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

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Today we'll be continuing Great Expectations by Charles Dickens, chapter 34 as I had grown accustomed to my expectations, I had insensibly begun to notice their effect upon myself and those around me.

Their influence on my own character.

I disguised from my recognition as much as possible, but I knew very well that it was not at all good.

I lived in a state of chronic uneasiness respecting my behavior to Joe.

My conscience was not by any means comfortable about biddy.

When I woke up in the night like Camilla, I used to think with a weariness on my spirits, that I should have been happier and better if I had never seen Miss Havisham's face and had risen to manhood content to be partners with Joe in The Honest Old Forge.

Many a time of an evening when I sat alone looking at the fire, I thought, after all, there was no fire like the forge fire and the kitchen fire at home.

Yet Estella was so inseparable from all my restlessness and disquietive mind that I really fell into confusion as to the limits of my own part in its production.

That is to say, supposing I had had no expectations and yet had had Estella to think of, I could not make out to my satisfaction that I should have done much better.

Now, concerning the influence of my position on others, I was in no such difficulty.

And so I perceived, though dimly enough, perhaps that it was not beneficial to anybody and above all, that it was not beneficial to Herbert.

My lavish habits led his easy nature into expenses that he could not afford, corrupted the simplicity of his life, and disturbed his peace with anxieties and regrets.

I was not at all remorseful for having unwittingly set those other branches of the Pocket family to the poor arts they practiced, because such littlenesses were their natural bend and would have been evoked by anyone else if I had left them slumbering.

But Herbert's was a very different case, and it often caused me a twinge to think that I had done him evil service in crowding his sparsely furnished chambers with incongruous upholstery work and placing the canary breasted avenger at his disposal.

So now, as an infallible way of making little ease, great ease, I began to contract a quantity of debt I could hardly begin.

But Herbert must begin too, so he soon followed.

At startop's suggestion, we put ourselves down for election into a club called the Finches of the Grove, the object of which institution I have never defined.

If it were not that the members should dine expensively once a fortnight to quarrel among themselves as much as possible after dinner and to cause six waiters to get drunk on the stairs.

I know that these gratifying social ends were so invariably accomplished that Herbert and I understood nothing else to be referred to in the first standing toast of the society which ran gentlemen, may the present promotion of good feeling ever reign predominant among the finches of the Grove.

The Finches spent their money foolishly.

The hotel we dined at was in Covent Garden, and the first Finch I saw when I had the honor of joining the Grove was Bentley Drummel.

At that time floundering about town in a cab of his own and doing a great deal of damage to the posts of the street corners.

Occasionally he shot himself out of his equipage head foremost over the apron, and I saw him on one occasion deliver himself at the door of the Grove in this unintentional way like coals.

But here I anticipate a little, for I was not a Finch and could not be according to the sacred laws of the Society until I came of age.

In my confidence, in my own resources, I would willingly have taken Herbert's expenses on myself.

But Herbert was proud, and I could make no such proposal to him.

So he got into difficulties in every direction and continued to look about him.

When we gradually fell into keeping late hours and late company, I noticed that he looked about him with a desponding eye at breakfast time.

That he began to look about him more hopefully about midday.

That he drooped when he came into dinner that he seemed to describe capital in the distance rather clearly after dinner.

That he all but realized capital towards midnight and that at about 02:00 in the morning he became so deeply despondent again as to talk of buying a rifle and going to America with a general purpose of compelling Buffaloes to make his fortune.

I was usually at Hammersmith about half the week and when I was at Hammersmith, I haunted Richmond whereof, separately, by and by, herbert would often come to Hammersmith when I was there.

And I think at those seasons his father would occasionally have some passing perception that the opening he was looking for had not appeared yet.

But in the general tumbling up of the family, his tumbling out in life somewhere was a thing to transact itself somehow.

In the meantime, Mr.

Pocket grew grayer and tried oftener to lift himself out of his perplexities by the hair, while Mrs.

Pocket tripped up the family with her footstool, read her book of dignities, lost her pocket handkerchief, told us about her grandpa, and taught the young idea how to shoot by shooting it into bed whenever it attracted her.

Notice.

As I am now generalizing a period of my life with the object of clearing my way before me, I can scarcely do so better than by at once completing the description of our usual manners and customs.

At Barnard's Inn.

We spent as much money as we could and got as little for it as people could make up their minds to give us.

We were always more or less miserable.

In most of our acquaintance, we were in the same condition.

There was a gay fiction among us that we were constantly enjoying ourselves and a skeleton truth that we never did.

To the best of my belief, our case was in the last aspect, a rather common one.

Every morning, with an air ever new, Herbert went into the city to look about him.

I often paid him a visit in the dark back room in which he consorted with an inkjar, a hat peg, a coal box, a string box, an almanac, a desk and stool, and a ruler.

And I do not remember that I ever saw him do anything else but look about him.

If we all did what we undertake to do as faithfully as Herbert did, we might live in a republic of the virtues.

He had nothing else to do, poor fellow, except at a certain hour of every afternoon to go to Lloyd's in observance of a ceremony of seeing his principal.

