 CHAPTER I. THE ONE THING NEEDFUL. Now what I want is facts. Teach these boys and girls, nothing but facts. Facts alone I'm wanted in life, plant nothing else, and root out everything else. You can only form the minds of reasoning animals upon facts. Nothing else will ever be of service to them. This is the principle upon which I bring up my own children, and this is the principle upon which I bring up these children. Sick to facts, sir. The scene was a plain, bare, monotonous vault of a schoolroom, and the speakers square forefinger emphasized his observations by underscoring every sentence with a line on the schoolmaster's sleeve. The emphasis was helped by the speaker's square wall of a forehead, which had his eyebrows for its base, while his eyes found commodious cellarage in two dark caves overshadowed by the wall. The emphasis was helped by the speaker's mouth which was wide, thin, and hard set. The emphasis was helped by the speaker's voice which was inflexible, dry, and dictatorial. The emphasis was helped by the speaker's hair, which bristled on the skirts of his bald head, a plantation of furs to keep the wind from its shining surface, all covered with knobs like the crust of a plum pie, as if the head had scarcely warehouse room for the hard facts stored inside. The speaker's obstinate carriage, square coat, square legs, square shoulders, his very neckcloth, trained to take him by the throat with an unaccommodating grasp like a stubborn fact as it was, all helped the emphasis. In this life we want nothing but facts, sir, nothing but facts. The speaker and the schoolmaster and the third grown person present all backed a little, and swept with their eyes the inclined plane of little vessels then and there arranged in order, ready to have imperial gallons of facts poured into them until they were full to the brim. CHAPTER II. MURDERING THE INNOCENCE Thomas Gradgrind, sir. A man of realities. A man of facts and calculations. A man who precedes upon the principle that two and two are four and nothing over, and who is not to be talked into allowing for anything over. Thomas Gradgrind, sir, preemptorily Thomas, Thomas Gradgrind, with a rule and a pair of scales and the multiplication table always in his pocket, sir, ready to weigh and measure any parcel of human nature and tell you exactly what it comes to. It is a mere question of figures, a case of simple arithmetic. You might hope to get some other nonsensical belief into the head of George Gradgrind or Augustus Gradgrind or John Gradgrind or Joseph Gradgrind, all seposititious, non-existent persons, put into the head of Thomas Gradgrind? No, sir. In such terms, Mr. Gradgrind always mentally introduced himself, whether to his private circle of acquaintance or to the public in general. In such terms, no doubt, substituting the words, boys and girls for sir, Thomas Gradgrind now presented Thomas Gradgrind to the little pictures before him, who were to be filled so full of facts. Indeed, as he easily sparkled at them from the cellarage before mentioned, he seemed a kind of cannon loaded to the muzzle with facts, and prepared to blow them clean out of the regions of childhood at one discharge. He seemed a galvanizing apparatus, too, charged with a grim mechanical substitute for the tender young imaginations that were to be stormed away. Girl number twenty, said Mr. Gradgrind, squarely pointing his square forefinger. I don't know that girl. Who is that girl? Sissy Jupe, sir, explained number twenty, blushing, standing up and curtsying. Sissy is not a name, said Mr. Gradgrind. Don't call yourself Sissy. Call yourself Cecilia. Its father has called me Sissy, sir, returned the young girl in a trembling voice and with another curtsy. Then he has no business to do it, said Mr. Gradgrind. Tell him he mustn't. Cecilia Jupe, let me see. What is your father? He belongs to the horse-riding, if you please, sir. Mr. Gradgrind frowned, and waved off the abjectionable calling with his hand. We don't want to know anything about that here. You mustn't tell us about that here. Your father breaks horses, don't he? If you please, sir, when they can get any to break they do break horses in the ring. You mustn't tell us about the ring here. Very well, then. Describe your father as a horse-breaker. He doctors horses, I daresay. Oh, yes, sir. Very well, then. He is a veterinary surgeon, a farrier, and a horse-breaker. Give me a definition of a horse. Sissy Jupe thrown into greatest alarm by this demand. Girl number twenty unable to define a horse, said Mr. Gradgrind, for the general behoof of all the little pitchers. Girl number twenty possessed of no facts in reference to one of the commonest of animals. Some boy's definition of a horse—Bitzer, yours. The square finger, moving here and there, lighted suddenly on Bitzer, perhaps because he chanced to sit in the same ray of sunlight which, darting in at one of the bare windows of the intensely whitewashed room, irradiated Sissy. For the boys and girls sat on the face of the inclined plane in two compact bodies, divided up the center by a narrow interval, and Sissy, being at the corner of a row on the sunny side, came in for the beginning of a sunbeam, of which Bitzer, being at the corner of a row on the other side, a few rows in advance, caught on the end. But whereas the girl was so dark-eyed and dark-haired that she seemed to receive a deeper and more lustrous color from the sun when it shone upon her, the boy was so light-eyed and light-haired that the self-same rays appeared to draw out of him what little color he ever possessed. His cold eyes would hardly have been eyes, but for the short ends of lashes which, by bringing them into immediate contrast with something paler than themselves, expressed their form. His short-cropped hair might have been a mere continuation of the sandy freckles on his forehead and face. His skin was so unwholesomely deficient in the natural tinge that he looked as though, if he were cut, he would bleed white. Bitzer, said Thomas Gradgrind, your definition of a horse. Quadruped, griminivorous, forty teeth, namely twenty-four grinders, four eye-teeth, and twelve incisive, sheds coat and spring, in marshy country, sheds hoofs too—hoofs hard but requiring to be shot with iron, age known by marks in mouth. Thus, and much more, Bitzer. Now, girl number twenty, said Mr. Gradgrind, you know what a horse is. She curtsied again, and would have blushed deeper if she could have blushed deeper than she had blushed all this time. Bitzer, after rapidly blinking at Thomas Gradgrind with both eyes at once, and so catching the light upon his quivering ends of lashes that they looked like the antennae of busy insects, put his knuckles to his freckled forehead, and sat down again. The third gentleman now stepped forth. A mighty man at cutting and drying he was. A government officer, in his way, and in most other peoples too, a professed pugilist, always in training, always with a system to force down the general throat like a bolus, always to be heard of at the bar of his little public office, ready to fight all England. To continue in fistic phraseology he had a genius for coming up to the scratch wherever and whatever it was, and proving himself an ugly customer. He would go in and damage any subject whatever with his right, follow with his left, stop, exchange, counter, bore his opponent, he always fought all England, to the ropes, and fall upon him neatly. He was certain to knock the wind out of common sense, and render that unlucky adversary deaf to the call of time, and he had it in charge from high authority to bring about the great public office millennium, when commissioners should reign upon earth. "'Very well,' said this gentleman, briskly smiling and folding his arms. "'That's a horse. Now let me ask you boys and girls, would you paper a room with representations of horses?' "'After a pause, one half of the children cried out in chorus, "'Yes, sir!' Upon which the other half, seeing in the gentleman's face that yes was wrong, cried out in chorus, "'No, sir!' as the custom is in these examinations. "'Of course no. Why wouldn't you?' "'A pause. One corpulent, slow boy, with a wheezy manner of breathing, ventured the answer, because he wouldn't paper a room at all, but would paint it.' "'You must paper it,' said the gentleman, rather warmly. "'You must paper it,' said Thomas Gradgrind, whether you like it or not. Don't tell us you wouldn't paper it. What do you mean, boy?' "'I'll explain to you then,' said the gentleman, after another and dismal pause. Why wouldn't you paper a room with representations of horses? Do you ever see horses walking on down the sides of rooms in reality? In fact, do you?' "'Yes, sir, from one half. No, sir, from the other.' "'Of course no,' said the gentleman, with an indignant look at the wrong half. Why, then, you are not to see anywhere what you don't see in fact. You are not to have anywhere what you don't have in fact. What is called taste is only another name for fact.'" Thomas Gradgrind nodded his approbation. "'This is a new principle. A discovery. A great discovery,' said the gentleman. "'Now I'll try you again. Suppose you were going to carpet a room. Would you use a carpet, having a representation of flowers upon it?' There being a general conviction by this time that no, sir, was always the right answer to this gentleman, the chorus of no was very strong. Only a few feeble stragglers said yes. Among them, Sissy Jupe. "'Girl number twenty,' said the gentleman, smiling in the calm strength of knowledge. Sissy blushed and stood up. So you would carpet your room, or your husband's room, if you were a grown woman and had a husband, with representations of flowers, would you?' said the gentleman. "'Why would you?' "'If you please, sir, I am very fond of flowers,' returned the girl. And is that why you would put tables and chairs upon them, and have people walking over them with heavy boots?' "'It wouldn't hurt them, sir. They wouldn't crush and wither if you please, sir. They would be pictures of what was very pretty and pleasant. And I would fancy.' "'I, I, but you mustn't fancy,' cried the gentleman, quite elated by coming so happily to his point. "'That's it. You are never to fancy.' "'You are not,' Sissy Jupe.' Thomas Gradgrind solemnly repeated, to do anything of that kind. "'Fact, fact,' said the gentleman, and fact, fact,' repeated Thomas Gradgrind. "'You are to be in all things regulated and governed,' said the gentleman, by fact. We hope to have before long a board of fact, composed of commissioners of fact, who will force the people to be a people of fact and of nothing but fact. You must discard the word fancy altogether. You have nothing to do with it. You are not to have, in any object of use or ornament, what would be a contradiction in fact. You don't walk upon flowers in fact. You cannot be allowed to walk upon flowers in carpets. You don't find that foreign birds and butterflies come down and perch upon your crockery. You cannot be permitted to paint foreign birds and butterflies upon your crockery. You never meet with quadrupeds going up and down walls. You must not have quadrupeds represented upon walls. You must use,' said the gentleman, for all these purposes, combinations and modifications in primary colors of mathematical figures which are susceptible of proof and demonstration. This is the new discovery. This is fact. This is taste.' The girl cursed and sat down. She was very young, and she looked as if she were frightened by the matter of fact prospect the world afforded. Now, if Mr. McChocum-child, said the gentleman, will proceed to give his first lesson here, Mr. Gradgrind, I shall be happy at your request to observe his mode of procedure. Mr. Gradgrind was much obliged. Mr. McChocum-child, we only wait for you. So Mr. McChocum-child began in his best manner. He and some one hundred and forty other school-masters had lately been turned at the same time in the same factory on the same principles, like so many pianoforte legs. He had been put through an immense variety of paces, and had answered volumes of head-breaking questions. Orthography, etymology, syntax and prosody, biography, astronomy, geography, and general cosmography, the sciences of compound proportion, algebra, land surveying and levelling, vocal music and drawing from models, were all at the ends of his ten chilled fingers. He had worked his stony way into Her Majesty's most honorable privy council's