Chapter 1
My father's family name being Pirrip, and my Christian name Philip, my infant tongue could make of both names nothing longer or more explicit than Pip. So, I called myself Pip, and came to be called Pip.
I give Pirrip as my father's family name, on the authority of his tombstone and my sister - Mrs. Joe Gargery, who married the blacksmith. As I never saw my father or my mother, and never saw any likeness of either of them (for their days were long before the days of photographs), my first fancies regarding what they were like, were unreasonably derived from their tombstones. The shape of the letters on my father's, gave me an odd idea that he was a square, stout, dark man, with curly black hair. From the character and turn of the inscription, "Also Georgiana Wife of the Above," I drew a childish conclusion that my mother was freckled and sickly. To five little stone lozenges, each about a foot and a half long, which were arranged in a neat row beside their grave, and were sacred to the memory of five little brothers of mine - who gave up trying to get a living, exceedingly early in that universal struggle - I am indebted for a belief I religiously entertained that they had all been born on their backs with their hands in their trousers-pockets, and had never taken them out in this state of existence.
Ours was the marsh country, down by the river, within, as the river wound, twenty miles of the sea. My first most vivid and broad impression of the identity of things, seems to me to have been gained on a memorable raw afternoon towards evening. At such a time I found out for certain, that this bleak place overgrown with nettles was the churchyard; and that Philip Pirrip, late of this parish, and also Georgiana wife of the above, were dead and buried; and that Alexander, Bartholomew, Abraham, Tobias, and Roger, infant children of the aforesaid, were also dead and buried; and that the dark flat wilderness beyond the churchyard, intersected with dykes and mounds and gates, with scattered cattle feeding on it, was the marshes; and that the low leaden line beyond, was the river; and that the distant savage lair from which the wind was rushing, was the sea; and that the small bundle of shivers growing afraid of it all and beginning to cry, was Pip.
"Hold your noise!" cried a terrible voice, as a man started up from among the graves at the side of the church porch. "Keep still, you little devil, or I'll cut your throat!"
A fearful man, all in coarse grey, with a great iron on his leg. A man with no hat, and with broken shoes, and with an old rag tied round his head. A man who had been soaked in water, and smothered in mud, and lamed by stones, and cut by flints, and stung by nettles, and torn by briars; who limped, and shivered, and glared and growled; and whose teeth chattered in his head as he seized me by the chin.
"O! Don't cut my throat, sir," I pleaded in terror. "Pray don't do it, sir."
"Tell us your name!" said the man. "Quick!"
"Pip, sir."
"Once more," said the man, staring at me. "Give it mouth!"
"Pip. Pip, sir."
"Show us where you live," said the man. "Pint out the place!"
I pointed to where our village lay, on the flat in-shore among the alder-trees and pollards, a mile or more from the church.
The man, after looking at me for a moment, turned me upside down, and emptied my pockets. There was nothing in them but a piece of bread. When the church came to itself - for he was so sudden and strong that he made it go head over heels before me, and I saw the steeple under my feet - when the church came to itself, I say, I was seated on a high tombstone, trembling, while he ate the bread ravenously.
"You young dog," said the man, licking his lips, "what fat cheeks you ha' got."
I believe they were fat, though I was at that time undersized for my years, and not strong.
"Darn me if I couldn't eat em," said the man, with a threatening shake of his head, "and if I han't half a mind to't!"
I earnestly expressed my hope that he wouldn't, and held tighter to the tombstone on which he had put me; partly, to keep myself upon it; partly, to keep myself from crying.
"Now lookee here!" said the man. "Where's your mother?"
"There, sir!" said I.
He started, made a short run, and stopped and looked over his shoulder.
"There, sir!" I timidly explained. "Also Georgiana. That's my mother."
"Oh!" said he, coming back. "And is that your father alonger your mother?"
"Yes, sir," said I; "him too; late of this parish."
"Ha!" he muttered then, considering. "Who d'ye live with - supposin' you're kindly let to live, which I han't made up my mind about?"
"My sister, sir - Mrs. Joe Gargery - wife of Joe Gargery, the blacksmith, sir."
"Blacksmith, eh?" said he. And looked down at his leg.
After darkly looking at his leg and me several times, he came closer to my tombstone, took me by both arms, and tilted me back as far as he could hold me; so that his eyes looked most powerfully down into mine, and mine looked most helplessly up into his.
"Now lookee here," he said, "the question being whether you're to be let to live. You know what a file is?"
