rssenglishworld, The English Literature and Grammar Digest

Oliver Asks For More by Charles Dickens Detailed Summary Oliver Twist was born in a workhouse in London. A workhouse is a house for poor people who had no money and no place to live in. A young pregnant woman was brought to the workhouse shortly before Oliver was born. She was seriously taken ill after she gave birth to Twist. A doctor and an old woman were standing beside her. She requests to see her newborn child once before she dies but the doctor advises her not to talk of dying as she was too young to die. But she insists and the doctor gives her child to her. She kisses the baby lovingly and dies a few moments later. The doctor declares that she is dead and the woman takes the child away from her. The doctor says she was good looking and asks where she had come from. The woman answers that it was usual story. She was found lying in the street. She must have walked a pretty long distance as her shoes had wholes. She was not married as she had no ring on her fingers.  The child...

The Model Millionaire by Oscar Wilde  Unless one is wealthy there is no use in being a charming fellow. Romance is the privilege of the rich, not the profession of the unemployed. The poor should be practical and prosaic. It is better to have a permanent income than to be fascinating. These are the great truths of modern life which Hughie Erskine never realised. Poor Hughie! Intellectually, we must admit, he was not of much importance. He never said a brilliant or even an ill-natured thing in his life. But then he was wonderfully good-looking, with his crisp brown hair, his clear-cut profile, and his grey eyes. He was as popular with  men as he was with women and he had every accomplishment except that of making money. His father had bequeathed him his cavalry sword and a History of the Peninsular War in fifteen volumes. Hughie hung the first over his looking-glass, put the second on a shelf between Ruff’s Guide and Bailey’s Magazine, and lived on two hundred a year that an ol...