"You were very sound, Sydney, in the matter of
those crown witnesses today. Every question told."
"I always am sound; am I not?"
"I don't gainsay it. What has roughened your
Line 5 temper? Put some punch to it and smooth it again."
With a deprecatory grunt, Carton complied.
"The old Sydney Carton of old Shrewsbury School."
said Stryver, nodding his head over him as he reviewed
him in the present and the past, "the old seesaw
10 Sydney. Up one minute and down the next; now in
spirits and now in despondency!"
"Ah!" returned the other, sighing: "Yes! The same
Sydney, with the same luck. Even then, I did exercises
for other boys, and seldom did my own."
"And why not?"
15 "God knows. It was my way, I suppose."
"Carton," said his friend, squaring himself at him
with a bullying air, as if the fire-grate had been the
furnace in which sustained endeavour was forged, and
20 the one delicate thing to be done for the old Sydney
Carton of old Shrewsbury School was to shoulder him
into it, "your Way is, and always was, a lame way. You
summon no energy and purpose. Look at me."
"Oh, botheration!" returned Sydney, with a lighter
25 and more good-humoured laugh, "don't you be moral!"
"How have I done what I have done?" said Stryver;
"how do I do what I do?”
"Partly through paying me to help you,
I suppose. But it's not worth your while to apostrophise me, or
30 the air, about it; what you want to do, you do. You Were
always in the front rank, and I was always behind."
"I had to get into the front rank; I was not born
there, was I?"
"I was not present at the ceremony; but my opinion
35 is you were," said Carton. At this, he laughed again,
and they both laughed.
"Before Shrewsbury, and at Shrewsbury, and ever
since Shrewsbury, pursued Carton, "you have fallen
into your rank, and I have fallen into mine. You were
40 always somewhere, and I was always nowhere.”
"And whose fault was that?"
"Upon my soul, I am not sure that it was not yours.
You Were always driving and shouldering and passing,
to that restless degree that I had no chance for my life
45 but in rust and repose. It's a gloomy thing, however, to
talk about one's own past, with the daybreaking. Turn
me in some other direction before I go."
"Well then! Pledge me to the pretty witness," said
Stryver, holding up his glass. "Are you turned in a
50 pleasant direction?"
"Pretty witness," he muttered, looking down into
his glass. "I have had enough of witnesses today and
tonight; who's your pretty witness?"
"The picturesque doctor's daughter, Miss Manette."
55 "She pretty?"
"Is she not?'
“No"
"Why, man alive, she was the admiration of the
whole Court!"
60 "Rot the admiration of the whole Court! Who made
the Old Bailey a judge of beauty? She was a golden
haired doll!"
"Do you know, Sydney," said Mr. Stryver, looking at
him with sharp eyes, and slowly drawing a hand across
65 his florid face: "do you know, I rather thought, at the
time, that you sympathized with the golden-haired
doll, and were quick to see what happened to the
golden-haired doll?"
"Quick to see what happened! If a girl, doll or no
70 doll, Swoons within a yard or two of a man's nose, he
can see it without a perspective-glass. I pledge you, but
I deny the beauty. And now I'll have no more drink; I'll
get to bed."
When his host followed him out on the staircase
75 with a candle, to light him down the stairs, the day was
coldly looking in through its grimy Windows. When he
got out of the house, the air was cold and sad, the dull
sky overcast, the river dark and dim, the whole scene
like a lifeless desert. And Wreaths of dust were spinning
80 round and round before the morning blast, as if the
desert-sand had risen far away, and the first spray of it
in its advance had begun to overwhelm the city.
Climbing to a high chamber in a well of houses, he
threw himself down in his clothes on a neglected bed,
85 and its pillow was wet with wasted tears. Sadly, sadly,
the sun rose; it rose upon no sadder sight than the
man of good abilities and good emotions, incapable
of their directed exercise, incapable of his own help and
his own happiness, sensible of the blight on him, and
90 resigning himself to let it eat him away.
The passage that follows is adapted from an 1859 novel that follows the lives of both English and French characters during the French Revolution.
Attempted
Wrong
Correct