To Miss Burdett Coutts this tale is dedicated with the true and earnest regard of the author...

What is exaggeration to one class of minds and perceptions, is plain truth to another. That which is commonly called a long-sight, perceives in a prospect innumerable features and bearings nonexistent...

As no lady or gentleman, with any claims to polite breeding, can possibly sympathize with the Chuzzlewit Family without being first assured of the extreme antiquity of the race, it is a great satisfac...

It was pretty late in the autumn of the year, when the declining sun, struggling through the mist which had obscured it all day, looked brightly down upon a little Wiltshire village, within an easy jo...

Mention has been already made more than once, of a certain Dragon who swung and creaked complainingly before the village alehouse door. A faded, and an ancient dragon he was; and many a wintry storm o...

That worthy man Mr. Pecksniff having taken leave of his cousin in the solemn terms recited in the last chapter, withdrew to his own home, and remained there three whole days; not so much as going out ...

The best of architects and land surveyors kept a horse, in whom the enemies already mentioned more than once in these pages pretended to detect a fanciful resemblance to his master. Not in his outward...

It was morning; and the beautiful Aurora, of whom so much hath been written, said, and sung, did, with her rosy fingers, nip and tweak Miss Pecksniff’s nose. It was the frolicsome custom of the Goddes...

Martin began to work at the grammar-school next morning, with so much vigour and expedition, that Mr. Pinch had new reason to do homage to the natural endowments of that young gentleman, and to acknow...

When Mr. Pecksniff and the two young ladies got into the heavy coach at the end of the lane, they found it empty, which was a great comfort; particularly as the outside was quite full and the passenge...

Surely there never was, in any other borough, city, or hamlet in the world, such a singular sort of a place as Todgers’s. And surely London, to judge from that part of it which hemmed Todgers’s round ...

But Mr. Pecksniff came to town on business. Had he forgotten that? Was he always taking his pleasure with Todgers’s jovial brood, unmindful of the serious demands, whatever they might be, upon his cal...

The family were within two or three days of their departure from Mrs. Todgers’s, and the commercial gentlemen were to a man despondent and not to be comforted, because of the approaching separation, w...

Mr. Pinch and Martin, little dreaming of the stormy weather that impended, made themselves very comfortable in the Pecksniffian halls, and improved their friendship daily. Martin’s facility, both of i...

Carrying Tom Pinch’s book quite unconsciously under his arm, and not even buttoning his coat as a protection against the heavy rain, Martin went doggedly forward at the same quick pace, until he had p...

The letter being duly signed, sealed, and delivered, was handed to Mark Tapley, for immediate conveyance if possible. And he succeeded so well in his embassy as to be enabled to return that same night...

A dark and dreary night; people nestling in their beds or circling late about the fire; Want, colder than Charity, shivering at the street corners; church-towers humming with the faint vibration of th...

Some trifling excitement prevailed upon the very brink and margin of the land of liberty; for an alderman had been elected the day before; and Party Feeling naturally running rather high on such an ex...

It was characteristic of Martin, that all this while he had either forgotten Mark Tapley as completely as if there had been no such person in existence, or, if for a moment the figure of that gentlema...

Change begets change. Nothing propagates so fast. If a man habituated to a narrow circle of cares and pleasures, out of which he seldom travels, step beyond it, though for never so brief a space, his ...

Mr. Pecksniff was in a hackney cabriolet, for Jonas Chuzzlewit had said “Spare no expense.” Mankind is evil in its thoughts and in its base constructions, and Jonas was resolved it should not have an ...

“Pecksniff,” said Jonas, taking off his hat, to see that the black crape band was all right; and finding that it was, putting it on again, complacently; “what do you mean to give your daughters when t...

The knocking at Mr. Pecksniff’s door, though loud enough, bore no resemblance whatever to the noise of an American railway train at full speed. It may be well to begin the present chapter with this fr...

As soon as it was generally known in the National Hotel, that the young Englishman, Mr. Chuzzlewit, had purchased a “lo‑cation” in the Valley of Eden, and intended to betake himself to that earthly Pa...

There happened to be on board the steamboat several gentlemen passengers, of the same stamp as Martin’s New York friend Mr. Bevan; and in their society he was cheerful and happy. They released him as ...

“Hallo, Pecksniff!” cried Mr. Jonas from the parlour. “Isn’t somebody a-going to open that precious old door of yours?” “Immediately, Mr. Jonas. Immediately.” “Ecod,” muttered the orphan, “not before ...

Mr. Mould was surrounded by his household gods. He was enjoying the sweets of domestic repose, and gazing on them with a calm delight. The day being sultry, and the window open, the legs of Mr. Mould ...

The laws of sympathy between beards and birds, and the secret source of that attraction which frequently impels a shaver of the one to be a dealer in the other, are questions for the subtle reasoning ...

Mr. Bailey, Junior⁠—for the sporting character, whilom of general utility at Todgers’s, had now regularly set up in life under that name, without troubling himself to obtain from the legislature a dir...

