THE PICKWICK PAPERS (illustrated, complete, and unabridged)

his greatest work may yet prove to be the perpetuation of the joyful mystery of Christmas.

On both occasions Fred had felt confident that he should meet the bill himself, having ample funds at disposal in his own hopefulness. You will hardly demand that his confidence should have a basis in external facts; such confidence, we know, is something less coarse and materialistic: it is a comfortable disposition leading us to expect that the w

But, the faint image of Eden which is stamped upon them in childhood, chafes and rubs in our rough struggles with the world, and soon wears away:

We were all, Merry Christmas Mrs. Gummidge! And she’s like, “Well, it might be, I don’t know. I been feeling so poorly.”