging enough to become her companion and protector.”

A passing thought occurred to me that Miss Murdstone, like the pocket instrument called a life-preserver, was not so much designed for purposes of protection as of assault.

But as I had none but passing thoughts for any subject save Dora, I glanced at her, directly afterwards, and was thinking that I saw, in her prettily pettish manner, that she was not very much inclined to be particularly confidential to her companion and …

There was some company. Dora was talking to an old gentleman with a grey head. Grey as he was—and a great-grandfather into the bargain, for he said so—I was madly jealous of him.

What a state of mind I was in! I was jealous of everybody.

I couldn’t bear the idea of anybody knowing Mr. Spenlow better than I did. It was torturing to me to hear them talk of occurrences in which I had had no share.

When a most amiable person, with a highly polished bald head, asked me across the dinner table, if that were the first occasion of my seeing the grounds, I could have done anything to him that was savage and revengeful.

I don’t remember who was there, except Dora. I have not the least idea what we had for dinner, besides Dora. My impression is, that I dined off Dora, entirely, and sent away half-a-dozen plates untouched.

I sat next to her. I talked to her. She had the most delightful little voice, the gayest little laugh, the pleasantest and most fascinating little ways, that ever led a lost youth into hopeless slavery. She was rather diminutive altogether.

… “Dora,” to write to her, to dote upon and worship her, to have reason to think that when she was with other people she was yet mindful of me, seemed to me the summit of human ambition—I am sure it was the summit of mine.

There is no doubt whatever that I was a lackadaisical young spooney; but there was a purity of heart in all this, that prevents my having quite a contemptuous recollection of it, let me laugh as I may.

I had not been walking long, when I turned a corner, and met her. I tingle again from head to foot as my recollection turns that corner, and my pen shakes in my hand.

I had not been walking long, when I turned a corner, and met her.

I tingle again from head to foot as my recollection turns that corner, and my pen shakes in my hand.

“You—are—out early, Miss Spenlow,” said I.

We are not going to confide in any such cross people, Jip and I. We mean to bestow our confidence where we like, and to find out our own friends, instead of having them found out for us—don’t we, Jip?”

Jip made a comfortable noise, in answer, a little like a teakettle when it sings.

As for me, every word was a new heap of fetters, riveted above the last.

Jip made a comfortable noise, in answer, a little like a teakettle when it sings.

As for me, every word was a new heap of fetters, riveted above the last.

“It is very hard, because we have not a kind Mama, that we are to have, instead, a sulky, gloomy old thing like Miss Murdstone, always following us about—isn’t it, Jip? Never mind, Jip.

Miss Murdstone had been looking for us. She found us here; and presented her uncongenial cheek, the little wrinkles in it filled with hair powder, to Dora to be kissed.

Then she took Dora’s arm in hers, and marched us into breakfast as if it were a soldier’s funeral.

How many cups of tea I drank, because Dora made it, I don’t know. But, I perfectly remember that I sat swilling tea until my whole nervous system, if I had had any in those days, must have gone by the board.

Within the first week of my passion, I bought four sumptuous waistcoats—not for myself; I had no pride in them; for Dora—and took to wearing straw-coloured kid gloves in the streets, and laid the foundations of all the corns I have ever had.

If the boots I wore at that period could only be produced and compared with the natural size of my feet, they would show what the state of my heart was, in a most affecting manner.

And yet, wretched cripple as I made myself by this act of homage to Dora, I walked miles upon miles daily in the hope of seeing her.

Keep a good heart, sir!” said Mrs. Crupp, nodding encouragement. “Never say die, sir! If She don’t smile upon you, there’s a many as will. You are a young gentleman to be smiled on, Mr. Copperfull, and you must learn your walue, sir.”

Mrs. Crupp always called me Mr. Copperfull: firstly, no doubt, because it was not my name; and secondly, I am inclined to think, in some indistinct association with a washing-day.

“What makes you suppose there is any young lady in the case, Mrs. Crupp?” said I.

I have my doubts, too, founded on the acute experience acquired at this period of my life, whether a sound enjoyment of animal food can develop itself freely in any human subject who is always in torment from tight boots.

I think the extremities require to be at peace before the stomach will conduct itself with vigour.

On the occasion of this domestic little party, I did not repeat my former extensive preparations. I merely provided a pair of soles, a small leg of mutton, and a pigeon-pie. Mrs.

His recent despondency, not to say despair, was gone in a moment. I never saw a man so thoroughly enjoy himself amid the fragrance of lemon-peel and sugar, the odour of burning rum, and the steam of boiling water, as Mr. Micawber did that afternoon.

It was wonderful to see his face shining at us out of a thin cloud of these delicate fumes, as he stirred, and mixed, and tasted, and looked as if he were making, instead of punch, a fortune for his family down to the latest posterity.

As to Mrs. Micawber, I don’t know whether it was the effect of the cap, or the lavender-water, or the pins, or the fire, or the wax-candles, but she came out of my room, comparatively speaking, lovely.

