Poor But Happy: My Reflection of Old Curiosity Shop

Have found a touching passage from Dickens’ The Old Curiosity Shop. It’s a deep reflection from Dickens about the poor vs the wealthy, and what happiness mean for them; taken from Kit and his family who can’t be happier than their present situation, poor as it is.

p. 276

“If ever household affections and loves are graceful things, they are graceful in the poor. The ties that bind the wealthy and the proud to home may forged on earth, but those which link the poor man to his humble hearth are of the true metal and bear the stamp of Heaven.”

“The man of high descent may love the halls and lands of his inheritance as a part of himself, as trophies of his birth and power; his associations with them are associations of pride and wealth and triumph; the poor man’s attachment to the tenements he holds, which strangers have held before, and may tomorrow occupy again, has a worthier root, struck deep into a purer soil. His household gods are flesh and blood with no alloy of silver, gold or precious stone; he has no property but in the affections of his own heart; and when they endear bare floors and walls, despite of rags and toil and scanty meals, that man has his love of home from God and his rude hut becomes a solemn place.”