Mrs. Lirriper's Legacy , livre ebook

Pub One Info - Charles Dickens

Découvre YouScribe en t'inscrivant gratuitement

Je m'inscris

Obtenez un accès à la bibliothèque pour le consulter en ligne
En savoir plus

21 pages

English

Vous pourrez modifier la taille du texte de cet ouvrage

Obtenez un accès à la bibliothèque pour le consulter en ligne
En savoir plus

A propos
Informations
Extrait

Description

pubOne.info thank you for your continued support and wish to present you this new edition. Ah! It's pleasant to drop into my own easy-chair my dear though a little palpitating what with trotting up-stairs and what with trotting down, and why kitchen stairs should all be corner stairs is for the builders to justify though I do not think they fully understand their trade and never did, else why the sameness and why not more conveniences and fewer draughts and likewise making a practice of laying the plaster on too thick I am well convinced which holds the damp, and as to chimney-pots putting them on by guess-work like hats at a party and no more knowing what their effect will be upon the smoke bless you than I do if so much, except that it will mostly be either to send it down your throat in a straight form or give it a twist before it goes there. And what I says speaking as I find of those new metal chimneys all manner of shapes (there's a row of 'em at Miss Wozenham's lodging-house lower down on the other side of the way) is that they only work your smoke into artificial patterns for you before you swallow it and that I'd quite as soon swallow mine plain, the flavour being the same, not to mention the conceit of putting up signs on the top of your house to show the forms in which you take your smoke into your inside

Informations

Publié par	Pub One Info
Date de parution	23 octobre 2010
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9782819911005
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0050€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