But we were not in condition to judge of this fact from the appearance of the gravy, forasmuch as the “young gal” had dropped it all upon the stairs—where it remained, by the by, in a long train, until it was worn out.

The pigeon-pie was not bad, but it was a delusive pie: the crust being like a disappointing head, phrenologically speaking: full of lumps and bumps, with nothing particular underneath.

In short, the banquet was such a failure that I should have been quite unhappy—about the failure, I mean, for I was always unhappy about Dora—if I had not been relieved by the great good humour of my company, and by a bright suggestion from …

We should not have been much discomposed, I dare say, by the appearance of Steerforth himself, but we became in a moment the meekest of the meek before his respectable serving-man.

Mr. Micawber, humming a tune, to show that he was quite at ease, subsided into his chair, with the handle of a hastily concealed fork sticking out of the bosom of his coat, as if he had stabbed himself.

Mrs. Micawber put on her brown gloves, and assumed a genteel languor. Traddles ran his greasy hands through his hair, and stood it bolt upright, and stared in confusion on the tablecloth.

cleared the table; piled everything on the dumbwaiter; gave us our wineglasses; and, of his own accord, wheeled the dumbwaiter into the pantry. All this was done in a perfect manner, and he never raised his eyes from what he was about.

Yet his very elbows, when he had his back towards me, seemed to teem with the expression of his fixed opinion that I was extremely young.

“Can I do anything more, sir?”

… from that extraordinary sense of being at a disadvantage which I always had in this man’s presence, my conscience had embarrassed me with whispers that I had mistrusted his master, and I could not repress a vague uneasy dread that he might find it out.

How was it, having so little in reality to conceal, that I always did feel as if this man were finding me out?

Mr. Micawber roused me from this reflection, which was blended with a certain remorseful apprehension of seeing Steerforth himself, by bestowing many encomiums on the absent Littimer as a most respectable fellow, and a thoroughly admirable servant. Mr.

If we failed to hold our own, because that equal foot at all men’s doors was heard knocking somewhere, every object in this world would slip from us. No! Ride on! Roughshod if need be, smooth-shod if that will do, but ride on!

Ride on over all obstacles, and win the race!

”

“Oh, Heaven knows,” said Steerforth. “Anything you like—or nothing! I told you she took everything, herself included, to a grindstone, and sharpened it.

She is an edge-tool, and requires great care in dealing with. She is always dangerous.

Good night!”

“

Daisy, if anything should ever separate us, you must think of me at my best, old boy.

Come! Let us make that bargain. Think of me at my best, if circumstances should ever part us!”

I was on the point of asking him if he knew me, when he tried to stretch out his arm, and said to me, distinctly, with a pleasant smile:

And, it being low water, he went out with the tide.

“Not to me, Dan’l,” returned Mrs. Gummidge. “

Nothink’s nat’ral to me but to be lone and lorn.

”

What is natural in me, is natural in many other men, I infer, and so I am not afraid to write that I never had loved Steerforth better than when the ties that bound me to him were broken.

In the keen distress of the discovery of his unworthiness, I thought more of all that was brilliant in him, I softened more towards all that was good in him, I did more justice to the qualities that might have made him a man of …

“You are a young man,” she said, nodding. “Take a word of advice, even from three foot nothing.

Try not to associate bodily defects with mental, my good friend, except for a solid reason.

”

“

Trust me no more, but trust me no less, than you would trust a full-sized woman

,” said the little creature, touching me appealingly on the wrist. “If ever you see me again, unlike what I am now, and like what I was when you first saw me, observe what company I am in.

No description I could give of her would do justice to my recollection of her, or to her entire deliverance of herself to her anger.

I have seen passion in many forms, but I have never seen it in such a form as that.

When I joined Mr. Peggotty, he was walking slowly and thoughtfully down the hill.

“I’m a-going to seek her, fur and wide. If any hurt should come to me, remember that the last words I left for her was, ‘

My unchanged love is with my darling child, and I forgive her!

’ ”

but I am quite sure I should have scouted the notion of her being simply human, like any other young lady, with indignation and contempt.

If I may so express it, I was steeped in Dora.

I was not merely over head and ears in love with her, but I was saturated through and through. Enough love might have been wrung out of me, metaphorically speaking, to drown anybody in;

I despised them, to a man. Frozen-out old gardeners in the flowerbeds of the heart, I took a personal offence against them all. The Bench was nothing to me but an insensible blunderer.

The Bar had no more tenderness or poetry in it, than the bar of a public-house.

Taking the management of Peggotty’s affairs into my own hands, with no little pride, I proved the will, and came to a settlement with the Legacy Duty-office, and took her to the Bank, and soon got everything into an orderly train.

I despised them, to a man.

Frozen-out old gardeners in the flowerbeds of the heart, I took a personal offence against them all.

