The Cane Bottom Chair by William Make-Peace Thackeray, who lived from 1811 to 1863, read for LibriVox.org by Alan Chant on the 3rd of March 2007. In tattered old slippers that toast at the bars, and a ragged old jacket perfumed with cigars away from the world and its toils and its cares, I have a snud little kingdom up for pair of stairs. To mount to this realm is a toil, to be sure, but the fire there is bright and the air rather pure, and the view I behold on a sunshiney day is grand through the chimney-bods over the way. This snud little chamber is crammed in all nooks with worthless old knickknacks and silly old books, and foolish old odds and foolish old ends, cracked bargains from brokers, cheap keepsakes from friends, old armour, prince pictures, bites, china, old cracked, old rickety tables, and chairs broken back, a tuppany treasure wondrous to see.
What matter? Displeasant to you, friend and me. No better to van neither Sultan require than the creaking old sofa that basks by the fire, and his wonderful surely, what music you get from the rickety ramshackle-weazy spinet. That praying rug came from a turbo-men's camp, by Tyber once twinkled that brazen old lamp.
A mama-look fierce yonder-dagger has drawn, tis a murderous knife. Two toast muffins upon. Long long through the hours and the night and the chimes here we talk of old books and old friends and old times. As we sit in a fog made of rich latter-key, this chamber is pleasant to you, friend and me.
But of all the cheap treasures that garnish my nest, there's one that I love and I cherish the best. For the finest of couches that's padded with hair I never would change the my cane-bottomed chair. Tis a bandy-legged high-shoulder'd-wormy-tent seat with a creaking old back and twisted old feet. But since the fair morning went fanny-set there, I bless thee and love the old cane-bottomed chair, if chairs have but feeling in holding such charms a thrill must have passed through your withered-old arms, I looked and I longed and I wished in despair, I wished myself turned to a cane-bottomed chair.
It was but a moment she sat in this place. She'd a scarf on her neck and a smile on her face, a smile on her face and a rose in her hair, and she sat there and bloomed in my cane-bottomed chair. And so I have valued my chair ever since, like the shrine of a saint or the throne of a prince. St.
Fanny, my patroness sweet, I declare the queen of my heart, and my cane-bottomed chair. When the candles burn low and the company's gone, in the silence of night as I sit here alone, I sit here alone, but we yet are a pair. My fanny I see in my cane-bottomed chair, she comes from the past and revisits my room. She looks as she then did, all beauty and bloom, so smiling and tender, so fresh and so fair, and yonder she sits in my cane-bottomed chair.
End of poem. This recording is in the public domain.