Hard Times | Page 5

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 dismal 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 approbation.
'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 wither, 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 ornament, 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 perch 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 modifications (in
primary colours) of mathematical figures which are susceptible of proof and
demonstration. 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 prospect 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. Orthography,
etymology, syntax, and prosody, biography, astronomy, geography, and general
cosmography, the sciences of compound proportion, algebra, land-surveying and
levelling, vocal music, and drawing from models, were all at the ends of his ten chilled
fingers. He had worked his stony way into Her Majesty's most Honourable Privy
Council's