Critical Reading For Exams / Long Reading Comprehension 10

The following passage is taken from Sombody’s Luggage by Charles Dickens. 

But the Dust-Bin was going down then, and your father took but little, excepting from a liquid point of view. 

Your mother’s object in those visits was of a house-keeping character, and you was set on to whistle your father  out. Sometimes he came out, but generally not. Come or not come, however, all that part of his existence which was  unconnected with open Waitering was kept a close secret, and was acknowledged by your mother to be a close se-  cret, and you and your mother flitted about the court, close secrets both of you, and would scarcely have confessed  under torture that you know your father, or that your father had any name than Dick (which wasn’t his name,  though he was never known by any other), or that he had kith or kin or chick or child. Perhaps the attraction of this  mystery, combined with your father’s having a damp compartment, to himself, behind a leaky cistern, at the Dust- 

Bin, a sort of a cellar compartment, with a sink in it, and a smell, and a plate-rack, and a bottle-rack, and three win-  dows that didn’t match each other or anything else, and no daylight, caused your young mind to feel convinced that  you must grow up to be a Waiter too; but you did feel convinced of it, and so did all your brothers, down to your  sister. Every one of you felt convinced that you was born to the Waitering. At this stage of your career, what was  your feelings one day when your father came home to your mother in open broad daylight, of itself an act of 

Madness on the part of a Waiter, and took to his bed (leastwise, your mother and family’s bed), with the statement  that his eyes were devilled kidneys. Physicians being in vain, your father expired, after repeating at intervals for a  day and a night, when gleams of reason and old business fitfully illuminated his being, "Two and two is five. And  three is sixpence.” Interred in the parochial department of the neighbouring [sic] churchyard, and accompanied to  the grave by as many Waiters of long standing as could spare the morning time from their soiled glasses (namely,  one), your bereaved form was attired in a white neckankecher [sic], and you was took on from motives of benevo-  lence at The George and Gridiron, theatrical and supper. Here, supporting nature on what you found in the plates  (which was as it happened, and but too often thoughtlessly, immersed in mustard), and on what you found in the  glasses (which rarely went beyond driblets and lemon), by night you dropped asleep standing, till you was cuffed  awake, and by day was set to polishing every individual article in the coffee-room. Your couch being sawdust; your  counterpane being ashes of cigars. Here, frequently hiding a heavy heart under the smart tie of your white neck-  ankecher [sic] (or correctly speaking lower down and more to the left), you picked up the rudiments of knowledge  from an extra, by the name of Bishops, and by calling plate-washer, and gradually elevating your mind with chalk  on the back of the corner-box partition, until such time as you used the inkstand when it was out of hand, attained  to manhood, and to be the Waiter that you find yourself. 

I could wish here to offer a few respectful words on behalf of the calling so long the calling of myself and fam-  ily, and the public interest in which is but too often very limited. We are not generally understood. No, we are not. 

Allowance enough is not made for us. For, say that we ever show a little drooping listlessness of spirits, or what  might be termed indifference or apathy. Put it to yourself what would your own state of mind be, if you was one of  an enormous family every member of which except you was always greedy, and in a hurry. Put it to yourself that  you was regularly replete with animal food at the slack hours of one in the day and again at nine p.m., and that the  repleter [sic] you was, the more voracious all your fellow-creatures came in. Put it to yourself that it was your busi-  ness, when your digestion was well on, to take a personal interest and sympathy in a hundred gentlemen fresh and  fresh (say, for the sake of argument, only a hundred), whose imaginations was given up to grease and fat and gravy  and melted butter, and abandoned to questioning you about cuts of this, and dishes of that, each of ’em going on as  if him and you and the bill of fare was alone in the world.