Bleak House by Charles Dickens (the top 100 crime novels of all time .txt) 📖

>She has been disappointed in Borrioboola-Gha, which turned out a

failure in consequence of the king of Borrioboola wanting to sell

everybody—who survived the climate—for rum, but she has taken up

with the rights of women to sit in Parliament, and Caddy tells me

it is a mission involving more correspondence than the old one. I

had almost forgotten Caddy’s poor little girl. She is not such a

mite now, but she is deaf and dumb. I believe there never was a

better mother than Caddy, who learns, in her scanty intervals of

leisure, innumerable deaf and dumb arts to soften the affliction of

her child.

 

As if I were never to have done with Caddy, I am reminded here of

Peepy and old Mr. Turveydrop. Peepy is in the Custom House, and

doing extremely well. Old Mr. Turveydrop, very apoplectic, still

exhibits his deportment about town, still enjoys himself in the old

manner, is still believed in in the old way. He is constant in his

patronage of Peepy and is understood to have bequeathed him a

favourite French clock in his dressing-room—which is not his

property.

 

With the first money we saved at home, we added to our pretty house

by throwing out a little growlery expressly for my guardian, which

we inaugurated with great splendour the next time he came down to

see us. I try to write all this lightly, because my heart is full

in drawing to an end, but when I write of him, my tears will have

their way.

 

I never look at him but I hear our poor dear Richard calling him a

good man. To Ada and her pretty boy, he is the fondest father; to

me he is what he has ever been, and what name can I give to that?

He is my husband’s best and dearest friend, he is our children’s

darling, he is the object of our deepest love and veneration. Yet

while I feel towards him as if he were a superior being, I am so

familiar with him and so easy with him that I almost wonder at

myself. I have never lost my old names, nor has he lost his; nor

do I ever, when he is with us, sit in any other place than in my

old chair at his side, Dame Trot, Dame Durden, Little Woman—all

just the same as ever; and I answer, “Yes, dear guardian!” just the

same.

 

I have never known the wind to be in the east for a single moment

since the day when he took me to the porch to read the name. I

remarked to him once that the wind seemed never in the east now,

and he said, no, truly; it had finally departed from that quarter

on that very day.

 

I think my darling girl is more beautiful than ever. The sorrow

that has been in her face—for it is not there now—seems to have

purified even its innocent expression and to have given it a

diviner quality. Sometimes when I raise my eyes and see her in the

black dress that she still wears, teaching my Richard, I feel—it

is difficult to express—as if it were so good to know that she

remembers her dear Esther in her prayers.

 

I call him my Richard! But he says that he has two mamas, and I am

one.

 

We are not rich in the bank, but we have always prospered, and we

have quite enough. I never walk out with my husband but I hear the

people bless him. I never go into a house of any degree but I hear

his praises or see them in grateful eyes. I never lie down at

night but I know that in the course of that day he has alleviated

pain and soothed some fellow-creature in the time of need. I know

that from the beds of those who were past recovery, thanks have

often, often gone up, in the last hour, for his patient

ministration. Is not this to be rich?

 

The people even praise me as the doctor’s wife. The people even

like me as I go about, and make so much of me that I am quite

abashed. I owe it all to him, my love, my pride! They like me for

his sake, as I do everything I do in life for his sake.

 

A night or two ago, after bustling about preparing for my darling

and my guardian and little Richard, who are coming to-morrow, I was

sitting out in the porch of all places, that dearly memorable

porch, when Allan came home. So he said, “My precious little

woman, what are you doing here?” And I said, “The moon is shining

so brightly, Allan, and the night is so delicious, that I have been

sitting here thinking.”

 

“What have you been thinking about, my dear?” said Allan then.

 

“How curious you are!” said I. “I am almost ashamed to tell you,

but I will. I have been thinking about my old looks—such as they

were.”

 

“And what have you been thinking about THEM, my busy bee?” said

Allan.

 

“I have been thinking that I thought it was impossible that you

COULD have loved me any better, even if I had retained them.”

 

“‘Such as they were’?” said Allan, laughing.

 

“Such as they were, of course.”

 

“My dear Dame Durden,” said Allan, drawing my arm through his, “do

you ever look in the glass?”

 

“You know I do; you see me do it.”

 

“And don’t you know that you are prettier than you ever were?”

 

“I did not know that; I am not certain that I know it now. But I

know that my dearest little pets are very pretty, and that my

darling is very beautiful, and that my husband is very handsome,

and that my guardian has the brightest and most benevolent face

that ever was seen, and that they can very well do without much

beauty in me—even supposing—.”

