George Silvermans Explanation | Page 3

provide, or agree to also provide on request at no additional cost, fee or expense,
a copy of the etext in its original plain ASCII form (or in EBCDIC or other equivalent
proprietary form).
[2] Honor the etext refund and replacement provisions of this "Small Print!" statement.
[3] Pay a trademark license fee to the Project of 20% of the net profits you derive
calculated using the method you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. If you
don't derive profits, no royalty is due. Royalties are payable to "Project Gutenberg
Association within the 60 days following each date you prepare (or were legally required
to prepare) your annual (or equivalent periodic) tax return.
WHAT IF YOU *WANT* TO SEND MONEY EVEN IF YOU DON'T HAVE TO?
The Project gratefully accepts contributions in money, time, scanning machines, OCR
software, public domain etexts, royalty free copyright licenses, and every other sort of
contribution you can think of. Money should be paid to "Project Gutenberg Association".
*END*THE SMALL PRINT! FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS*Ver.04.29.93*END*

George Silverman's Explanation by Charles Dickens Scanned and proofed by David Price
[email protected]

GEORGE SILVERMAN'S EXPLANATION

FIRST CHAPTER

IT happened in this wise -
But, sitting with my pen in my hand looking at those words again, without descrying any
hint in them of the words that should follow, it comes into my mind that they have an
abrupt appearance. They may serve, however, if I let them remain, to suggest how very
difficult I find it to begin to explain my explanation. An uncouth phrase: and yet I do not
see my way to a better.

SECOND CHAPTER

IT happened in THIS wise -
But, looking at those words, and comparing them with my former opening, I find they are
the self-same words repeated. This is the more surprising to me, because I employ them
in quite a new connection. For indeed I declare that my intention was to discard the
commencement I first had in my thoughts, and to give the preference to another of an
entirely different nature, dating my explanation from an anterior period of my life. I will
make a third trial, without erasing this second failure, protesting that it is not my design
to conceal any of my infirmities, whether they be of head or heart.

THIRD CHAPTER

NOT as yet directly aiming at how it came to pass, I will come upon it by degrees. The
natural manner, after all, for God knows that is how it came upon me.
My parents were in a miserable condition of life, and my infant home was a cellar in
Preston. I recollect the sound of father's Lancashire clogs on the street pavement above,
as being different in my young hearing from the sound of all other clogs; and I recollect,
that, when mother came down the cellar-steps, I used tremblingly to speculate on her feet
having a good or an ill- tempered look, - on her knees, - on her waist, - until finally her
face came into view, and settled the question. From this it will be seen that I was timid,
and that the cellar-steps were steep, and that the doorway was very low.
Mother had the gripe and clutch of poverty upon her face, upon her figure, and not least
of all upon her voice. Her sharp and high- pitched words were squeezed out of her, as by
the compression of bony fingers on a leathern bag; and she had a way of rolling her eyes
about and about the cellar, as she scolded, that was gaunt and hungry. Father, with his
shoulders rounded, would sit quiet on a three-legged stool, looking at the empty grate,

until she would pluck the stool from under him, and bid him go bring some money home.
Then he would dismally ascend the steps; and I, holding my ragged shirt and trousers
together with a hand (my only braces), would feint and dodge from mother's pursuing
grasp at my hair.
A worldly little devil was mother's usual name for me. Whether I cried for that I was in
the dark, or for that it was cold, or for that I was hungry, or whether I squeezed myself
into a warm corner when there was a fire, or ate voraciously when there was food, she
would still say, 'O, you worldly little devil!' And the sting of it was, that I quite well knew
myself to be a worldly little devil. Worldly as to wanting to be housed and warmed,
worldly as to wanting to be fed, worldly as to the greed with which I inwardly compared
how much I got of those good things with how much father and mother got, when, rarely,
those good things were going.
Sometimes they