Join Host Bree Carlile as she reads the thirty-first chapter of Great Expectations.

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Today we'll be continuing Great Expectations by Charles Dickens chapter 31 on our arrival in Denmark, we've found the King and Queen of that country elevated in two armchairs on a kitchen table, holding a court.

The whole of the Danish nobility were in attendance, consisting of a noble boy in the washed leather boots of a gigantic ancestor, a venerable peer with a dirty face, who seemed to have risen from the people late in life.

And the Danish chivalry with a comb in its hair and a pair of white silk legs and presenting, on the whole, a feminine appearance.

My gifted townsman stood gloomily apart with folded arms, and I could have wished that its curls and forehead had been more probable.

Several curious little circumstances transpired as the action proceeded.

The late king of the country not only appeared to have been troubled with a cough at the time of his disease, but to have taken it with him to the tomb, and to have brought it back.

The royal phantom also carried a ghostly manuscript round its trencheon, to which it had the appearance of occasionally referring, and that too, with an air of anxiety and a tendency to lose the place of reference which were suggestive of a state of mortality.

It was this, I conceive, which led to the shades being advised by the gallery to turn over a recommendation which it took extremely ill.

It was likewise to be noted of this majestic spirit, that whereas it always appeared with an air of having been out a long time and walked in immense distance, it perceptibly came from a closely contiguous wall, this occasioned its terrors to be received derisively.

The Queen of Denmark.

A very buxom lady, though no doubt historically brazen, was considered by the public to have too much brass about her.

Her chin being attached to her diadem by a broad band of that metal as if she had a gorgeous toothache her waist being encircled by another and each of her arms by another, so that she was openly mentioned as the Ketle drum.

The noble boy in the ancestral boots was inconsistent representing himself, as it were, in one breath, as an able seaman, a strolling actor, a gravedigger, a clergyman, and a person of the utmost importance at a court fencing match, on the authority of whose practiced eye and nice discrimination the finest strokes were judged.

This gradually led to a want of toleration for him, and even on his being detected in holy orders and declining to perform the funeral service to the general indignation taking the form of nuts.

Lastly, Ophelia was a prey to such slow, musical madness that when in course of time, she had taken off her white muslin scarf, folded it up and buried it, a sulky man who had been long cooling his impatient nose against an iron bar in the front row of the gallery, growled, now the baby is put to bed.

Let's have supper.

Which, to say the least of it, was out of keeping upon my unfortunate townsman.

All these incidents accumulated with playful effect.

Whenever that undecided prince had to ask a question or state a doubt, the public helped him out with it, as, for example, on the question whether twas nobler in the mind to suffer.

Some roared yes and some no, and some inclining to both opinions said Toss up for it.

And quite a debating society arose.

When he asked what should such fellows as he do crawling between earth and heaven?

He was encouraged with loud cries of Here, here.

When he appeared with his stalking disordered, its disorder expressed, according to usage by one very neat fold in the top, which I supposed to be always got up with a flat iron.

A conversation took place in the gallery respecting the paleness of his leg and whether it was occasioned by the turn the ghost had given him on his taking the recorders, very like a little black flute that had just been playing in the orchestra and handed out the door.

He was called upon unanimously for Rule Britannia when he recommended the player not to saw the air.

Thus the sulky man said, and don't you do it neither.

You're a deal worse than him.

And I grieved to add that peals of laughter greeted Mr.

Wapsel on every one of these occasions.

But his greatest trials were in the churchyard, which had the appearance of a primeval forest with a kind of small ecclesiastical wash house on one side and a turnpike gate on the other.

Mr.

Wapsel was in a comprehensive black cloak being described entering at the turnpike.

The gravedigger was admonished in a friendly way look out.

Here's the undertaker coming to see how you're getting on with your work.

I believe it is well known in a constitutional country that Mr.

Wapsel could not possibly have returned to the skull after moralizing over it without dusting his fingers on a white napkin taken from his breast.

But even that innocent and indispensable action did not pass without the comment waiter.

The arrival of the body for interment in an empty black box with the lid tumbling open was a signal for a general joy which was much enhanced by the discovery among the bearers of an individual obnoxious to identification.

The joy attended Mr.

Wapsel through his struggle with Laertes on the brink of the orchestra in the grave and slackened no more until he had tumbled the king off the kitchen table and had died by inches from the ankles upward.

We had made some pale efforts in the beginning to applaud Mr.

Wapsel, but they were too hopeless to be persisted in.

Therefore, we had sat feeling keenly for him, but laughing nevertheless from ear to ear.

I laughed in spite of myself all the time.

The whole thing was so droll.

And yet I had a latent impression that there was something decidedly fine in Mr.

Wapstel's elocution.

Not for old association's sake, I'm afraid, but because it was very slow, very dreary, very uphill and downhill, and very unlike any way in which any man in any natural circumstances of life or death ever expressed himself about anything.

When the tragedy was over and he had been called for and hooted, I said to Herbert, let us go at once, or perhaps we shall meet him.

We made all the haste we could downstairs, but we were not quick enough either.

Standing at the door was a Jewish man with an unnatural heavy smear of eyebrow who caught my eyes as we advanced and said when we came up with him, mr.