Schedule B, and had taken the bloom off the higher branches of mathematics and physical science, French, German, Latin, and Greek. He knew all about the watersheds of all the world, whatever they are, and all the histories of all the peoples, and all the names of all the rivers and mountains, and all the productions, manners and customs of all the countries, and all their boundaries and bearings on the two and thirty points of the compass. I'll rather overdone, Mr. McChocom Child, if he had only learned a little less, how infinitely better he might have taught much more. He went to work in this preparatory lesson not unlike Morgana in the forty thieves, looking into all the vessels ranged before him, one after another, to see what they contained. Say, good Mr. McChocom Child, when from my boiling-store thou shalt fill each jarbrim full by and by, dost thou think that thou wilt always kill outright the robber fancy lurking within, or sometimes only maim and distort him? CHAPTER III A LOOPAL Mr. Gradgrind walked homeward from the school in a state of considerable satisfaction. It was his school, and he intended it to be a model. He intended every child in it to be a model, just as the young Gradgrinds were all models. There were five young Gradgrinds, and they were models every one. They had been lectured at from their tenderest years, coarse like little hairs. Almost as soon as they could run alone, they had been made to run to the lecture-room. The first object with which they had an association, or of which they had a remembrance, was a large blackboard with a dry ogre chalking gasly white figures on it. Not that they knew, by name or nature, anything about an ogre fact forbid. I only use the word to express a monster in a lecturing castle. With heaven knows how many heads manipulated into one, taking childhood captive and dragging it into gloomy statistical dens by the hair. No little Gradgrind had ever seen a face in the moon. It was up in the moon before it could speak distinctly. No little Gradgrind had ever learnt the silly jingle, twinkle, twinkle, little star, how I wonder what you are. No little Gradgrind had ever known wonder on the subject. Each little Gradgrind, having at five years, dissected the great bear like a Professor Owen, and driven Charles's wane like a locomotive engine driver. No little Gradgrind had ever associated a cow in a field with that famous cow with the crumpled horn, who tossed the dog who worried the cat who killed the rat who ate the malt, or with that yet more famous cow who swallowed Tom Thumb. It had never heard of these celebrities, and had only been introduced to a cow as a griminivorous ruminating quadruped with several stomachs. To his matter-of-fact home, which was called Stone Lodge, Mr. Gradgrind directed his steps. He had virtually retired from the wholesale hardware trade before he built Stone Lodge, and was now looking about for a suitable opportunity of making an arithmetical figure in Parliament. Stone Lodge was situated on a moor within a mile or two of a great town called Coketown in the present Faithful Guidebook. A very regular feature on the face of the country, Stone Lodge, was—not the least disguised tone down or shaded off that uncompromising fact in the landscape—a great square house, with a heavy portico darkening the principal windows, as its master's heavy brows overshadowed his eyes. A calculated cast-up, balanced and proved house—six windows on this side of the door, six on that side, a total of twelve in this wing, a total of twelve in the other wing, four and twenty carried over to the back wings. A lawn and garden, and an infant avenue, all ruled straight like a botanical account-book. Gas and ventilation, drainage and water service, all of the primest quality. Iron clamps and girders, fire proof from top to bottom, mechanical lifts for the housemaids with all their brushes and brooms, everything that the heart could desire. Everything? Well, I suppose so. The little Gradgrinds had cabinets in various departments of science, too. They had a little conchological cabinet, and a little metallurgical cabinet, and a little mineralogical cabinet, and the specimens were all arranged and labelled, and the bits of stone and ore looked as though they might have been broken from the parent substances by those tremendously hard instruments, their own names, and to paraphrase the idle legend of Peter Piper, who had never found his way into their nursery. If the greedy little Gradgrinds grasped at more than this, what was it, for good gracious goodness' sake, that the greedy little Gradgrinds grasped it? Their father walked in on a hopeful and satisfied frame of mind. He was an affectionate father, after his manner, but he would probably have described himself, if he had been put, like Sissy Jupe upon a definition, as an eminently practical father. He had a particular pride in the phrase, eminently practical, which was considered to have a special application to him. Whatsoever the public meeting held in Coketown, and whatsoever the subject of such meeting, some Coketowner was sure to seize the occasion of alluding to his eminently practical friend, Gradgrind. This always pleased the eminently practical friend. He knew it to be his due, but his due was acceptable. He had reached the neutral ground upon the outskirts of the town which was neither town nor country, and yet was either spoiled when his ears were invaded by the sound of music. The clashing and banging band attached to the horse-riding establishment which had there set up its rest in a wooden pavilion, was in full bray. A flag, floating from the summit of the temple, proclaimed to mankind that it was Sleary's horse-riding, which claimed their suffrages. Sleary himself, a stout modern statue with a money-box at its elbow, in an ecclesiastical niche of early gothic architecture, took the money. Miss Josephine Sleary, as some very long and very narrow strips of printed bill announced, was then inaugurating the entertainment with her graceful equestrian Tyrolean Flower Act. Among the other pleasing but always strictly moral wonders which must be seen to be believed, Signor Jupe was that afternoon to elucidate the diverting accomplishments of his highly trained performing dog, Maryless. He was also to exhibit his astounding feat of throwing seventy-five hundred weight in rapid succession backhanded over his head, thus forming a fountain of solid iron in midair, a feat never before attempted in this or any other country, and which having elixited such rapturous plaudits from enthusiastic throngs, it cannot be withdrawn. The same Signor Jupe was to enliven the varied performances at frequent intervals with his chaste Shakespearean quips and retorts. Lastly he was to wind them up by appearing in his favorite character of Mr. William Button of Tully Street in the highly novel and laughable hippocommediata of The Taylor's Journey to Brentford. Thomas Gradgrine took no heed of these trivialities, of course, but passed on as a practical man ought to pass on, either brushing the noisy insects from his thoughts or consigning them to the House of Correction. But the turning of the road took him by the back of the booth, and at the back of the booth a number of children were congregated in a number of stealthy attitudes, striving to peep in at the hidden glories of this place. This brought him to a stop. Now, think of these vagabonds, said he, attracting the young rabble from a model school. A space of stunted grass and dry rubbish being between him and the young rabble, he took his eyeglass out of his westcoat to look for any child he knew by name, and might order off. Phenomenon almost incredible, though distinctly seen. What did he then behold but his own metallurgical Louisa, and his own mathematical Thomas abasing himself on the ground to catch but a hoof of the graceful equestrian Tyrolean flower act? Dumb with amazement, Mr. Gradgrine crossed to the spot where his family was thus disgraced, laid his hand upon each erring child, and said, Louisa, Thomas! Both rose, red, and disconcerted. But Louisa looked at her father with more boldness than Thomas did. Indeed Thomas did not look at him, but gave himself up to be taken home like a machine. In the name of wonder, idleness and folly, said Mr. Gradgrine, leading each away by a hand. What do you do here? Wanted to see what it was like, returned Louisa shortly. Yes, father. There was an air of jaded sullenness in them both, and particularly in the girl, yet struggling through the dissatisfaction of her face, there was a light with nothing to rest upon, a fire with nothing to burn, a starved imagination keeping life in itself somehow which brightened its expression, not with the brightness natural to cheerful youth, but with uncertain, eager, deathful flashes which had something painful in them, analogous to the changes on a blind face groping its way. She was a child now of fifteen or sixteen, but at no distant day would seem to become a woman all at once. Her father thought so as he looked at her. She was pretty, would have been self-willed, he thought in his eminently practical way, but for her bringing up. Thomas, though I have the fact before me I find it difficult to believe that you, with your education and resources, should have brought your sister to a scene like this. I brought him father, said Louisa, quickly. I asked him to come. I'm sorry to hear it. I am very sorry to hear it. It makes Thomas no better, and it makes you worse, Louisa." She looked at her father again, but no tear fell down her cheek. You, Thomas! And you! To whom the circle of the sciences is open. Thomas and you, whom may be said to be replete with facts. Thomas and you, who have been trained to mathematical exactness. Thomas and you here! cried Mr. Gradgrind. In this degraded position I am amazed. I was tired, father. I've been tired a long time, said Louisa. Tired? Of what? asked the astonished father. I don't know of what. Of everything, I think. Say not another word, returned Mr. Gradgrind. You are childish. I will hear no more. He did not speak again until they had walked some half a mile in silence when he gravely broke out with, What would your best friend say, Louisa? Do you attach no value to their good opinion? What would Mr. Bounderby say? At the mention of this name his daughter stole a look at him, remarkable for its intense and searching character. He saw nothing of it, for before he looked at her she had again cast down her eyes. What he repeated presently, would Mr. Bounderby say? All the way to Stone Lodge, as with grave indignation he led the two delinquents home he repeated at intervals. What would Mr. Bounderby say, as if Mr. Bounderby had been Mrs. Grendy? Book one, chapters four and five. Chapter four, Mr. Bounderby. Not being Mrs. Grendy, who was Mr. Bounderby? Why, Mr. Bounderby was as near to being Mr. Gradgrind's bosom friend, as a man perfectly devoid of sentiment, can approach that spiritual relationship towards another man perfectly devoid of sentiment. So, near was Mr. Bounderby, or if the reader should prefer it, so far off. He was a rich man, banker, merchant, manufacturer, and what-not, a big, loud man, with a stare and a metallic laugh, a man made out of a coarse material, which seemed to have been stretched to make so much of him, a man with a great puffed head and forehead, swelled veins in his temples, and such a strange skin to his face that it seemed to hold his eyes open and lift his eyebrows up, a man with a pervading appearance on him of being inflated like a balloon and ready to start, a man who could never sufficiently vaunt himself a self-made man, a man who was always proclaiming through that brassy speaking trumpet voice of his, his old ignorance and his old poverty, a man who was the bully of humility. A year or two younger than his eminently practical friend, Mr. Bounderby looked older. His seven or eight and forty might have had this seven or eight added to it again without surprising anybody. He had not much hair. One might have fancied he had talked it off, and that what was left all standing up in disorder was in that condition from being constantly blown about by his windy boastfulness. In the formal drawing room of Stone Lodge, standing on the hearth rug, warming himself before the fire, Mr. Bounderby delivered some observations to Mrs. Gradgrind on the circumstance of its being his birthday. He stood before the fire, partly because