Maximum-assistance view: every word above everyday vocabulary is explained at every appearance; each name is introduced at its first appearance in the chapter.

CHAPTER I.

The Period (The Time: the years when this story begins)

It was the best of times (Every good thing here is followed straight away by its opposite, so the age could be called anything), it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom (the time when people had good sense), it was the age of foolishness (having no sense), it was the epoch (a long stretch of time) of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity (refusing to believe anything), it was the season of Light (the time when people saw clearly), it was the season of Darkness (the time when they saw nothing), it was the spring of hope (the season when hope grows), it was the winter of despair (the season when hope dies), we had everything before us (our whole future was still to come), we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way (going straight to hell; he will not say the word)--in short (to say it briefly), the period was so far (so much like) like the present period (the writer’s own time), that some of its noisiest authorities (its loudest experts) insisted on its being received (demanded that everyone speak of it), for good or for evil (whether people called it good or bad), in the superlative degree of comparison only (only in the strongest words the language has: best, worst, most, least).

There were a king with a large jaw (a heavy lower face) and a queen with a plain face (an ordinary face, not beautiful), on the throne of England; there were a king with a large jaw and a queen with a fair face (a beautiful face), on the throne of France (the country across the sea from England). In both countries it was clearer than crystal (perfectly clear) to the lords of the State preserves of loaves and fishes (the important men who made their living out of government jobs), that things in general were settled for ever (fixed, and would never change).

It was the year of Our Lord (the year, counted from the birth of Christ) one thousand seven hundred and seventy-five. Spiritual revelations were conceded to England (The writer is joking bitterly: he pretends it was a gift to England that it had ghosts and prophets) at that favoured period, as at this (in that lucky time, as in our own). Mrs. Southcott (a woman of the time who said heaven spoke to her) had recently attained her five-and-twentieth blessed birthday (reached her twenty-fifth birthday), of whom (that is, about her) a prophetic private in the Life Guards (an ordinary soldier of the king’s guard who said he could see what was coming) had heralded the sublime appearance (had said in advance that she was coming, and that her coming would be grand) by announcing that arrangements were made for the swallowing up (the sinking into the earth) of London and Westminster (London, the capital, and Westminster, where the king and the parliament sat). Even the Cock-lane ghost had been laid (the ghost people said knocked in a house in Cock Lane, in London, had been quieted) only a round dozen of years (a full twelve years), after rapping out its messages (spelling out its messages by knocking on the walls), as the spirits of this very year last past (the ghosts of only last year) (supernaturally deficient in originality (with nothing new to say, even though they came from the other world)) rapped out theirs. Mere messages in the earthly order of events (Plain messages about ordinary matters of this world) had lately come to the English Crown and People (the King and the people of England), from a congress of British subjects in America (a meeting of British people living in America: the start of their break away): which, strange to relate (odd as it sounds), have proved more important to the human race than any communications yet received through any of the chickens of the Cock-lane brood (any of the other ghosts of that kind: a cock is a male chicken, so the writer calls them its chicks).

France, less favoured on the whole as to matters spiritual (with fewer ghosts and prophets) than her sister of the shield and trident (England, pictured as a woman with a shield and a three-pointed spear), rolled with exceeding smoothness down hill (was sliding easily and steadily towards ruin), making paper money and spending it (printing money and spending it). Under the guidance of her Christian pastors (led by her priests), she entertained herself, besides, with such humane achievements (Bitter mockery: what follows is a torture, called a fine act of kindness) as sentencing a youth to have his hands cut off, his tongue torn out (pulled out) with pincers (a metal tool for gripping and tearing), and his body burned alive, because he had not kneeled down (gone down on his knees) in the rain to do honour (to show respect) to a dirty procession of monks (a muddy line of holy men walking together in their long robes) which passed within his view (where he could see it), at a distance of some fifty or sixty yards (about fifty metres away). It is likely enough that, rooted in the woods (growing in the forests) of France and Norway (the country in the far north of Europe), there were growing trees, when that sufferer (the young man they killed) was put to death, already marked by the Woodman, Fate (Fate as a man who cuts down trees: these are already chosen, though nobody knows it), to come down and be sawn into boards (to be cut down and cut into flat pieces of wood), to make a certain movable framework with a sack and a knife in it (a wooden frame that could be moved, with a bag and a blade in it), terrible in history (that history would remember with horror). It is likely enough that in the rough outhouses (small farm buildings outside the house) of some tillers of the heavy lands (farmers of the thick soil) adjacent to (next to) Paris (the capital of France), there were sheltered from the weather that very day, rude carts, bespattered with rustic mire (rough farm wagons, splashed with country mud), snuffed about by pigs (sniffed at by pigs), and roosted in by poultry (slept in by hens), which the Farmer, Death, had already set apart (already chosen) to be his tumbrils of the Revolution (the carts that would carry people to their death when the French rose against their rulers). But that Woodman and that Farmer (Fate and Death, still pictured as two workmen), though they work unceasingly, work silently (though they never stop, they make no sound), and no one heard them as they went about (moved from place to place) with muffled tread (quiet footsteps): the rather, forasmuch as (all the more because) to entertain any suspicion that they were awake (to suspect that they were at work), was to be atheistical and traitorous (against God and against the king).

