My only other remembrances of the great festival are, That they wouldn’t let me go to sleep, but whenever they saw me dropping off, woke me up and told me to enjoy myself.  That, rather late in the evening Mr. Wopsle gave us Collins’s ode, and threw his bloodstain’d sword in thunder down, with such effect, that a waiter came in and said, “The Commercials underneath sent up their compliments, and it wasn’t the Tumblers’ Arms.”  That, they were all in excellent spirits on the road home, and sang O Lady Fair!  Mr. Wopsle taking the bass, and asserting with a tremendously strong voice (in reply to the inquisitive bore who leads that piece of music in a most impertinent manner, by wanting to know all about everybody’s private affairs) that he was the man with his white locks flowing, and that he was upon the whole the weakest pilgrim going.

Finally, I remember that when I got into my little bedroom I was truly wretched, and had a strong conviction on me that I should never like Joe’s trade.  I had liked it once, but once was not now.

Chapter 14

It is a most miserable thing to feel ashamed of home.  There may be black ingratitude in the thing, and the punishment may be retributive and well deserved; but, that it is a miserable thing, I can testify.

Home had never been a very pleasant place to me, because of my sister’s temper.  But, Joe had sanctified it, and I had believed in it.  I had believed in the best parlour as a most elegant saloon; I had believed in the front door, as a mysterious portal of the Temple of State whose solemn opening was attended with a sacrifice of roast fowls; I had believed in the kitchen as a chaste though not magnificent apartment; I had believed in the forge as the glowing road to manhood and independence.  Within a single year, all this was changed.  Now, it was all coarse and common, and I would not have had Miss Havisham and Estella see it on any account.

How much of my ungracious condition of mind may have been my own fault, how much Miss Havisham’s, how much my sister’s, is now of no moment to me or to any one.  The change was made in me; the thing was done.  Well or ill done, excusably or inexcusably, it was done.

Once, it had seemed to me that when I should at last roll up my shirt-sleeves and go into the forge, Joe’s ’prentice, I should be distinguished and happy.  Now the reality was in my hold, I only felt that I was dusty with the dust of small coal, and that I had a weight upon my daily remembrance to which the anvil was a feather.  There have been occasions in my later life (I suppose as in most lives) when I have felt for a time as if a thick curtain had fallen on all its interest and romance, to shut me out from anything save dull endurance any more.  Never has that curtain dropped so heavy and blank, as when my way in life lay stretched out straight before me through the newly-entered road of apprenticeship to Joe.