it was a cool spring afternoon, though the sun shone, partly because the shade of Stone Lodge was always haunted by the ghost of damp mortar, partly because he thus took up a commanding position from which to subdue Mrs. Gradgrind. I hadn't a shoe on my foot. As to a stocking, I didn't know such a thing by name. I passed the day in a ditch, and the night in a pig sty. That's the way I spent my tense birthday. Not that a ditch was new to me, for I was born in a ditch. Mrs. Gradgrind, a little thin, white, pink-eyed bundle of shawls, of surpassing feebleness, mental and bodily, who was always taking physics without any effect, and who, whenever she showed a symptom of coming to life, was invariably stunned by some weighty piece of fact tumbling on her, Mrs. Gradgrind hoped it was a dry ditch. No! Wet is a sop. A foot of water in it, said Mr. Bounderby. Enough to give a baby cold, Mrs. Gradgrind considered. Cold? I was born with inflammation of the lungs, and of everything else I believed that was capable of inflammation, returned Mr. Bounderby. For years, madam, I was one of the most miserable little wretches ever seen. I was so sickly that I was always moaning and groaning. I was so ragged and dirty that you wouldn't have touched me with a pair of tongs. Mrs. Gradgrind faintly looked at the tongs as the most appropriate thing her imbecility could think of doing. How I fought through it I don't know, said Bounderby. I was determined, I suppose. I have been a determined character in later life, and I suppose I was then. Here I am, Mrs. Gradgrind anyhow, and nobody to thank for being here but myself. Mrs. Gradgrind meekly and weakly hoped that his mother, my mother, bolted, ma'am, said Bounderby. Mrs. Gradgrind stunned as usual, collapsed, and gave it up. My mother left me to my grandmother, said Bounderby, and according to the best of my remembrance my grandmother was the wickedest and worst old woman that ever lived. If I got a little pair of shoes by any chance, she would take them off and sell them for drink. Why, I have known that grandmother of mine lie in her bed and drink her fourteen glasses of liquor before breakfast. Mrs. Gradgrind weakly smiling and giving no other sign of vitality looked, as she always did, like an indifferently executed transparency of a small female figure without enough light behind it. She kept a chandler's shop, pursued Bounderby, and kept me in an egg box. That was the cot of my infancy, an old egg box. As soon as I was big enough to run away, of course I ran away. Then I became a young vagabond, and instead of one old woman knocking me about and starving me, everybody of all ages knocked me about and starved me. They were right. They had no business to do anything else. I was a nuisance, an encumbrance and a pest. I know that very well. His pride in having at any time of his life achieved such a great social distinction as to be a nuisance, an encumbrance, and a pest was only to be satisfied by three sonorous repetitions of the boast. I was to pull through it, I suppose, Mrs. Gradgrind. Whether I was to do it or not, ma'am, I did it. I pulled through it, though nobody threw me out a rope. Vagabond, errand boy, vagabond, labourer, porter, clerk, chief manager, small partner, Josiah Bounderby of Coketown. Those are the antecedents and the culmination. Josiah Bounderby of Coketown learned his letters from the outsides of shops, Mrs. Gradgrind, and was first able to tell the time upon a dial plate, from studying the steeple-clock of St. Giles Church, London, under the direction of a drunken cripple, who was a convicted thief and an incorrigible vagrant. Tell Josiah Bounderby of Coketown, of your district schools and your model schools and your training schools, and your whole kettle of fish schools, and Josiah Bounderby of Coketown tells you plainly, all right, all correct. He had not such advantages, but let us have hard-headed, solid-fisted people. The education that made him won't do for everybody. He knows well. Such and such his education was, however, and you may force him to swallow boiling fat, but you shall never force him to suppress the facts of his life. Being heated when he arrived at this climax, Josiah Bounderby of Coketown stopped. He stopped just as his eminently practical friend, still accompanied by the two young culprits, entered the room, his eminently practical friend on seeing him, stopped also and gave Louisa a reproachful look that plainly said, Behold your Bounderby! Well, blustered Mr. Bounderby, what's the matter? What is young Thomas in the dumps about? He spoke of young Thomas, but he looked at Louisa. We were peeping at the circus, muttered Louisa heartily, without lifting up her eyes, and father caught us. And Mrs. Gradgrind, said her husband, in a lofty manner, I should as soon have expected to find my children reading poetry. Dear me, whimpered Mrs. Gradgrind, how can you, Louisa and Thomas, I wonder at you? I declare you're enough to make one regret ever having had a family at all. I have a great mind to say I wish I hadn't. Then what would you have done I should like to know? Mr. Gradgrind did not seem favorably impressed by these cogent remarks. He frowned impatiently. As if, with my head in its present throbbing state, you couldn't go and look at the shells and minerals and things provided for you, instead of circuses, said Mrs. Gradgrind. You know as well as I do. No young people have circus masters or keep circuses in cabinets or attend lectures about circuses. What can you possibly want to know of circuses then? I am sure you have enough to do if that's what you want. With my head in its present state I couldn't remember the mere names of half the facts you have got to attend to. That's the reason, pouted Louisa. Don't tell me the reason because it can't be nothing of the sort, said Mrs. Gradgrind. Go and be something illogical directly. Mrs. Gradgrind was not a scientific character and usually dismissed her children to their studies with this general injunction to choose their pursuit. In truth Mrs. Gradgrind's stock of facts in general was woefully defective, but Mr. Gradgrind in raising her to her high matrimonial position had been influenced by two reasons. Firstly she was most satisfactory as a question of figures and secondly she had no nonsense about her. By nonsense he meant fancy and truly it is probable she was as free from any alloy of that nature as any human being not arrived at the perfection of an absolute idiot ever was. The simple circumstance of being left alone with her husband and Mr. Boundaby was sufficient to stun this admirable lady again without collision between herself and any other fact. So she once more died away and nobody minded her. Boundaby, said Mr. Gradgrind, drawing a chair to the fireside. You are always so interested in my young people, particularly in Louisa, that I make no apology for saying to you I am very much vexed by this discovery. I have systematically devoted myself, as you know, to the education of the reason of my family. The reason is, as you know, the only faculty to which the education should be addressed. And yet, Boundaby, it would appear from this unexpected circumstance of today, though in itself a trifling one, as if something had crept into Thomas's and Louisa's minds, which is, or rather which is not, I do not know that I can express myself better than by saying which has never been intended to be developed and in which their reason has no part. There certainly is no reason in looking with interest at a parcel of vagabonds, returned Boundaby. When I was a vagabond myself, nobody looked with any interest at me, I know that. Then comes the question, said the eminently practical father, with his eyes on the fire, in what has this vulgar curiosity its rise? I'll tell you in what? In idle imagination. I hope not, said the eminently practical. I confess, however, that the misgiving has crossed me on my way home. In idle imagination, grad grand, repeated Boundaby, a very bad thing for anybody, but a cursed bad thing for a girl like Louisa. I should ask Mrs. Gradgrind's pardon for strong expressions, but that she knows very well I am not a refined character. Whoever expects refinement in me will be disappointed. I hadn't a refined bringing up. Whether, said Gradgrind, pondering with his hands in his pockets and his cavernous eyes on the fire, whether any instructor or servant can have suggested anything, whether Louisa or Thomas can have been reading anything, whether in spite of all precautions any idle storybook can have got into the house, because in minds that have been practically formed by rule and line from the cradle upwards, this is so curious, so incomprehensible. Stop a bit! cried Boundaby, who all this time had been standing as before on the hearth bursting at the very furniture of the room with explosive humility. You have one of those stroller's children in the school. Cecilia jupe by name, said Mr. Gradgrind, with something of a stricken look at his friend. Now stop a bit! cried Boundaby again. How did she come there? Why, the fact is, I saw the girl myself for the first time only just now. She specially applied here at the house to be admitted, as not regularly belonging to our town. And, yes, you are right, Boundaby. You are right. Now stop a bit! cried Boundaby once more. Louisa saw her when she came. Louisa certainly did see her, for she mentioned the application to me, but Louisa saw her, I have no doubt, in Mrs. Gradgrind's presence. Pray, Mrs. Gradgrind, said Boundaby. What passed? Oh, my poor health, returned Mrs. Gradgrind. The girl wanted to come to the school, and Mr. Gradgrind wanted girls to come to the school. And Louisa and Thomas both said that the girl wanted to come, and that Mr. Gradgrind wanted girls to come. And how was it possible to contradict them when such was the fact? Now I tell you what, Gradgrind, said Mr. Boundaby, turn this girl to the right about, and there's an end of it. I am much of your opinion. Do it at once, said Boundaby. Has always been my motto from a child. When I thought I would run away from my egg box and my grandmother, I did it at once. Do you the same? Do this at once. Are you walking? asked his friend. I have the father's address. Perhaps he would not mind walking to town with me. Not the least in the world, said Mr. Boundaby, as long as you do it at once. So Mr. Boundaby threw on his hat. He always threw it on, as expressing a man who had been far too busily employed in making himself to acquire any fashion of wearing his hat, and with his hands in his pockets sauntered out into the hall. I never wear gloves, it was his custom to say. I didn't climb up the ladder in them. Shouldn't be so high up if I had. Being left to saunter in the hall a minute or two while Mr. Gradgrind went upstairs for the address, he opened the door of the children's study and looked into that serene floor-clothed department, which, notwithstanding its bookcases and its cabinets and its variety of learned and philosophical appliances, had much of the genial aspect of a room devoted to hair cutting. Louisa languidly leaned upon the window looking out, without looking at anything, while young Thomas stood sniffing revengefully at the fire. Adam Smith and Malthus, two younger Gradgrinds, were out at lecture in custody, and little Jane, after manufacturing a good deal of moist pipe clay on her face with slate pencil and tears, had fallen asleep over vulgar fractions. —It's all right now, Louisa. It's all right, young Thomas, said Mr. Boundaby. You won't do so any more. I'll answer for its being all over with father. Well, Louisa, that's worth a kiss, isn't it? —You can take one, Mr. Boundaby, returned Louisa, when she had coldly paused and slowly walked across the room, and ungraciously raised her cheek towards him with her face turned away. —Always my pet, ain't you, Louisa? —said Mr. Boundaby. —Goodbye, Louisa. He went his way, but she stood on the same spot, rubbing the cheek he had kissed with her handkerchief until it was burning red. She was doing this five minutes afterwards. —What are you about, Lou? Her brother sulkily remonstrated. You'll rub a hole in your face. You may cut the piece out with your penknife if you like, Tom. I wouldn't cry. —Coketown, to which Messer's Boundaby and Gradgrind now walked, was a triumph of fact. It had no greater taint of fancy in it than Mrs. Gradgrind herself. Let us strike the keynote, Coketown, before pursuing our tune. It