Great Expectations, Charles Dickens [top 10 best books of all time txt] 📗

disadvantage

of both gentlemen.

Mr. Wopsle’s great-aunt, besides keeping this Educational

Institution, kept in the same room—a little general shop. She

had no idea what stock she had, or what the price of anything in it

was; but there was a little greasy memorandum-book kept in a

drawer, which served as a Catalogue of Prices, and by this oracle

Biddy arranged all the shop transaction. Biddy was Mr. Wopsle’s

great-aunt’s granddaughter; I confess myself quiet unequal to the

working out of the problem, what relation she was to Mr. Wopsle. She

was an orphan like myself; like me, too, had been brought up by

hand. She was most noticeable, I thought, in respect of her

extremities; for, her hair always wanted brushing, her hands always

wanted washing, and her shoes always wanted mending and pulling up

at heel. This description must be received with a week-day

limitation. On Sundays, she went to church elaborated.

Much of my unassisted self, and more by the help of Biddy than of

Mr. Wopsle’s great-aunt, I struggled through the alphabet as if it

had been a bramble-bush; getting considerably worried and scratched

by every letter. After that I fell among those thieves, the nine

figures, who seemed every evening to do something new to disguise

themselves and baffle recognition. But, at last I began, in a

purblind groping way, to read, write, and cipher, on the very

smallest scale.

One night I was sitting in the chimney corner with my slate,

expending great efforts on the production of a letter to Joe. I

think it must have been a full year after our hunt upon the

marshes, for it was a long time after, and it was winter and a hard

frost. With an alphabet on the hearth at my feet for reference, I

contrived in an hour or two to print and smear this epistle:—

“MI DEER JO i OPE U R KR WITE WELL i OPE i SHAL SON B HABELL 4 2

TEEDGE U JO AN THEN WE SHORL B SO GLODD AN WEN i M PRENGTD 2 U JO

WOT LARX AN BLEVE ME INF XN PIP.”

There was no indispensable necessity for my communicating with Joe

by letter, inasmuch as he sat beside me and we were alone. But I

delivered this written communication (slate and all) with my own

hand, and Joe received it as a miracle of erudition.

“I say, Pip, old chap!” cried Joe, opening his blue eyes wide,

“what a scholar you are! An’t you?”

“I should like to be,” said I, glancing at the slate as he held it;

with a misgiving that the writing was rather hilly.

“Why, here’s a J,” said Joe, “and a O equal to anythink! Here’s a J

and a O, Pip, and a J-O, Joe.”

I had never heard Joe read aloud to any greater extent than this

monosyllable, and I had observed at church last Sunday, when I

accidentally held our Prayer-Book upside down, that it seemed to

suit his convenience quite as well as if it had been all right.

Wishing to embrace the present occasion of finding out whether in

teaching Joe, I should have to begin quite at the beginning, I

said, “Ah! But read the rest, Jo.”

“The rest, eh, Pip?” said Joe, looking at it with a slow,

searching eye, “One, two, three. Why, here’s three Js, and three

Os, and three J-O, Joes in it, Pip!”

I leaned over Joe, and, with the aid of my forefinger read him the

whole letter.

“Astonishing!” said Joe, when I had finished. “You ARE a scholar.”

“How do you spell Gargery, Joe?” I asked him, with a modest

patronage.

“I don’t spell it at all,” said Joe.

“But supposing you did?”

“It can’t be supposed,” said Joe. “Tho’ I’m uncommon fond of

reading, too.”

“Are you, Joe?”

“Oncommon. Give me,” said Joe, “a good book, or a good newspaper,

and sit me down afore a good fire, and I ask no better. Lord!” he

continued, after rubbing his knees a little, “when you do come to a

J and a O, and says you, “Here, at last, is a J-O, Joe,” how

interesting reading is!”

I derived from this, that Joe’s education, like Steam, was yet

in its infancy, Pursuing the subject, I inquired,—

“Didn’t you ever go to school, Joe, when you were as little as me?”

“No, Pip.”

“Why didn’t you ever go to school, Joe, when you were as little as

me?”

“Well, Pip,” said Joe, taking up the poker, and settling himself to

his usual occupation when he was thoughtful, of slowly raking the

fire between the lower bars; “I’ll tell you. My father, Pip, he

were given to drink, and when he were overtook with drink, he

hammered away at my mother, most onmerciful. It were a’most the

only hammering he did, indeed, ‘xcepting at myself. And he hammered

at me with a wigor only to be equalled by the wigor with which he

didn’t hammer at his anwil.—You’re a listening and understanding,

Pip?”

“Yes, Joe.”

“‘Consequence, my mother and me we ran away from my father

several times; and then my mother she’d go out to work, and she’d

say, “Joe,” she’d say, “now, please God, you shall have some

schooling, child,” and she’d put me to school. But my father were

that good in his hart that he couldn’t abear to be without us. So,

he’d come with a most tremenjous crowd and make such a row at the

doors of the houses where we was, that they used to be obligated to

have no more to do with us and to give us up to him. And then he

took us home and hammered us. Which, you see, Pip,” said Joe,

pausing in his meditative raking of the fire, and looking at me,

“were a drawback on my learning.”

