Charles Dickens, the Story of His Life

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J. C. Hotten, [pref. 1870], 1870 - 367 pages

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Page 12 - I have been Tom Jones (a child's Tom Jones, a harmless creature) for a week together. I have sustained my own idea of Roderick Random for a month at a stretch, I verily believe.
Page 12 - I bought an approved scheme of the noble art and mystery of stenography (which cost me ten and sixpence), and plunged into a sea of perplexity, that brought me, in a few weeks, to the confines of distraction. The changes that were rung upon dots, which in...
Page 108 - Some of that dreary double entendre may be attributed to freer times and manners than ours, but not all. The foul Satyr's eyes leer out of the leaves constantly: the last words the famous author wrote were bad and wicked — the last lines the poor stricken wretch penned were for pity and pardon.
Page 37 - Fogg's hung (which last ewent I think is the most likely to happen first, Sammy), and then let him come back and write a book about the 'Merrikins, as'll pay all his expenses and more, if he blows 'em up enough.
Page 45 - Dickens since those halfdozen years, the store of happy hours that he has made us pass, the kindly and pleasant companions whom he has introduced to us ; the harmless laughter, the generous wit, the frank, manly, human love which he has taught us to feel ! Every month of those years has brought us some kind token from this delightful genius.
Page 20 - Club,' the members of which were to go out shooting, fishing, and so forth, and getting themselves into difficulties through their want of dexterity, would be the best means of introducing these.
Page 13 - The pleasure that I used to feel in the rapidity and dexterity of its exercise has never faded out of my breast. Whatever little cunning of hand or head I took to it, or acquired in it, I have so retained as that I fully believe I could resume it to-morrow, very little the worse from long disuse. To this present year of my life, when I sit in this hall, or where not, hearing a dull speech, the phenomenon does occur — I sometimes beguile the tedium of the moment by mentally following the speaker...
Page 33 - When death strikes down the innocent and young, for every fragile form from which he lets the panting spirit free, a hundred virtues rise in shapes of mercy, charity, and love, to walk the world and bless it. Of every tear that sorrowing mortals shed on such green graves, some good is born, some gentler nature comes.
Page 18 - ... was the nickname of a pet child, a younger brother, whom I had dubbed Moses, in honour of the Vicar of Wakefield ; which being facetiously pronounced through the nose, became Boses, and being shortened, became Boz. "Boz" was a very familiar household word to me, long before I was an author, and so I came to adopt it.

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