Category: Humour

The Wrong Box

How very little does the amateur, dwelling at home at ease, comprehend the labours and perils of the author, and, when he smilingly skims the surface of a work of fiction, how little does he consider the hours of toil, consultation of authorities, researches in the Bodleian, c...

Chapters

8. Chapter 8

Punctually at eight o’clock next morning the lawyer rattled (according to previous appointment) on the studio door. He found the artist sadly altered for the worse--bleached, bl...

11. Chapter 11

Mr Edward Hugh Bloomfield having announced his intention to stay in the neighbourhood of Maidenhead, what more probable than that the Maestro Jimson should turn his mind toward...

2. Chapter 2

Some days later, accordingly, the three males of this depressing family might have been observed (by a reader of G. P. R. James) taking their departure from the East Station of...

6. Chapter 6

As the hansom span through the streets of London, Morris sought to rally the forces of his mind. The water-butt with the dead body had miscarried, and it was essential to recove...

9. Chapter 9

I know Michael Finsbury personally; my business--I know the awkwardness of having such a man for a lawyer--still it’s an old story now, and there is such a thing as gratitude, a...

1. Chapter 1

How very little does the amateur, dwelling at home at ease, comprehend the labours and perils of the author, and, when he smilingly skims the surface of a work of fiction, how l...

14. Chapter 14

On the morning of Sunday, William Dent Pitman rose at his usual hour, although with something more than the usual reluctance. The day before (it should be explained) an addition...

7. Chapter 7

Norfolk Street, King’s Road--jocularly known among Mr Pitman’s lodgers as ‘Norfolk Island’--is neither a long, a handsome, nor a pleasing thoroughfare. Dirty, undersized maids-o...

3. Chapter 3

Whether mankind is really partial to happiness is an open question. Not a month passes by but some cherished son runs off into the merchant service, or some valued husband decam...

13. Chapter 13

In a really polite age of literature I would have scorned to cast my eye again on the contortions of Morris. But the study is in the spirit of the day; it presents, besides, fea...

5. Chapter 5

It has been mentioned that at Bournemouth Julia sometimes made acquaintances; it is true she had but a glimpse of them before the doors of John Street closed again upon its capt...

12. Chapter 12

England is supposed to be unmusical; but without dwelling on the patronage extended to the organ-grinder, without seeking to found any argument on the prevalence of the Jew’s tr...

10. Chapter 10

The reader has perhaps read that remarkable work, Who Put Back the Clock? by E. H. B., which appeared for several days upon the railway bookstalls and then vanished entirely fro...

15. Chapter 15

Morris returned from Waterloo in a frame of mind that baffles description. He was a modest man; he had never conceived an overweening notion of his own powers; he knew himself u...

4. Chapter 4

The city of Winchester is famed for a cathedral, a bishop--but he was unfortunately killed some years ago while riding--a public school, a considerable assortment of the militar...

16. Chapter 16

Finsbury brothers were ushered, at ten the next morning, into a large apartment in Michael’s office; the Great Vance, somewhat restored from yesterday’s exhaustion, but with one...