The Bench was nothing to me but an insensible blunderer. The Bar had no more tenderness or poetry in it, than the bar of a public-house.

I think I committed every possible absurdity in the way of preparation for this blessed event.

I turn hot when I remember the cravat I bought. My boots might be placed in any collection of instruments of torture.

I provided, and sent down by the Norwood coach the night before, a delicate little hamper, amounting in itself, I thought, almost to a declaration. There were crackers in it with the tenderest mottoes that could be got for money.

He stood up sometimes, and asked me what I thought of the prospect. I said it was delightful, and I dare say it was; but it was all Dora to me.

The sun shone Dora, and the birds sang Dora. The south wind blew Dora, and the wild flowers in the hedges were all Doras, to a bud.

My comfort is, Miss Mills understood me. Miss Mills alone could enter into my feelings thoroughly.

Mr. Mills was not at home. I did not expect he would be.

Nobody wanted him. Miss Mills was at home. Miss Mills would do.

I was shown into a room upstairs, where Miss Mills and Dora were. Jip was there. Miss Mills was copying music (I recollect, it was a new song, called “Affection’s Dirge”), and Dora was painting flowers.

I loved her at that minute to distraction. I should always love her, every minute, to distraction. Lovers had loved before, and lovers would love again; but no lover had loved, might, could, would, or should ever love, as I loved Dora.

The more I raved, the more Jip barked. Each of us, in his own way, got more mad every moment.

Well, well! Dora and I were sitting on the sofa by and by, quiet enough, and Jip was lying in her lap, winking peacefully at me. It was off my mind. I was in a state of perfect rapture. Dora and I were engaged.

But she gave us her blessing, and the assurance of her lasting friendship, and spoke to us, generally, as became a Voice from the Cloister.

What an idle time it was! What an insubstantial, happy, foolish time it was!

When I measured Dora’s finger for a ring that was to be made of forget-me-nots, and when the jeweller, to whom I took the measure, found me out, and laughed over his order-book, and charged me anything he liked for the pretty little toy, with …

What an idle time! What an insubstantial, happy, foolish time!

Of all the times of mine that Time has in his grip, there is none that in one retrospect I can smile at half so much, and think of half so tenderly.

“Very sad, is it not?” returned Traddles. “But in a merely domestic view it is not so bad as it might be, because Sophy takes her place.

She is quite as much a mother to her mother, as she is to the other nine.

”

“Well! That’s human,” said my aunt. “

It sounds less as if you wanted a missionary.

How d’ye do, Barkis? I hope you’re well?”

“Thank you, Trot,” replied my aunt, “

I prefer to sit upon my property.

” Here my aunt looked hard at Mrs. Crupp, and observed, “We needn’t trouble you to wait, ma’am.”

“

We must meet reverses boldly, and not suffer them to frighten us, my dear. We must learn to act the play out. We must live misfortune down, Trot!

”

Mrs. Crupp had indignantly assured him that there wasn’t room to swing a cat there; but, as Mr. Dick justly observed to me, sitting down on the foot of the bed, nursing his leg, “

You know, Trotwood, I don’t want to swing a cat. I never do swing a cat. Therefore, what does that signify to me!

”

“

Tut, tut, child. If nothing worse than Ale happens to us, we are well off.

”

I dismissed the coachman, and she took my arm, and we walked on together.

She was like Hope embodied, to me. How different I felt in one short minute, having Agnes at my side!

My aunt had written her one of the odd, abrupt notes—very little longer than a banknote—to which her epistolary efforts were usually limited.

The reversal of the two natures, in their relative positions, Uriah’s of power and Mr. Wickfield’s of dependence, was a sight more painful to me than I can express.

If I had seen an ape taking command of a man, I should hardly have thought it a more degrading spectacle.

He appeared to be only too conscious of it himself. When he came in, he stood still; and with his head bowed, as if he felt it. This was only for a moment; for Agnes softly said to him, “Papa!

“Go along with you, sir!” said my aunt, anything but appeased. “Don’t presume to say so! I am nothing of the sort.

If you’re an eel, sir, conduct yourself like one. If you’re a man, control your limbs, sir!

Good God!” said my aunt, with great indignation, “I am not going to be serpentined and corkscrewed out of my senses!”

said my aunt, anything but appeased. “Don’t presume to say so! I am nothing of the sort. If you’re an eel, sir, conduct yourself like one. If you’re a man, control your limbs, sir! Good God!” said my aunt, with great indignation, “

I am not going to be serpentined and corkscrewed out of my senses!

”

When it was almost dark, he lay down on a sofa, Agnes pillowing his head and bending over him a little while; and when she came back to the window, it was not so dark but I could see tears glittering in her eyes.

I pray Heaven that I never may forget the dear girl in her love and truth, at that time of my life; for if I should, I must be drawing near the end, and then I would desire to remember her best!

