Passage of the Day: Charles Dicken’s “Bleak House”

“Wintry morning looking with dull eyes and sallow face upon the neighbourhood of Leicester Square finds its inhabitants unwilling to get out of bed. Many of them are not early risers at the best of times, being birds of the night who roost when the sun is high are wide awake and keen for prey when the stars shine out. Behind dingy blind and curtain, in upper story and garret, skulking more or less under false names, false hair, false titles, false jewelry, and false histories a colony of brigands lie in their first sleep. Gentlemen of the green-baize road who could discourse from personal experience of foreign galleys and home treadmills: spies of strong governments that eternally quake with weakness and miserable fear: broken traitors, cowards, bullies, gamesters, shufflers, swindlers and false witnesses: some not unmarked by the branding iron beneath their dirty braid; all with more cruelty in them than was in Nero, and more crime than is in Newgate. For howsoever bad the devil can be in fustian or smock frock ) and he can be very bad in both), he is more designing, callous, and intolerable devil when he sticks a pin in his shirt-front and calls himself a gentleman, backs a card or colour, plays a game or so of billiards, and knows a little about bills and promissory notes than in any other form he wears.”