Search -
Barnaby Rudge, Master Humphrey's Clock, and The Mystery of Edwin Drood
Barnaby Rudge Master Humphrey's Clock and The Mystery of Edwin Drood Author:Charles Dickens Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: MASTER HUMPHREY'S CLOCK MASTER HUMPHREY, FROM HIS CLOCK-SIDE IN THE CHIMNEY-CORNER The reader must not expect to know where I live. At present, it is true,... more » my abode may be a question of little or no import to anybody ; but if I should carry my readers with me, as I hope to do, and there should spring up, between them and me, feelings of homely affection and regard attaching something of interest to matters ever so slightly connected with my fortunes or my speculations, even my place of residence might one day have a kind of charm for them. Bearing this possible contingency in mind, I wish them to understand in the outset, that they must never expect to know it. I am not a churlish old man. Friendless I can never be, for all mankind are my kindred, and I am on ill terms with no one member of my great family. But for many years I have led a lonely, solitary life ; — what wound I sought to heal, what sorrow to forget, originally, matters not now ; it is sufficient that retirement has become a habit with me, and that I am unwilling to break the spell which for so long a time has shed its quiet influence upon my home and heart. I live in a venerable suburb of London, in an old house, which in bygone days was a famous resort for merry roysterers and peerless ladies, long since departed. It is a silent, shady place, with a paved courtyard so full of echoes that sometimes I am tempted to believe that faint responses to the noises of old times linger there yet, and that these ghosts of sound haunt my footsteps as I pace it up and down. I am the more confirmed in this belief, because, of late years, the echoes that attend my walks have been less loud and marked than they were wont to be; and it is pleasanter to imagine in them the rustling of silkbrocade, and the light step of s...« less