CHAPTER I – MRS. LIRRIPER RELATES HOW SHE WENTON, AND WENT OVER
Ah! It's pleasant to drop into my own easy-chair mydear though a little palpitating what with trotting up-stairs andwhat with trotting down, and why kitchen stairs should all becorner stairs is for the builders to justify though I do not thinkthey fully understand their trade and never did, else why thesameness and why not more conveniences and fewer draughts andlikewise making a practice of laying the plaster on too thick I amwell convinced which holds the damp, and as to chimney-pots puttingthem on by guess-work like hats at a party and no more knowing whattheir effect will be upon the smoke bless you than I do if so much,except that it will mostly be either to send it down your throat ina straight form or give it a twist before it goes there. And what Isays speaking as I find of those new metal chimneys all manner ofshapes (there's a row of 'em at Miss Wozenham's lodging-house lowerdown on the other side of the way) is that they only work yoursmoke into artificial patterns for you before you swallow it andthat I'd quite as soon swallow mine plain, the flavour being thesame, not to mention the conceit of putting up signs on the top ofyour house to show the forms in which you take your smoke into yourinside.
Being here before your eyes my dear in my owneasy-chair in my own quiet room in my own Lodging-House NumberEighty-one Norfolk Street Strand London situated midway between theCity and St. James's – if anything is where it used to be withthese hotels calling themselves Limited but called unlimited byMajor Jackman rising up everywhere and rising up into flagstaffswhere they can't go any higher, but my mind of those monsters isgive me a landlord's or landlady's wholesome face when I come off ajourney and not a brass plate with an electrified number clickingout of it which it's not in nature can be glad to see me and towhich I don't want to be hoisted like molasses at the Docks andleft there telegraphing for help with the most ingeniousinstruments but quite in vain – being here my dear I have no callto mention that I am still in the Lodgings as a business hoping todie in the same and if agreeable to the clergy partly read over atSaint Clement's Danes and concluded in Hatfield churchyard whenlying once again by my poor Lirriper ashes to ashes and dust todust.
Neither should I tell you any news my dear intelling you that the Major is still a fixture in the Parlours quiteas much so as the roof of the house, and that Jemmy is of boys thebest and brightest and has ever had kept from him the cruel storyof his poor pretty young mother Mrs. Edson being deserted in thesecond floor and dying in my arms, fully believing that I am hisborn Gran and him an orphan, though what with engineering since hetook a taste for it and him and the Major making Locomotives out ofparasols broken iron pots and cotton-reels and them absolutely agetting off the line and falling over the table and injuring thepassengers almost equal to the originals it really is quitewonderful. And when I says to the Major, "Major can't you by ANYmeans give us a communication with the guard?" the Major says quitehuffy, "No madam it's not to be done," and when I says "Why not?"the Major says, "That is between us who are in the Railway Interestmadam and our friend the Right Honourable Vice-President of theBoard of Trade" and if you'll believe me my dear the Major wrote toJemmy at school to consult him on the answer I should have before Icould get even that amount of unsatisfactoriness out of the man,the reason being that when we first began with the little model andthe working signals beautiful and perfect (being in general aswrong as the real) and when I says laughing "What appointment am Ito hold in this undertaking gentlemen?" Jemmy hugs me round theneck and tells me dancing, "You shall be the Public Gran" andconsequently they put upon me just as much as ever they like and Isit a growling in my easy-chair.
My dear whether it is that a grown man as clever asthe Major cannot give half his heart and mind to anything – even aplaything – but must get into right down earnest with it, whetherit is so or whether it is not so I do not undertake to say, butJemmy is far out-done by the serious and believing ways of theMajor in the management of the United Grand Junction Lirriper andJackman Great Norfolk Parlour Line, "For" says my Jemmy with thesparkling eyes when it was christened, "we must have a wholemouthful of name Gran or our dear old Public" and there the youngrogue kissed me, "won't stump up." So the Public took the shares –ten at ninepence, and immediately when that was spent twelvePreference at one and sixpence – and they were all signed by Jemmyand countersigned by the Major, and between ourselves much betterworth the money than some shares I have paid for in my time. In thesame holidays the line was made and worked and opened and ranexcursions and had collisions and burst its boilers and all sortsof accidents and offences all most regular correct and pretty. Thesense of responsibility entertained by the Major as a militarystyle of station-master my dear starting the down train behind timeand ringing one of those little bells that you buy with the littlecoal-scuttles off the tray round the man's neck in the street didhim honour, but noticing the Major of a night when he is writingout his monthly report to Jemmy at school of the state of theRolling Stock and the Permanent Way and all the rest of it (thewhole kept upon the Major's sideboard and dusted with his own handsevery morning before varnishing his boots) I notice him as full ofthought and care as full can be and frowning in a fearful manner,but indeed the Major does nothing by halves as witness his greatdelight in going out surveying with Jemmy when he has Jemmy to gowith, carrying a chain and a measuring-tape and driving I don'tknow what improvements right through Westminster Abbey and fullybelieved in the streets to be knocking everything upside down byAct of Parliament. As please Heaven will come to pass when Jemmytakes to that as a profession!
Mentioning my poor Lirriper brings into my head hisown youngest brother the Doctor though Doctor of what I am sure itwould be hard to say unless Liquor, for neither Physic nor Musicnor yet Law does Joshua Lirriper know a morsel of exceptcontinually being summoned to the County Court and having ordersmade upon him which he runs away from, and once was taken in thepassage of this very house with an umbrella up and the Major's haton, giving his name with the door-mat round him as Sir JohnsonJones, K.C.B. in spectacles residing at the Horse Guards. On whichoccasion he had got into the house not a minute before, through thegirl letting him on the mat when he sent in a piece of papertwisted more like one of those spills for lighting candles than anote, offering me the choice between thirty shillings in hand andhis brains on the premises marked immediate and waiting for ananswer. My dear it gave me such a dreadful turn to think of thebrains of my poor dear Lirriper's own flesh and blood flying aboutthe new oilcloth however unworthy to be so assisted, that I wentout of my room here to ask him what he would take once for all notto do it for life when I found him in the custody of two gentlementhat I should have judged to be in the feather-bed trade if theyhad not announced the law, so fluffy were their personalappearance. "Bring your chains, sir," says Joshua to the littlestof the two in the biggest hat, "rivet on my fetters!" Imagine myfeelings when I pictered him clanking up Norfolk Street in ironsand Miss Wozenham looking out of window! "Gentlemen," I says all ofa tremble and ready to drop "please to bring him into MajorJackman's apartments." So they brought him into the Parlours, andwhen the Major spies his own curly-brimmed hat on him which JoshuaLirriper had whipped off its peg in the passage for a militarydisguise he goes into such a tearing passion that he tips it offhis head with his hand and kicks it up to the ceiling with his footwhere it grazed long afterwards. "Major" I says "be cool and adviseme what to do with Joshua my dead and gone Lirriper's own youngestbrother." "Madam" says the Major "my advice is that you board andlodge him in a Powder Mill, with a handsome gratuity to theproprietor when exploded." "Major" I says "as a Christian youcannot mean your words." "Madam" says the Major "by the Lord I do!"and indeed the Major besides being with all his merits a verypassionate man for his size had a bad opinion of Joshua on accountof former troubles even unattended by liberties taken with hisapparel. When Joshua Lirriper hears this conversation betwixt us heturns upon the littlest one with the biggest hat and says "Comesir! Remove me to my vile dungeon. Where is my mouldy straw?" Mydear at the picter of him rising in my mind dressed almost entirelyin padlocks like Baron Trenck in Jemmy's book I was so overcomethat I burst into tears and I says to the Major, "Major take mykeys and settle with these gentlemen or I shall never know a happyminute more," which was done several times both before and since,but still I must remember that Joshua Lirriper has his goodfeelings and shows them in being always so troubled in his mindwhen he cannot wear mourning for his brother.