was a town of red brick, or of brick that would have been red if the smoke and ashes had allowed it. But as matters stood, it was a town of unnatural red and black, like the painted face of a savage. It was a town of machinery and tall chimneys, out of which interminable serpents of smoke trailed themselves forever and ever, and never got uncoiled. It had a black canal in it, and a river that ran purple with ill-smelling dye, and vast piles of building full of windows where there was a rattling and a trembling all day long, and where the piston of the steam engine worked monotonously up and down, like the head of an elephant in a state of melancholy madness. It contained several large streets all very like one another, and many small streets still more like one another, inhabited by people equally like one another, who all went in and out at the same hours with the same sound upon the same pavements to do the same work, and to whom every day was the same as yesterday and tomorrow, and every year the counterpart of the last and the next. These attributes of Coketown were in the main inseparable from the work by which it was sustained. Against them were to be set off, comforts of life which found their way all over the world, and elegancies of life which made, we will not ask how much of the fine lady who could scarcely bear to hear the place mentioned. The rest of its features were voluntary, and they were these. You saw nothing in Coketown but what was severely workful. If the members of a religious persuasion built a chapel there, as the members of eighteen religious persuasions had done, they made it a pious warehouse of red brick, with sometimes, but this is only in highly ornamental examples, a bell in a birdcage on the top of it. The solitary exception was the new church, a stuck-oed edifice with a square steeple over the door, terminating in four short pinnacles like florid wooden legs. All the public inscriptions in the town were painted alike in severe characters of black and white. The jail might have been the infirmary, the infirmary might have been the jail, the town hall might have been either, or both, or anything else, for anything that appeared to the contrary in the graces of their construction. Fact, fact, fact, everywhere in the material aspect of the town, fact, fact, fact, everywhere in the immaterial. The Machocomchold school was all fact, and the school of design was all fact, and the relations between master and man were all fact, and everything was fact between the lying-in hospital and the cemetery, and what you couldn't state in figures or show to be purchasable in the cheapest market and saleable in the dearest was not, and never should be, world without end, amen. A town so sacred to fact and so triumphant in its assertion, of course, got on well. Why, no, not quite well. No, dear me. No. Coketown did not come out of its own furnaces in all respects like gold that had stood the fire. First, the perplexing mystery of the place was who belonged to the eighteen denominations, because whoever did the laboring people did not. It was very strange to walk through the streets on a Sunday morning and note how few of them, the barbarous jangling of bells that was driving the sick and nervous mad, called away from their own quarter, from their own close rooms, from the corners of their own streets, where they lounged listlessly, gazing at all the church and chapel going, as at a thing with which they had no manner of concern. Nor was it merely the stranger who noticed this, because there was a native organization in Coketown itself whose members were to be heard of in the House of Commons every session indignantly petitioning for acts of parliament that should make these people religious by main force. Then came the T. Total Society, who complained that these same people would get drunk, and showed in tabular statements that they did get drunk, and proved at tea parties that no inducement, human or divine, except a medal, would induce them to forego their custom of getting drunk. Then came the chemist and drugist with other tabular statements, showing that when they didn't get drunk they took opium. Then came the experienced chaplain of the jail, with more tabular statements, outdoing all the previous tabular statements, and showing that the same people would resort to low haunts hidden from the public eye, where they heard low singing and saw low dancing, and mayhap joined in it. And where A. B., age 24, next birthday, and committed for 18 months solitary, had himself said, not that he had ever shown himself particularly worthy of belief, his ruin began, as he was perfectly sure and confident that otherwise he would have been a tip-top moral specimen. Then came Mr. Gradgrind and Mr. Bounderby, the two gentlemen at this present moment walking through Coketown, and both eminently practical, who could on occasion furnish more tabular statements derived from their own personal experience, and illustrated by cases they had known and seen, from which it clearly appeared, in short it was the only clear thing in the case, that these same people were a bad lot altogether, gentlemen, that do what you would for them, they were never thankful for it, gentlemen, that they were restless gentlemen, that they never knew what they wanted, that they lived upon the best, and bought fresh butter and insisted on mocha coffee, and rejected all but prime parts of meat, and yet were eternally dissatisfied and unmanageable. In short, it was the moral of the old nursery fable. There was an old woman, and what do you think? She lived upon nothing but viddles and drink. Viddles and drink were the whole of her diet, and yet this old woman would never be quiet. Is it possible, I wonder, that there was any analogy between the case of the Coketown population, and the case of the little gradgrinds? Surely none of us in our sober senses, and acquainted with figures, are to be told at this time of day, that one of the foremost elements in the existence of the Coketown working people had been for scores of years deliberately said it not, that there was any fancy in them demanding to be brought into healthy existence instead of struggling on in convulsions, that exactly in the ratio as they worked long monotonously the craving grew within them for some physical relief, some relaxation, encouraging good humor and good spirits, and giving them event, some recognized holiday, though it were but for an honest dance to a stirring band of music, some occasional light pie in which even Machokumchild had no finger, which craving must and would be satisfied or right, or must and would inevitably go wrong, until the laws of creation were repealed. This man lives at Pod's End, and I don't quite know Pod's End, said Mr. Gradgrind, which is it Bounderby? Mr. Bounderby knew it was somewhere downtown, but knew no more respecting it. And so they stopped for a moment, looking about. Almost as they did so there came running around the corner of the street at a quick pace and with a frightened look, a girl whom Mr. Gradgrind recognized. Hello! said he. Stop! Where are you going? Stop! Girl number twenty stopped then, palpitating, and made him a curtsy. Why are you tearing about the streets? said Mr. Gradgrind in this improper manner. I was... I was run after, sir, the girl panted, and I wanted to get away. Run after, repeated Mr. Gradgrind, who would run after you? The question was unexpectedly and suddenly answered for her by the colorless boy, Bitzer, who came around the corner with such blind speed and so little anticipating a stoppage on the pavement that he brought himself up against Mr. Gradgrind's waistcoat and rebounded into the road. What do you mean, boy? said Mr. Gradgrind. What are you doing? How dare you dash against everybody in this manner! Bitzer picked up his cap, which the concussion had knocked off, and backing and knuckling his forehead pleaded that it was an accident. Was this boy running after you, jupe? asked Mr. Gradgrind. Yes, sir, said the girl reluctantly. No, I wasn't, sir, cried Bitzer, not till she ran away from me. But the horse riders never mind what they say, sir. They're famous for it. You know the horse riders are famous for never mind in what they say, addressing Sissy. It is well known in the town as... Please, sir, as the multiplication table isn't known to the horse riders. Bitzer tried Mr. Bounderby with this. He fraughtens me so, said the girl, with his cruel faces. Ow, cried Bitzer. Ow, ain't you one of the rest. Ain't you a horse rider? I never looked at her, sir. I asked her if she would know how to define a horse tomorrow, and offered to tell her again, and she ran away. And I ran after her, sir, that she might know how to answer when she was asked. You wouldn't have thought of saying such mischief if you hadn't been a horse rider. Her calling seems to be pretty well known among them, observed Mr. Bounderby. You'd have had the whole school peeping in a row in a week. Truly, I think so, returned his friend. Bitzer, turn you about and take yourself home. Jupe, stay here a moment. Let me hear of your running in this manner any more, boy, and you will hear of me through the master of the school. You understand what I mean. Go along. The boy stopped in his rapid blinking, knuckled his forehead again, glanced at Sissy, turned about, and retreated. Now, girl, said Mr. Gradgrind, take this gentleman and me to your father's. We are going there. What have you got in that bottle you're carrying? Gin, said Mr. Bounderby. Dear nosa, it's the gnawing oils. The what? cried Mr. Bounderby. The gnawing oils, sir, to rob a father with. Then, said Mr. Bounderby, with a short, loud laugh, what in the devil do you rub your father with gnawing oils for? It's what our people always use, sir, when they get any hurts in the ring, replied the girl, looking over her shoulder, to assure herself that her pursuer was gone. They bruised themselves very bad sometimes. Serves them right, said Mr. Bounderby, for being idle. She glanced up at his face, with mingled astonishment and dread. By George, said Mr. Bounderby, when I was four or five years younger than you, I had worse bruises upon me than ten oils, twenty oils, forty oils would have rubbed off. I didn't get them by posture making, but by being banged about. There was no rope dancing for me. I danced on the bare ground, and was lorrupt with the rope. Mr. Gradgrine, though hard enough, was by no means so rough a man as Mr. Bounderby. His character was not unkind, all things considered. It might have been a very kind one, indeed, if he had only made some round mistake in the arithmetic that balanced it years ago. He said, in what he meant for a reassuring tone, as they turned down a narrow road, and this is Pod's end, is it, jupe? This it is, sir, and if you wouldn't mind, sir, this is the house. She stopped, at twilight, at the door of a mean little public house, with dim red lights in it, as haggard and as shabby as if, for want of custom, it had itself taken to drinking, and had gone the way all drunkards go, and was very near the end of it. It's only crossing the bar, sir, and up the stairs, if you wouldn't mind. And waiting there for a moment till I get a candle. If you should hear a dog, sir, it's only Marylegs, and he only barks. Marylegs and non-oils, eh? said Mr. Bounderby, entering last with his metallic laugh. Pretty well this for a self-made man. CHAPTER VI. SLEERY'S HORSEMANSHIP. The name of the public house was the Pegasus Arms. The Pegasus Legs might have been more to the purpose, but underneath the winged horse upon the sideboard, the Pegasus Arms was inscribed in Roman letters. Beneath that inscription again, in a flowing scroll, the painter had touched off the lines, Good malt makes good beer, walk in and they'll draw it here. Good wine makes good brandy, give us a call and you'll find it handy. Framed and glazed upon the wall behind the dingy little bar, was another Pegasus, a theatrical one, with real gauze led in for his wings. Golden stars stuck on all over him, and his ethereal harness made of red silk. As it had grown too dusky without to see the sign, and as it had not grown light enough within to see the picture, Mr. Gradgrind and Mr. Bounderby received no offence from these idealities. They followed the girl up some steep corner stairs without meeting anyone, and stopped in the dark while she went on for a candle. They expected every moment to hear merry legs give