Author: Charles Dickens
Release Date: November, 1996 [EBook #730] [This
file was last updated on March 25, 2006]
Edition: 11
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
*** Start of the project gutenberg
EBOOK Oliver Twist ***
This etext was created by Peggy Gaugy.
Edition 11 editing by Leigh Little.
Oliver Twist
or
the parish boy’s progress
by
Charles Dickens
Treats of the place where
Oliver Twist was born and
of the
circumstances attending his birth
Among other public buildings in a certain town, which
for many reasons it will be prudent to refrain from
mentioning, and to which I will assign no fictitious
name, there is one anciently common to most towns,
great or small: to wit, a workhouse; and in this
workhouse was born; on a day and date which I need
not trouble myself to repeat, inasmuch as it can be
of no possible consequence to the reader, in this
stage of the business at all events; the item of mortality
whose name is prefixed to the head of this chapter.
For a long time after it was ushered into this world
of sorrow and trouble, by the parish surgeon, it remained
a matter of considerable doubt whether the child would
survive to bear any name at all; in which case it
is somewhat more than probable that these memoirs
would never have appeared; or, if they had, that being
comprised within a couple of pages, they would have
possessed the inestimable merit of being the most concise
and faithful specimen of biography, extant in the
literature of any age or country.
Although I am not disposed to maintain that the being
born in a workhouse, is in itself the most fortunate
and enviable circumstance that can possibly befall
a human being, I do mean to say that in this particular
instance, it was the best thing for Oliver Twist that
could by possibility have occurred. The fact
is, that there was considerable difficulty in inducing
Oliver to take upon himself the office of respiration,—a
troublesome practice, but one which custom has rendered
necessary to our easy existence; and for some time
he lay gasping on a little flock mattress, rather
unequally poised between this world and the next:
the balance being decidedly in favour of the latter.
Now, if, during this brief period, Oliver had been
surrounded by careful grandmothers, anxious aunts,
experienced nurses, and doctors of profound wisdom,
he would most inevitably and indubitably have been
killed in no time. There being nobody by, however,
but a pauper old woman, who was rendered rather misty
