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

Come with us as we release one bite a day of one of your favorite classic novels, plays & short stories. Bree reads these classics like she reads to her daughter, one chapter a day. If you love books or audiobooks and want something to listen to as you're getting ready, driving to work, or as you're getting ready for bed, check out Bite at a Time Books!

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San the book and let's see what we can find.

Take it chapter by chapter, one bite at a time so many adventures and mountains we can climb take it word for word, like by line.

One bite at a time my name is Brie Carlyle and I love to read and wanted to share my passion with listeners like you.

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Today we'll be beginning great Expectations by Charles Dickens.

Chapter One my father's family name being Pirup, and my Christian name Philip, my infant tongue could make of both names nothing longer or more explicit than Pip, so I called myself Pip and came to be called Pip.

I gave Pirp as my father's family name on the authority of his tombstone, and my sister Mrs.

Jo Gardry, who married the blacksmith.

As I never saw my father or my mother, and never saw any likeness of either of them, for their days were long before the days of photographs, my first fancies regarding what they were like were unreasonably derived from their tombstones.

The shape of the letters on my father's gave me an OD idea that he was a square, stout man with curly black hair.

From the character and turn of the inscription also Georgiana, wife of the above, I drew a childish conclusion that my mother was freckled and sickly to five little stone lozenges, each about a foot and a half long, which were arranged in a neat robe beside their grave and were sacred to the memory of five little brothers of mine who gave up trying to get a living exceedingly early in that universal struggle.

I am indebted for a belief I religiously entertained that they had all been born on their backs, with their hands in their trousers pockets, and had never taken them out in this state of existence.

Ours was the marsh country down by the river within, as the river wound 20 miles of the sea, my first, most vivid and broad impression of the identity of things seems to me to have been gained on a memorable raw afternoon towards evening.

At such a time, I found out for certain that this bleak place, overgrown with nettles, was the churchyard, and that Philip Pirup, late of this parish, and also Georgiana, wife of the above, were dead and buried, and that alexander, Bartholomew, Abram Tobias and Roger Infant, children of the aforesaid, were also dead and buried.

And that the dark, flat wilderness beyond the churchyard intersected with dikes and mounds and gates with scattered cattle feeding on it was the marshes, and that the load leaden lined beyond was the river and that the distant savage lair from which the wind was rushing was the sea.

And that the small bundle of shivers growing afraid of it all and beginning to cry was Pip.

Hold your noise.

Cried a terrible voice as a man started up from among the grays at the side of the church porch.

Keep still, you little devil, or I'll cut your throat.

A fearful man, all in coarse gray, with a great iron on his leg.

A man with no hat and with broken shoes and with an old rag tied round his head.

A man who had been soaked in water and smothered in mud and lamed by stones and cut by flints and stung by nettles and torn by briars.

Who limped and shivered and glared and growled and whose teeth chattered in his head as he seized me by the chin.

Oh, don't cut my throat, sir, I pleaded in terror.

Pray don't do it, sir.

Tell us your name, said the man.

Quick.

Pip, sir.

Once more, said the man, staring at me.

Give it mouth.

Pip.

Pip, sir.

Show us where you live, said the man.

Pint out the place.

I pointed to where our village lay on the flat inshore among the alder trees and pollards a mile or more from the church.

The man, after looking at me for a moment, turned me upside down and emptied my pockets.

There was nothing in them but a piece of bread when the church came to itself, for he was so sudden and strong that he made it go head over heels before me, and I saw the steeple under my feet.

When the church came to itself, I say I was seated on a high tombstone trembling while he ate the bread.

Ravenously, you young dog, said the man, licking his lips.

What fat cheeks you got.

I believe they were fat, though I was at that time undersized for my years, and not strong.

Darn me if I couldn't eat them.

Said the man with a threatening shake of his head.

And if I hadn't have a mind.

To it, I earnestly expressed my hope that he wouldn't, and held tighter to the tombstone on which he had put me partly to keep myself upon it, partly to keep myself from crying.

Now, looky here, said the man.

Where's your mother?

There, sir, said I.

He started, made a short run, and stopped and looked over his shoulder.

There, sir, I timidly explained.

Also Georgiana.

That's my mother.

