Dickens Charles. Oliver Twist

Webster’s Thesaurus Edition for PSAT, SAT, GRE, LSAT, GMAT, and AP English Test PreparationAmong other public buildings in a certain town, which for many reasons it
will be prudent to refrain from mentioning, and to which I will assign no
fictitious name, there is one anciently common to most towns, great or small: to
wit, a workhouse; and in this workhouse was born; on a day and date which I
need not trouble myself to repeat, inasmuch as it can be of no possible
consequence to the reader, in this stage of the business at all events; the item of
mortality whose name is prefixed to the head of this chapter.%
For a long time after it was ushered into this world of sorrow and trouble, by
the parish surgeon, it remained a matter of considerable doubt whether the child
would survive to bear any name at all; in which case it is somewhat more than
probable that these memoirs would never have appeared; or, if they had, that
being comprised within a couple of pages, they would have possessed the
inestimable merit of being the most concise and faithful specimen of biography,
extant in the literature of any age or country.