Join Host Bree Carlile as she reads the fourteenth chapter of Great Expectations.
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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.
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One bite at a time.
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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 continuing great Expectations by Charles Dickens Chapter 14 it is the most miserable thing to feel ashamed of home.
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There may be blackened gratitude in the thing, and the punishment may be retributive and well deserved, but that is a miserable thing.
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I can testify.
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Home had never been a very pleasant place to me because of my sister's temper.
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But Joe had sanctified it and I had believed in it.
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I had believed in the best parlor as a most elegant saloon.
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I had believed in the front door as a mysterious portal of the Temple of state whose solemn opening was attended with a sacrifice of roast fowls.
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I had believed in the kitchen as a chase, though not magnificent, apartment.
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I had believed in the forge as the glowing road to manhood and independence.
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Within a single year all this was changed.
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Now it was all coarse and common, and I would not have had Miss Havisham and Estella see it on any account.
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How much of my ungracious condition of mind may have been my own fault, how much Miss Havisham's, how much my sister's is now of no moment to me or to anyone.
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The change was made in me.
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The thing was done well or ill done, excusably or inexcusably, it was done.
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Once.
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It had seemed to me that when I should at last roll up my shirt sleeves and go into the forge Joe's Prentice, I should be distinguished and happy.
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Now the reality was in my hold.
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I only felt that I was dusty with the dust of small coal, and that I had a weight upon my daily remembrance to which the anvil was a feather.
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There have been occasions in my later life, I suppose, as in most lives, when I felt for a time as if a thick curtain had fallen on all its interest in romance, to shut me out from anything save dull endurance anymore.
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Never has that curtain dropped so heavy and blank as when my way in life lay stretched out straight before me through the newly entered road of apprenticeship to Joe.
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I remember that at a later period of my time I used to stand about the churchyard on Sunday evenings, when night was falling, comparing my own perspective with a windy marsh view, and making out some likeness between them by thinking how flat and low both were, and how on both there came an unknown way and a dark mist, and in the sea.
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I was quite as dejected on the first working day of my apprenticeship as in that after time.
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But I'm glad to know that I never breathed a murmur to Joe while my indentures lasted.
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It is about the only thing I am glad to know of myself in that connection.
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For though it includes what I proceed to add, all the merit of what I proceed to add was Joe's.
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It was not because I was faithful, but because Joe was faithful, that I never ran away and went for a soldier or a sailor.
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It was not because I had a strong sense of the virtue of industry, but because Joe had a strong sense of the virtue of industry that I worked with.
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Tolerable zeal against the grain.
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It is not possible to know how far the influence of any amiable, honest hearted, duty doing man flies out into the world.
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But it is very possible to know how it has touched oneself in going by.
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And I know right well that any good that intermixed itself with my apprenticeship came of plain, contented Joe, and not of restlessly aspiring, discontented me.
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What I wanted, who can say?
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How can I say, when I never knew?
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What I dreaded was that in some unlucky hour I, being at my grimmest and commonest, should lift up my eyes and see Estella looking in at one of the wooden windows of the forge.
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I was haunted by the fear that she would sooner or later find me out with a black face and hands doing the coarsest part of my work and would exalt over me and despise me.
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Often after dark when I was pulling the bellows for Joe and we were singing old Clem, and when the thought how we used to sing it at Miss Havisham's would seem to show me Estella's face in the fire, with her pretty hair fluttering in the wind and her eyes scorning me.
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Often at such a time I would look towards those panels of Black Knight in the wall, which the wooden windows then were, and would fancy that I saw her just drawing her face away and would believe that she had come at last.
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After that, when we went into supper, the place and the meal would have a more homely look than ever, and I would feel more ashamed of home than ever in my own ungracious breast.
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Thank you for joining Bite at a Time books today while we read a bite of one of your favorite classics.
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Again, my name is Brie Carlyle and I hope you come back tomorrow for the next bite of great expectations.
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Take a look and a book and let's see what we can find.
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Take it chapter by chapter One have at a time so many adventures and mountains we can climb.
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Take it word for word, line by line, one bite at a time, close.
