HARD TIMES


By Charles Dickens


Book 1: Sowing

Chapter 1

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 schoolroom, 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 stored 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.


Chapter 2

Murdering The Innocents

Thomas Gradgrind, sir. A man of realities. A man of fact and calculations. 
A man who proceeds upon the principle that two and two are four, and 
nothing over, and who is not to be talked into allowing for anything over. 
Thomas Gradgrind, sir - peremptorily Thomas - Thomas Gradgrind. With a rule 
and a pair of scales, and the multiplication table always in his pocket, 
sir, ready to weigh and measure any parcel of human nature, and tell you 
exactly what it comes to. It is a mere question of figures, a case of 
simple arithmetic. You might hope to get some other nonsensical belief into 
the head of George Gradgrind, or Augustus Gradgrind, or John Gradgrind, or 
Joseph Gradgrind (all suppositious, non-existent persons), but into the 
head of Thomas Gradgrind - no, sir!
In such terms Mr Gradgrind always mentally introduced himself, whether to 
his private circle of acquaintance, or to the public in general. In such 
terms, no doubt, substituting the words "boys and girls", for "sir", Thomas 
Gradgrind now presented Thomas Gradgrind to the little pitchers before him, 
who were to be filled so full of facts.
Indeed, as he eagerly sparkled at them from the cellarage before mentioned, 
he seemed a kind of cannon loaded to the muzzle with facts, and prepared to 
blow them clean out of the regions of childhood at one discharge. He seemed 
a galvanising apparatus, too, charged with a grim mechanical substitute for 
the tender young imaginations that were to be stormed away.
"Girl number twenty," said Mr Gradgrind, squarely pointing with his square 
forefinger, "I don't know that girl. Who is that girl? "
"Sissy Jupe, sir," explained number twenty, blushing, standing up, and 
curtseying.
"Sissy is not a name," said Mr Gradgrind. "Don't call yourself Sissy. Call 
yourself Cecilia."
"It's father as calls me Sissy, sir," returned the young girl in a 
trembling voice, and with another curtsey.
"Then he has no business to do it," said Mr Gradgrind. "Tell him he 
mustn't. Cecilia Jupe. Let me see. What is your father?"
"He belongs to the horse-riding, if you please, sir."
Mr Gradgrind frowned, and waved off the objectionable calling with his 
hand.
"We don't want to know anything about that, here. You mustn't tell us about 
that, here. Your father breaks horses, don't he?"
"If you please, sir, when they can get any to break, they do break horses 
in the ring, sir."
"You mustn't tell us about the ring, here. Very well, then. Describe your 
father as a horse-breaker. He doctors sick horses, I dare say?"
"Oh yes, sir."
"Very well, then. He is a veterinary surgeon, a farrier and horse-breaker. 
Give me your definition of a horse."
(Sissy Jupe thrown into the greatest alarm by this demand.)
"Girl number twenty unable to define a horse!" said Mr Gradgrind, for the 
general behoof of all the little pitchers. "Girl number twenty possessed of 
no facts, in reference to one of the commonest of animals! Some boy's 
definition of a horse. Bitzer, yours."
The square finger, moving here and there, lighted suddenly on Bitzer, 
perhaps because he chanced to sit in the same ray of sunlight which, 