tongue, but the highly trained performing dog had not barked when the girl and the candle appeared together. Father is not in our room, sir, she said with a face of great surprise. If you wouldn't mind walking in, I'll find him directly. They walked in, and Sissy, having set two chairs for them, sped away with a light quick step. It was a mean, shabbily furnished room with a bed in it. The white nightcap embellished with two peacock's feathers and a pigtail bolt upright, in which Signor Jupe had that very afternoon enlivened the varied performances with his chaste Shakespearean quips and retorts, hung upon a nail. But no other portion of his wardrobe or other token of himself or his pursuits was to be seen anywhere. As to merry legs, that respectable ancestor of the highly trained animal who went aboard the ark might have been accidentally shut out of it for any sign of a dog that was manifest to eye or ear in the pegasus arms. They heard the doors of rooms above, opening and shutting as Sissy went from one to another in quest of her father, and presently they heard voices expressing surprise. She came bounding down again in a great hurry, opened a battered and mangy old hair-trunk, found it empty, and looked round with her hands clasped and her face full of terror. Father must have gone down to the booth, sir. I don't know why he should go there, but he must be there. I'll bring him in a minute. She was gone directly, without her bonnet, with her long, dark, childish hair streaming behind her. What does she mean? said Mr. Gradgrind. Back in a minute. It's more than a mile off. Before Mr. Bounderby could reply, a young man appeared at the door, and introducing himself with the words, By your leaves, gentlemen, walked in with his hands in his pockets. His face, close-shaven, thin, and sallow, was shaded by a great quantity of dark hair, brushed into a roll all round his head and parted up the centre. His legs were very robust, but shorter than legs of good proportion should have been. His chest and back were as much too broad as his legs were too short. He was dressed in a new market coat and tight-fitting trousers, wore a shawl round his neck, smelt of lamp-oil, straw, orange peel, horses' provinder, and sawdust, and looked a most remarkable sort of centaur, compounded of the stable in the playhouse. Where the one began and the other ended, nobody could have told with any precision. This gentleman was mentioned in the bills of the day as Mr. E. W. B. Childers, so justly celebrated for his daring vaulting act as the wild huntsman of the North American prairies, in which popular performance a diminutive boy with an old face, who now accompanied him, assisted as his infant son, being carried upside down over his father's shoulder by one foot, and held by the crown of his head, heels upwards in the palm of his father's hand, according to the violent paternal manner in which wild huntsman may be observed to fondle their offspring. Made up with curls, wreaths, wings, white bismuth, and carmine, this hopeful young person soared into so pleasing a cupid as to constitute the chief delight of the maternal part of the spectators. But in private, where his characteristics were a precocious cutaway coat and an extremely gruff voice, he became of the turf, turfy. For your leaves, gentlemen, said Mr. E. W. B. Childers, glancing round the room, it was you I believed that were wishing to see Jupe. It was, said Mr. Groudgrind. His daughter is going to fetch him, but I can't wait. Therefore, if you please, I will leave a message for him with you. You see, my friend, Mr. Bounderby put in, we are the kind of people who know the value of time, and you are the kind of people who don't know the value of time. I have not, retorted Mr. Childers, after surveying him from head to foot, the honour of knowing you, but if you mean that you can make more money of your time, and I can't of mine, I should judge from your appearance that you're about right. And when you've might it, you can keep it, too, I should think, said Cupid. Kidderminster stir that, said Mr. Childers. Master Kidderminster was Cupid's mortal name. What was he coming at cheek in us for, then? cried Master Kidderminster, showing a very irascible temperament. If you want a cheek, us pay your ochre at the doors and take it out. Kidderminster, said Mr. Childers, raising his voice, Stow that, sir, to Mr. Gradgrind. I was addressing myself to you. You may or you may not be aware, but perhaps you have not been much in the audience, that Jupiter's missed his tip very often lately. Has what is he missed? asked Mr. Gradgrind, glancing at the potent Bounderby for assistance. Missed his tip. Offered it that God is four times last night, and never done him once, said Master Kidderminster. Missed his tip at the Banners, too, and was loose in his punging. Didn't do what he ought to do, was shorten his leaps and bad in his tumbling, Mr. Childers interpreted. Oh, said Mr. Gradgrind. That is tip, is it? In a general way, asked Missing his tip. Mr. E. W. B. Childers answered. Nine oils, merry legs, Missing tips, God is Banners and Punging, eh? Ejaculated Bounderby with his laugh of laughs. Queer sort of company, too, for a man has raised himself. Lower yourself, then, retorted Cupid. Oh, Lord, if you've raised yourself so high as all that comes to, let yourself down a bit. This is a very obtrusive lad, said Mr. Gradgrind, turning and knitting his brows on him. We'd have had a young gentleman to meet you if we'd known you were coming, retorted Master Kidermanster, nothing abashed. So pity you don't have a bespake being so particular. You're on the tight-jef, ain't you? What does this unmanly boy mean? asked Mr. Gradgrind, eyeing him on a sort of desperation. By tight-jef. There, get out, get out! said Mr. Childers, thrusting his young friend from the room, rather in the prairie manner. Tight-jef or slack-jef, you don't much signify. It's only tight-rope and slack-rope. You were going to give me a message for jupe? Yes, I was. Then continued Mr. Childers quickly. My opinion is he will never receive it. Do you know much of him? I never saw the man in my life. My doubt if you ever will see him now, he's pretty plain to me. He's off. Do you mean that he has deserted his daughter? I, I mean, said Mr. Childers with a nod, that he is cut. It was Goose last night. It was Goose the night before last. It was Goose today. He's lately gotten the way of always being Goose, and he can't stand it. Why has he been so very much? Goose, asked Mr. Gradgrind, forcing the word out of himself with great solemnity and reluctance. His joints attend in stiff, and he's getting used up, said Childers. I guess his points is a cackler still, but he can't get a living out of him. A cackler, bound to be repeated. Here we go again. A spaker, if a gentleman likes it better, said Mr. E. W. B. Childers, superciliously throwing the interpretation over his shoulder, and accompanying it with a shake of his long hair, which all shook at once. Now, it's a remarkable fact, sir, that it cut that man deeper, to know that his daughter knew of his being Goose, and to go through with it. Good, interrupted Mr. Boundaby. This is good, Gradgrind, a man so fond of his daughter that he runs away from her. This is devilish good. Now, I'll tell you what, young man, I haven't always occupied my present station in life. I know what these things are. You may be astonished to hear it, but my mother ran away from me. E. W. B. Childers replied pointedly that he was not at all astonished to hear it. Very well, said Boundaby, I was born in a ditch, and my mother ran away from me. Do I excuse her for it? No. Have I ever excused her for it? Not I. What do I call her for it? I call her probably the very worst woman that ever lived in the world, except my drunken grandmother. There's no family pride about me. There's no imaginative, sentimental humbug about me. I call a spade a spade, and I call the mother of Josiah Boundaby of Coketown, without any fear or any favor. What I should call her if she had been the mother of Dick Jones of Wapping. So would this man. He is a runaway rogue and a vagabond. That's what he is in English. So all the same to me, what he is or what he is not. Whether in English or whether in French. Retorted Mr. E. W. B. Childers facing about. I'm telling your friend what's the fact. If you don't like to hear it, you can avail yourself of the open air. You give it mouth enough you do, but give it mouth in your own building at least. Remonstrated E. W. B. with stern irony. Don't give it mouth in this building till you're called upon. You have got some building of your own, I dare say, now. Perhaps so, replied Mr. Boundaby, rattling his money and laughing. Then give it mouth in your own building, will you, if you please, said Childers. Because this isn't a strong building, and too much of you might bring it down. I, Mr. Boundaby, from head to foot again, he turned from him, as from a man finally disposed of to Mr. Gradgrind. Jupe sent his daughter out on an errand not an hour ago, and then was seen to slip out himself with his hat over his eyes, and a bundle tied up in an anchor-chief under his arm. She'll never believe it of him, but he's cut away and left her. Pray, said Mr. Gradgrind, why will she never believe it of him? Because those two were one, because they were never asunder. Because up to this time he seemed to doubt upon her, said Childers, taking a step or two to look into the empty trunk. Both Mr. Childers and Master Kitterminster walked in a curious manner, with their legs wider apart than the general run of men. And with a very knowing assumption of being stiff in the knees, this walk was common to all the male members of Sleary's company, and was understood to express that they were always on horseback. Poor Sissy, he had better of apprenticed her, said Childers, giving his hair another shake as he looked up from the empty box. Now he leaves it without anything to take to. It is creditable to you, who have never been apprenticed, to express that opinion, returned Mr. Gradgrind approvingly. I never apprenticed, I was apprenticed when I was seven-year-old. Oh, indeed, said Mr. Gradgrind, rather resentfully, as having been defrauded of his good opinion. I was not aware of its being the custom to apprentice young persons to idleness, Mr. Bounderby put in with a loud laugh. No, by the Lord Harry, nor I. If father always had it in his head, resumed Childers, feigning unconsciousness of Mr. Bounderby's existence, that she was to be taught the deuce in all of education, how he got into his head, I can't say. I can only say it never got out. He's been picking up a bit of reading for her here, a bit of writing for her there, a bit of siphoning for her somewhere else, at least seven years. Mr. E. W. B. Childers took one of his hands out of his pockets, stroked his face and chin and looked with a good deal of doubt and a little hope at Mr. Gradgrind. From the first he had sought to conciliate that gentleman for the sake of the deserted girl. When Sissy got into the school year, he pursued, her father was as pleased as punch. I couldn't altogether make out why myself, as we were not stationary here, being but commas and goers anywhere. I suppose, however, he had this move in mind, it was always half-cracked, and then considered I provided for. If you should happen to have looked in tonight for the purpose of telling him that you were going to do her any little service, said Mr. Childers, stroking his face again and repeating his look, it will be very fortunate and well-timed, very fortunate and well-timed. On the contrary, returned Mr. Gradgrind, I came to tell him that her connections made her not an object for the school and that she must not attend any more. Still, if her father really has left her without any connivance on her part, Boundary, let me have a word with you. Upon this Mr. Childers politely betook himself with his equestrian walk to the landing outside the door, and there stood stroking his face and softly whistling. While thus engaged, he overheard such phrases in Mr. Boundary's voice as, No, I say no, I advise you not, I say by no means. While from Mr. Gradgrind he heard in his much lower tone the words, but even as an example to Louisa of what this pursuit, which has been the subject of a vulgar curiosity, leads to and ends in, think of it, Boundary, from that point of view. Meanwhile, the various members of Sleary's company