She filled my heart with such good resolutions, strengthened my weakness so, by her example, so directed—I know not how, she was too modest and gentle to advise me in many words—the wandering ardour and unsettled purpose within me, that all the little good I …

But that did not discourage me. With the new life, came new purpose, new intention.

Great was the labour; priceless the reward. Dora was the reward, and Dora must be won.

I got into such a transport, that I felt quite sorry my coat was not a little shabby already. I wanted to be cutting at those trees in the forest of difficulty, under circumstances that should prove my strength.

Steerforth’s, and looked over the corner of the garden wall. His room was shut up close. The conservatory doors were standing open, and Rosa Dartle was walking, bareheaded, with a quick, impetuous step, up and down a gravel walk on one side of the lawn.

She gave me the idea of some fierce thing, that was dragging the length of its chain to and fro upon a beaten track, and wearing its heart out.

I came softly away from my place of observation, and avoiding that part of the neighbourhood, and wishing I had not gone near it, strolled about until it was ten o’clock.

It was Mr. Jack Maldon; and Mr. Jack Maldon was not at all improved by India, I thought.

I was in a state of ferocious virtue, however, as to young men who were not cutting down trees in the forest of difficulty

; and my impression must be received with due allowance.

A display of indifference to all the actions and passions of mankind was not supposed to be such a distinguished quality at that time, I think, as I have observed it to be considered since. I have known it very fashionable indeed.

I have seen it displayed with such success, that I have encountered some fine ladies and gentlemen who might as well have been born caterpillars.

Perhaps it impressed me the more then, because it was new to me, but it certainly did not tend to exalt my opinion of, or to strengthen my confidence in, Mr. Jack Maldon.

I am persuaded, not only that this was quite the same to Mr. Micawber as paying the money, but that Traddles himself hardly knew the difference until he had had time to think about it.

Mr. Micawber walked so erect before his fellow man, on the strength of this virtuous action, that his chest looked half as broad again when he lighted us downstairs.

We parted with great heartiness on both sides; and when I had seen Traddles to his own door, and was going home alone, I thought, among the other odd and contradictory things I mused upon, that, slippery as Mr.

“Have the goodness to show Mr. Copperfield,” said Mr. Spenlow, “what you have in your reticule, Miss Murdstone.”

I believe it was the old identical steel-clasped reticule of my childhood, that shut up like a bite.

Compressing her lips, in sympathy with the snap, Miss Murdstone opened it—opening her mouth a little at the same time—and produced my last letter to Dora, teeming with expressions of devoted affection.

It’s paper.’ Miss Spenlow immediately put her hand to her frock, gave a sudden cry, and ran to the dog. I interposed, and said, ‘Dora, my love, you must permit me.’ ”

Oh Jip, miserable Spaniel, this wretchedness, then, was your work!

“Miss Spenlow endeavoured,” said Miss Murdstone, “to bribe me with kisses, work-boxes, and small articles of jewellery—that, of course, I pass over. The little dog retreated under the sofa on my approaching him, and was with great difficulty dislodged by the fire-irons.

At length I obtained possession of it. After perusing it, I taxed Miss Spenlow with having many such letters in her possession; and ultimately obtained from her the packet which is now in David Copperfield’s hand.”

Here she ceased; and snapping her reticule again, and shutting her mouth, looked as if she might be broken, but could never be bent.

“You have heard Miss Murdstone,” said Mr. Spenlow, turning to me. “I beg to ask, Mr. Copperfield, if you have anything to say in reply?”

A deep gulf, she observed, had opened between Dora and me, and love could only span it with its rainbow. Love must suffer in this stern world; it ever had been so, it ever would be so. No matter, Miss Mills remarked.

Hearts confined by cobwebs would burst at last, and then Love was avenged.

This was small consolation, but Miss Mills wouldn’t encourage fallacious hopes. She made me much more wretched than I was before, and I felt (and told her with the deepest gratitude) that she was indeed a friend.

Miss Mills had a wonderful flow of words, and liked to pour them out.

I could not help feeling, though she mingled her tears with mine, that she had a dreadful luxury in our afflictions.

She petted them, as I may say, and made the most of them. A deep gulf, she observed, had opened between Dora and me, and love could only span it with its rainbow. Love must suffer in this stern world;

… if he might come in—the lazy hush and rest there was in the office, and the insatiable relish with which our people talked about it, and other people came in and out all day, and gorged themselves with the subject—this is easily intelligible to anyone.

What I cannot describe is, how, in the innermost recesses of my own heart, I had a lurking jealousy even of Death.

How I felt as if its might would push me from my ground in Dora’s thoughts. How I was, in a grudging way I have no words for, envious of her grief.

When I have come to you, at last (as I have always done), I have come to peace and happiness.

I come home, now, like a tired traveller, and find such a blessed sense of rest!

”

It was the first time it had ever occurred to me, that this detestable cant of false humility might have originated out of the Heep family.

I had seen the harvest, but had never thought of the seed.

