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00574.txt
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1993-07-27
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$Unique_ID{bob00574}
$Pretitle{}
$Title{Hard Times
Chapter I}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Dickens, Charles}
$Affiliation{}
$Subject{facts
speaker's
emphasis
helped
square
}
$Date{}
$Log{}
Title: Hard Times
Book: Book The First: Sowing
Author: Dickens, Charles
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 emphasised 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
stowed 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.