Hunted Down: The Detective Stories of Charles Dickens

Name: Hunted Down: The Detective Stories of Charles Dickens
Author: Charles Dickens

by Charles Dickens

Pages: about 31
Category: Literature & Fiction
Language: English
Reading time: 34 min at 250 wpm

Start readingThe whole book, as cards or one word at a time. 19 min at 450 wpm in Read mode.

From the opening

Transcribed from the 1905 Chapman and Hall “Hard Times and Reprinted Pieces” edition by David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org
MOST of us see some romances in life. In my capacity as Chief Manager of a Life Assurance Office, I think I have within the last thirty years seen more romances than the generality of men, however unpromising the opportunity may, at first sight, seem.
As I have retired, and live at my ease, I possess the means that I used to want, of considering what I have seen, at leisure. My experiences have a more remarkable aspect, so reviewed, than they had when they were in progress. I have come home from the Play now, and can recall the scenes of the Drama upon which the curtain has fallen, free from the glare, bewilderment, and bustle of the Theatre.
There is nothing truer than physiognomy, taken in connection with manner. The art of reading that book of which Eternal Wisdom obliges every human creature to present his or her own page with the individual character written on it, is a difficult one, perhaps, and is little studied. It may require some natural aptitude, and it must require (for everything does) some patience and some pains. That these are not usually given to it,—that numbers of people accept a few stock commonplace expressions of the face as the whole list of characteristics, and neither seek nor know the refinements that are truest,—that You, for instance, give a great deal of time and attention to the reading of music, Greek, Latin, French, Italian, Hebrew, if you please, and do not qualify yourself to read the face of the master or mistress looking over your shoulder teaching it to you,—I assume to be five hundred times more probable than improbable. Perhaps a little self-sufficiency may be at the bottom of this; facial expression requires no study from you, you think; it comes by nature to you to know enough about it, and you are not to be taken in.

A short sample. Read the whole book

Hunted Down: The Detective Stories of Charles Dickens

From the opening

More to read