Great Expectations
Page 37At the time when I stood in the churchyard reading the family
tombstones, I had just enough learning to be able to spell them out. My
construction even of their simple meaning was not very correct, for I
read "wife of the Above" as a complimentary reference to my father's
exaltation to a better world; and if any one of my deceased relations
had been referred to as "Below," I have no doubt I should have formed
the worst opinions of that member of the family. Neither were my notions
of the theological positions to which my Catechism bound me, at
all accurate; for, I have a lively remembrance that I supposed my
declaration that I was to "walk in the same all the days of my life,"
laid me under an obligation always to go through the village from our
by the wheelwright's or up by the mill.
When I was old enough, I was to be apprenticed to Joe, and until I could
assume that dignity I was not to be what Mrs. Joe called "Pompeyed," or
(as I render it) pampered. Therefore, I was not only odd-boy about the
forge, but if any neighbor happened to want an extra boy to frighten
birds, or pick up stones, or do any such job, I was favored with the
employment. In order, however, that our superior position might not be
compromised thereby, a money-box was kept on the kitchen mantel-shelf,
in to which it was publicly made known that all my earnings were
dropped. I have an impression that they were to be contributed
had no hope of any personal participation in the treasure.
Mr. Wopsle's great-aunt kept an evening school in the village; that is
to say, she was a ridiculous old woman of limited means and unlimited
infirmity, who used to go to sleep from six to seven every evening, in
the society of youth who paid two pence per week each, for the improving
opportunity of seeing her do it. She rented a small cottage, and Mr.
Wopsle had the room up stairs, where we students used to overhear him
reading aloud in a most dignified and terrific manner, and occasionally
bumping on the ceiling. There was a fiction that Mr. Wopsle "examined"
the scholars once a quarter. What he did on those occasions was to turn
the body of Caesar. This was always followed by Collins's Ode on
the Passions, wherein I particularly venerated Mr. Wopsle as Revenge
throwing his blood-stained sword in thunder down, and taking the
War-denouncing trumpet with a withering look. It was not with me then,
as it was in later life, when I fell into the society of the Passions,
and compared them with Collins and Wopsle, rather to the disadvantage of
both gentlemen.