s, is done in Dickens's best style,
and was a frontal attack on the Poor Law administration of the
time. Bumble, indeed, has passed into common use as the
typical workhouse official of the least satisfactory sort. No
less powerful than the picture of Oliver's wretched childhood
is the description of the thieves' kitchen, presided over by
Fagin. Bill Sikes and the Artful Dodger are household words
for criminals, and the character of Fagin is drawn with
wonderful skill in this terrible view of the underworld of
London.

_I.--The Parish Boy_

Oliver was born in the workhouse, and his mother died the same night.
Not even a promised reward of L10 could produce any information as to
the boy's father or the mother's name. The woman was young, frail, and
delicate--a stranger to the parish.

"How comes he to have any name at all, then?" said Mrs. Mann (who was
responsible for the early bringing up of the workhouse children) to Mr.
Bumble, the parish beadle.

The beadle drew himself up with great pride, and said, "I invented it.
We name our foundings in alphabetical order. The last was a S; Swubble I
named him. This was a T; Twist I named _him_. I have got names ready
made to the end of the alphabet, and all the way through it again, when
we come to Z."

"Why, you're quite a literary character, sir," said Mrs. Mann.

Oliver, being now nine years old, was removed from the tender mercies of
Mrs. Mann, in whose wretched home not one kind word or look had ever
lighted the gloom of his infant years, and was taken into the workhouse.

Now the members of the board, who were long-headed men, had just
established the rule that all poor people should have the alternative
(for they would compel nobody, not they) of being starved by a gradual
process in the house, or by a quick one out of it. All relief was
inseparable from the workhouse, and the thin gruel issued three times a
day to its inmates.

The system was in full operation for the first six months after Oliver
Twist's admission, and boys having generally excellent appetites, Oliver
Twist and his companions suffered the tortures of slow starvation. Each
boy had one porringer of gruel, and no more. At last the boys got so
voracious and wild with hunger, that one, who was tall for his age and
hadn't been used to that sort of thing (for his father had kept a small
cook's shop), hinted darkly to his companions that unless he had a