Charles Dickens

“ Sparsit sat at the window, with her hands before her, not thinking much of the sounds of evening; the whooping of boys, the barking of dogs, the rumbling of wheels, the steps and voices of passengers, the shrill street cries, the clogs upon the pavement when it was their hour for going by, the shutting-up of shop-shutters. Not until the light porter announced that her nocturnal sweetbread was ready, did Mrs. Sparsit arouse herself from her reverie, and convey her dense black eyebrows—by that time creased with meditation, as if they needed ironing out-up-stairs. ”

“ Utilitarian economists, skeletons of schoolmasters, Commissioners of Fact, genteel and used-up infidels, gabblers of many little dog’s-eared creeds, the poor you will have always with you. Cultivate in them, while there is yet time, the utmost graces of the fancies and affections, to adorn their lives so much in need of ornament; or, in the day of your triumph, when romance is utterly driven out of their souls, and they and a bare existence stand face to face, Reality will take a wolfish turn, and make an end of you. ”

“ Every night, Sissy went to Rachael’s lodging, and sat with her in her small neat room. All day, Rachael toiled as such people must toil, whatever their anxieties. The smoke-serpents were indifferent who was lost or found, who turned out bad or good; the melancholy mad elephants, like the Hard Fact men, abated nothing of their set routine, whatever happened. Day and night again, day and night again. The monotony was unbroken. Even Stephen Blackpool’s disappearance was falling into the general way, and becoming as monotonous a wonder as any piece of machinery in Coketown. ”

“ Sparsit returned, in effect, though not of the Mahomedan persuasion: ‘To hear is to obey.’
Now, Mrs. Sparsit was not a poetical woman; but she took an idea in the nature of an allegorical fancy, into her head. Much watching of Louisa, and much consequent observation of her impenetrable demeanour, which keenly whetted and sharpened Mrs. Sparsit’s edge, must have given her as it were a lift, in the way of inspiration. She erected in her mind a mighty Staircase, with a dark pit of shame and ruin at the bottom; and down those stairs, from day to day and hour to hour, she saw Louisa coming. ”

“ Did Louisa see these things? Such things were to be.
Herself again a wife—a mother—lovingly watchful of her children, ever careful that they should have a childhood of the mind no less than a childhood of the body, as knowing it to be even a more beautiful thing, and a possession, any hoarded scrap of which, is a blessing and happiness to the wisest? Did Louisa see this? Such a thing was never to be.
But, happy Sissy’s happy children loving her; all children loving her; she, grown learned in childish lore; thinking no innocent and pretty fancy ever to be despised ”

“ It was very strange that a young gentleman who had never been left to his own guidance for five consecutive minutes, should be incapable at last of governing himself; but so it was with Tom. It was altogether unaccountable that a young gentleman whose imagination had been strangled in his cradle, should be still inconvenienced by its ghost in the form of grovelling sensualities; but such a monster, beyond all doubt, was Tom.
‘Do you smoke?’ asked Mr. James Harthouse, when they came to the hotel. ”

“ Gradgrind regularly answered, ‘No, Jupe, nothing of the sort,’ the trembling of Sissy’s lip would be repeated in Louisa’s face, and her eyes would follow Sissy with compassion to the door. Mr. Gradgrind usually improved these occasions by remarking, when she was gone, that if Jupe had been properly trained from an early age she would have remonstrated to herself on sound principles the baselessness of these fantastic hopes. Yet it did seem (though not to him, for he saw nothing of it) as if fantastic hope could take as strong a hold as Fact. ”

“ Mr. Gradgrind was quite moved by his success, and by this testimony to it. ‘My dear Louisa,’ said he, ‘you abundantly repay my care. Kiss me, my dear girl.’
So, his daughter kissed him. Detaining her in his embrace, he said, ‘I may assure you now, my favourite child, that I am made happy by the sound decision at which you have arrived. Mr. Bounderby is a very remarkable man; and what little disparity can be said to exist between you—if any—is more than counterbalanced by the tone your mind has acquired. ”

“ Thou knowest who said, “Let him who is without sin among you cast the first stone at her!” There have been plenty to do that. Thou art not the man to cast the last stone, Stephen, when she is brought so low.’
‘O Rachael, Rachael!’
‘Thou hast been a cruel sufferer, Heaven reward thee!’ she said, in compassionate accents. ‘I am thy poor friend, with all my heart and mind.’
The wounds of which she had spoken, seemed to be about the neck of the self-made outcast. ”

“ It is a dangerous thing to see anything in the sphere of a vain blusterer, before the vain blusterer sees it himself. Mr. Bounderby felt that Mrs. Sparsit had audaciously anticipated him, and presumed to be wiser than he. Inappeasably indignant with her for her triumphant discovery of Mrs. Pegler, he turned this presumption, on the part of a woman in her dependent position, over and over in his mind, until it accumulated with turning like a great snowball. ”

“ 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 antennæ 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. ”

