Literature -- History and criticism; Speeches, addresses, etc., English
were only half as far gone, that was the greatest of all the miracles.”
When the Scotch surgeon was called in professionally to see Mr. Krook’s
unfortunate lodger, the Scotch tongue pronounced him to be “just as dead
as Chairy.” Job’s poverty is not likely to be forgotten among the
comparisons. No, Mr. Mell’s mother was as poor as Job. Nor Samson’s
strength: Dot’s mother had so many infallible recipes for the
preservation of the baby’s health, that had they all been administered,
the said baby must have been done for, though strong as an infant Samson.
Nor Goliath’s importance: John Chivery’s chivalrous feeling towards all
that belonged to Little Dorrit, made him so very respectable, in spite of
his small stature, his weak legs, and his genuine poetic temperament,
that a Goliath might have sat in his place demanding less consideration
at Arthur Clennam’s hands. Nor Solomon’s wisdom: Trotty Veck was so
delighted when the child kissed him that he couldn’t help saying, “She’s
as sensible as Solomon.” Miss Wade having said farewell to her
fellow-travellers in the public room of the hotel at Marseilles, sought
her own apartment. As she passed along the gallery, she heard an angry
sound of muttering and sobbing. A door stood open, and, looking into the
room, she saw therein Pet’s attendant, the maid with the curious name of
Tattycoram. Miss Wade asked what was the matter, and received in reply a
few short and angry words in a deeply-injured, ill-used tone. Then again
commenced the sobs and tears and pinching, tearing fingers, making
altogether such a scene as if she were being “rent by the demons of old.”
Let us close these comparisons by quoting another from the same book,
“Little Dorrit,” descriptive of the evening stillness after a day of
terrific glare and heat at Marseilles:—“The sun went down in a red,
green, golden glory; the stars came out in the heavens, and the
fire-flies mimicked them in the lower air, as men may feebly imitate the
goodness of a better order of beings; the long, dusty roads and the
interminable plains were in repose, and _so deep a hush was on the sea_,
_that it scarcely whispered of the time when it shall give up its dead_.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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