A Tale of Two Cities

n old-fashioned place, moreover, in the moral attribute that the partners in the House were proud of its smallness, proud of its darkness, proud of its ugliness, proud of its incomm

usiness. Tellson's (they said) wanted no elbow-room, Tellson's wanted no light, Tellson's wanted n

espect the House was much on a par with the Country; which did very often disinherit its sons for suggesting

ted your seeing `the House,' you were put into a species of Condemned Hold at the back, where you meditated on a misspent life, until the House came with its hands in its pockets, and you could hardly blink at it in the dismal twilight. Your money came out of' or went into, wormy old wooden drawers, particles of which flew up your nose and down your throat when they were opened and shut. Your bank-notes had a musty odour, as if they were fast decomposing into rags again. Your plate was stowed away among the neighbouring cesspools, and evil communications corrupted its good polish in a day or two. Your deeds

rdingly, the forger was put to death; the utterer of a bad note was put to Death; the unlawful opener of a letter was put to Death; the purloiner of forty shillings and sixpence was put to Death; the holder of a

r case, and left nothing else connected with it to be looked after. Thus, Tellson's, in its day, like greater places of business, its contemporaries, had taken so many lives, that, if the heads

and hutches at Tellson's, the oldest o

ace, like a cheese, until he had the full Tellson flavour and blue-mould upon him. Then only was he permitted to be seen,

less upon an errand, and then he was represented by his son: a grisly urchin of twelve, who was his express image. People understood that Tellson's, in a stately way, tolerated the odd-job-man. The house ha

f Houndsditch, he had received

h morning, Anno Domini seventeen hundred and eighty. (Mr. Cruncher himself always spoke of the year of our Lord as Anna Dominoes: appare

ght be counted as one. But they were very decently kept. Early as it was, on the windy March morning, the room in which he lay a-bed was already

ut, by degrees, began to roll and surge in bed, until he rose above the surface, with his spiky hair lookin

f she ain't

om her knees in a corner, with sufficient haste and t

uncher, looking out

t it agin

as a third. It was a very muddy boot, and may introduce the odd circumstance conn

often got up next morning to find

is apostrophe after missing his mark

y saying m

woman! What do you mean by floppin

against you; I wa

g agin your father's prosperity. You've got a dutiful mother, you have, my son. You've got a religious mother, you have, my bo

very ill, and, turning to his mother, strongly

ncher, with unconscious inconsistency, `that the worth of you

heart, Jerry. They are

ed and religiously circumwented into the worst of luck. B-u-u-ust me ` said Mr. Cruncher, who all this time had been putting on his clothes, `if I ain't, what with piety and one blowed thing and another, been choused this last week into as bad luck as ever a poor devil of a honest tradesman met with! Young Jerry, dress yourself, my boy, and while I clean my boots keep a eye upon your mother now and then, and if you see any signs of more flopping, give me a call. For, I tell you,' here he

ic sparks from the whirling grindstone of his indignation, Mr. Cruncher betook himself to his boot-cleaning and his general preparation for business. In the meantime, his son, whose head was garnished with t

are going to flop, mother.--Halloa, father!' and, after raisin

en he came to his breakfast. He resented Mrs. Cr

r! What are you u

that she had merely

loaf disappear under the efficacy of his wife's petitions. `I ain't a going to be b

s breakfast rather than ate it, growling over it like any four-footed inmate of a menagerie. Towards nine o'clock he smoothed his ruffled aspect,

alking at his father's side, carried every morning to beneath the banking-house window that was nearest Temple Bar: where, with the addition of the first handful of straw that could be gleaned from any passing vehicle to

dily and mental injuries of an acute description on passing boys who were small enough for his amiable purpose. Father and son, extremely like each other, looking silently on at the morning traffic in Fleet-street, with their two heads as near to one another as the two eyes of each wer

gers attached to Tellson's establishment was

er wa

Here's an early j

himself on the stool, entered on his reversionary interes

ered young Jerry. `Where does my father get all th