gradually gathered together from the upper regions, where they were quartered, and from standing about talking in low voices to one another and to Mr. Childers, gradually insinuated themselves and him into the room. There were two or three handsome young women among them, with their two or three husbands, and their two or three mothers, and their eight or nine little children, who did the ferry business when required. The father of one of the families was in the habit of balancing the father of another of the families on the top of a great pole. The father of a third family often made a pyramid of both those fathers, with Master Kidermanster for the apex, and himself for the base. All the fathers could dance upon rolling casks, stand upon bottles, catch knives and balls, twirl hand basins, ride upon anything, jump over everything, and stick at nothing. All the mothers could, and did, dance upon the slack wire and the tight rope, and perform rapid acts on barebacked steeds. None of them were at all particular in respect of showing their legs, and one of them alone in a Greek chariot drove six in hand into every town they came to. They all assumed to be mighty rakish and knowing. They were not very tidy in their private dresses. They were not at all orderly in their domestic arrangements, and the combined literature of the whole company would have produced but a poor letter on any subject. Yet there was a remarkable gentleness and childishness about these people, a special inaptitude for any kind of sharp practice, and an untiring readiness to help and pity one another, deserving often of as much respect, and always of as much generous construction, as the everyday virtues of any class of people in the world. Last of all appeared Mr. Sleary, a stout man, as already mentioned, with one fixed eye and one loose eye, a voice of it can be called so, like the efforts of a broken old pair of bellows, a flabby surface, and a muddled head, which was never sober and never drunk. Squire! said Mr. Sleary, who was troubled with asthma, and whose breath came far too thick and heavy for the letter S. You're fervent! This is a bad piece of business, this is. You've heard of Mark Clown and his dog being supposed to have mourned? He addressed Mr. Gradgrind, who answered, Yes. Well, Squire, he returned, taking off his hat and rubbing the lining with his pocket handkerchief, which he kept inside for the purpose. Is it your intention to do anything for the poor girl, Squire? I shall have something to propose to her when she comes back, said Mr. Gradgrind. Glad to hear it, Squire. Not that I want to get rid of the child, any more than I want to send in a way. I'm willing to take apprentice, though at her age is late. My voice is a little husky, Squire, and not easy heard by them as don't know me. But if you'd been chilled and heated, heated and chilled, chilled and heated in the ring when you was young, as often as I have been, your voice wouldn't have lasted out, Squire, no more than mine. I daresay not, said Mr. Gradgrind. What's there to be, Squire, while you wait? Tell it be, Therry. Give her their name, Squire, said Mr. Sleary, with her spitable ease. Nothing for me, I thank you, said Mr. Gradgrind. Don't say nothing, Squire. What did your friend say? If you haven't taken a feed yet, have a glass of bitith. Here is daughter Josephine, a pretty fair-haired girl of eighteen, who had been tied on a horse at two years old and had made a will at twelve, which she always carried about her, expressive of her dying desire to be drawn to the grave by the two piebald ponies. Cried, Father Hush, she's come back. Then came Sissy Jupe, running into the room as she had run out of it. And when she saw them all assembled and saw their looks and saw no father there, she broke into a most deplorable cry and took refuge on the bosom of the most accomplished tightrope lady, herself in the family way, who knelt down on the floor to nurse her and to weep over her. It's an internal shame upon my soul, it is, said Sleary. Oh, my dear Father, my good kind Father, where are you going? You are going to try to do me some good, I know. You are going away for my sake, I'm sure. And how miserable and helpless you'll be without me, poor, poor Father, until you come back. It was so pathetic to hear her saying many things of this kind, with her face turned upward and her arms stretched out as if she were trying to stop his departing shadow and embrace it, that no one spoke a word until Mr. Bounderby, growing impatient, took the case in hand. Now, good people all, said he, this is wanton waste of time. Let the girl understand the fact. Let her take it from me, if you like, who have been run away from myself. Here, what's your name? Your father has absconded, deserted you, and you mustn't expect to see him again as long as you live. They cared so little for plain fact, these people, and were in that advanced state of degeneracy on the subject, that instead of being impressed by the speaker's strong common sense, they took it in extraordinary dudgeon. The men muttered shame, and the women, brute, and slurry, and some haste, communicated the following hint apart to Mr. Bounderby. I'll tell you what, squire, to speak plain to you, my opinion is that you are better cut your thought and drop it. They're a very good nature of people, my people, but they're accustomed to being quick with their movements, and if you don't act upon my vise, I'm damned if I don't believe they'll pith you out of the window. Mr. Bounderby being restrained by this mild suggestion, Mr. Gradgrine found an opening for his eminently practical exposition of the subject. It is of no moment, said he, whether this person is to be expected back at any time, or the contrary, he's gone away, and there is no present expectation of his return. That, I believe, is agreed on all hands. That's agreed, squire. Thick to that, from Sleary. Well, then, I, who came here to inform the father of the poor girl, Jupe, that she could not be received in the school anymore, in consequence of there being practical objections into which I need not enter, to the reception there of the children of persons so employed, and prepared in these altered circumstances to make a proposal. I am willing to take charge of you, Jupe, and to educate you and provide for you. The only condition over and above your good behaviour I make is that you decide now, at once, whether to accompany me or remain here. Also, that if you accompany me now, it is understood that you communicate no more with any of your friends who are here present. These observations comprise the whole of the case. At the same time, said Sleary, I must put in my words, squire, so that both sides of the banner may be equally seen. If you like Cecilia to be apprenticed, you know the nature of the work and you know your companions. Emma Gordon, in whose lap you are lying at present, would be a mother to you, and Josephine would be a sister to you. I don't pretend to be the angel breed myself, and I don't say but what when you missed your tip you'd find me cut up rough and swearing also to at you. But what I say, squire, is that good tempered or bad tempered, I never did a horse an injury yet, no more than swearing at him went, and that I don't expect I shall begin otherwise at my time of life with a rider. I never was much of a cackler, squire, but I said my say. The latter part of the speech was addressed to Mr. Gradgrind, who received it with a grave inclination of his head, and then remarked, The only observation I will make to you, Jube, in the way of influencing your decision is that it is highly desirable to have a sound practical education, and that even your father himself from what I understand appears on your behalf to have known and felt that much. The last words had a visible effect upon her. She stopped in her wild crying, a little detached herself from Emma Gordon, and turned her face full upon her patron. The whole company perceived the force of the change and drew a long breath together that plainly said, She will go. Be sure you know your own mind, Jube, Mr. Gradgrind cautioned her. I say no more. Be sure you know your own mind. When father comes back, cried the girl, bursting into tears again after a minute's silence, how will he ever find me if I go away? You may be quite at ease, said Mr. Gradgrind calmly. He worked out the whole matter like a sum. You may be quite at ease, Jube, on that score. In such a case your father, I apprehend, must find out, Mr. Sleary. That's my name, Squire, not a thame, dov' it? Known all over England and all with pethid way. Must find out, Mr. Sleary, who would then let him know where you went. I should have no power of keeping you against his wish, and he would have no difficulty at any time in finding Mr. Thomas Gradgrind of Coketown. I'm well known. Well known, assented Mr. Sleary, rolling his loose eye. You're one of the thoughts, Squire, that keep the pethid sight of money out of the house. But never mind that, I prethent. There was another silence, and then she exclaimed, sobbing with her hands before her face. Oh, give me my clothes! Give me my clothes, and let me go away before I break my heart! The women sadly bestirred themselves to get the clothes together. It was soon done, for they were not many, and to pack them in a basket which had often travelled with them. Sissy sat all the time upon the ground, still sobbing and covering her eyes. Mr. Gradgrind and his friend Bounderby stood near the door, ready to take her away. Mr. Sleary stood in the middle of the room with the male members of the company around him, exactly as he would have stood in the centre of the ring during his daughter Josephine's performance. He wanted nothing but his whip. The basket packed in silence, they brought her bonnet to her, and smoothed her disordered hair and put it on. Then they pressed about her and bent over her in very natural attitudes, kissing and embracing her, and brought the children to take leave of her, and were a tender-hearted, simple, foolish set of women altogether. Now, Jupe, said Mr. Gradgrind, if you are quite determined, come. But she had to take her farewell of the male part of the company yet, and every one of them had to unfold his arms, for they all assumed the professional attitude when they found themselves near Sleary, and give her a parting kiss, Master Kidermanster accepted, in whose young nature there was an original flavour of the misanthrope, who was also known to have harboured matrimonial views, and who moodily withdrew. Mr. Sleary was reserved until the last. Opening his arms wide, he took her by both hands, and would have sprung up and down after the writing-master manner of congratulating young ladies on their dismounting from a rapid act. But there was no rebound in Sissy, and she only stood before him, crying. Good-bye, my dear, said Sleary. You'll make your fortune I hope, and none of our poor folks will ever trouble you, or pound it. Or with your father hadn't taken his dog with him, it's an ill-convenience to have the dog out of the bilf. But on second thought, he wouldn't have performed without his master, though it has broadeth his long. With that he regarded her attentively with his fixed eye, surveyed his company with his loose one, kissed her, shook his head, and handed her to Mr. Gradgrind as to a horse. There he is, squire, he said, sweeping her with the professional glance as if she were being adjusted in her seat. And they'll do you justice. Good-bye, Cecilia. Good-bye, Cecilia. Good-bye, Sissy. God bless you, dear, in a variety of voices from all over the room. But the riding-master had observed the bottle of the nine-oils in her bosom, and he now interposed with, leave the boat, oh my dear, it's large to carry, it'll be of no use to you now, give it to me. No, no, she said in another burst of tears. Oh, no, pray let me keep it for father till he comes back. He'll want it when he comes back. He never thought of going away when he sent me for it. I must keep it for him, if you please. So be it, my dear. You see how it is, squire. Farewell, Cecilia. My last word to you is this. Stick to the terms of your engagement, be obedient to the squire, and forget us. But if, when you're grown up and married and well off, you come upon any horse-riding ever, don't be hard upon it, don't be cross with it, give it a bespeak if you can, and think how you might do worse. People must be amused, squire, somehow, continued