In England, there was scarcely an amount of order and protection to justify much national boasting (England had very little law and order). Daring burglaries (bold break-ins) by armed men, and highway robberies (robberies on the open roads), took place in the capital itself (London itself) every night; families were publicly cautioned (warned in public notices) not to go out of town without removing their furniture to upholsterers’ warehouses (putting their furniture where furniture-makers keep goods safe) for security; the highwayman in the dark was a City tradesman in the light (the robber by night was a respectable man of business by day), and, being recognised and challenged by his fellow-tradesman (when a man of his own trade knew him and called out to him) whom he stopped in his character of (acting the part of) “the Captain,” (the name the robber used for himself) gallantly shot him through the head (shot him dead; the word used for it means brave and gentlemanly, and the writer means it bitterly) and rode away (went away on his horse); the mail was waylaid by seven robbers (the horse-drawn carriage that carried the letters was attacked by seven armed men), and the guard shot three dead, and then got shot dead himself by the other four, “in consequence of the failure of his ammunition (because he had run out of bullets; these are the official words, quoted to mock them):” after which the mail was robbed in peace (with nobody left to stop them); that magnificent potentate (the grand ruler — said with mockery), the Lord Mayor of London (the head of London’s city government), was made to stand and deliver (was forced to stop and hand over his money; that was the robber’s command) on Turnham Green (an open place on the road west out of London), by one highwayman, who despoiled the illustrious creature (robbed the great man) in sight of all his retinue (in front of all his servants); prisoners in London gaols (prisons) fought battles with their turnkeys (prison guards), and the majesty of the law fired blunderbusses (the men who acted for the law fired wide-mouthed guns) in among them, loaded with rounds of shot and ball (loaded with small pellets and bullets); thieves snipped off diamond crosses (cut the jewels from their necks) from the necks of noble lords (rich men born into the country’s most important families) at Court drawing-rooms (the rooms where the king received visitors); musketeers (soldiers with long guns) went into St. Giles’s (a poor and crowded part of London), to search for contraband goods (goods brought in without paying the tax), and the mob (the crowd) fired on the musketeers, and the musketeers fired on the mob, and nobody thought any of these occurrences (things that happened) much out of the common way (at all unusual). In the midst of them (in the middle of all this), the hangman (the man paid to hang people), ever busy and ever worse than useless (always at work and always doing more harm than good), was in constant requisition (was needed all the time); now, stringing up long rows of miscellaneous criminals (sometimes he hanged long lines of criminals of every kind); now, hanging a housebreaker on Saturday (at another time, hanging a man who broke into houses, on a Saturday) who had been taken on Tuesday (caught on Tuesday); now, burning people in the hand at Newgate (burning a mark into people’s hands with a hot iron at Newgate prison) by the dozen (many of them, over and over), and now burning pamphlets at the door of Westminster Hall (burning printed papers outside the great law courts in London); to-day, taking the life of (killing, here by hanging) an atrocious murderer (a horrible murderer), and to-morrow (and the next day, killing) of a wretched pilferer (a miserable thief who stole small things of little value) who had robbed a farmer’s boy of sixpence (six pennies, a very small sum).

All these things, and a thousand like them, came to pass (happened) in and close upon the dear old year (in and around the year — ‘dear old’ is bitter) one thousand seven hundred and seventy-five. Environed by them (Surrounded by these things), while the Woodman and the Farmer (Fate and Death) worked unheeded (worked and nobody noticed), those two of the large jaws, and those other two of the plain and the fair faces (the two kings and the two queens), trod with stir enough (moved through their lives with plenty of fuss and show), and carried their divine rights with a high hand (used the God-given power they claimed, and used it harshly). Thus did the year one thousand seven hundred and seventy-five conduct their Greatnesses (carried the kings and queens along), and myriads of small creatures (countless small people)--the creatures of this chronicle (the people of this story) among the rest--along the roads that lay before them (the roads ahead of them: the lives they still had to live).