“I, Alexandre Manette, unfortunate physician, native of Beauvais, and afterwards resident in Paris, write this melancholy paper in my doleful cell in the Bastille, during the last month of the year, 1767. I write it at stolen intervals, under every difficulty. I design to secrete it in the wall of the chimney, where I have slowly and laboriously made a place of concealment for it. Some pitying hand may find it there, when I and my sorrows are dust. “These words are formed by the rusty iron point with which I write with difficulty in scrapings of soot and charcoal [Read More]
Charles Dickens
My Wonderful Adventures in Skitzland
I am fond of Gardening. I like to dig. If among the operations of the garden any need for such a work can be at any time discovered or invented, I like to dig a hole. This fun little tale first appeared in Dickens’ weekly journal Household Words. The version of it here is from an anthology of pieces from the journal published in America as Pearl-Fishing; Choice Stories from Dickens’ Household Words, which is hosted at Project Gutenberg. On the 3d of March, 1849, I began a hole behind the kitchen wall, whereinto it was originally intended to transplant [Read More]
The Signalman
Halloa! Below there!” When he heard a voice thus calling to him, he was standing at the door of his box, with a flag in his hand, furled round its short pole. One would have thought, considering the nature of the ground, that he could not have doubted from what quarter the voice came; but instead of looking up to where I stood on the top of the steep cutting nearly over his head, he turned himself about, and looked down the Line. There was something remarkable in his manner of doing so, though I could not have said for [Read More]