“When I was quite a young boy,” said Uriah, “I got to know what ’umbleness did, and I took to it. I ate ’umble pie with an appetite. I stopped at the ’umble point of my learning, and says I, ‘Hold hard!’

I ate ’umble pie with an appetite. I stopped at the ’umble point of my learning, and says I, ‘Hold hard!’ When you offered to teach me Latin, I knew better. ‘People like to be above you,’ says father, ‘keep yourself down.’

I am very ’umble to the present moment, Master Copperfield, but I’ve got a little power!

”

“Oh, Trotwood, Trotwood!” exclaimed Mr. Wickfield, wringing his hands. “What I have come down to be, since I first saw you in this house! I was on my downward way then, but the dreary, dreary road I have traversed since!

Weak indulgence has ruined me. Indulgence in remembrance, and indulgence in forgetfulness.

My natural grief for my child’s mother turned to disease; my natural love for my child turned to disease. I have infected everything I touched. I have brought misery on what I dearly love, I know—You know!

I thought it possible that I could truly mourn for one creature gone out of the world, and not have some part in the grief of all who mourned. Thus the lessons of my life have been perverted!

I have preyed on my own morbid coward heart, and it has preyed on me.

Sordid in my grief, sordid in my love, sordid in my miserable escape from the darker side of both, oh see the ruin I am, and hate me, shun me!”

He spoke of a traveller’s house on the Dover Road, where he knew he could find a clean, plain lodging for the night. I went with him over Westminster Bridge, and parted from him on the Surrey shore.

Everything seemed, to my imagination, to be hushed in reverence for him, as he resumed his solitary journey through the snow.

I returned to the inn yard, and, impressed by my remembrance of the face, looked awfully around for it. It was not there. The snow had covered our late footprints; my new track was the only one to be seen;

“No,” said Traddles. “Nothing will induce it. If I was to carry a half-hundred-weight upon it, all the way to Putney, it would be up again the moment the weight was taken off. You have no idea what obstinate hair mine is, Copperfield.

I am quite a fretful porcupine.

”

and the pleasure of Miss Lavinia’s life was to wait upon her, curl her hair, make ornaments for her, and treat her like a pet child. What Miss Lavinia did, her sister did as a matter of course.

It was very odd to me; but they all seemed to treat Dora, in her degree, much as Dora treated Jip in his.

I made up my mind to speak to Dora about this;

“

Why, the butcher would know how to sell it, and what need I know? Oh, you silly boy!

”

I have never believed it possible that any natural or improved ability can claim immunity from the companionship of the steady, plain, hardworking qualities, and hope to gain its end. There is no such thing as such fulfilment on this earth.

Some happy talent, and some fortunate opportunity, may form the two sides of the ladder on which some men mount, but the rounds of that ladder must be made of stuff to stand wear and tear; and there is no substitute for thoroughgoing, ardent, and sincere earnestness.

Never to put one hand to anything, on which I could throw my whole self; and never to affect depreciation of my work, whatever it was; I find, now, to have been my golden rules.

I don’t intend to mention it to mother, nor to any living soul. I’m determined to forgive you. But I do wonder that you should lift your hand against a person that you knew to be so ’umble!”

I felt only less mean than he.

He knew me better than I knew myself. If he had retorted or openly exasperated me, it would have been a relief and a justification; but he had put me on a slow fire, on which I lay tormented half the night.

I felt only less mean than he.

He knew me better than I knew myself.

If he had retorted or openly exasperated me, it would have been a relief and a justification; but he had put me on a slow fire, on which I lay tormented half the night.

and now the unseen heather lies in mounds and bunches underneath a covering of snow. In a breath, the river that flows through our Sunday walks is sparkling in the summer sun, is ruffled by the winter wind, or thickened with drifting heaps of ice.

Faster than ever river ran towards the sea, it flashes, darkens, and rolls away.

Not a thread changes, in the house of the two little birdlike ladies. The clock ticks over the fireplace, the weatherglass hangs in the hall. Neither clock nor weatherglass is ever right; but we believe in both, devoutly.

Not a thread changes, in the house of the two little birdlike ladies. The clock ticks over the fireplace, the weatherglass hangs in the hall.

Neither clock nor weatherglass is ever right; but we believe in both, devoutly.

I have come legally to man’s estate. I have attained the dignity of twenty-one. But this is a sort of dignity that may be thrust upon one. Let me think what I have achieved.

Night after night, I record predictions that never come to pass, professions that are never fulfilled, explanations that are only meant to mystify. I wallow in words.

Britannia, that unfortunate female, is always before me, like a trussed fowl: skewered through and through with office-pens, and bound hand and foot with red tape.

I am sufficiently behind the scenes to know the worth of political life. I am quite an infidel about it, and shall never be converted.

But she preyed upon our minds dreadfully. We felt our inexperience, and were unable to help ourselves.

We should have been at her mercy, if she had had any; but she was a remorseless woman, and had none.

