Original Penny Readings: A Series of Short Sketches

Now, it don't matter a bit what sort of clay a pot's made of, if when it's been tried in the fire it turns out sound and rings well when it's struck. If I'm only common red ware...

Goes in for salvage, sir; and when a ship's going on to the sands, where she must be knocked to pieces in no time, and a party of our company goes off and saves her, why we dese...

Ideas for new sketches are like mushrooms in the London fields--scarce articles, and difficult to find unless you force them in a bed. But then the forced article will not bear...

Well, sir, yes; perhaps it was his own fault, a good deal of it, and yet I thinks sometimes as those big folks above us might do something for us to make things better. But that...

"Oh, no; ain't nothing like such tools as I've been used to," he says. "At my last shop everything was first class, and the place beautifully fitted-up--gas on, new benches, fin...

"Hope I see you well, sir. Thanky, sir, I ain't had such a cigar since as you give me that day. You'll often find me on this stand, sir, and happy to drive yer at any time, eith...

Reformations, and improvements, and setrer, are all very well; but, mind yer, if your drink's been four ale all your life you won't take kindly to porter, "threepence a pot in y...

Don't you make a mistake, now, and think I'm not a working man, because I am. Don't you run away with the idea that because I go of a morning and find my horse and cab waiting r...

In educating myself a bit, it seems to me like getting up a high mountain; and after going on at it for years and years, I've come to the idea that there never is any getting up...

"Where to dine at any time," says the advertisement, as though such a thing as money was quite out of the question, and so many men did not depend upon the hospitality of their...

One of the great peculiarities of the policeman is his head. Now, I do not mean that his head differs from the small or large capital at the head of most articles; but I allude...

Unfortunately, one cannot always get one's own particular cabman--the favoured one of the civil tongue; and on more than one occasion I have been on the box with as surly a spec...

"Co-o-o-o-me orn," said Cabby, as we sat by his side on the box--"Co-o-o-me orn. Nice sorter day this here, sir. Thanky, sir; I do draw a bit, and never sez `no' to a cigar. Art...

That's our vessel out there, moored fore and aft--that one with her starn so low down, and her nose right up outer the water. You see, that's all owing to her make. Being a scre...

"Man killed saluting her Majesty," as we read in the papers t'other day: poor fellow, told off at the rammer he was, and for want of proper sponging out; when he drove in the gr...

Of broken hearts, Minnie, though the doctor's certificates told another tale. But then doctors deal with the body, and I am speaking of the mind. 'Tis twenty years since; and, a...

I don't believe that old well of ours would ever have been cleaned out if it had not been for the magpie, which, by the way, in its tame state is most decidedly as ill-condition...

The creaking and groaning of the timbers, the tossing and plunging of the ship, and the heavy beating of the waves upon her sides, tended to drive away sleep, without the access...

A short time since we were about to change our residence, and my wife, having need for a fresh lady to cook our chops and manufacture apple-dumplings, answered two or three of t...

If there is any one thing in which I like to see a boy excel, it is in swimming. Now, we upright walking animals seem to be naturally the worst swimmers, and the higher and more...

Now it's all very well to say that truth is strange--stranger than fiction; but the saying won't wash, it isn't fast colours, but partakes of the nature of those carried by cert...

"Sale now on," was stuck upon the door-posts of a good-sized house that I was passing the other day--a house that an agent would call "a genteel family mansion;" for the agent,...

Now, you know, it wouldn't matter a bit if it was only the publicans who gave short measure. Most of us know what their gin-glasses are--regular little humbugs of things--werry...

But a few hours before I had been lying in a nook amidst the huge rocks, high above the sands, gazing down at the sea, which curled over with a long ripple upon the yellow sands...

What is a Wife? Well, that seems a question easily answered. But still the answer depends upon circumstances; in fact, there seem to be no end of replies to that little query, a...

Being only a quiet, country-bumpkin sort of personage, it seems but reasonable that I should ask what can there be in me that people should take such intense interest in my life...

'Tain't no use, sir; times is altered and the people too. What with yer railways, and telegraphs, and steam, and penny noosepapers, people knows too much by half, and it's about...

You people here in England don't know what a river is; the Thames and Severn are only ditches, while the Humber is precious little better than a creek of the sea. Just think of...

In the good old times--the very good old times, before trade, competition, and the spreading of knowledge, had upset and spoiled everything--sending people off in a mad hurry, h...

Yes, all sorts, sir, and we takes the innercent and the guilty too sometimes, no doubt on it. Yer see we're men as generally has everybody's ill word, and nobody ever has a good...

Wondering whether Molly told the truth when she declared that she had never been false since the last parting at Wapping Old Stairs, and forming our own opinion upon the matter...

Move on, oh pen! and in words whose hue is murky as his oilskin cape, tell with thy silent gall-dipped nibs of the tyrant of our streets--the Hyde Park hero--the helmet-crowned...