slurry, rendered more percy than ever by so much talking, they can't be all with the working, nor yet they can't be all with the learning. Make the best of us, not the worst. I've got my living out of the horse-riding all my life, I know, but I consider that I lay down the philosophy of the subject, when I say to you, squire, make the best of us, not the worst. The slurry philosophy was propounded as they went downstairs, and the fixed eye of philosophy, and its rolling-eye too, soon lost the three figures, and the basket in the darkness of the street. CHAPTER VII and VIII. CHAPTER VII. Mrs. Sparsett. Mr. Bounderby, being a bachelor, an elderly lady, presided over his establishment, in consideration of a certain annual stipend. Mrs. Sparsett was this lady's name, and she was a prominent figure in attendance on Mr. Bounderby's car, as it rolled along in triumph with the bully of humility inside. For Mrs. Sparsett had not only seen different days, but was highly connected. She had a great aunt living in these very times called Lady Scadgers. Mr. Sparsett, deceased of whom she was the relic, had been by the mother's side what Mrs. Sparsett still called a pauller. Strangers of limited information and dull apprehension were sometimes observed not to know what a pauller was, and even to appear uncertain whether it might be a business, or a political party, or a profession of faith. The better class of minds, however, did not need to be informed that the paullers were an ancient stock, who could trace themselves so exceedingly far back that it was not surprising if they sometimes lost themselves, which they had rather frequently done as respected horse flesh, blind hooky, Hebrew monetary transactions, and the insolvent debtor's court. The late Mr. Sparsett, being by the mother's side a pauller, married this lady, being by the father's side a Scadgers. Lady Scadgers, an immensely fat old woman with an inordinate appetite for butcher's meat, and a mysterious leg, which had now refused to get out of bed for fourteen years, contrived the marriage, at a period when Sparsett was just of age and chiefly noticeable for a slender body, weakly supported on two long, slim props, and surmounted by no head worth mentioning. He inherited a fair fortune from his uncle, but owed it all before he came into it, and spent it twice over immediately afterwards. Thus when he died at twenty-four, the scene of his deceased Calais and the cause Brandy, he did not leave his widow, from whom he had been separated soon after the honeymoon in affluent circumstances. That bereaved lady, fifteen years older than he, fell presently at deadly feud with her only relative Lady Scadgers, and partly to spite her ladyship, partly to maintain herself, went out at a salary. And here she was now, in her elderly days, with the Coriolanian style of nose and the dense black eyebrows which had captivated Sparsett, making Mr. Boundary's tea as he took his breakfast. If Boundary had been a conqueror, and Mrs. Sparsett a captive princess, whom he took about as a feature in his state processions, he could not have made a greater flourish with her than he habitually did. Just as it belonged to his boastfulness to depreciate his own extraction, so it belonged to it to exalt Mrs. Sparsett's. In the measure that he would not allow his own youth to have been attended by a single favorable circumstance, he brightened Mrs. Sparsett's juvenile career with every possible advantage, and showered wagon-loads of early roses all over that lady's path. And yet, sir, he would say, how does it turn out, after all, why here she is at a hundred a year, I give her a hundred, which she is pleased to term handsome, keeping the house of Josiah Boundary of Coketown. Nay, he made this foil of his so very widely known that third parties took it up, and handled it on some occasions with considerable briskness. It was one of the most exasperating attributes of Boundary that he not only sang his own praises, but stimulated other men to sing them. There was a moral infection of claptrap in him. Strangers, modest enough elsewhere, started up at dinners in Coketown and boasted in quite a rampant way of Boundary. They made him out to be the Royal Arms, the Union Jack, Magna Carta, John Bull, habeas corpus, the Bill of Rights, and Englishman's houses as castle, church and state, and God saved the Queen all put together. And as often, and it was very often, as an orator of this kind brought into his peroration, princes and lords may flourish or may fade, a breath can make them as a breath has made. It was, for certain, more or less understood among the company that he had heard of Mrs. Sparsett. Mr. Boundary, said Mrs. Sparsett, you are unusually slow, sir, with your breakfast this morning. Why, ma'am, he returned, I am thinking about Tom Gradgrind's whim. Tom Gradgrind, for a bluff, independent manner of speaking, as if somebody were always endeavoring to bribe him with immense sums to say Thomas, and he wouldn't. Tom Gradgrind's whim, ma'am, of bringing up the tumbling girl. The girl is now waiting to know, said Mrs. Sparsett, whether she is to go straight to the school or up to the lodge. She must wait, ma'am, answered Boundary, till I know myself. We shall have Tom Gradgrind down here presently, I suppose. If he should wish her to remain here a day or two longer, of course she can, ma'am. Of course she can, if you wish it, Mr. Boundary. I told him I should give her a shake down here last night, in order that he might sleep on it, before he decided to let her have any association with Louisa. Indeed, Mr. Boundary, very thoughtful of you. Mrs. Sparsett's coriolanian nose underwent a slight expansion of the nostrils, and her black eyebrows contracted as she took a sip of tea. It's tolerably clear to me, said Boundary, that the little puss can get small good out of such companionship. Are you speaking of young Miss Gradgrind, Mr. Boundary? Yes, ma'am. I'm speaking of Louisa. Your observation being limited to little puss, said Mrs. Sparsett, and there being two little girls in question, I did not know which might be indicated by that expression. Louisa, repeated Mr. Boundary. Louisa, Louisa! You are quite another father to Louisa, sir. Mrs. Sparsett took a little more tea, and as she bent her again contracted eyebrows over her steaming cup, rather looked as if her classical countenance were invoking the infernal gods. If you had said I was another father to Tom—young Tom, I mean, not my friend Tom, Gradgrind—you might have been nearer the mark. I am going to take young Tom into my office, going to have him under my wing-man. Indeed, rather young for that, is he not, sir? Mrs. Sparsett, sir, in addressing Mr. Boundary, was a word of ceremony, rather extracting consideration for herself in the use than honoring him. I'm not going to take him at once. He is to finish his educational cramming before then, said Boundary. By the Lord Harry, he'll have enough of it first and last. He'd open his eyes, that boy would, if he knew how empty of learning my young maw was at his time of life, which, by the way, he probably did know, for he'd heard of it often enough. But it's extraordinary the difficulty I have on scores of such subjects in speaking to anyone on equal terms. Here, for example, I've been speaking to you this morning about tumblers. Why, what do you know about tumblers? At the time when, to have been a tumbler in the mud of the streets would have been a godsend to me, a prize in the lottery to me. You were at the Italian opera! You were coming out of the Italian opera, ma'am! In white satin and jewels, a blaze of splendor, when I hadn't a penny to buy a link to light you. I certainly, sir, returned Mrs. Sparsett, with a dignity serenely mournful, was familiar with the Italian opera at a very early age. Ye God, ma'am, so was I, said Boundary, with the wrong side of it. A hard bed the pavement of its arcade used to make I assure you. People like you, ma'am, accustomed from infancy to lie on down feathers, have no idea how hard a paving-stone is without trying it. No, no, it of no use my talking to you about tumblers. I should speak of foreign dancers, and the West End of London, and may fair and lords and ladies and honourables. I trust, sir, rejoined Mrs. Sparsett, with decent resignation. It is not necessary that you should do anything of that kind. I hope I have learned how to accommodate myself to the changes of life. If I have acquired an interest in hearing of your instructive experiences, and can scarcely hear enough of them, I claim no merit for that, since I believe it is a general sentiment. Well, ma'am, said her patron, perhaps some people may be pleased to say that they do like to hear, in his own unpolished way, what Josiah Boundary of Coketown has gone through, but you must confess that you were born in the lap of luxury yourself. Come, ma'am, you know you were born in the lap of luxury. I do not, sir, returned Mrs. Sparsett with a shake of her head. Deny it. Mr. Boundary was obliged to get up from table, and stand with his back to the fire, looking at her, if she was such an enhancement of his position. And you were in crack society, devilish high society, he said, warming his legs. It is true, sir, returned Mrs. Sparsett, with an affictation of humility the very opposite of his, and therefore in no danger of jostling it. You were in the tip-top fashion, and all the rest of it, said Mr. Boundary. Yes, sir, returned Mrs. Sparsett, with a kind of social widowhood upon her. It is unquestionably true. Mr. Boundary, bending himself at the knees, literally embraced his legs in his great satisfaction, and laughed aloud. Mr. and Ms. Gradgrine, being then announced, he received the former with a shake of the hand, and the latter with a kiss. Can Joop be sent here, Boundary? asked Mr. Gradgrine. Certainly, so Joop was sent there. On coming in, she curtsied to Mr. Boundary, and to his friend Tom Gradgrine, and also to Louisa, but in her confusion, unluckily omitted Mrs. Sparsett. Observing this, the blustrous Boundary had the following remarks to make. Now, I tell you what, my girl, the name of that lady by the teapot is Mrs. Sparsett. That lady acts as mistress of this house, and she is a highly connected lady. Consequently, if ever you come again into any room in this house, you will make a short stay in it, if you don't behave towards that lady in your most respectful manner. Now, I don't care a button what you do to me, because I don't affect to be anybody. So, far from having high connections, I have no connections at all, and I come of the scum of the earth, but towards that lady, I do care what you do, and you shall do what is deferential and respectful, or you shall not come here. I hope, Boundary, said Mr. Gradgrind in a conciliatory voice, that this was merely an oversight. My friend Tom Gradgrind suggests, Mrs. Sparsett, said Boundary, that this was merely an oversight, very likely. However, as you are aware, ma'am, I don't allow of even oversight towards you. You are very good indeed, sir, returned Mrs. Sparsett, shaking her head with her state humility. It is not worth speaking of. Sissy, who, all this time, had been faintly excusing herself with tears in her eyes, was now waved over by the master of the house to Mr. Gradgrind. She stood looking intently at him, and Louisa stood coldly by with her eyes upon the ground, while he proceeded thus. Jup, I have made up my mind to take you into my house, and when you are not in attendance at the school to employ you about Mrs. Gradgrind, who is rather an invalid. I have explained to Miss Louisa, this is Miss Louisa, the miserable but natural end of your late career, and you are to expressly understand that the whole of that subject matter is past. It is not to be referred to any more. From this time, you begin your history. You are, at present, ignorant, I know. Yes, sir, very, she answered, curtsying. I shall have the satisfaction of causing you to be strictly educated, and you will be a living proof to all who come into communication with you of the advantages of the training you will receive. You will be reclaimed and formed. You have been in the habit now of reading to your father, and those people I found you among, I daresay, said Mr. Gradgrind, beckoning her nearer to him, before he said so, and dropping his voice. Only to father and Mary Legs, sir, and at least I mean to father, when Mary Legs was always there. Never mind Mary Legs, Jup, said