Pippin friend.

Identity of Mr.

Pippin Friend confessed mr.

Waldengarver said the man, would be glad to have the honor.

Waldengarver, I repeated when Herbert murmured in my ear, probably Wapsel.

Oh.

Said I?

Yes.

Shall we follow you a few steps?

Please.

When we were in the side alley, he turned and asked, how do you think he looked?

I dressed him.

I don't know what he had looked like except a funeral with the addition of a large Danish sun or star hanging round his neck by a blue ribbon that had given him the appearance of being insured in some extraordinary fire office.

But I said he had looked very nice.

When he had come to the grave, said our conductor.

He showed his cloak beautiful, but judging from the wing, it looked to me that when he see the ghost in the Queen's apartment, he might have made more of his stockings.

I modestly assented, and we all fell through a little dirty swing door into a sort of hot packing case immediately behind it.

Here Mr.

Wapsel was divesting himself of his Danish garments, and here there was just room for us to look at him over one another's shoulders by keeping the packing case door or lid wide open.

Gentlemen, said Mr.

Wapsel, I am proud to see you.

I hope, Mr.

Pip, you will excuse my sending round.

I at the happiness to know you in former times, and the drama has ever had a claim which has ever been acknowledged on the noble and the affluent.

Meanwhile, Mr.

Waldengarver, in a frightful perspiration, was trying to get himself out of his princely sables skin.

The stockings off, Mr.

Waldengarver, said the owner of that property, or you'll bust them.

Bust them, and you'll bust five and 30 shillings.

Shakespeare never was complimented with a finer pair.

Keep quiet in your chair now, and leave them to me.

With that he went upon his knees and began to flay his victim, who, on the first stocking coming off, would certainly have fallen over backward with its chair, but for there being no room to fall anyhow.

I'd been afraid until then to say a word about the play.

But then Mr.

Waldengarver looked up at.

Us complacently and said, gentlemen, how did it seem to you to go in front?

Herbert said from behind, at the same time poking me, capital E.

So I.

Said, capital E.

How did you like my reading of the character, gentlemen?

Said Mr.

Waldengarver.

Almost, if not quite, with patronage, herbert said from behind again, poking me massive and concrete.

So I said boldly, as if I had originated it, and must beg to insist upon it, massive and concrete.

I'm glad to have your approbation, gentlemen.

Said Mr.

Waldengarver, with an air of dignity, in spite of his being ground against the wall at the time and holding on by the seat of the chair.

But I'll tell you one thing, Mr.

Waldengarver, said the man who was on his knees, in which you're out in your reading now, mind, I don't care who says contrary, I tell you so, you're out in your reading of Hamlet when you get your legs in profile.

The last Hamlet, as I dressed, made the same mistakes in his reading at rehearsal, till I got him to put a large red wafer on each of his shins.

And then at that rehearsal, which was the last, I went in front, sir, to the back of the pit.

And whenever his reading brought him into profile, I called out, I don't see no wafers.

And at night his reading was lovely.

Mr.

Waldengarver smiled at me as much to say, a faithful dependent, I overlook his folly, and then said aloud, my.

View is a little classic and thoughtful for them here.

But they will improve.

They will improve.

Herbert and I said together, oh, no doubt they would improve.

Did you observe, gentlemen, said Mr.

Walden Garver, that there was a man in the gallery who endeavored to cast derision on the service?

I mean, the representation.

We basically replied that we rather thought we had noticed such a man.

I added.

He was drunk, no doubt.

Oh, dear, no, sir, said Mr.

Wapsel, not drunk.

His employer would see to that, sir.

His employer would not allow him to.

Be drunk, you know, his employer, said I.

Mr.

Wapsel shut his eyes and opened them again, performing both ceremonies very slowly.

You must have observed, gentlemen, said he an ignorant and a blatant a** with a rasping throat and a countenance expressive of low malignancy who went through I will not say sustained the role, if I may use a French.

Expression of Claudius, king of Denmark.

That is his employer, gentlemen such as the profession.

Without distinctly knowing whether I should have been more sorry for Mr.

Wapsel if he had been in despair.

I was so sorry for him as it was that I took the opportunity of his turning round to have his braces put on which jostled us out at the doorway to ask Herbert what he thought of having us home to supper.

Herbert said he thought it would be kind to do so.

Therefore I invited him, and he went to Barnard's with us, wrapped up to the eyes, and we did our best for him.

And he sat until 02:00 in the morning reviewing his success and developing his plans.

I forget in detail what they were, but I have a general recollection that he was, to begin with reviving the drama and end with crushing it.

And as much as his deceased would leave it utterly bereft, and without a chance or hope miserably.

I went to bed after all and Miserably thought of Estella and Miserably dreamed that my expectations were all canceled and that I had to give my hand in marriage to Herbert's Clara or play Hamlet to Miss Havisham's ghost before 20,000 people without knowing 20 words of it.

Thank you for joining Bite at a Time Books today while we read a bite of one of your favorite classics.

Again, my name is Brie Carlyle and I hope you come back tomorrow for the next bite of Great Expectations.

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