“Certainly, poor Joe!”

“Though mind you, Pip,” said Joe, with a judicial touch or two of

the poker on the top bar, “rendering unto all their doo, and

maintaining equal justice betwixt man and man, my father were that

good in his hart, don’t you see?”

I didn’t see; but I didn’t say so.

“Well!” Joe pursued, “somebody must keep the pot a biling, Pip, or

the pot won’t bile, don’t you know?”

I saw that, and said so.

“‘Consequence, my father didn’t make objections to my going to

work; so I went to work to work at my present calling, which were

his too, if he would have followed it, and I worked tolerable hard,

I assure you, Pip. In time I were able to keep him, and I kep him

till he went off in a purple leptic fit. And it were my intentions

to have had put upon his tombstone that, Whatsume’er the failings on

his part, Remember reader he were that good in his heart.”

Joe recited this couplet with such manifest pride and careful

perspicuity, that I asked him if he had made it himself.

“I made it,” said Joe, “my own self. I made it in a moment. It was

like striking out a horseshoe complete, in a single blow. I never

was so much surprised in all my life,—couldn’t credit my own ed,—

to tell you the truth, hardly believed it were my own ed. As I was

saying, Pip, it were my intentions to have had it cut over him; but

poetry costs money, cut it how you will, small or large, and it

were not done. Not to mention bearers, all the money that could be

spared were wanted for my mother. She were in poor elth, and quite

broke. She weren’t long of following, poor soul, and her share of

peace come round at last.”

Joe’s blue eyes turned a little watery; he rubbed first one of

them, and then the other, in a most uncongenial and uncomfortable

manner, with the round knob on the top of the poker.

“It were but lonesome then,” said Joe, “living here alone, and I

got acquainted with your sister. Now, Pip,”—Joe looked firmly at

me as if he knew I was not going to agree with him;—“your sister

is a fine figure of a woman.”

I could not help looking at the fire, in an obvious state of doubt.

“Whatever family opinions, or whatever the world’s opinions, on

that subject may be, Pip, your sister is,” Joe tapped the top bar

with the poker after every word following, “a-fine-figure—of

—a—woman!”

I could think of nothing better to say than “I am glad you think

so, Joe.”

“So am I,” returned Joe, catching me up. “I am glad I think so,

Pip. A little redness or a little matter of Bone, here or there,

what does it signify to Me?”

I sagaciously observed, if it didn’t signify to him, to whom did it

signify?

“Certainly!” assented Joe. “That’s it. You’re right, old chap! When

I got acquainted with your sister, it were the talk how she was

bringing you up by hand. Very kind of her too, all the folks said,

and I said, along with all the folks. As to you,” Joe pursued with

a countenance expressive of seeing something very nasty indeed, “if

you could have been aware how small and flabby and mean you was,

dear me, you’d have formed the most contemptible opinion of

yourself!”

Not exactly relishing this, I said, “Never mind me, Joe.”

“But I did mind you, Pip,” he returned with tender simplicity.

“When I offered to your sister to keep company, and to be asked in

church at such times as she was willing and ready to come to the

forge, I said to her, ‘And bring the poor little child. God bless

the poor little child,’ I said to your sister, ‘there’s room for

him at the forge!’”

I broke out crying and begging pardon, and hugged Joe round the

neck: who dropped the poker to hug me, and to say, “Ever the best

of friends; an’t us, Pip? Don’t cry, old chap!”

When this little interruption was over, Joe resumed:—

“Well, you see, Pip, and here we are! That’s about where it lights;

here we are! Now, when you take me in hand in my learning, Pip (and

I tell you beforehand I am awful dull, most awful dull), Mrs. Joe

mustn’t see too much of what we’re up to. It must be done, as I may

say, on the sly. And why on the sly? I’ll tell you why, Pip.”

He had taken up the poker again; without which, I doubt if he could

have proceeded in his demonstration.

“Your sister is given to government.”

“Given to government, Joe?” I was startled, for I had some shadowy

idea (and I am afraid I must add, hope) that Joe had divorced her

in a favor of the Lords of the Admiralty, or Treasury.

“Given to government,” said Joe. “Which I meantersay the government

of you and myself.”

“Oh!”

“And she an’t over partial to having scholars on the premises,” Joe

continued, “and in partickler would not be over partial to my being

a scholar, for fear as I might rise. Like a sort or rebel, don’t

you see?”

I was going to retort with an inquiry, and had got as far as

“Why—” when Joe stopped me.

“Stay a bit. I know what you’re a going to say, Pip; stay a bit! I

don’t deny that your sister comes the Mo-gul over us, now and

again. I don’t deny that she do throw us back-falls, and that she

do drop down upon us heavy. At such times as when your sister is on

the Rampage, Pip,” Joe sank his voice to a whisper and glanced at

the door, “candor compels fur to admit that she is a Buster.”

Joe pronounced this word, as if it began with at least twelve

capital Bs.

“Why don’t I rise? That were your observation when