Oh, said he, coming back.

And is that your father longer your mother?

Yes, sir.

Said I.

Him too late of this parish ha, he muttered.

Then, considering, who do you live with, supposing you're kindly let to live, which I hadn't made up my mind about.

My sister, sir.

Mrs.

Joe gardery, wife of Joe Gargery, the blacksmith.

Sir.

Blacksmith, eh?

Said he, and looked down at his leg.

After darkly looking at his leg and me several times, he came closer to my tombstone, took me by both arms, and tilted me back as far as he could hold me, so that his eyes looked most powerfully down into mine, and mine looked most helplessly up into his.

Now looky here, he said, the question being whether you're to be let to live.

You know what a file is?

Yes, sir.

And you know what whittles is?

Yes, sir.

After each question, he tilted me over a little more so as to give me a greater sense of helplessness and danger.

You get me a file he tilted me again.

And you get me whittles.

He tilted me again.

You bring them both to me.

He tilted me again, or I'll have your heart and liver out.

He tilted me again.

I was dreadfully frightened and so giddy that I clung to him with both hands and said, if you would kindly please to let me keep upright, sir, perhaps I shouldn't be sick and perhaps I could attend more.

He gave me a most tremendous dip and roll so that the church jumped over its own weathercock.

Then he held me by the arms in an upright position on the top of the stone and went on in.

These fearful terms you bring me tomorrow morning early that file in them whittles.

You bring the lot to me at.

That old battery over yonder.

You do it.

And you never dare to say a word or dare to make a sign concerning you have seen such a person as me, or any person, some ever, and you shall be let to live.

You fail, or you go for my words in any particular, no matter how small it is, and your heart and your liver shall be tore out, roasted and ate.

Now, I ain't alone as you may think I am.

There's a young man hid with me in comparison with which young man I am an angel.

That young man hears the words I speak.

That young man has a secret way, peculiar to himself of getting at a boy and at his heart and at his liver.

It is in wayne a boy to attempt to hide himself from that young man.

A boy may lock his door, may be warm in bed, may tuck himself up, may draw the clothes over his head, may think himself comfortable and safe, but that young man will softly creep and creep his way to him and tear him open.

I'm keeping that young man from harming of you.

At the present moment, with great difficulty.

I find it very hard to hold that young man off your inside.

Now, what do you say?

I said that I would get him the file and I would get him what broken bits of food I could and I would come to him at the Battery early in the morning, say.

Lord strike you dead if you don't, said the man.

I said so when he took me down.

Now, he pursued you.

Remember what you've undertook and you remember that young man, and you get home.

Good night, sir.

I faltered much of that, said he, glancing about him over the cold, wet flat.

I wish I was a frog or.

An eel at the same time.

He hugged his shuddering body in both his arms, clasping himself as if to hold himself together.

And he limped towards the low church wall.

As I saw him go picking his way among the nettles and among the brambles that bound the green mounds, he looked in my young eyes as if he were eluding the hands of the dead people stretching up cautiously out of their graves to get a twist upon his ankle and pull him in.

When he came to the low church wall, he got over it like a man whose legs were numbed and stiff.

And then he turned round to look for me.

When I saw him turning, I set my face towards home and made the best use of my legs.

But presently I looked over my shoulder and saw him going on again towards the river, still hugging himself in both arms and picking his way with his sore feet among the great stones dropped into the marshes here and there for stepping places when the rains were heavy or the tide was in.

The marshes were just a long, black horizontal line, then as I stopped to look after him and the river was just another horizontal line, not nearly so broad, nor yet so black and the sky was just a row of long, angry red lines and dense black lines intermixed on the edge of the river.

I could faintly make out the only two black things and all the prospect that seemed to be standing upright.

One of these was the beacon by which the sailors steered like an unhooped cask upon a pole, an ugly thing when you were near it the other a gibbit with some chains hanging to it, which had once held a pirate.

The man was limping on towards this ladder as if he were the pirate come to life and come down and going back to hook himself up again.

It gave me a terrible turn when I thought so, and as I saw the cattle lifting their heads to gaze after him, I wondered whether they thought so too.

I looked all round for the horrible young man and could see no signs of him.

But now I was frightened again and ran home without stopping.

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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