"Yes, sir."
"And you know what wittles is?"
"Yes, sir."
After each question he tilted me over a little more, so as to give me a greater sense of helplessness and danger.
"You get me a file." He tilted me again. "And you get me wittles." He tilted me again. "You bring 'em both to me." He tilted me again. "Or I'll have your heart and liver out." He tilted me again.
I was dreadfully frightened, and so giddy that I clung to him with both hands, and said, "If you would kindly please to let me keep upright, sir, perhaps I shouldn't be sick, and perhaps I could attend more."
He gave me a most tremendous dip and roll, so that the church jumped over its own weather-cock. Then, he held me by the arms, in an upright position on the top of the stone, and went on in these fearful terms:
"You bring me, to-morrow morning early, that file and them wittles. You bring the lot to me, at that old Battery over yonder. You do it, and you never dare to say a word or dare to make a sign concerning your having seen such a person as me, or any person sumever, and you shall be let to live. You fail, or you go from my words in any partickler, no matter how small it is, and your heart and your liver shall be tore out, roasted and ate. Now, I ain't alone, as you may think I am. There's a young man hid with me, in comparison with which young man I am a Angel. That young man hears the words I speak. That young man has a secret way pecooliar to himself, of getting at a boy, and at his heart, and at his liver. It is in wain for a boy to attempt to hide himself from that young man. A boy may lock his door, may be warm in bed, may tuck himself up, may draw the clothes over his head, may think himself comfortable and safe, but that young man will softly creep and creep his way to him and tear him open. I am a-keeping that young man from harming of you at the present moment, with great difficulty. I find it wery hard to hold that young man off of your inside. Now, what do you say?"
I said that I would get him the file, and I would get him what broken bits of food I could, and I would come to him at the Battery, early in the morning.
"Say Lord strike you dead if you don't!" said the man.
I said so, and he took me down.
"Now," he pursued, "you remember what you've undertook, and you remember that young man, and you get home!"
"Goo-good night, sir," I faltered.
"Much of that!" said he, glancing about him over the cold wet flat. "I wish I was a frog. Or a eel!"
At the same time, he hugged his shuddering body in both his arms - clasping himself, as if to hold himself together - and limped towards the low church wall. As I saw him go, picking his way among the nettles, and among the brambles that bound the green mounds, he looked in my young eyes as if he were eluding the hands of the dead people, stretching up cautiously out of their graves, to get a twist upon his ankle and pull him in.
When he came to the low church wall, he got over it, like a man whose legs were numbed and stiff, and then turned round to look for me. When I saw him turning, I set my face towards home, and made the best use of my legs. But presently I looked over my shoulder, and saw him going on again towards the river, still hugging himself in both arms, and picking his way with his sore feet among the great stones dropped into the marshes here and there, for stepping-places when the rains were heavy, or the tide was in.
The marshes were just a long black horizontal line then, as I stopped to look after him; and the river was just another horizontal line, not nearly so broad nor yet so black; and the sky was just a row of long angry red lines and dense black lines intermixed. On the edge of the river I could faintly make out the only two black things in all the prospect that seemed to be standing upright; one of these was the beacon by which the sailors steered - like an unhooped cask upon a pole - an ugly thing when you were near it; the other a gibbet, with some chains hanging to it which had once held a pirate. The man was limping on towards this latter, as if he were the pirate come to life, and come down, and going back to hook himself up again. It gave me a terrible turn when I thought so; and as I saw the cattle lifting their heads to gaze after him, I wondered whether they thought so too. I looked all round for the horrible young man, and could see no signs of him. But, now I was frightened again, and ran home without stopping.
― Matt DC (Matt DC), Sunday, 12 November 2006 21:39 (eighteen years ago)
Famous Openings
101 Dalmatians, by Dodie Smith
"Not long ago, there lived in London a young married couple of Dalmatian dogs named Pongo and Misses Pongo."
1984, by George Orwell
"It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen."
2001: A Space Odyssey, by Arthur C. Clarke
"The drought had lasted now for ten million years, and the reign of the terrible lizards had long since ended."
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain
"You don't know about me without you have read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer; but that ain't
no matter."
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, by Mark Twain
"'TOM!'"
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, by Lewis Carroll
"Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the bank, and of having nothing to do: once or twice she
had peeped into the book her sister was reading, but it had no pictures or conversations in it, 'and what is the use of a book,'
thought Alice 'without pictures or conversation?'"
Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley
"A squat gray building of only thirty-four stories. Over the main entrance the words, CENTRAL LONDON HATCHERY AND CONDITIONING
CENTRE, and in a shield, the World State's motto, Community, Identity, Stability."
The Call of the Wild, by Jack London
"Buck did not read the newspapers, or he would have known that trouble was brewing, not alone for himself, but for
every tide-water dog, strong of muscle and with warm, long hair, from Puget Sound to San Diego."
Candide, by Voltaire
"In the country of Westphalia, in the castle of the most noble Baron of Thunder-ten-tronckh, lived a youth whom Nature had
endowed with a most sweet disposition."
Catch-22, by Joseph Heller
"It was love at first sight."
The Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger
"If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy
childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of
crap, but I don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth."
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, by Roald Dahl
"These two very old people are the father and mother of Mr. Bucket."
Charlotte's Web, by E.B. White
"'Where's Papa going with that ax?' said Fern to her mother as they were setting the table for breakfast."
Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang, by Ian Fleming
"Most motorcars are conglomerations (this is a long word for bundles) of steel and wire and rubber and plastic, and electricity
and oil and gasoline and water, and the toffee papers you pushed down the crack in the back seat last Sunday."
A Christmas Carol, by Charles Dickens
"Marley was dead, to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that."
A Clockwork Orange, by Anthony Burgess
"What's it going to be then, eh?"
The Count of Monte Cristo, by Alexandre Dumas
"On the 24th of February, 1815, the lookout of Notre-Dame de la Garde signalled the three-master, the Pharaon, from Smyrna,
Trieste, and Naples. As usual, a pilot put off immediately, and rounding the Chateau d'If, got on board the vessel between Cape
Morgion and the Isle of Rion."
Crime and Punishment, by Fyodor Dostoevski
"On an exceptionally hot evening early in July a young man came out of the garret in which he lodged in S. Place and walked
slowly, as though in hesitation, towards K. bridge."
Don Quixote, by Miguel De Cervantes
"At a village of La Mancha, whose name I do not wish to remember, there lived a little while ago one of those gentlemen who
are wont to keep a lance in the rack, an old buckler, a lean horse and a swift greyhound."
Dracula, by Bram Stoker
"3 May. Bistritz. - Left Munich at 8:35 P.M., on 1st May, arriving at Vienna early next morning; should have arrived at 6:46,
but the train was an hour late. Buda-Pesth seems a wonderful place, from the glimpse which I got from the train and the little
I could walk through the streets."
Dune, by Frank Herbert
"In the week before their departure to Arrakis, when all the final scurrying about had reached a nearly unbearable frenzy,
an old crone came to visit the mother of the boy, Paul."
Emma, by Jane Austen
"Emma Woodhouse, handsome, clever, and rich, with a comfortable home and happy disposition, seemed to unite some of the best
blessings of existence; and had lived nearly twenty-one years in the world with very little to distress or vex her."
Ethan Frome, by Edith Wharton
"I had the story, bit by bit, from various people, and, as generally happens in such cases, each time it was a different story."
The Exorcist, by William Peter Blatty
"Like the brief doomed flare of exploding suns that registers dimly on blind men's eyes, the beginning of the horror passed
almost unnoticed; in the shriek of what followed, in fact, was forgotten and perhaps not connected to the horror at all."
The Fellowship of the Ring, by J.R.R Tolkien
"When Mr. Bilbo Baggins of Bag End announced that he would shortly be celebrating his eleventy-first birthday with a party
of special magnificence, there was much talk and excitement in Hobbiton."
Flowers for Algernon, by Daniel Keys
"Dr. Strauss says I should rite down what I think and remembir and evrey thing that happins to me from now on."
Foundation, by Isaac Asimov
"His name was Gaal Dornick and he was just a country boy who had never seen Trantor before."
Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley
"You will rejoice to hear that no disaster has accompanied the commencement of an enterprise which you have regarded with
such evil forebodings."
The Godfather, by Mario Puzo
"Amerigo Bonasera sat in New York Criminal Court Number 3 and waited for justice; vengeance on the men who had so
cruelly hurt his daughter, who had tried to dishonor her."
Goldfinger, by Ian Fleming
"James Bond, wth two double bourbons inside him, sat back in the final departure lounge of Miami Airport and thought about life
and death."