There were many powerful reasons for Jonas Chuzzlewit being strongly prepossessed in favour of the scheme which its great originator had so boldly laid open to him; but three among them stood prominen...

It may have been the restless remembrance of what he had seen and heard overnight, or it may have been no deeper mental operation than the discovery that he had nothing to do, which caused Mr. Bailey,...

As the surgeon’s first care after amputating a limb is to take up the arteries the cruel knife has severed, so it is the duty of this history, which in its remorseless course has cut from the Pecksnif...

The closing words of the last chapter lead naturally to the commencement of this, its successor; for it has to do with a church. With the church, so often mentioned heretofore, in which Tom Pinch play...

Early on the day next after that on which she bade adieu to the halls of her youth and the scenes of her childhood, Miss Pecksniff, arriving safely at the coach-office in London, was there received, a...

From Mr. Moddle to Eden is an easy and natural transition. Mr. Moddle, living in the atmosphere of Miss Pecksniff’s love, dwelt (if he had but known it) in a terrestrial Paradise. The thriving city of...

Among the passengers on board the steamboat, there was a faint gentleman sitting on a low campstool, with his legs on a high barrel of flour, as if he were looking at the prospect with his ankles, who...

It was midday, and high water in the English port for which the Screw was bound, when, borne in gallantly upon the fullness of the tide, she let go her anchor in the river. Bright as the scene was; fr...

Oh! What a different town Salisbury was in Tom Pinch’s eyes to be sure, when the substantial Pecksniff of his heart melted away into an idle dream! He possessed the same faith in the wonderful shops, ...

Tom’s evil genius did not lead him into the dens of any of those preparers of cannibalic pastry, who are represented in many standard country legends as doing a lively retail business in the Metropoli...

In walking from the city with his sentimental friend, Tom Pinch had looked into the face, and brushed against the threadbare sleeve, of Mr. Nadgett, man of mystery to the Anglo-Bengalee Disinterested ...

Pleasant little Ruth! Cheerful, tidy, bustling, quiet little Ruth! No doll’s house ever yielded greater delight to its young mistress, than little Ruth derived from her glorious dominion over the tria...

There was a ghostly air about these uninhabited chambers in the Temple, and attending every circumstance of Tom’s employment there, which had a strange charm in it. Every morning when he shut his door...

The office of the Anglo-Bengalee Disinterested Loan and Life Assurance Company being near at hand, and Mr. Montague driving Jonas straight there, they had very little way to go. But the journey might ...

The doctor’s prognostication in reference to the weather was speedily verified. Although the weather was not a patient of his, and no third party had required him to give an opinion on the case, the q...

On the night of the storm, Mrs. Lupin, hostess of the Blue Dragon, sat by herself in her little bar. Her solitary condition, or the bad weather, or both united, made Mrs. Lupin thoughtful, not to say ...

It was a special quality, among the many admirable qualities possessed by Mr. Pecksniff, that the more he was found out, the more hypocrisy he practised. Let him be discomfited in one quarter, and he ...

Tom Pinch and his sister having to part, for the dispatch of the morning’s business, immediately after the dispersion of the other actors in the scene upon the wharf with which the reader has been alr...

On the next day’s official duties coming to a close, Tom hurried home without losing any time by the way; and after dinner and a short rest sallied out again, accompanied by Ruth, to pay his projected...

Did no men passing through the dim streets shrink without knowing why, when he came stealing up behind them? As he glided on, had no child in its sleep an indistinct perception of a guilty shadow fall...

Tom Pinch and Ruth were sitting at their early breakfast, with the window open, and a row of the freshest little plants ranged before it on the inside by Ruth’s own hands; and Ruth had fastened a spri...

Mrs. Gamp’s apartment in Kingsgate Street, High Holborn, wore, metaphorically speaking, a robe of state. It was swept and garnished for the reception of a visitor. That visitor was Betsey Prig: Mrs. P...

It was the next evening; and Tom and his sister were sitting together before tea, talking, in their usual quiet way, about a great many things, but not at all about Lewsome’s story or anything connect...

The night had now come, when the old clerk was to be delivered over to his keepers. In the midst of his guilty distractions, Jonas had not forgotten it. It was a part of his guilty state of mind to re...

Old Martin’s cherished projects, so long hidden in his own breast, so frequently in danger of abrupt disclosure through the bursting forth of the indignation he had hoarded up during his residence wit...

Brilliantly the Temple Fountain sparkled in the sun, and laughingly its liquid music played, and merrily the idle drops of water danced and danced, and peeping out in sport among the trees, plunged li...

Todger’s was in high feather, and mighty preparations for a late breakfast were astir in its commercial bowers. The blissful morning had arrived when Miss Pecksniff was to be united in holy matrimony,...

At a Public Dinner given to me on Saturday the 18th of April, 1868, in the city of New York, by two hundred representatives of the Press of the United States of America, I made the following observati...

The most credulous reader will scarcely believe that Mr. Pecksniff’s reasoning was once set upon as the Author’s!! ↩...