She was the cause of our first little quarrel.

“

Oh, but reasoning is worse than scolding!

” exclaimed Dora, in despair. “I didn’t marry to be reasoned with. If you meant to reason with such a poor little thing as I am, you ought to have told me so, you cruel boy!”

“No, no,” said my aunt. “

But Little Blossom is a very tender little blossom, and the wind must be gentle with her.

”

And if you cannot, child,” here my aunt rubbed her nose, “you must just accustom yourself to do without ’em. But remember, my dear, your future is between you two. No one can assist you; you are to work it out for yourselves.

This is marriage, Trot; and Heaven bless you both, in it, for a pair of babes in the wood as you are!

”

she spoke softly, but without any hesitation: “very much. We had been little lovers once. If circumstances had not happened otherwise, I might have come to persuade myself that I really loved him, and might have married him, and been most wretched.

There can be no disparity in marriage like unsuitability of mind and purpose.

”

Never cast me out! Do not think or speak of disparity between us, for there is none, except in all my many imperfections. Every succeeding year I have known this better, as I have esteemed you more and more.

Oh, take me to your heart, my husband, for my love was founded on a rock, and it endures!

”

“

What! Did you ever see a crocodile overcome?

” inquired my aunt.

When she loved him, Trot, right well. When there was no proof of attachment and affection that she would not have given him. He repaid her by breaking her fortune, and nearly breaking her heart.

So she put all that sort of sentiment, once and forever, in a grave, and filled it up, and flattened it down.

”

The house kept itself, and we kept a page. The principal function of this retainer was to quarrel with the cook; in which respect he was a perfect Whittington, without his cat, or the remotest chance of being made Lord Mayor.

He appears to me to have lived in a hail of saucepan-lids.

His whole existence was a scuffle. He would shriek for help on the most improper occasions—as when we had a little dinner-party, or a few friends in the evening—and would come tumbling out of the kitchen, with iron missiles flying after him.

“

In the world! Ah, Doady, it’s a large place!

”

The old unhappy feeling pervaded my life.

It was deepened, if it were changed at all; but it was as undefined as ever, and addressed me like a strain of sorrowful music faintly heard in the night.

I loved my wife dearly, and I was happy; but the happiness I had vaguely anticipated, once, was not the happiness I enjoyed, and there was always something wanting.

So that’s what I’m a-going to do with her.”

He forgot nobody. He thought of everybody’s claims and strivings, but his own.

“Em’ly,” he continued, “will keep along with me—poor child, she’s sore in need of peace and rest!—until such time as we goes upon our voyage. She’ll work at them clothes, as must be made;

And I tell you what—it’s a most uncommon chair to smoke a pipe in.”

I never saw such a good old fellow to make the best of a thing, and find out the enjoyment of it, as Mr. Omer.

He was as radiant, as if his chair, his asthma, and the failure of his limbs, were the various branches of a great invention for enhancing the luxury of a pipe.

“I knew you would be,” said Mr. Omer. “And Joram and Minnie are like valentines. What more can a man expect? What’s his limbs to that!”

His supreme contempt for his own limbs, as he sat smoking, was one of the pleasantest oddities I have ever encountered.

“And since I’ve took to general reading, you’ve took to general writing, eh, sir?” said Mr. Omer, surveying me admiringly. “What a lovely work that was of yours! What expressions in it! I read it every word—every word. And as to feeling sleepy!

“Have you breakfasted?” said Mr. Dick. “Have a chop!”

“Not for the world, my good sir!” cried Mr. Micawber, stopping him on his way to the bell; “appetite and myself, Mr. Dixon, have long been strangers.”

Mr. Dixon was so well pleased with his new name, and appeared to think it so obliging in Mr. Micawber to confer it upon him, that he shook hands with him again, and laughed rather childishly.

“ ‘Dear Miss Trotwood and gentlemen—’ ”

“Bless and save the man!” exclaimed my aunt in a low voice. “He’d write letters by the ream, if it was a capital offence!”

Mr. Micawber, without hearing her, went on.

as, that they utterly detest, abominate, and abjure, or so forth; and the old anathemas were made relishing on the same principle.

We talk about the tyranny of words, but we like to tyrannize over them too; we are fond of having a large superfluous establishment of words to wait upon us on great occasions; we think it looks important, and sounds well.

As we are not particular about the meaning of our liveries on state occasions, if they be but fine and numerous enough, so, the meaning or necessity of our words is a secondary consideration, if there be but a great parade of them.

“As I think I told you once before,” said I, “it is you who have been, in your greed and cunning, against all the world.

It may be profitable to you to reflect, in future, that there never were greed and cunning in the world yet, that did not do too much, and overreach themselves. It is as certain as death.

”

I sit down by the fire, thinking with a blind remorse of all those secret feelings I have nourished since my marriage.

I think of every little trifle between me and Dora, and feel the truth, that trifles make the sum of life.