Gone with the Wind, by Margaret Mitchell
"Scarlett O'Hara was not beautiful, but men seldom realized it when caught by her charm as the Tarleton twins were."
The Grapes of Wrath, by John Steinbeck
"To the red country and part of the gray country of Oklahoma, the last rains came gently, and they did not cut the scarred
earth."
Great Expectations, by Charles Dickens
"My father's family name being Pirrip, and my christian name Philip, my infant tongue could make of both names nothing longer
or more explicit than Pip."
The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald
"In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I've been turning over in my mind ever since."
The Hobbit, by J.R.R. Tolkien
"In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit."
The Hound of the Baskervilles, by Arthur Conan Doyle
"Mr. Sherlock Holmes,who was usually very late in the mornings, save upon those not infrequent occasions when he was up all
night, was seated at the breakfast table."
The Hunchback of Notre Dame, by Victor Hugo
"It was three hundred forty-eight years, six months, and nineteen days ago today that the citizens of Paris were awakened by
the pealing of all the bells in the triple precincts of the City, the University, and the Town."
The Invisible Man, by H.G. Wells
"THE STRANGER came early in February one wintry day, through a biting wind and a driving snow, the last snowfall of the
year, over the down, walking as it seemed from Bramblehurst railway station and carrying a little black portmanteau in his
thickly gloved hand."
Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Bronte
"There was no possibility of taking a walk that day."
Jaws, by Peter Benchley
"The great fish moved silently through the night water, propelled by short sweeps of its crescent tail."
The Jungle Book, by Rudyard Kipling
"It was seven o'clock of a very warm evening in the Seeonee hills when Father Wolf woke up from his day's rest, scratched
himself, yawned, and spread out his paws one after the other to get rid of the sleepy feeling in their tips."
Kidnapped, by Robert Louis Stevenson
"I will begin the story of my adventures with a certain morning early in the month of June, the year of grace 1751, when I took
the key for the last time out of my father's door."
To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee
"When he was nearly thirteen, my brother Jem got his arm badly broken at the elbow."
The Last of the Mohicans, by James Fenimore Cooper
"It was a feature peculiar to the colonial wars of North America, that the toils and dangers of the wilderness were to be
encountered before the adverse hosts could meet."
Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott
"Christmas won't be Christmas without any presents," grumbled Jo, lying on the rug."
Lord of the Flies, by William Golding
"The boy with fair hair lowered himself down the last few feet of rock and began to pick his way towards the lagoon."
Madeline, by Ludwig Bemelmans
"In an old house in Paris that was covered with vines lived twelve little girls in two straight lines."
Mary Poppins, by P.L. Travers
"If you want to find Cherry Tree Lane all you have to do is ask a policeman at the crossroads."
The Metamorphosis, by Franz Kafka
"As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect."
Moby Dick, by Herman Melville
"Call me Ishmael."
Of Mice and Men, by John Steinbeck
"A few miles south of Soledad, the Salinas River drops in close to the hill-side bank and runs deep and green."
The Old Man and the Sea, by Ernest Hemingway
"He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf stream and he had gone 84 days now without taking a fish."
Old Yeller, by Fred Gipson
"We called him Old Yeller."
Peter Pan, by J.M. Barrie
"All children, except one, grow up."
The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde
"The studio was filled with the rich odour of roses, and when the light summer wind stirred amidst the trees of the garden there
came through the open door the heavy scent of the lilac, or the more delicate perfume of the pink-flowering thorn."
The Poseidon Adventure, by Paul Gallico
"At seven o'clock, the morning of the 26th of December, the S.S. Poseidon, 81,000 tons, homeward bound for Lisbon after a
month-long Christmas cruise to African and South American ports, suddenly found herself in the midst of an unaccountable
swell, 400 miles south-west of the Azores, and began to roll like a pig."
A Prayer for Owen Meany, by John Irving
"I am doomed to remember a boy with a wrecked voice - not because of his voice, or because he was the smallest person I
ever knew, or even because he was the instrument of my mother's death, but because he is the reason I believe in God; I
am a Christian because of Owen Meany."
Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austin
"It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife."
The Prince and the Pauper, by Mark Twain
"In the ancient city of London, on a certain autumn day in the second quarter of the sixteenth century, a boy was born
to a poor family of the name of Canty, who did not want him."
The Red Badge of Courage, by Stephen Crane
"The cold passed reluctantly from the earth, and the retiring fogs revealed an army stretched out on the hills, resting."
