When I got up to my little room and said my prayers,
I did not forget Joe’s recommendation, and yet
my young mind was in that disturbed and unthankful
state, that I thought long after I laid me down, how
common Estella would consider Joe, a mere blacksmith:
how thick his boots, and how coarse his hands.
I thought how Joe and my sister were then sitting
in the kitchen, and how I had come up to bed from
the kitchen, and how Miss Havisham and Estella never
sat in a kitchen, but were far above the level of
such common doings. I fell asleep recalling
what I “used to do” when I was at Miss
Havisham’s; as though I had been there weeks
or months, instead of hours; and as though it were
quite an old subject of remembrance, instead of one
that had arisen only that day.
That was a memorable day to me, for it made great
changes in me. But, it is the same with any life.
Imagine one selected day struck out of it, and think
how different its course would have been. Pause
you who read this, and think for a moment of the long
chain of iron or gold, of thorns or flowers, that
would never have bound you, but for the formation
of the first link on one memorable day.
Chapter 10
The felicitous idea occurred to me a morning or two
later when I woke, that the best step I could take
towards making myself uncommon was to get out of Biddy
everything she knew. In pursuance of this luminous
conception I mentioned to Biddy when I went to Mr.
Wopsle’s great-aunt’s at night, that I
had a particular reason for wishing to get on in life,
and that I should feel very much obliged to her if
she would impart all her learning to me. Biddy,
who was the most obliging of girls, immediately said
she would, and indeed began to carry out her promise
within five minutes.
The Educational scheme or Course established by Mr.
Wopsle’s great-aunt may be resolved into the
following synopsis. The pupils ate apples and
put straws down one another’s backs, until Mr
Wopsle’s great-aunt collected her energies, and
made an indiscriminate totter at them with a birch-rod.
After receiving the charge with every mark of derision,
the pupils formed in line and buzzingly passed a ragged
book from hand to hand. The book had an alphabet
in it, some figures and tables, and a little spelling
— that is to say, it had had once. As
soon as this volume began to circulate, Mr. Wopsle’s
great-aunt fell into a state of coma; arising either
from sleep or a rheumatic paroxysm. The pupils
then entered among themselves upon a competitive examination
on the subject of Boots, with the view of ascertaining
who could tread the hardest upon whose toes.
This mental exercise lasted until Biddy made a rush
at them and distributed three defaced Bibles (shaped
as if they had been unskilfully cut off the chump-end
of something), more illegibly printed at the best
than any curiosities of literature I have since met
Copyrights
Great Expectations from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.