“ E. W. B. Childers answered.
‘Nine oils, Merrylegs, missing tips, garters, banners, and Ponging, eh!’ ejaculated Bounderby, with his laugh of laughs. ‘Queer sort of company, too, for a man who 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 had known you were coming,’ retorted Master Kidderminster, nothing abashed. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Thus easily did Stephen Blackpool fall into the loneliest of lives, the life of solitude among a familiar crowd. The stranger in the land who looks into ten thousand faces for some answering look and never finds it, is in cheering society as compared with him who passes ten averted faces daily, that were once the countenances of friends. Such experience was to be Stephen’s now, in every waking moment of his life ”

“ His leaning against the chimney-piece reminded him of the night with the whelp. It was the self-same chimney-piece, and somehow he felt as if he were the whelp to-night. He could make no way at all.
‘I suppose a man never was placed in a more ridiculous position,’ he said, after looking down, and looking up, and laughing, and frowning, and walking off, and walking back again. ‘But I see no way out of it. What will be, will be. This will be, I suppose. I must take off myself, I imagine—in short, I engage to do it.’
Sissy rose. ”

“ 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 I wish I hadn’t. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Harthouse,’ returned Sissy, with a blending of gentleness and steadiness that quite defeated him, and with a simple confidence in his being bound to do what she required, that held him at a singular disadvantage, ‘the only reparation that remains with you, is to leave here immediately and finally. I am quite sure that you can mitigate in no other way the wrong and harm you have done. ”

“ Mr. Bounderby away and Mrs. Sparsit away. Mrs. Sparsit away? Who could have been reduced to sudden extremity for the company of that griffin!
‘Well! I don’t know,’ said Tom, who had his own reasons for being uneasy about it. ‘She was off somewhere at daybreak this morning. She’s always full of mystery; I hate her. So I do that white chap; he’s always got his blinking eyes upon a fellow.’
‘Where were you last night, Tom?’
‘Where was I last night!’ said Tom. ‘Come! I like that. I was waiting for you, Mr. Harthouse, till it came down as I never saw it come down before. ”

“ Bounderby carried it off in these terms, holding the door open for the company to depart, there was a blustering sheepishness upon him, at once extremely crestfallen and superlatively absurd. Detected as the Bully of humility, who had built his windy reputation upon lies, and in his boastfulness had put the honest truth as far away from him as if he had advanced the mean claim (there is no meaner) to tack himself on to a pedigree, he cut a most ridiculous figure. ”

“ Stephen bent over his loom, quiet, watchful, and steady. A special contrast, as every man was in the forest of looms where Stephen worked, to the crashing, smashing, tearing piece of mechanism at which he laboured. Never fear, good people of an anxious turn of mind, that Art will consign Nature to oblivion. ”

“ Gradgrind, who was 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, says M’Choakumchild, yonder baby just able to walk, and I will engage that it shall never wonder. ”

“ Then, why don’t they improve it, ma’am! It’s the first consideration of a rational creature, and it’s what they pretend to want.’
‘Pretend indeed!’ said Mrs. Sparsit.
‘I am sure we are constantly hearing, ma’am, till it becomes quite nauseous, concerning their wives and families,’ said Bitzer. ‘Why look at me, ma’am! I don’t want a wife and family. Why should they?’
‘Because they are improvident,’ said Mrs. Sparsit.
‘Yes, ma’am,’ returned Bitzer, ‘that’s where it is. If they were more provident and less perverse, ma’am, what would they do? ”

“ If you want a speech this morning, my friend and father-in-law, Tom Gradgrind, is a Member of Parliament, and you know where to get it. I am not your man. However, if I feel a little independent when I look around this table to-day, and reflect how little I thought of marrying Tom Gradgrind’s daughter when I was a ragged street-boy, who never washed his face unless it was at a pump, and that not oftener than once a fortnight, I hope I may be excused. ”

“ Sparsit softly crushed her way through the thick undergrowth, so intent upon her object that she probably would have done no less, if the wood had been a wood of adders.
Hark!
The smaller birds might have tumbled out of their nests, fascinated by the glittering of Mrs. Sparsit’s eyes in the gloom, as she stopped and listened.
Low voices close at hand. His voice and hers. The appointment was a device to keep the brother away! There they were yonder, by the felled tree.
Bending low among the dewy grass, Mrs. Sparsit advanced closer to them. ”

“ It wasn’t as if she gave up another lover for old Bounderby; but still it was a good thing in her.’
‘Perfectly delightful. And she gets on so placidly.’
‘Oh,’ returned Tom, with contemptuous patronage, ‘she’s a regular girl. A girl can get on anywhere. She has settled down to the life, and she don’t mind. It does just as well as another. Besides, though Loo is a girl, she’s not a common sort of girl. She can shut herself up within herself, and think—as I have often known her sit and watch the fire—for an hour at a stretch.’
‘Ay, ay? Has resources of her own,’ said Harthouse, smoking quietly. ”

“ 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 ”

“ Mr. James Harthouse passed a whole night and a day in a state of so much hurry, that the World, with its best glass in his eye, would scarcely have recognized him during that insane interval, as the brother Jem of the honourable and jocular member. He was positively agitated. He several times spoke with an emphasis, similar to the vulgar manner. He went in and went out in an unaccountable way, like a man without an object. He rode like a highwayman. In a word, he was so horribly bored by existing circumstances, that he forgot to go in for boredom in the manner prescribed by the authorities. ”