 

*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, BLEAK HOUSE ***

 

This file should be named blkhs12.txt or blkhs12.zip

Corrected EDITIONS of our eBooks get a new NUMBER, blkhs13.txt

VERSIONS based on separate sources get new LETTER, blkhs12a.txt

 

Project Gutenberg eBooks are often created from several printed

editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the US

unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we usually do not

keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.

 

We are now trying to release all our eBooks one year in advance

of the official release dates, leaving time for better editing.

Please be encouraged to tell us about any error or corrections,

even years after the official publication date.

 

Please note neither this listing nor its contents are final til

midnight of the last day of the month of any such announcement.

The official release date of all Project Gutenberg eBooks is at

Midnight, Central Time, of the last day of the stated month. A

preliminary version may often be posted for suggestion, comment

and editing by those who wish to do so.

 

Most people start at our Web sites at:

http://gutenberg.net or

http://promo.net/pg

 

These Web sites include award-winning information about Project

Gutenberg, including how to donate, how to help produce our new

eBooks, and how to subscribe to our email newsletter (free!).

 

Those of you who want to download any eBook before announcement

can get to them as follows, and just download by date. This is

also a good way to get them instantly upon announcement, as the

indexes our cataloguers produce obviously take a while after an

announcement goes out in the Project Gutenberg Newsletter.

 

http://www.ibiblio.org/gutenberg/etext05 or

ftp://ftp.ibiblio.org/pub/docs/books/gutenberg/etext05

 

Or /etext04, 03, 02, 01, 00, 99, 98, 97, 96, 95, 94, 93, 92, 92,

91 or 90

 

Just search by the first five letters of the filename you want,

as it appears in our Newsletters.

 

Information about Project Gutenberg (one page)

 

We produce about two million dollars for each hour we work. The

time it takes us, a rather conservative estimate, is fifty hours

to get any eBook selected, entered, proofread, edited, copyright

searched and analyzed, the copyright letters written, etc. Our

projected audience is one hundred million readers. If the value

per text is nominally estimated at one dollar then we produce $2

million dollars per hour in 2002 as we release over 100 new text

files per month: 1240 more eBooks in 2001 for a total of 4000+

We are already on our way to trying for 2000 more eBooks in 2002

If they reach just 1-2% of the world’s population then the total

will reach over half a trillion eBooks given away by year’s end.

 

The Goal of Project Gutenberg is to Give Away 1 Trillion eBooks!

This is ten thousand titles each to one hundred million readers,

which is only about 4% of the present number of computer users.

 

Here is the briefest record of our progress (* means estimated):

 

eBooks Year Month

 

1 1971 July

10 1991 January

100 1994 January

1000 1997 August

1500 1998 October

2000 1999 December

2500 2000 December

3000 2001 November

4000 2001 October/November

6000 2002 December*

9000 2003 November*

10000 2004 January*

 

The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation has been created

to secure a future for Project Gutenberg into the next millennium.

 

We need your donations more than ever!

 

As of February, 2002, contributions are being solicited from people

and organizations in: Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Connecticut,

Delaware, District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois,

Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Massachusetts,

Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New

Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Ohio,

Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South

Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West

Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming.

 

We have filed in all 50 states now, but these are the only ones

that have responded.

 

As the requirements for other states are met, additions to this list

will be made and fund raising will begin in the additional states.

Please feel free to ask to check the status of your state.

 

In answer to various questions we have received on this:

 

We are constantly working on finishing the paperwork to legally

request donations in all 50 states. If your state is not listed and

you would like to know if we have added it since the list you have,

just ask.

 

While we cannot solicit donations from people in states where we are

not yet registered, we know of no prohibition against accepting

donations from donors in these states who approach us with an offer to

donate.

 

International donations are accepted, but we don’t know ANYTHING about

how to make them tax-deductible, or even if they CAN be made

deductible, and don’t have the staff to handle it even if there are

ways.

 

Donations by check or money order may be sent to:

 

PROJECT GUTENBERG LITERARY ARCHIVE FOUNDATION

809 North 1500 West

Salt Lake City, UT 84116

 

Contact us if you want to arrange for a wire transfer or payment

method other than by check or money order.

 

The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation has been approved by

the US Internal Revenue Service as a 501(c)(3) organization with EIN

[Employee Identification Number] 64-622154. Donations are

tax-deductible to the maximum extent permitted by law. As fund-raising

requirements for other states are met, additions to this list will be

made and fund-raising will begin in the additional states.

 

We need your donations more than ever!

 

You can get up to date donation information online at:

 

http://www.gutenberg.net/donation.html

***

If you can’t reach Project Gutenberg,

you can always email directly to:

 

Michael S. Hart <hart@pobox.com>

 

Prof.