Mr. Gradgrind, with a passing frown. I don't ask about him. I understand you to have been in the habit of reading to your father. Oh, yes, sir, thousands of times they were the happiest, oh, of all the happy times we had together, sir. It was only now when her sorrow broke out that Louisa looked at her. And what, asked Mr. Gradgrind, in a still lower voice, did you read to your father, Jup? About the fairies, sir, and the dwarf, and the hunchback, and the genies, she sobbed out, and about— Hush, said Mr. Gradgrind, that is enough. Never breathe a word of such destructive nonsense anymore. Boundary, this is a case for rigid training, and I shall observe it with interest. Well, returned Mr. Boundary, I have given you my opinion already, and I shouldn't do as you do. But very well, very well, since you are bent upon it very well. So Mr. Gradgrind and his daughter took Cecilia Jup off with them to Stone Lodge, and on the way Louisa never spoke one word, good or bad, and Mr. Boundary went about his daily pursuits, and Mrs. Sparsett got behind her eyebrows and meditated in the gloom of that retreat all the evening. End of Chapter 8 Never Wonder Let us strike the keynote again before pursuing the tune. When she was half a dozen years younger, Louisa had been overheard to begin a conversation with her brother one day by saying, Tom, I wonder, upon which Mr. Gradgrind, who is the person overhearing, stepped forth into the light and said, Louisa, never wonder. Herein lay the spring of the mechanical art and mystery of educating the reason without stooping to the cultivation of the sentiments and affections. Never wonder. By means of addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division, settle everything somehow, and never wonder. Bring to me, but chocomchild, young yonder baby just able to walk, and I will engage that it shall never wonder. Now, besides very many babies just able to walk, there happened to be in Coketown a considerable population of babies who had been walking against time towards the infinite world 20, 30, 40, 50 years and more. These portentious infants being alarming creatures to stalk about in any human society, the 18 denominations incessantly scratched one another's faces and pulled one another's hair by way of agreeing on the steps to be taken for their improvement, which they never did. A surprising circumstance when the happy adaptation of the means to the end is considered. Still, although they differed in every other particular conceivable and inconceivable, especially inconceivable, they were pretty well united on the point that these unlucky infants were never to wonder. Body number one said they must take everything on trust. Body number two said they must take everything on political economy. Body number three wrote lead and little books for them showing how the good grown up baby invariably got to the savings bank and the bad grown up baby invariably got transported. Body number four, under dreary pretenses of being droll when it was very melancholy indeed, made the shallowest pretenses of concealing pitfalls of knowledge into which it was the duty of these babies to be smuggled and invagled. But all the bodies agreed that they were never to wonder. There was a library in Coketown to which general access was easy. Mr. Gradgrind greatly tormented his mind about what the people read in this library, a point where on little rivers of tabular statements periodically flowed into the howling ocean of tabular statements which no diver ever got to any depth in and came up saying. It was a disheartening circumstance but a melancholy fact that even these readers persisted in wondering. They wondered about human nature, human passions, human hopes and fears, the struggles, triumphs and defeats, the cares and joys and sorrows, the lives and deaths of common men and women. They sometimes, after 15 hours' work, sat down to read mere fables about men and women more or less like themselves and about children more or less like their own. They took to foe to their bosoms instead of Euclid and seemed to be on the whole more comforted by Goldsmith than by Cocker. Mr. Gradgrind was forever working in print and out of print at this eccentric summony never could make out how it yielded this unaccountable product. I am sick of my life, Lou. I hate it altogether and I hate everybody except you, said the unnatural young Thomas Gradgrind in the haircutting chamber at Twilight. You don't hate Sissy, Tom. I hate to be obliged to call her Jupe. And she hates me, said Tom Moodley. No, she does not, Tom. I'm sure. She must, said Tom. She must just hate and detest the whole set out of us. They'll bother her head off, I think, before they have done with her. Already she's getting as pale as wax and as heavy as I am. Young Thomas expressed these sentiments sitting astride of a chair before the fire with his arms on the back and his sulky face on his arms. His sister sat in the darker corner by the fireside, now looking at him, now looking at the bright sparks as they dropped upon the hearth. As to me, he said, Tom, tumbling his hair all manner of ways with his sulky hands. I am a donkey, that's what I am. I am as obstinate as one. I am more stupid than one. I get as much pleasure as one. And I should like to kick like one. Not me, I hope, Tom. No, Lou, I wouldn't hurt you. I made an exception of you at first. I don't know what this jolly old jaundice jail Tom had paused to find a sufficiently complimentary and expressive name for the parental roof and seemed to relieve his mind for a moment by the strong alliteration of this one. Would be without you. Indeed, Tom, do you really and truly say so? Why, of course I do. What's the use of talking about it, return Tom? Chafing his face on his coat sleeve as if to mortify his flesh and have it in unison with his spirit. Because Tom, said his sister after silently watching the sparks a while, as I get older and nearer growing up I often sit wondering here and think how unfortunate it is for me that I can't reconcile you to home better than I am able to do. I don't know what other girls know. I can't play to you or sing to you. I can't talk to you so as to lighten your mind for I never see any amusing sights or read any amusing books that it would be a pleasure or a relief to you to talk about when you are tired. Well, no more do I. I'm as bad as you in that respect and I'm a mule too, which you're not. If father was determined to make me either a prig or a mule and I'm not a prig, why, it stands to reason, I must be a mule. And so I am, said Tom, desperately. It's a great pity, said Louisa after another pause and speaking thoughtfully out of her dark corner. It's a great pity, Tom. It's very unfortunate for both of us. Oh, you, said Tom, you. You're a girl, Lou. And a girl comes out of it better than a boy does. I don't miss anything in you. You're the only pleasure I have. You can brighten even this place and you can always lead me as you like. You are a dear brother, Tom, and while you think I can do such things, I don't so much mind knowing better. Though I do know better, Tom, and I'm very sorry for it. She came and kissed him and went back into her corner again. I wish I could collect all the facts we hear so much about, said Tom, spitefully setting his teeth and all the figures and all the people who found them out and I wish I could put a thousand barrels of gunpowder under them and blow them all up together. However, when I go to live with old Bounderby, I'll have my revenge. Your revenge, Tom. I mean, I'll enjoy myself a little and go about and see something and hear something. I'll recompense myself for the way in which I've been brought up. But don't disappoint yourself beforehand, Tom. Mr. Bounderby thinks as father thinks, and is a great deal rougher and not half so kind. Oh, said Tom, laughing, I don't mind that. I shall very well know how to manage and smooth old Bounderby. Their shadows were defined upon the wall, but those of the high presses in the room were all blended together on the wall and on the ceiling as if the brother and sister were overhung by a dark cavern, or a fanciful imagination, if such treason could have been there, might have made it out to be the shadow of their subject and of its lowering association with their future. What is your great mode of smoothing and managing, Tom? Is it a secret? Oh, said Tom, if it is a secret, it's not far off, it's you. You are his little pet. You are his favorite. He'll do anything for you. When he says to me what I don't like, I shall say to him, my sister Lou will be heard and disappointed, Mr. Bounderby, she always used to tell me that she was sure you would be easier with me than this. That'll bring him about or nothing will. After waiting for some answering remark and getting none, Tom wearily relapsed into the present time and twined himself yawning round and about the rails of his chair and rumpled his head more and more until he suddenly looked up and asked, have you gone to sleep, Lou? No, Tom, I am looking at the fire. You seem to find more to look at in it than I ever could find, said Tom. Another of the advantages, I suppose, of being a girl. Tom inquired his sister slowly and in a curious tone, as if she were reading what she asked in the fire and was not quite plainly written there. Do you look forward with any satisfaction to this change to Mr. Bounderby's? While there's one thing to be said of it, returned Tom, pushing his chair from him and standing up, it will be getting away from home. There is one thing to be said of it, Louisa repeated in her former curious tone, it will be getting away from home. Yes. Not but what I shall be very unwilling, both to leave you, Lou, and to leave you here. But I must go, you know, whether I like it or not, and I'd better go where I can take with me some advancements. Better go where I can take with me some advantage of your influence than where I should lose it altogether. Don't you see? Yes, Tom. The answer was so long and coming, though there was no indecision in it, that Tom went and leaned on the back of her chair to contemplate the fire which so engrossed her from her point of view, and see what he could make of it. Except that it is a fire, said Tom, it looks to me as stupid and blank as everything else looks. What do you see in it? Not a circus. I don't see anything in it, Tom, particularly, but since I have been looking at it, I have been wondering about you and me grown up. Wondering again, said Tom. I have such unmanageable thoughts, returned his sister, that they will wonder. Then I beg of you, Louisa, said Mrs. Gradgrind, who had opened the door without being heard, to do nothing of that description. For goodness sake, you inconsiderate girl, or I shall never hear the last of it from your father. And Thomas, it is really shameful with my poor head continually wearing me out that a boy brought up as you have been, and whose education has cost what yours has, should be found encouraging his sister to wonder, when he knows his father has expressly said that she is not to do it. Louisa denied Tom's participation in the offense, but her mother stopped her with the conclusive answer. Louisa, don't tell me in my state of health, for unless you had been encouraged, it is morally and physically impossible that you could have done it. I was encouraged by nothing, mother, but by looking at the red sparks dropping out of the fire and whitening and dying. It made me think, after all, how short my life would be, and how little I could hope to do in it. Nonsense, said Mrs. Gradgrind, rendered almost energetic. Nonsense! Don't stand there and tell me such stuff, Louisa, to my face, when you know very well that if it was ever to reach your father's ears, I should never hear the last of it. After all, the trouble that has been taken with you, after the lectures you have attended, and the experiments you have seen, after I have heard you myself, when the whole of my right side has been benumbed, going on with your master about combustion, and calcination, and caliprification, and I may say every kind of asian that could drive a poor invalid distracted, to hear you talking in this absurd way about sparks and ashes. I wish, whimpered Mrs. Gradgrind, taking a chair and discharging her strongest point before succumbing under these mere shadows of facts. Yes, I really do wish that I had never had a family, and then you would have known what it was to do without me.