contemplated me in dismay. “Pip, old chap!
this won’t do, old fellow! I say! Where do you
expect to go to?”

“It's terrible, Joe; an’t it?”

“Terrible?” cried Joe. “Awful! What possessed
you?”

“I don’t know what possessed me, Joe,” I
replied, letting his shirt sleeve go, and sitting
down in the ashes at his feet, hanging my head;
“but I wish you hadn’t taught me to call Knaves
at cards, Jacks; and I wish my boots weren’t
so thick nor my hands so coarse.”

And then I told Joe that I felt very miserable,
and that I hadn’t been able to explain myself to
Mrs. Joe and Pumblechook, who were so rude
to me, and that there had been a beautiful young
lady at Miss Havisham’s who was dreadfully
proud, and that she had said I was common, and
that I knew I was common, and that I wished I
was not common, and that the lies had come of
it somehow, though I didn't know how.

This was a case of metaphysics, at least as
difficult for Joe to deal with, as for me. But,
Joe took the case altogether out of the region
of metaphysics, and by that means vanquished it.

“There’s one thing you may be sure of, Pip,”
said Joe, after some rumination, “namely, that
lies is lies. Howsever they come, they didn’t
ought to come, and they come from the father
of lies, and work round to the same. Don’t you
tell no more of ’em, Pip. That ain’t the way to
get out of being common, old chap. And as to
being common, I don’t make it out at all clear.
You are oncommon in some things. You’re
oncommon small.  Likewise you’re a oncommon
scholar.”

“No, I am ignorant and backward, Joe.”

“Why, see what a letter you wrote last
night. Wrote in print even! I’ve seen letters
—Ah! and from gentlefolks!— that I’ll swear
weren’t wrote in print,” said Joe.

"I have learnt next to nothing, Joe. You
think much of me. It’s only that.”

“Well, Pip,” said Joe, “be it so or be it
son’t, you must be a common scholar afore
you can be a oncommon one, I should hope!
The king upon his throne, with his crown upon
his ed, can’t sit and write his acts of Parliament
in print, without having begun, when he were a
unpromoted Prince, with the alphabet—Ah!"
added Joe, with a shake of the head that was
full of meaning, “and begun at A too, and
worked his way to Z. And / know what that
is to do, though I can’t say I’ve exactly done
it.”

There was some hope in this piece of wisdom,
and it rather encouraged me.

“Whether common ones as to callings and
earnings,” pursued Joe, reflectively, “mightn’t
be the better of continuing for to keep company
with common ones, instead of going out to play
with oncommon ones—which reminds me to
hope that there were a flag perhaps?”

“No, Joe.”

“(I'm sorry there weren’t a flag, Pip.) Whether
that might be or mightn’t be, is a thing as
can’t be looked into now, without putting your
sister on the Rampage; and that’s a thing not
to be thought of as being done intentional.
Lookee here, Pip, at what is said to you by a
true friend. Which this to you the true friend
say. If you can’t get to be oncommon through
going straight, you’ll never do it through going
crooked. So don’t tell no more on ’em, Pip,
and live well and die happy.”

“You are not angry with me, Joe?”

“No, old chap. But bearing in mind that
them were which I meantersay of a stunning
and outdacious sort—alluding to them which
bordered on weal-cutlets and dog-fighting—a
sincere well-wisher would adwise, Pip, their
being dropped into your meditations when you
go up-stairs to bed. That’s all, old chap, and
don’t never do it no more.”

When I got up to my little room and said
my prayers, I did not forget Joe’s recommendation,                                            and yet my young mind was in that
disturbed and unthankful state, that I thought
long after I laid me down, how common Estella
would consider Joe, a mere blacksmith: how
thick his boots, and how coarse his hands. I
thought how Joe and my sister were then
sitting in the kitchen, and how I had come up to
bed from the kitchen, and how Miss Havisham
and Estella never sat in a kitchen, but were far
above the level of such common doings. I fell
asleep recalling what I “used to do” when I
was at Miss Havisham’s; as though I had been
there weeks or months, instead of hours, and
as though it were quite an old subject of
remembrance, instead of one that had arisen only
that day.

That was a memorable day to me, for it
made great changes in me. But, it is the same
with any life. Imagine one selected day struck
out of it, and think how different its course
would have been. Pause you who read this,
and think for a moment of the long chain of iron
or gold, of thorns or flowers, that would never
have bound you, but for the formation of the
first link on one memorable day.

CHAPTER X.

THE felicitous idea occurred to me a morning
or two later when I woke, that the best step
I could take towards making myself uncommon
was to get out of Biddy everything she knew.
In pursuance of this luminous conception I
mentioned to Biddy when I went to Mr. Wopsle’s
great-aunt’s at night, that I had a particular
reason for wishing to get on in life, and that I
should feel very much obliged to her if she would
impart all her learning to me. Biddy, who was
the most obliging of girls, immediately said she
would, and indeed began to carry out her promise
within five minutes.

The Educational scheme or Course established
by Mr. Wopsle’s great-aunt may be resolved into
the following synopsis. The pupils ate apples and
put straws up one another’s backs, until Mr.
Wopsle’s great-aunt collected her energies, and
made an indiscriminate totter at them with a
birch-rod. After receiving the charge with
every mark of derision, the pupils formed in