Multimedia Mania/abacus-multimedia-mania.iso/dp/0057/00576.txt

Text File | 1993-07-27 | 11KB | 216 lines

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$Title{Hard Times
Chapter III}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Dickens, Charles}
$Affiliation{}
$Subject{gradgrind
little
thomas
father
like
louisa
stone
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practical
eminently
see
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}
$Date{}
$Log{See Stone Lodge*0057601.scf
}
Title:       Hard Times
Book:        Book The First: Sowing
Author:      Dickens, Charles

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 bares.
Almost as soon as they could run alone, they had been 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 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
gramnivorous 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 account-book.  Gas and
ventilation, drainage and water-service, all of the primest quality.  Iron
clamps and girders, fireproof from top to bottom; mechanical lifts for the
housemaid, with all their brushes and brooms; everything that heart could
desire.

[See Stone Lodge: A calculated, cast up, balanced, and proved house.]

     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 at!

     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 Shakesperean 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 hippo-comedietta 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 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."

     "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.