Good evening. Welcome to the Just Sleep podcast. I'm Tasia, your host. Every week, I will read you

an old story to help you relax, put the stressful day behind you, and drift off to sleep.

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Tonight, I will be reading Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens.

So lie down, close your eyes, and let me read you a story.

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 prudent to refrain for mentioning, and to which I will assign

no fictitious name. There is one anciently common to most towns, great or small, to it 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 consequence 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 considerable 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

...