Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackery

Chapter 1

Chiswick Mall

"When the present century was in its teens, and on one sun-shiny morning in

June,there drove up the great of Miss Pinkerton's academy for young ladies,

on Chiswick Mall, a large family coach, with two fat horses in blazing harness,

driven by a fat coachman in a three-cornered hat and wig, at the rate of

four miles an hour. A black servant, who reposed onthe box beside the

fat coachman, uncurled his bandy legs as soon as the equipage drew up

opposite Miss Pinkerton's shining brass plate, and as he pulled the bell,

at least a score of young heads were seen peering out of the narrow windows

of the stately old brick house. Nay, the acute observer might have recognized

the little red nose of good-natured Miss Jemima Pinkerton herself, rising over

some geranium-pots in the window of that lady's own drawing-room."