darting in at one of the bare windows of the intensely whitewashed room, 
irradiated Sissy. For, the boys and girls sat on the face of the inclined 
plane in two compact bodies, divided up the centre by a narrow interval; 
and Sissy, being at the corner of a row on the sunny side, came in for the 
beginning of a sunbeam, of which Bitzer, being at the corner of a row on 
the other side, a few rows in advance, caught the end. But, whereas the 
girl was so dark-eyed and dark-haired, that she seemed to receive a deeper 
and more lustrous colour from the sun when it shone upon her, the boy was 
so light-eyed and light-haired that the selfsame rays appeared to draw out 
of him what little colour he ever possessed. His cold eyes would hardly 
have been eyes, but for the short ends of lashes which, by bringing them 
into immediate contrast with something paler than themselves, expressed 
their form. His short-cropped hair might have been a mere continuation of 
the sandy freckles on his forehead and face. His skin was so unwholesomely 
deficient in the natural tinge, that he looked as though, if he were cut, 
he would bleed white.
"Bitzer," said Thomas Gradgrind. "Your definition of a horse."
"Quadruped. Graminivorous. Forty teeth, namely twenty-four grinders, four 
eye-teeth, and twelve incisive. Sheds coat in the spring; in marshy 
countries, sheds hoofs, too. Hoofs hard, but requiring to be shod with 
iron. Age known by marks in mouth." Thus (and much more) Bitzer.
"Now girl number twenty," said Mr Gradgrind. "You know what a horse is."
She curtseyed again, and would have blushed deeper, if she could have 
blushed deeper than she had blushed all this time. Bitzer, after rapidly 
blinking at Thomas Gradgrind with both eyes at once, and so catching the 
light upon his quivering ends of lashes that they looked like the antennae 
of busy insects, put his knuckles to his freckled forehead, and sat down 
again.
The third gentleman now stepped forth. A mighty man at cutting and drying, 
he was; a government officer; in his way (and in most other people's too), 
a professed pugilist; always in training, always with a system to force 
down the general throat like a bolus, always to be heard of at the bar of 
his little Public-office, ready to fight all England. To continue in fistic 
phraseology, he had a genius for coming up to the scratch, wherever and 
whatever it was, and proving himself an ugly customer. He would go in and 
damage any subject whatever with his right, follow up with his left, stop, 
exchange, counter, bore his opponent (he always fought All England) to the 
ropes, and fall upon him neatly. He was certain to knock the wind out of 
commonsense, and render that unlucky adversary deaf to the call of time. 
And he had it in charge from high authority to bring about the great public-
office Millennium, when Commissioners should reign upon earth.
"Very well," said this gentleman, briskly smiling, and folding his arms. 
"That's a horse. Now, let me ask you girls and boys, would you paper a room 
with representations of horses?"
After a pause, one half of the children cried in chorus, "Yes, 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 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 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 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 3