Return of the Native, by Thomas Hardy
"A Saturday afternoon in November was approaching the time of twilight, and the vast tract of unenclosed wild known as Egdon
Heath embrowned itself moment by moment."
A River Runs Through It, by Norman MacLean
"In our family, there was no clear line between religion and fly fishing."
Robinson Crusoe, by Daniel Defoe
"I was born in the year 1632, in the city of York, of a good family, though not of that country, my father being a foreigner
of Bremen, who settled first at Hull."
Roots, by Alex Haley
"Early in the spring of 1750, in the village of Juffure, four days upriver from the coast of Gambia, West Africa, a manchild
was born to Omoro and Binta Kinte."
The Satanic Verses, by Salman Rushdie
"'To be born again' sang Gibreel Farishta tumbling from the heavens, 'first you have to die.'"
The Scarlet Letter, by Nathaniel Hawthorne
"A throng of bearded men, in sad-colored garments and gray, steeple-crowned hats, intermixed with women, some wearing
hoods, and others bareheaded, was assembled in front of a wooden edifice, the door of which was heavily timbered with
oak, and studded with iron spikes."
The Secret Garden, by Frances Hodgson Burnett
"When Mary Lennox was sent to Misselthwaite Manor to live with her uncle everybody said she was the most disagreeable-
looking child ever seen."
Slaughterhouse-Five, by Kurt Vonnegut
"All this happened, more or less."
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, by Robert Louis Stevenson
"Mr. Utterson the lawyer was a man of a rugged countenance, that was never lighted by a smile; cold, scanty and embarrassed
in discourse; backward in sentiment; lean, long, dusty, dreary and yet somehow lovable."
Stranger in a Strange Land, by Robert A. Heinlein
"Once upon a time there was a Martian named Valentine Michael Smith."
Stuart Little, by E.B. White
"When Mrs. Frederick C. Little's second son arrived, everybody noticed that he was not much bigger than a mouse."
The Swiss Family Robinson, by Johann Wyss
"For many days we had been tempest-tossed."
The Tale of Peter Rabbit, by Beatrix Potter
"Once upon a time, there were four little Rabbits, and their names were -- Flopsy, Mopsy, Cottontail, and Peter."
A Tale of Two Cities, by Charles Dickens
"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the
epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the
spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going
direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way -- in short, the period was so."
Terms of Endearment, by Larry McMurtry
"'The success of a marriage invariably depends on the woman,' Mrs. Greenway said."
The Three Musketeers, by Alexandre Dumas
"On the first Monday of the month of April, 1625, the town of Meung, in which the author of The Romance of the Rose was
born, appeared to be in a perfect state of revolution as if the Hugenots had just made a second Rochelle of it."
Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson
"Squire Trelawney, Dr. Livesey, and the rest of these gentlemen having asked me to write down the whole particulars about
Treasure island, from the beginning to the end, keeping nothing back but the bearings of the island, and that only because
there is still treasure not yet lifted, I take up my pen in the year of grace 17 - , and go back to the time when my father
kept the `Admiral Benbow' inn, and the brown old seaman, with the sabre cut, first took up his lodging under our roof."
Uncle Tom's Cabin, by Harriet Beecher Stowe
"Late in the afternoon of a chilly day in February, two gentlemen were sitting alone over their wine, in a well-furnished
dining parlor, in the town of P----, in Kentucky."
Walden, by Henry David Thoreau
"When I wrote the following pages, or rather the bulk of them, I lived alone, in the woods, a mile from any neighbor, in a house
which I had built myself, on the shore of Walden Pond, in Concord, Massachusetts, and earned my living by the labor of my
hands only."
War and Peace, by Leo Tolstoy
"'Well, Prince, so Genoa and Lucca are now just family estates of the Buonapartes.'"
The War of the Worlds, by H.G. Wells
"No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by
intelligences greater than man’s and yet as mortal as his own; that as men busied themselves about their various concerns they
were scrutinised and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinise the transient creatures
that swarm and multiply in a drop of water."
The Wind in the Willows, by Kenneth Grahame
"The Mole had been working very hard all morning, spring cleaning his little home."
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, by Frank Baum
"Dorothy lived in the midst of the great Kansas prairies, with Uncle Henry, who was a farmer, and Aunt Em, who was the
farmer's wife."
― Marmot (marmotwolof), Monday, 13 November 2006 01:34 (eighteen years ago)
one year passes...