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  wonder what you are! No little Gradgrind had ever known wonder on

  the subject, each little Gradgrind having at five years old

  dissected the Great Bear like a Professor Owen, and driven

  Charles's Wain 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 those celebrities,

  and had only been introduced to a cow as a graminivorous 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 guide-book.

  A very regular feature on the face of the country, Stone Lodge was.

  Not the least disguise toned 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 accountbook.

  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 heart could desire.

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  Dickens, Charles - Hard Times

  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 on in 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

  entertainments 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 Merrylegs.' 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

  mid-air, a feat never before attempted in this or any other

  country, and which having elicited 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 Shaksperean quips and retorts.' Lastly, he was to wind

  them up by appearing in his favourite character of Mr. William

  Button, of Tooley Street, in 'the highly novel and laughable hippocomedietta

  of The Tailor's Journey to Brentford.'

  Thomas Gradgrind 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 the place.

  This brought him to a stop. 'Now, to 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 waistcoat to look for

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  Dickens, Charles - Hard Times

  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, peeping with all her might through a hole

  in a deal board, 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. Gradgrind 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. Gradgrind,

  leading each away by a hand; 'what do you do here?'

  'Wanted to see what it was like,' returned Louisa, shortly.

  'What it was like?'

  '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, doubtful

  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 am sorry to hear it. I am very sorry indeed 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, who 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 have been tired a long time,' said Louisa.

  'Tired? Of what?' asked the astonished father.

  'I don't know of what - of everything, I think.'

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  Dickens, Charles - Hard Times

  '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 friends 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. Grundy.

  CHAPTER IV - MR. BOUNDERBY

  NOT being Mrs. Grundy, who was Mr. Bounderby?

  Why, Mr. Bounderby was as near 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 strained 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 of a 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

  the 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

  hearthrug, 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 to 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

  pigsty. That's the way I spent my tenth 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,

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  Dickens, Charles - Hard Times

  of surpassing feebleness, mental and bodily; who was always taking

  physic 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! As wet as 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 believe, that was capable of inflammation,'

  returned Mr. Bounderby. 'For years, ma'am, 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 my 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 the worst old woman that ever lived. If I got a

  little pair of shoes by any chance, she would take 'em off and sell

  'em for drink. Why, I have known that grandmother of mine lie in

  her bed and drink her four-teen 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 incumbrance, a
nd 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 incumbrance, 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 learnt his letters from

  the outsides of the shops, Mrs. Gradgrind, and was first able to

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  Dickens, Charles - Hard Times

  tell the time upon a dial-plate, from studying the steeple clock of

  St. Giles's 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 of schools; and Josiah Bounderby of Coketown, tells

  you plainly, all right, all correct - he hadn't 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, haughtily,

  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