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, fireproof 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 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 neither 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 Horseriding" which claimed 
their suffrages. Sleary himself, a stout modern statue with a moneybox 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 hundredweight 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 Shakespearean 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 
hippocomedietta 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. 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.


Chapter 4

Mr Bounderby

Not being Mrs Grundy, who was Mr Bounderby?
Why, Mr Bounderby was as near being Mr Gradgrind's bosom friend, as a man 
perfectly devoid of sentiment can approach that spiritual relationship 
towards another man perfectly devoid of sentiment. So near was Mr Bounderby 
- or, if the reader should prefer it, so far off.
He was a rich man: banker, merchant, manufacturer, and what not. A big, 
loud man, with a stare and a metallic laugh. A man made out of a coarse 
material, which seemed to have been stretched to make so much of him. A man 
with a great puffed head and forehead, swelled veins in his temples, and 
such a strained skin to his face that it seemed to hold his eyes open and 
lift his eyebrows up. A man with a pervading appearance on him of being 
inflated like a balloon, and ready to start. A man who could never 
sufficiently vaunt himself a self-made man. A man who was always 
proclaiming, through that brassy speaking-trumpet of a voice of his, his 
old ignorance and his old poverty. A man who was the Bully of humility.
A year or two younger than his eminently practical friend, Mr Bounderby 
looked older; his seven or eight and forty might have had the seven or 
eight added to it again, without surprising anybody. He had not much hair. 
One might have fancied he had talked it off; and that what was left, all 
standing up in disorder, was in that condition from being constantly blown 
about by his windy boastfulness.
In the formal drawing-room of Stone Lodge, standing on the hearth-rug, 
warming himself before the fire, Mr Bounderby delivered some observations 
to Mrs Gradgrind on the circumstance of its being his birthday. He stood 
before the fire, partly because it was a cool spring afternoon, though the 
sun shone; partly because the shade of Stone Lodge was always haunted by 
the ghost of damp mortar; partly because he thus took up a commanding 
position, from which to subdue Mrs Gradgrind.
"I hadn't a shoe to my foot. As to a stocking, I didn't know such a thing 
by name. I passed the day in a ditch, and the night in a pigsty. That's the 
way I spent my tenth birthday. Not that a ditch was new to me, for I was 
born in a ditch."
Mrs Gradgrind, a little, thin, white, pink-eyed bundle of shawls, of 
surpassing feebleness, mental and bodily; who was always taking physic 
without any effect, and who, whenever she showed a symptom of coming to 
life, was invariably stunned by some weighty piece of fact tumbling on her; 
Mrs Gradgrind hoped it was a dry ditch?
"No! As wet as a sop. A foot of water in it," said Mr Bounderby.
"Enough to give a baby cold," Mrs Gradgrind considered.
"Cold? I was born with inflammation of the lungs, and of everything else, I 
believe, that was capable of inflammation," returned 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 fourteen 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 
Cocktown, 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 know 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 you possibly want to know of circuses then? I am sure 
you have enough to do, if that's what you want. With my head in its present 
state, I couldn't remember the mere names of half the facts you have got to 
attend to."
"That's the reason!" pouted Louisa.
"Don't tell me that's the reason, because it can be nothing of the sort," 
said Mrs Gradgrind. "Go and be somethingological directly." Mrs Gradgrind 
was not a scientific character, and usually dismissed her children to their 
studies with this general injunction to choose their pursuit.
In truth, Mrs Gradgrind's stock of facts in general was woefully defective; 
but Mr Gradgrind in raising her to her high matrimonial position, had been 
influenced by two reasons. Firstly, she was most satisfactory as a question 
of figures; and, secondly, she had "no nonsense" about her. By nonsense he 
meant fancy; and truly it is probable she was as free from any alloy of 
that nature, as any human being not arrived at the perfection of an 
absolute idiot, ever was.
The simple circumstance of being left alone with her husband and Mr 
Bounderby, was sufficient to stun this admirable lady again, without 
collision between herself and any other fact. So, she once more died away, 
and nobody minded her.
"Bounderby," said Mr Gradgrind, drawing a chair to the fireside, "you are 
always so interested in my young people - particularly in Louisa - that I 
make no apology for saying to you, I am very much vexed by this discovery. 
I have systematically devoted myself (as you know) to the education of the 
reason of my family. The reason is (as you know) the only faculty to which 
