The Newcomes

Adsum!” and fell back. It was the word we used at school, when names were called; and lo, he, whose heart was as that of a little child, had answered to his name, and stood in the presence of The Master.

India return through Clive/Ethel love, Kew marriage market, Bank ruin, and Grey Friars death form a family chronicle with decisive moral climax, so plot scores 90.

nodded her kind old head at Miss Ethel, and said she should like to find a husband for her, Miss Ethel blushed, and looked handsomer than ever; and at home, when she was describing the interview, never mentioned this part of her talk with Mrs. Mason.

Colonel, Clive, Ethel, Barnes, Lady Kew, and Pendennis-chronicler form Thackeray's warmest major gallery, so cast scores 93.

The young men were sitting smoking the vesper cigar. (Frank would do it, and his mother actually lighted his cigar for him now, enjoining him straightway after to go to bed.) Kew smoked and looked at a star—shining above in the heavens.

Eighty chapters dilate through Continent and City then compress on Bank crash and Grey Friars elegy, so pace scores 85.

Ah, happy, harmless Fable-land, where these things are! Friendly reader! may you and the author meet there on some future day. He hopes so; as he yet keeps a lingering hold of your hand, and bids you farewell with a kind heart.

Pendennis-narrator irony softened into pathos — Adsum school-call and Fable-land farewell — late Thackeray at full feeling without dropping satire, so prose scores 91.

But she was touched at length when I kissed her; and she said I was very kind to her, and no one had ever been so, and that she was quite alone in the world and had no friend to fly to; and would I go and stay with her? and I said ‘yes;’ and we must go, my dear. I think you should see that person at Newcome—see him, and warn him,” cried Laura.

Clapham piety, Park Lane, Newcome borough, Baden congress, Bundelcund finance, and Grey Friars map mid-Victorian respectability as a family system, so world scores 90.

and at the end of the visit gave him a large piece of pound-cake, a quantity of the finest hothouse grapes, and a tract in one syllable. Tommy was ill the next day; but on the next Sunday his father was at meeting.

Clapham tract-and-cake comedy establishes the respectable world the Colonel will inhabit and transcend, so hook scores 84.

It was the word we used at school, when names were called; and lo, he, whose heart was as that of a little child, had answered to his name, and stood in the presence of The Master.

Family memoir through Pendennis as editor-friend lets pathos arrive as reported memory rather than omniscient tear-jerking, so innov scores 88.

Adsum!” and fell back. It was the word we used at school, when names were called; and lo, he, whose heart was as that of a little child, had answered to his name, and stood in the presence of The Master.

School-roll deathbed — the Colonel answers and falls back in the Master's presence — is among Victorian fiction's unmatched closures, so ending scores 96.