The Cricket on the Hearth: A Fairy Tale of Home

————— BY CHARLES DICKENS. ELEVENTH EDITION. London: PRINTED AND PUBLISHED FOR THE AUTHOR, ——— BY BRADBURY AND EVANS, 90, FLEET STREET, AND WHITEFRIARS. ——— MDCCCXLVI.
LONDON: BRADBURY AND EVANS, PRINTERS, WHITEFRIARS.
TO LORD JEFFREY THIS LITTLE STORY IS INSCRIBED, WITH THE AFFECTION AND ATTACHMENT OF HIS FRIEND, THE AUTHOR. December , 1845.



Mrs. Peerybingle 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 scythe in front of a Moorish Palace, hadn't mowed down half an acre of imaginary grass before the Cricket joined in at all!
Why, I am not naturally positive. Every one knows that. I wouldn't set my own opinion against the opinion of Mrs. Peerybingle, 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?