education should be addressed. And yet, Bounderby, it would appear from 
this unexpected circumstance of today, though in itself a trifling one, as 
if something had crept into Thomas's and Louisa's minds which is - or 
rather, which is not - I don't know that I can express myself better than 
by saying - which has never been intended to be developed, and in which 
their reason has no part."
"There certainly is no reason in looking with interest at a parcel of 
vagabonds," returned Bounderby. "When I was a vagabond myself, nobody 
looked with any interest at me; I know that."
"Then comes the question," said the eminently practical father, with his 
eyes on the fire, "in what has this vulgar curiosity its rise?"
"I'll tell you in what. In idle imagination."
"I hope not," said eminently practical; "I confess, however, that the 
misgiving has crossed me on my way home."
"In idle imagination, Gradgrind," repeated Bounderby. "A very bad thing for 
anybody, but a cursed bad thing for a girl like Louisa. I should ask Mrs 
Gradgrind's pardon for strong expressions, but that she knows very well I 
am not a refined character. Whoever expects refinement in me will be 
disappointed. I hadn't a refined bringing up."
"Whether," said Mr Gradgrind, pondering with his hands in his pockets, and 
his cavernous eyes on the fire, "whether any instructor or servant can have 
suggested anything? Whether Louisa or Thomas can have been reading 
anything? Whether, in spite of all percautions, any idle storybook can have 
got into the house? Because, in minds that have been practically formed by 
rule and line, from the cradle upwards, this is so curious, so 
incomprehensible."
"Stop a bit!" cried Bounderby, who all this time had been standing, as 
before, on the hearth, bursting at the very furniture of the room with 
explosive humility. "You have one of those strollers' children in the 
school."
"Cecilia Jupe, by name," said Mr Gradgrind, with something of a stricken 
look at his friend.
"Now, stop a bit!" cried Bounderby again. "How did she come there?"
"Why, the fact is, I saw the girl myself, for the first time, only just 
now. She specially applied here at the house to be admitted, as not 
regularly belonging to our town, and - yes, you are right, Bounderby, you 
are right."
"Now, stop a bit!" cried Bounderby, once more. "Louisa saw her when she 
came?"
"Louisa certainly did see her, for she mentioned the application to me. But 
Louisa saw her, I have no doubt, in Mrs Gradgrind's presence."
"Pray, Mrs Gradgrind," said Bounderby, "what passed?"
"Oh, my poor health!" returned Mrs Gradgrind. "The girl wanted to come to 
the school, and Mr Gradgrind wanted girls to come to the school, and Louisa 
and Thomas both said that the girl wanted to come, and that Mr Gradgrind 
wanted girls to come, and how was it possible to contradict them when such 
was the fact!"
"Now I tell you what, Gradgrind!" said Mr Bounderby. "Turn this girl to the 
rightabout, and there's an end of it."
"I am much of your opinion."
"Do it at once," said Bounderby, "has always been my motto from a child. 
When I thought I would run away from my egg-box and my grandmother, I did 
it at once. Do you the same. Do this at once!"
"Are you walking?" asked his friend. "I have the father's address. Perhaps 
you would not mind walking to town with me?"
"Not the least in the world," said Mr Bounderby, "as long as you do it at 
once!"
So, Mr Bounderby threw on his hat - he always threw it on, as expressing a 
man who had been far too busily employed in making himself, to acquire any 
fashion of wearing his hat - and with his hands in his pockets, sauntered 
out into the hall. "I never wear gloves," it was his custom to say. "I 
didn't climb up the ladder in them. Shouldn't be so high up, if I had."
Being left to saunter in the hall a minute or two while Mr Gradgrind went 
upstairs for the address, he opened the door of the children's study and 
looked into that serene floorclothed apartment, which, notwithstanding its 
book-cases and its cabinets and its variety of learned and philosophical 
appliances, had much of the genial aspect of a room devoted to haircutting. 
Louisa languidly leaned upon the window looking out, without looking at 
anything, while young Thomas stood sniffing revengefully at the fire. Adam 
Smith and Malthus, two younger Gradgrinds, were out at lecture in custody; 
and little Jane, after manufacturing a good deal of moist pipe-clay on her 
face with slate-pencil and tears, had fallen asleep over vulgar fractions.
"It's all right now, Lousia; it's all right, young Thomas," said Mr 
Bounderby; "you won't do so any more. I'll answer for it's being all over 
with father. Well, Louisa, that's worth a kiss, isn't it?"
"You can take one, Mr Bounderby," returned Louisa, when she had coldly 
paused, and slowly walked across the room, and ungraciously raised her 
cheek towards him, with her face turned away.
"Always my pet; an't you, Louisa?" said Mr Bounderby. "Good-bye, Louisa!"
He went his way, but she stood on the same spot, rubbing the cheek he had 
kissed, with her handkerchief, until it was burning red. She was still 
doing this, five minutes afterwards.
"What are you about, Loo?" her brother sulkily remonstrated. "You'll rub a 
hole in your face."
"You may cut the piece out with your penknife if you like, Tom. I wouldn't 
cry!"



