The Cricket On The Hearth
contributor: Eric Lease Morgan (Infomotions, Inc.)
creator: Dickens, Charles
date: 0000-00-00
extent: 185887
format: text/plain
language: en
publisher: Wiretap Electronic Text Archive
rights: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/GPL/2.0/
source: cricket.txt
subject: john
subject: carrier
subject: tackleton
subject: caleb
subject: bertha
subject: question
subject: fact
subject: dickens
subject: charles
subject: cricket
subject: hearth
subject: english
subject: literature
type: text
local mirror: dickens-cricket-127.txt
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plain html: dickens-cricket-127.htm
sort title: Cricket On The Hearth, The
full text: "The Cricket on the Hearth", by Charles Dickens. [obi/Charles.Dickens/cricket.on.hearth.txt] THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH CHIRP THE FIRST The kettle began it! Don't tell me what Mrs. Peerybingle said. I know better. Mrs. Peery- bingle may leave it on record to the end of time that she couldn't say which of them began it; but, I say the kettle did. I ought to know, I hope! The kettle began it, full five minutes by the little waxy- faced Dutch clock in the corner, before the Cricket uttered a chirp. As if the clock hadn't finished striking, and the convulsive little Haymaker at the top of it, jerking away right and left with a scythe in front of a Moorish Palace, hadn't mowed down half an acre of imaginary grass before the Cricket joined in at all! Why, I am not naturally positive. Every one knows that. I wouldn't set my own opinion against the opinion of Mrs. Peerybingle, unless I were quite sure, on any account whatever. Nothing should in- duce me. But, this is a question of fact. And the fact is, that the kettle began it, at least five minutes before the Cricket gave any sign of being in exist- ence. Contradict me, and I'll say ten. Let me narrate exactly how it happened. I should have proceeded to do so in my very first word, but for this plain consideration -- if I am to tell a story I must begin at the beginning; and how is it pos- sible to begin at the beginning, without beginning at the kettle? It appeared as if there were a sort of match, or trial of skill, you must understand, between the kettle and the Cricket. And this is what led to it, and how it came about. Mrs. Peerybingle, going out into the raw twilight, and clicking over the wet stones in a pair of pattens that worked innumerable rough impressions of the first proposition in Euclid all about the yard -- Mrs, Peerybingle filled the kettle at the water-butt. Pres- ently returning, less the pattens (and a good deal less, for they were tall and Mrs. Peerybingle was but short), she set the kettle on the fir…