Can I crick it on the hearth of a tiny carrier's cottage for see the future?

Charles Dickens, today on the Classic Tales podcast.

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Well, it's Christmas time. And you know what Christmas means Charles Dickens. Dickens wrote several Christmas stories.

The most famous of course being a Christmas Carol. There's also the goblins and the grave digger, the chimes, and today's story among others.

In a crick it on the hearth, we have a bunch of really fun characters and Dickens charming pros winding around it all. I hope you like it.

And now a crick it on the hearth, part one of three by Charles Dickens.

Chapter one, chirp the first.

The kettle began it. Don't tell me what Mrs. PiriBingle said, I know better. Mrs. PiriBingle may leave it on record to the end of time that she couldn't say which of them began it. But I say the kettle did.

I ought to know I hope. The kettle began it full five minutes by the little waxy-faced Dutch clock in the corner before the cricket uttered a chirp.

As if the clock hadn't finished striking and the convulsive little haymaker at the top of it jerking away right and left with a sigh in front of a morish palace hadn't mowed down half an acre of imaginary grass before the cricket joined in at all.

Why? I am not naturally positive. Everyone knows that. I wouldn't set my own opinion against the opinion of Mrs. PiriBingle unless I were quite sure on any account whatever.

Nothing should induce me. But this is a question of fact and the fact is that the kettle began it at least five minutes before the cricket gave any sign of being in existence. Contradict me and I'll say ten.

Let me narrate exactly how it happened. I should have proceeded to do so in my very first word but for this plain consideration if I am to tell a story I must begin at the beginning and how is it possible to begin at the beginning without beginning at the kettle.

It appeared as if there were sort of match or trial of skill you must understand between the kettle and the cricket and this is what led to it and how it came about.

Mrs. PiriBingle going out into the raw twilight and clicking over the wet stones in a pair of patterns, the worked innumerable rough impressions of the first proposition in Euclid all about the yard,

...