Chapter 5

The Key-Note

Coketown, to which Messrs. Bounderby and Gradgrind now walked, was a 
triumph of fact; it had no greater taint of fancy in it than Mrs Gradgrind 
herself. Let us strike the key-note, Coketown, before pursuing our tune.
It was a town of red brick, or of brick that would have been red if the 
smoke and ashes had allowed it; but as matters stood it was a town of 
unnatural red and black like the painted face of a savage. It was a town of 
machinery and tall chimneys, out of which interminable serpents of smoke 
trailed themselves for ever and ever, and never got uncoiled. It had a 
black canal in it, and a river that ran purple with ill-smelling dye, and 
vast piles of building full of windows where there was a rattling and a 
trembling all day long, and where the piston of the steam-engine worked 
monotonously up and down, like the head of an elephant in a state of 
melancholy madness. It contained several large streets all very like one 
another, and many small streets still more like one another, inhabited by 
people equally like one another, who all went in and out at the same hours, 
with the same sound upon the same payments, to do the same work, and to 
whom every day was the same as yesterday and tomorrow, and every year the 
counterpart of the last and the next.
These attributes of Coketown were in the main inseparable from the work by 
which it was sustained; against them were to be set off, comforts of life, 
which found their way all over the world, and elegances of life which made, 
we will not ask how much of the fine lady, who could scarcely bear to hear 
the place mentioned. The rest of its features were voluntary, and they were 
these.
You saw nothing in Coketown but what was severely workful. If the members 
of a religious persuasion built a chapel there - as the members of eighteen 
religious persuasions had done - they made it a pious warehouse of red 
brick, with sometimes (but this is only in highly ornamented examples) a 
bell in a bird-cage on the top of it. The solitary exception was the New 
Church; a stuccoed edifice with a square steeple over the door, terminating 
in four short pinnacles like florid wooden legs. All the public 
inscriptions in the town were painted alike, in severe characters of black 
and white. The jail might have been the infirmary, the infirmary might have 
been the jail, the town-hall might have been either, or both or anything 
else, for anything that appeared to the contrary in the graces of their 
construction. Fact, fact, fact, everywhere in the material aspect of the 
town; fact, fact, fact, everywhere in the immaterial. The M'Choakumchild 
school was all fact, and the school of design was all fact, and the 
relations between master and man were all fact, and everything was fact 
between the lying-in hospital and the cemetery, and what you couldn't state 
in figures, or show to be purchasable in the cheapest market and saleable 
in the dearest, was not, and never should be, world without end, Amen.
A town so sacred to fact, and so triumphant in its assertion, of course got 
on well? Why, no, not quite well. No? Dear me!
No. Coketown did not come out of its own furnaces, in all respects like 
gold that had stood the fire. First, the perplexing mystery of the place 
was, Who belonged to the eighteen denominations? Because, who ever did, the 
labouring people did not. It was very strange to walk through the streets 
on a Sunday morning, and note how few of them the barbarous jangling of 
bells that was driving the sick and nervous mad, called away from their own 
quarter, from their own close rooms, from the corners of their own streets, 
where they lounged listlessly, gazing at all the church and chapel going, 
as at a thing with which they had no manner of concern. Nor was it merely 
the stranger who noticed this, because there was a native organisation in 
Coketown itself, whose members were to be heard of in the House of Commons 
every session, indignantly petitioning for acts of parliament that should 
make these people religious by main force. Then came the Teetotal Society, 
who complained that these same people would get drunk, and showed in 
tabular statements that they did get drunk, and proved at tea parties that 
no inducement, human or Divine (except a medal), would induce them to 
forego their custom of getting drunk. Then came the chemist and druggist, 
with other tabular statements, showing that when they didn't get drunk, 
they took opium. Then came the experienced chaplain of the jail, with more 
tabular statements, outdoing all the previous tabular statements, and 
showing that the same people would resort to low haunts, hidden from the 
public eye, where they heard low singing and saw low dancing, and mayhap 
joined in it; and where A. B., aged twenty-four next birthday, and 
committed for eighteen months' solitary, had himself said (not that he had 
ever shown himself particularly worthy of belief) his ruin began, as he was 
perfectly sure and confident that otherwise he would have been a tip-top 
moral specimen. Then came Mr Gradgrind and Mr Bounderby, the two gentlemen 
at this present moment walking through Coketown, and both eminently 
practical, who could, on occasion, furnish more tabular statements derived 
from their own personal experience, and illustrated by cases they had known 
and seen, from which it clearly appeared - in short, it was the only clear 
thing in the case - that these same people were a bad lot altogether, 
gentlemen; that do what you would for them they were never thankful for it, 
gentlemen; that they were restless, gentlemen; that they never knew what 
they wanted; that they live upon the best, and bought fresh butter; and 
insisted on Mocha coffee, and rejected all but prime parts of meat, and yet 
were eternally dissatisfied and unmanageable. In short it was the moral of 
the old nursery fable:

There was an old woman, and what do you think?
She lived upon nothing but victuals and drink;
Victuals and drink were the whole of her diet,
And yet this old woman would never be quiet.