Ever rising from the sea of my remembrance, is the image of the dear child as I knew her first, graced by my young love, and by her own, with every fascination wherein such love is rich.

We proceeded by appointment straight to Mr. Micawber’s house; where, and at Mr. Wickfield’s, my friend had been labouring ever since our explosive meeting. When poor Mrs. Micawber saw me come in, in my black clothes, she was sensibly affected.

There was a great deal of good in Mrs. Micawber’s heart, which had not been dunned out of it in all those many years.

“Well, Mr. and Mrs. Micawber,” was my aunt’s first salutation after we were seated. “Pray, have you thought about that emigration proposal of mine?”

to say nothing of the immense number of letters he has written me between this house and Mr. Wickfield’s, and often across the table when he has been sitting opposite, and might much more easily have spoken; is quite extraordinary.”

“Letters!” cried my aunt. “I believe he dreams in letters!”

“There’s Mr. Dick, too,” said Traddles, “has been doing wonders! As soon as he was released from overlooking Uriah Heep, whom he kept in such charge as I never saw exceeded, he began to devote himself to Mr. Wickfield.

“I should say he must have pocketed a good deal, in one way or other. But, I think you would find, Copperfield, if you had an opportunity of observing his course, that money would never keep that man out of mischief.

He is such an incarnate hypocrite, that whatever object he pursues, he must pursue crookedly. It’s his only compensation for the outward restraints he puts upon himself.

Always creeping along the ground to some small end or other, he will always magnify every object in the way; and consequently will hate and suspect everybody that comes, in the most innocent manner, between him and it.

“He’s a monster of meanness!” said my aunt.

“Really I don’t know about that,” observed Traddles thoughtfully. “Many people can be very mean, when they give their minds to it.”

“And now, touching Mr. Micawber,” said my aunt.

I now approach an event in my life, so indelible, so awful, so bound by an infinite variety of ties to all that has preceded it, in these pages, that, from the beginning of my narrative, I have seen it growing larger and larger as I advanced, like a great tower in a plain, and throwing its forecast shadow even on the incidents of my childish days.

For years after it occurred, I dreamed of it often. I have started up so vividly impressed by it, that its fury has yet seemed raging in my quiet room, in the still night.

I have an association between it and a stormy wind, or the lightest mention of a seashore, as strong as any of which my mind is conscious. As plainly as I behold what happened, I will try to write it down.

I do not recall it, but see it done; for it happens again before me.

The time drawing on rapidly for the sailing of the emigrant-ship, my good old nurse (almost brokenhearted for me, when we first met) came up to London. I was constantly with her, and her brother, and the Micawbers (they being very much together);

“I have still a presentiment,” said Mrs. Micawber, pensively shaking her head, “that my family will appear on board, before we finally depart.”

Mr. Micawber evidently had his presentiment on the subject too, but he put it in his tin pot and swallowed it.

“If you have any opportunity of sending letters home, on your passage, Mrs. Micawber,” said my aunt, “you must let us hear from you, you know.”

Micawber. “The ocean, in these times, is a perfect fleet of ships; and we can hardly fail to encounter many, in running over. It is merely crossing,” said Mr. Micawber, trifling with his eyeglass, “merely crossing. The distance is quite imaginary.”

I think, now, how odd it was, but how wonderfully like Mr. Micawber, that, when he went from London to Canterbury, he should have talked as if he were going to the farthest limits of the earth; and, when he went from England to Australia, as if he were going for a little trip across the channel.

“On the voyage, I shall endeavour,” said Mr. Micawber, “occasionally to spin them a yarn; and the melody of my son Wilkins will, I trust, be acceptable at the galley-fire. When Mrs.

In short,” said Mr. Micawber, with the old genteel air, “the probability is, all will be found so exciting, alow and aloft, that when the lookout, stationed in the maintop, cries Land-oh! we shall be very considerably astonished!”

With that he flourished off the contents of his little tin pot, as if he had made the voyage, and had passed a first-class examination before the highest naval authorities.

“What I chiefly hope, my dear Mr. Copperfield,” said Mrs. Micawber, “is, that in some branches of our family we may live again in the old country. Do not frown, Micawber! I do not now refer to my own family, but to our children’s children.

Micawber, wielding the rod of talent and of power in Australia, will be nothing in England? I am but a woman; but I should be unworthy of myself and of my papa, if I were guilty of such absurd weakness.”

Mrs. Micawber’s conviction that her arguments were unanswerable, gave a moral elevation to her tone which I think I had never heard in it before.

“And therefore it is,” said Mrs. Micawber, “that I the more wish, that, at a future period, we may live again on the parent soil. Mr. Micawber may be—I cannot disguise from myself that the probability is, Mr. Micawber will be—a page of History;

“And therefore it is,” said Mrs. Micawber, “that I the more wish, that, at a future period, we may live again on the parent soil.

