Oliver Twist
By Charles Dickens
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CHAPTER I
TREATS OF THE PLACE
WHERE OLIVER TWIST
WAS BORN AND OF
THE CIRCUMSTANCES
ATTENDING HIS BIRTH
A
mong other public buildings in a certain town, which
for many reasons it will be prudent to refrain from mentioning, and to which I will assign no fictitious name, there
is one anciently common to most towns, great or small: to
wit, a workhouse; and in this workhouse was born; on a day
and date which I need not trouble myself to repeat, inasmuch as it can be of no possible consequence to the reader,
in this stage of the business at all events; the item of mortality whose name is prefixed to the head of this chapter.
For a long time after it was ushered into this world of
sorrow and trouble, by the parish surgeon, it remained a
matter of considerable doubt whether the child would sur-
Oliver Twist
vive to bear any name at all; in which case it is somewhat
more than probable that these memoirs would never have
appeared; or, if they had, that being comprised within a
couple of pages, they would have possessed the inestimable
merit of being the most concise and faithful specimen of biography, extant in the literature of any age or country.
Although I am not disposed to maintain that the being
born in a workhouse, is in itself the most fortunate and enviable circumstance that can possibly befall a human being,
I do mean to say that in this particular instance, it was the
best thing for Oliver Twist that could by possibility have occurred. The fact is, that there was considerable difficulty in
inducing Oliver to take upon himself the office of respiration,—a troublesome practice, but one which custom has
rendered necessary to our easy existence; and for some time
he lay gasping on a little flock mattress, rather unequally
poised between this world and...