"A white-haired man sat on a low bench, stooping forward and very busy, making shoes."

John McLenan

1859

Dickens's A Tale of Two Cities, Book I, Chapter V, "The Wine-shop"

Harper's Weekly (21 May 1859): 325. This text appeared in the UK in All the Year Round on 14 May 1859.

[For passage illustrated, see below]

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Passage Illustrated

The following lines, which introduce Dr. Manette to the reader, end the chapter and lead directly to the next one, "The Shoemaker":

The garret, built to be a depository for firewood and the like, was dim and dark: for, the window of dormer shape, was in truth a door in the roof, with a little crane over it for the hoisting up of stores from the street: unglazed, and closing up the middle in two pieces, like any other door of French construction. To exclude the cold, one half of this door was fast closed, and the other was opened but a very little way. Such a scanty portion of light was admitted through these means, that it was difficult, on first coming in, to see anything; and long habit alone could have slowly formed in any one, the ability to do any work requiring nicety in such obscurity. Yet, work of that kind was being done in the garret; for, with his back towards the door, and his face towards the window where the keeper of the wine-shop stood looking at him, a white-haired man sat on a low bench, stooping forward and very busy, making shoes.

References

Dickens, Charles. A Tale of Two Cities: A story of the French Revolution. Project Gutenberg e-text by Judith Boss, Omaha, Nebraska. Release Date: September 25, 2004 [EBook #98].

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Last modified 26 November 2007