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 - peremptorily1 Thomas - Thomas Gradgrind. With a rule and a pair of scales, and the multiplication2 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 mere3 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 pitchers4 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 cannon5 loaded to the muzzle6 with facts, and prepared to blow them clean out of the regions of childhood at one discharge. He seemed a galvanizing apparatus7, 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 forefinger8, 'I don't know that girl. Who is that girl?'
'Sissy Jupe, sir,' explained number twenty, blushing, standing9 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.'
'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 possessed10 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, darting11 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 interval12; 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 lustrous13 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 lashes14 which, by bringing them into immediate15 contrast with something paler than themselves, expressed their form. His short-cropped hair might have been a mere continuation of the sandy freckles16 on his forehead and face. His skin was so unwholesomely deficient17 in the natural tinge18, 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 incisive19. Sheds coat in the spring; in marshy20 countries, sheds hoofs21, 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 catching22 the light upon his quivering ends of lashes that they looked like the antennae23 of busy insects, put his knuckles24 to his freckled25 forehead, and sat down again.
The third gentleman now stepped forth26. A mighty27 man at cutting and drying, he was; a government officer; in his way (and in most other people's too), a professed28 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 neatly29. He was certain to knock the wind out of common sense, and render that unlucky adversary30 deaf to the call of time. And he had it in charge from high authority to bring about the great public-office Millennium31, when Commissioners32 should reign33 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 dismal34 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 approbation35.
'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 wither36, 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 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 ornament37, 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 perch38 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 modifications39 (in primary colours) of mathematical figures which are susceptible40 of proof and demonstration41. 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 prospect42 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. Orthography43, etymology44, syntax, and prosody45, biography, astronomy, geography, and general cosmography, the sciences of compound proportion, algebra46, land-surveying and levelling, vocal47 music, and drawing from models, were all at the ends of his ten chilled fingers. He had worked his stony48 way into Her Majesty's most Honourable49 Privy50 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 overdone51, M'Choakumchild. If he had only learnt a little less, how infinitely52 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 vessels53 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 wilt54 always kill outright55 the robber Fancy lurking56 within - or sometimes only maim57 him and distort him!
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1
peremptorily
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| adv.紧急地，不容分说地，专横地 | |
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multiplication
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| n.增加，增多，倍增；增殖，繁殖；乘法 | |
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mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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pitchers
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| 大水罐( pitcher的名词复数 ) | |
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cannon
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| n.大炮，火炮；飞机上的机关炮 | |
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muzzle
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| n.鼻口部；口套；枪(炮)口；vt.使缄默 | |
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apparatus
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| n.装置，器械；器具，设备 | |
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forefinger
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| n.食指 | |
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standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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possessed
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| adj.疯狂的；拥有的，占有的 | |
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darting
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| v.投掷，投射( dart的现在分词 )；向前冲，飞奔 | |
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interval
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| n.间隔，间距；幕间休息，中场休息 | |
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13
lustrous
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| adj.有光泽的；光辉的 | |
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14
lashes
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| n.鞭挞( lash的名词复数 )；鞭子；突然猛烈的一击；急速挥动v.鞭打( lash的第三人称单数 )；煽动；紧系；怒斥 | |
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immediate
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| adj.立即的；直接的，最接近的；紧靠的 | |
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freckles
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| n.雀斑，斑点( freckle的名词复数 ) | |
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deficient
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| adj.不足的，不充份的，有缺陷的 | |
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tinge
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| vt.(较淡)着色于，染色；使带有…气息；n.淡淡色彩，些微的气息 | |
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incisive
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| adj.敏锐的，机敏的，锋利的，切入的 | |
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marshy
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| adj.沼泽的 | |
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hoofs
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| n.（兽的）蹄，马蹄( hoof的名词复数 )v.（兽的）蹄，马蹄( hoof的第三人称单数 ) | |
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catching
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| adj.易传染的，有魅力的，迷人的，接住 | |
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antennae
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| n.天线；触角 | |
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knuckles
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| n.（指人）指关节( knuckle的名词复数 )；（指动物）膝关节，踝v.（指人）指关节( knuckle的第三人称单数 )；（指动物）膝关节，踝 | |
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freckled
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| adj.雀斑；斑点；晒斑；（使）生雀斑v.雀斑，斑点( freckle的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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forth
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| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
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mighty
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| adj.强有力的；巨大的 | |
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professed
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| 公开声称的，伪称的，已立誓信教的 | |
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neatly
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| adv.整洁地，干净地，灵巧地，熟练地 | |
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adversary
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| adj.敌手，对手 | |
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millennium
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| n.一千年，千禧年；太平盛世 | |
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commissioners
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| n.专员( commissioner的名词复数 )；长官；委员；政府部门的长官 | |
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reign
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| n.统治时期，统治，支配，盛行；v.占优势 | |
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dismal
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| adj.阴沉的，凄凉的，令人忧郁的，差劲的 | |
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approbation
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| n.称赞；认可 | |
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wither
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| vt.使凋谢，使衰退，(用眼神气势等)使畏缩；vi.枯萎，衰退，消亡 | |
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ornament
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| v.装饰，美化；n.装饰，装饰物 | |
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perch
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| n.栖木，高位，杆；v.栖息，就位，位于 | |
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39
modifications
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| n.缓和( modification的名词复数 )；限制；更改；改变 | |
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40
susceptible
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| adj.过敏的，敏感的；易动感情的，易受感动的 | |
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41
demonstration
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| n.表明，示范，论证，示威 | |
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prospect
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| n.前景，前途；景色，视野 | |
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43
orthography
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| n.拼字法，拼字式 | |
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etymology
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| n.语源；字源学 | |
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45
prosody
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| n.诗体论，作诗法 | |
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46
algebra
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| n.代数学 | |
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47
vocal
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| adj.直言不讳的；嗓音的；n.[pl.]声乐节目 | |
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48
stony
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| adj.石头的，多石头的，冷酷的，无情的 | |
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honourable
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| adj.可敬的；荣誉的，光荣的 | |
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50
privy
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| adj.私用的；隐密的 | |
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51
overdone
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| v.做得过分( overdo的过去分词 )；太夸张；把…煮得太久；（工作等）过度 | |
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52
infinitely
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| adv.无限地，无穷地 | |
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vessels
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| n.血管( vessel的名词复数 )；船；容器；（具有特殊品质或接受特殊品质的）人 | |
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54
wilt
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| v.(使)植物凋谢或枯萎；(指人)疲倦，衰弱 | |
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55
outright
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| adv.坦率地；彻底地；立即；adj.无疑的；彻底的 | |
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56
lurking
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| 潜在 | |
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maim
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| v.使残废，使不能工作，使伤残 | |
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