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The adventures of Oliver Twist 1899Author: Dickens, Charles, 1812-1870Language: EnglishCHAPTER I. TREATS OF THE PLACE WHERE OLIVER TWIST WAS BORN; AND OF THE CIRCUMSTANCES ATTENDING HIS BIRTH. AMONG other public buildings in a certain town, which for many reasons it will be pru- dent to refrain from mentioning, and to which I will assign no fictitious name, there is one anciently common to most towns, great or small ; to wit, a workhouse ; and in this workhouse was born : on a day and date which I need not trouble myself to repeat, inasmuch as it can be of no possible conse- quence to the reader, in this stage of the business at all events ; the item of mortality whose name is prefixed to the head of this chapter. For a long time after it was ushered into this world of sorrow and trouble, by the parish surgeon, it remained a matter of con- siderable doubt whether the child would survive to bear any name at all ; in which case it is somewhat more than probable that these memoirs would never have appeared ; or, if they had that being comprised within a couple of pages, they would have possessed the inestimable merit of being the most concise and faithful specimen of biography extant, in the literature of any age or country.