I think he never did anything else in connection with Lloyd's that I could find out except come back again.

When he felt his case unusually serious and that he positively must find an opening, he would go on change at a busy time and walk in and out in a kind of gloomy country dance figure among the assembled magnates.

For, says Herbert to me, coming home to dinner on one of those special occasions, I find the truth to be handle that an opening won't come to one.

But one must go to it.

So I have been if we had been less attached to one another.

I think we must have hated one another regularly every morning.

I detested the chambers beyond expression at that period of repentance and could not enter the sight of the Avengers livery which had a more expensive and a less remunerative appearance than at any other time in the four and 20 hours.

As we got more and more into debt breakfast became a hollower and hollower form and being on one occasion at breakfast time threatened by letter with legal proceedings not wholly unconnected, as my local paper might put it, with jewelry.

I went so far as to seize the Avenger by his blue collar and shake him off his feet so that he was actually in the air like a booted cupid.

For presuming to suppose that we wanted a role at certain times meaning at uncertain times for they depended on our humor I would say to Herbert as if it were a remarkable discovery my dear Herbert, we are getting on badly.

My dear Handel, Herbert would say to me in all sincerity if you'll believe me, those very words were on my lips.

By a strange coincidence, then, Herbert, I would respond let us look into our affairs.

We always derived profound satisfaction from making an appointment for this purpose.

I always thought this was business this was the way to confront the thing.

This was the way to take the foe by the throat.

And I know herbert thought so, too.

We ordered something rather special for dinner with a bottle of something similarly out of the common way in order that our minds might be fortified for the occasion and we might come well up to the mark.

Dinner over, we produced a bundle of pens, a copious supply of ink and a goodly show of writing and blotting paper for there was something very comfortable in having plenty of stationery.

I would then take a sheet of paper and write across the top of it in a neat hand the heading Memorandum of Pip Stats with Barnard's Inn and the date very carefully added.

Herbert would also take a sheet of paper and write across it with similar formalities memorandum of Herbert's debts.

Each of us would then refer to a confused heap of papers at his side which had been thrown into drawers worn into holes and pockets half burnt in lighting candles stuck for weeks into the looking glass and otherwise damaged.

The sound of our pens going refreshed us exceedingly insomuch that I sometimes found it difficult to distinguish between this edifying business proceeding and actually paying the money in point of meritorious character.

The two things seemed about equal when we had written a little while I would ask Herbert how he got on.

Herbert probably would have been scratching his head in the most rueful manner at the sight of his accumulating figures.

They are mounting up handle.

Herbert would say upon my life, they are mounting up.

Be firm, Herbert.

I would retort plying my own pen with great astute.

Look the thing in the face, look into your affairs, stare them out of countenance so I would handle only they are staring me out of countenance.

However, my determined manner would have its effect, and Herbert would fall to work again.

After a time, he would give up once more on the plea that he had not got COB's bill or lobs or knobs, as the case might be.

Then Herbert, estimate.

Estimate it in round numbers, then put it down.

What a fellow of resource you are, my friend would reply with admiration.

Really, your business powers are very remarkable.

I thought so too.

I established with myself on these occasions the reputation of a first rate man of business prompt, decisive, energetic, clear, cool headed.

When I had got all my responsibilities down upon my list, I compared each with the bill and ticked it off.

My self approval when I ticked an entry was quite a luxurious sensation.

When I had no more ticks to make, I folded all my bills up uniformly, docketed each on the back, and tied the hole into a symmetrical bundle.

Then I did the same for Herbert, who modestly said he had not my administrative genius and felt that I had brought his affairs into a focus for him.

My business habits had one other bright feature which I called leaving a margin.

For example, supposing Herbert's debts to be 164 pounds, four and two pence, I would say leave a margin and put them down at 200.

Or supposing my own to be four times as much, I would leave a margin and put them down at 700.

I have the highest opinion of the wisdom of the same margin, but I am bound to acknowledge that on looking back, I deem it to have been an expensive device, for we always ran into new debt immediately, to the full extent of the margin, and sometimes in the sense of freedom and solvency, it imparted, got pretty far on into another margin.

But there was a calm, a rest, a virtuous hush consequent on these examinations of our affairs that gave me for the time an admirable opinion of myself.

Soothed by my exertions, my method and Herbert's compliments, I would sit with his symmetrical bundle and my own on the table before me among the stationery and feel like a bank of some sort rather than a private individual.

We shut our outer door on these solemn occasions in order that we might not be interrupted.

I had fallen into my serene state one evening when we heard a letter dropped through the slit in the said door and fall on the ground.

It's for you, Handel, said Herbert, going out and coming back with it, and I hope there's nothing the matter.

This was an allusion to its heavy black seal and border.

The letter was signed Trabanco and its contents were simply that I was an honored sir and that they begged to inform me that Mrs.

J Gardrey had departed this life on Monday last at 20 minutes past six in the evening and that my attendance was requested at the interment on Monday next at 03:00 in the afternoon.

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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