Edward Chester listened to his primal scream reverberate around the bare walls of the incommodious travelers room, awoken again in a clammy start from the fresh nightmare of a highwayman’s attack a scarce seven days prior.
Mr. Bumble was joined by what seemed the entire bedraggled common of the whole East End as he stood at the polluted risers of the river’s edge and listened to the distant, quiet riot of fiery works.
Pickwick listened to the morning drudgery of Goswell Street as it come reluctantly alive with the sad recognisation of despair, rot and all the pains of being pure at heart.
Where once there would have been the joyful sound of the merry hay-making of summertime and all the lovely sparrows, Jack Dawkins listened instead to the din of broken bells, dogs fought, and the neglected screech of some new day’s wretched orphan.
Moved by the evening’s performance of Titus Andronicus, Harriet Carker withdrew her Play List from the family writing desk and, by dim flicker of one tallow candle, added the title of the production to the list of plays she had favored at Covent Garden during the year 1845.
Loyal John Grueby listened dolefully as the rioters pounced upon Lord Gordon’s treasured collection of handsome furs.
Mr. Dick apologized for his tardiness, for having listened distractedly to the persistent hawking of the builders and the butchers and the fruit-brokers of Hungerford Market for too long, he finally purchased his release with a half penny’s worth of cherries.
Poor Mr. Wickfield listened solemnly as Uriah Heep repulsively croaked out, by way of proviso, an abominable refrain of new tariff requirements.
The prisoners marching through the high walls of King’s Bench prison customarily listened to the shame fostered by the people; though grimly, the conditions that separated them from the immediate neighbourhood were often distinguishable only by the persistent outbreaks of typhus.
Would only the Captain have listened to the caution of Lady Hawk on the matter of opiate indulgence, he might not have been found stiff and withered on his birthday, cold and cadaverous skin the colour of pale country fog yet unstained by London’s sooty belch.