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.
Copyrights
Great Expectations from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.