Mr. Micawber may be⁠—I cannot disguise from myself that the probability is, Mr. Micawber will be⁠—a page of History; and he ought then to be represented in the country which gave him birth, and did not give him employment!

”

It was then calm, radiant sunset. She lay between us, and the red light; and every taper line and spar was visible against the glow.

A sight at once so beautiful, so mournful, and so hopeful, as the glorious ship, lying, still, on the flushed water, with all the life on board her crowded at the bulwarks, and there clustering, for a moment, bareheaded and silent, I never saw.

Silent, only for a moment. As the sails rose to the wind, and the ship began to move, there broke from all the boats three resounding cheers, which those on board took up, and echoed back, and which were echoed and reechoed.

Then I saw her, at her uncle’s side, and trembling on his shoulder. He pointed to us with an eager hand; and she saw us, and waved her last goodbye to me.

Aye, Emily, beautiful and drooping, cling to him with the utmost trust of thy bruised heart; for he has clung to thee, with all the might of his great love!

Surrounded by the rosy light, and standing high upon the deck, apart together, she clinging to him, and he holding her, they solemnly passed away. The night had fallen on the Kentish hills when we were rowed ashore—and fallen darkly upon me.

I went away from England; not knowing, even then, how great the shock was, that I had to bear. I left all who were dear to me, and went away; and believed that I had borne it, and it was past.

As a man upon a field of battle will receive a mortal hurt, and scarcely know that he is struck, so I, when I was left alone with my undisciplined heart, had no conception of the wound with which it had to strive.

The knowledge came upon me, not quickly, but little by little, and grain by grain. The desolate feeling with which I went abroad, deepened and widened hourly. At first it was a heavy sense of loss and sorrow, wherein I could distinguish little else.

I had thought, much and often, of my Dora’s shadowing out to me what might have happened, in those years that were destined not to try us;

I had considered how the things that never happen, are often as much realities to us, in their effects, as those that are accomplished.

The very years she spoke of, were realities now, for my correction; and would have been, one day, a little later perhaps, though we had parted in our earliest folly.

I endeavoured to convert what might have been between myself and Agnes, into a means of making me more self-denying, more resolved, more conscious of myself, and my defects and errors.

Thus, through the reflection that it might have been, I arrived at the conviction that it could never be.

These, with their perplexities and inconsistencies, were the shifting quicksands of my mind, from the time of my departure to the time of my return home, three years afterwards. Three years had elapsed since the sailing of the emigrant ship;

“All well, my dear, dear Copperfield, and nothing but good news!”

We cried with pleasure, both of us.

“My dear fellow,” said Traddles, rumpling his hair in his excitement, which was a most unnecessary operation, “my dearest Copperfield, my long-lost and most welcome friend, how glad I am to see you! How brown you are! How glad I am!

Poor things, they have had a great loss in Sophy—who, I do assure you, Copperfield is, and ever was, the dearest girl!—and it gratifies me beyond expression to find them in such good spirits. The society of girls is a very delightful thing, Copperfield.

It’s not professional, but it’s very delightful.

”

A few slight indications of a rather petted and capricious manner, which I observed in the Beauty, were manifestly considered, by Traddles and his wife, as her birthright and natural endowment.

If she had been born a queen bee, and they labouring bees, they could not have been more satisfied of that.

But their self-forgetfulness charmed me. Their pride in these girls, and their submission of themselves to all their whims, was the pleasantest little testimony to their own worth I could have desired to see.

I am sure, when I took my leave, and Traddles was coming out to walk with me to the coffeehouse,

I thought I had never seen an obstinate head of hair, or any other head of hair, rolling about in such a shower of kisses.

Altogether, it was a scene I could not help dwelling on with pleasure, for a long time after I got back and had wished Traddles good night.

She would marry, and would have new claimants on her tenderness; and in doing it, would never know the love for her that had grown up in my heart. It was right that I should pay the forfeit of my headlong passion.

What I reaped, I had sown.

I was thinking.

He was tolerably stricken in years by this time; but, being a mild, meek, calm little man, had worn so easily, that

I thought he looked at that moment just as he might have looked when he sat in our parlour, waiting for me to be born.

Mr. Chillip had left Blunderstone six or seven years ago, and I had never seen him since. He sat placidly perusing the newspaper, with his little head on one side, and a glass of warm sherry negus at his elbow.

Mr. Chillip had left Blunderstone six or seven years ago, and I had never seen him since. He sat placidly perusing the newspaper, with his little head on one side, and a glass of warm sherry negus at his elbow.

He was so extremely conciliatory in his manner that he seemed to apologize to the very newspaper for taking the liberty of reading it.

I walked up to where he was sitting, and said, “How do you do, Mr. Chillip?”

“Well, sir,” replied Mr. Chillip, “a medical man, being so much in families, ought to have neither eyes nor ears for anything but his profession.

Still, I must say, they are very severe, sir: both as to this life and the next.

”