Hard Times | Page 6

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 overdone, M'Choakumchild. If he had only learnt a little less,
how infinitely 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 vessels 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 wilt always kill outright the robber
Fancy lurking within - or sometimes only maim him and distort him!


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 hares. Almost as soon as they
could run alone, they had been made 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 graminivorous
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, fire-proof
from top to bottom; mechanical lifts for the housemaids, with all their brushes and
brooms; everything that heart could desire.
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