Hard Times | Page 9

Mr. Bounderby. 'For years, ma'am, I was one of
the most miserable little wretches ever seen. I was so sickly, that I was always moaning
and groaning. I was so ragged and dirty, that you wouldn't have touched me with a pair of
tongs.'
Mrs. Gradgrind faintly looked at the tongs, as the most appropriate thing her imbecility
could think of doing.

'How I fought through it, I don't know,' said Bounderby. 'I was determined, I suppose. I
have been a determined character in later life, and I suppose I was then. Here I am, Mrs.
Gradgrind, anyhow, and nobody to thank for my being here, but myself.'
Mrs. Gradgrind meekly and weakly hoped that his mother -
'My mother? Bolted, ma'am!' said Bounderby.
Mrs. Gradgrind, stunned as usual, collapsed and gave it up.
'My mother left me to my grandmother,' said Bounderby; 'and, according to the best of
my remembrance, my grandmother was the wickedest and the worst old woman that ever
lived. If I got a little pair of shoes by any chance, she would take 'em off and sell 'em for
drink. Why, I have known that grandmother of mine lie in her bed and drink her four-teen
glasses of liquor before breakfast!'
Mrs. Gradgrind, weakly smiling, and giving no other sign of vitality, looked (as she
always did) like an indifferently executed transparency of a small female figure, without
enough light behind it.
'She kept a chandler's shop,' pursued Bounderby, 'and kept me in an egg-box. That was
the cot of my infancy; an old egg-box. As soon as I was big enough to run away, of
course I ran away. Then I became a young vagabond; and instead of one old woman
knocking me about and starving me, everybody of all ages knocked me about and starved
me. They were right; they had no business to do anything else. I was a nuisance, an
incumbrance, and a pest. I know that very well.'
His pride in having at any time of his life achieved such a great social distinction as to be
a nuisance, an incumbrance, and a pest, was only to be satisfied by three sonorous
repetitions of the boast.
'I was to pull through it, I suppose, Mrs. Gradgrind. Whether I was to do it or not, ma'am,
I did it. I pulled through it, though nobody threw me out a rope. Vagabond, errand-boy,
vagabond, labourer, porter, clerk, chief manager, small partner, Josiah Bounderby of
Coketown. Those are the antecedents, and the culmination. Josiah Bounderby of
Coketown learnt his letters from the outsides of the shops, Mrs. Gradgrind, and was first
able to tell the time upon a dial-plate, from studying the steeple clock of St. Giles's
Church, London, under the direction of a drunken cripple, who was a convicted thief, and
an incorrigible vagrant. Tell Josiah Bounderby of Coketown, of your district schools and
your model schools, and your training schools, and your whole kettle-of-fish of schools;
and Josiah Bounderby of Coketown, tells you plainly, all right, all correct - he hadn't such
advantages - but let us have hard-headed, solid-fisted people - the education that made
him won't do for everybody, he knows well - such and such his education was, however,
and you may force him to swallow boiling fat, but you shall never force him to suppress
the facts of his life.'
Being heated when he arrived at this climax, Josiah Bounderby of Coketown stopped. He
stopped just as his eminently practical friend, still accompanied by the two young culprits,

entered the room. His eminently practical friend, on seeing him, stopped also, and gave
Louisa a reproachful look that plainly said, 'Behold your Bounderby!'
'Well!' blustered Mr. 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. Then what would you have done, I should like to
know?'
Mr. Gradgrind did not seem favourably impressed by these cogent remarks. He frowned
impatiently.
'As if, with my head in its present throbbing state, you couldn't go and look at the shells
and minerals and things provided for you, instead of circuses!' said Mrs. Gradgrind. 'You
know, as well as I do, no young people have circus masters, or keep circuses in cabinets,
or attend lectures about circuses. What can