Identifier: bleakhouse00dick (find matches)
Title: Bleak house
Year: 1895 (1890s)
Authors: Dickens, Charles, 1812-1870 Dickens, Charles, 1837-1896, ed Browne, Hablot Knight, 1815-1882, illus
Subjects: Young women Guardian and ward Illegitimate children Inheritance and succession
Publisher: New York, London, Macmillan and co.
Contributing Library: The Library of Congress
Digitizing Sponsor: Sloan Foundation

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he has his revenge. Even the winds are his messengers,and they serve him in these hours of darkness. There is not adrop of Toms corrupted blood but propagates infection and conta-gion somewhere. It shall pollute, this very night, the choicestream (in which chemists on analysis would find the genuinenobility) of a Norman house, and his Grace shall not be able to sayNay to the infamous alliance. There is not an atom of Tomsslime, not a cubic inch of any pestilential gas in which he lives,not one obscenity or degradation about him, not an ignorance, nota wickedness, not a brutality of his committing, but shall work itsretribution, through every order of society, up to the proudest ofthe proud, and to the highest of the high. Verily, what withtainting, plundering, and spoiling, Tom has his revenge. It is a moot point whether Tom-all-Alones be uglier by day orby night; but on the argument that the more that is seen of it themore shocking it must be, and that no part of it left to the imag-
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tom-all-alones. BLEAK HOUSE. 583 ination is at all likely to be made so bad as the reality, day carriesit. The day begins to break now ; and in truth it might be betterfor the national glory even that the sun should sometimes setupon the British dominions, than that it should ever rise upon sovile a wonder as Tom. A brown sunburnt gentleman, who appears in some inaptitudefor sleep to be wandering abroad rather than counting the hourson a restless pillow, strolls hitherward at this quiet time. At-tracted by curiosity, he often pauses and looks about him, up anddown the miserable byeways. Nor is he merely curious, for in hisbright dark eye there is compassionate interest; and as he lookshere and there, he seems to understand such wretchedness, and tohave studied it before. On the banks of the stagnant channel of mud which is the mainstreet of Tom-all-Alones, nothing is to be seen but the crazyhouses, shut up and silent. No waking creature save himselfappears, except in one direction whe

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