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  Dickens, Charles - Hard Times

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  [Title:Hard Times]

  [Author:Charles Dickens]

  [Scanned:David Price ]

  [Checked:David Price ]

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  [Revision:1]

  [Source:Gutenberg]

  [Copyright:Public Domain - Copyright Expired]

  [Category:Fiction]

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  Hard Times

  BOOK THE FIRST - SOWING

  CHAPTER I - THE ONE THING NEEDFUL

  'NOW, what I want is, Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing

  but Facts. Facts alone are 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 any

  service to them. This is the principle on which I bring up my own

  children, and this is the principle on which I bring up these

  children. Stick to Facts, sir!'

  The scene was a plain, bare, monotonous vault of a school-room, and

  the speaker's 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 firs 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, - nay, 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.

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  Dickens, Charles - Hard Times

  CHAPTER II - MURDERING THE INNOCENTS

  THOMAS GRADGRIND, sir. A man of realities. A man of facts and

  calculations. A man who proceeds 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 - peremptorily

  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 supposititious, non-existent

  persons), but 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 pitchers before him, who were to be filled so full of

  facts.

  Indeed, as he eagerly 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 with

  his square forefinger, 'I don't know that girl. Who is that girl?'

  'Sissy Jupe, sir,' explained number twenty, blushing, standing up,

  and curtseying.

  'Sissy is not a name,' said Mr. Gradgrind. 'Don't call yourself

  Sissy. Call yourself Cecilia.'

  'It's father as calls me Sissy, sir,' returned the young girl in a

  trembling voice, and with another curtsey.

  '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 objectionable 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, sir.'

  'You mustn't tell us about the ring, here. Very well, then.

  Describe your father as a horsebreaker. He doctors sick horses, I

  dare say?'

  'Oh yes, sir.'

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  Dickens, Charles - Hard Times

  'Very well, then. He is a veterinary surgeon, a farrier, and

  horsebreaker. Give me your definition of a horse.'

  (Sissy Jupe thrown into the 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 white-washed room, irradiated Sissy. For, the boys and

  girls sat on the face of the inclined plane in two compact bodies,

  divided up the centre 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 the end. But, whereas the girl

  was so dark-eyed and dark-haired, that she seemed to receive a

  deeper and more lustrous colour 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 colour 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. Graminivorous. Forty teeth, namely twenty-four

  grinders, four eye-teeth, and twelve incisive. Sheds coat in the

  spring; in marshy countries, sheds hoofs, too. Hoofs hard, but

  requiring to be shod 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 curtseyed 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

  people's 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 up 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

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  Dickens, Charles - Hard Times

  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 girls and boys, Would

  you paper a room with representations of horses?'

  After a pause, one half of the children cried 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

  a dismal pause, 'why you wouldn't paper a room with representations

  of horses. Do you ever see horses walking up and 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 the pictures of what was very

  pretty and pleasant, and I would fancy - '

  'Ay, ay, ay! But you mustn't fancy,' cried the gentleman, quite

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  Dickens, Charles - Hard Times

  elated by coming so happily to his point. 'That's it! You are

  never to fancy.'

  'You are not, Cecilia Jupe,' Thomas Gradgrind solemnly repeated,

  'to do anything of that kind.'

  'Fact, fact, fact!' said the gentleman. And 'Fact, 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 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 colours) of

  mathematical figures which are susceptible of proof and

  demonstration. This is the new discovery. This is fact. This is

  taste.'

  The girl curtseyed, 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. M'Choakumchild,' 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. M'Choakumchild, we only wait

  for you.'

  So, Mr. M'Choakumchild began in his best manner. He and some one

  hundred and forty other schoolmasters, had been lately 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-survey
ing 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

  Honourable 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 all the Water Sheds 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. Ah, rather overdone, M'Choakumchild. If he had only

  learnt a little less, how infinitely better he might have taught

  much more!

  He went to work in this preparatory lesson, not unlike Morgiana in

  the Forty Thieves: looking into all the vessels ranged before him,

  one after another, to see what they contained. Say, good

  M'Choakumchild. When from thy boiling store, thou shalt fill each

  jar brim full by-and-by, dost thou think that thou wilt always kill

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  Dickens, Charles - Hard Times

  outright the robber Fancy lurking within - or sometimes only maim

  him and distort him!

  CHAPTER III - A LOOPHOLE

  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; coursed,

  like little hares. 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 black board with a dry Ogre chalking ghastly 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