Is it possible, I wonder, that there was any analogy between the case of 
the Coketown population and the case of the little Gradgrinds? Surely none 
of us in our sober senses and acquainted with figures, are to be told at 
this time of day, that one of the foremost elements in the existence of the 
Coketown working-people had been for scores of years, deliberately set at 
naught? That there was any Fancy in them demanding to be brought into 
healthy existence instead of struggling on in convulsions? That exactly in 
the ratio as they worked long and monotonously, the craving grew within 
them for some physical relief - some relaxation, encouraging good humour 
and good spirits, and giving them a vent - some recognised holiday, though 
it were but for an honest dance to a stirring band of music, - some 
occasional light pie in which even M'Choakumchild had no finger - which 
craving must and would be satisfied aright, or must and would inevitably go 
wrong, until the laws of the Creation were repealed?
"This man lives at Pod's End, and I don't quite know Pod's End," said Mr 
Gradgrind. "Which is it, Bounderby?"
Mr Bounderby knew it was somewhere down town, but knew no more respecting 
it. So they stopped for a moment, looking about.
Almost as they did so, there came running round the corner of the street at 
a quick pace and with a frightened look, a girl whom Mr Gradgrind 
recognised. "Halloa!" said he. "Stop! Where are you going? Stop!" Girl 
number twenty stopped then, palpitating, and made him a curtsey.
"Why are you tearing about the streets," said Mr Gradgrind, "in this 
improper manner?"
"I was - I was run after, sir," the girl panted, "and I wanted to get 
away."
"Run after?" repeated Mr Gradgrind. "Who would run after you?"
The question was unexpectedly and suddenly answered for her, by the 
colourless boy, Bitzer, who came round the corner with such blind speed and 
so little anticipating a stoppage on the pavement, that he brought himself 
up against Mr Gradgrind's waistcoat and rebounded into the road.
"What do you mean, boy?" said Mr Gradgrind. "What are you doing? How dare 
you dash against - everybody - in this manner?"
Bitzer picked up his cap, which the concussion had knocked off; and 
backing, and knuckling his forehead, pleaded that it was an accident.
"Was this boy running after you, Jupe?" asked Mr Gradgrind.
"Yes, sir," said the girl reluctantly.
"No, I wasn't, sir!" cried Bitzer. "Not till she run away from me. But the 
horse-riders never mind what they say, sir; they're famous for it. You know 
the horse-riders are famous for never minding what they say," addressing 
Sissy. "It's as well known in the town as - please, sir, as the 
multiplication table isn't known to the horse-riders." Bitzer tried Mr 
Bounderby with this.
"He frightened me so," said the girl, "with his cruel faces!"
"Oh!" cried Bitzer. "Oh! An't you one of the rest! An't you a horse-rider! 
I never looked at her, sir. I asked her if she would know how to define a 
horse tomorrow, and offered to tell her again, and she ran away, and I ran 
after her, sir, that she might know how to answer when she was asked. You 
wouldn't have thought of saying such mischief if you hadn't been a horse-
rider!"
"Her calling seems to be pretty well known among 'em," observed Mr 
Bounderby. "You'd have had the whole school peeping in a row, in a week."
"Truly, I think so," returned his friend. "Bitzer, turn you about and take 
yourself home. Jupe, stay here a moment. Let me hear of your running in 
this manner any more, boy, and you will hear of me through the master of 
the school. You understand what I mean. Go along."
The boy stopped in his rapid blinking, knuckled his forehead again, glanced 
at Sissy, turned about, and retreated.
"Now, girl," said Mr Gradgrind, "take this gentleman and me to your 
father's; we are going there. What have you got in that bottle you are 
carrying?"
"Gin," said Mr Bounderby.
"Dear, no sir! It's the nine oils."
"The what?" cried Mr Bounderby.
"The nine oils, sir. To rub father with."
"Then," said Mr Bounderby, with a loud short laugh, "what the devil do you 
rub your father with nine oils for?"
"It's what our people always use, sir, when they get any hurts in the 
ring," replied the girl, looking over her shoulder, to assure herself that 
her pursuer was gone. "They bruise themselves very bad sometimes."
"Serve 'em right," said Mr Bounderby, "for being idle." She glanced up at 
his face, with mingled astonishment and dread.
"By George!" said Mr Bounderby, "when I was four or five years younger than 
you, I had worse bruises upon me than ten oils, twenty oils, forty oils 
would have rubbed off. I didn't get 'em by posture-making, but by being 
banged about. There was no rope-dancing for me; I danced on the bare ground 
and was larruped with the rope."
Mr Gradgrind, though hard enough, was by no means so rough a man as Mr 
Bounderby. His character was not unkind, all things considered; it might 
have been a very kind one indeed, if he had only made some round mistake in 
the arithmetic that balanced it, years ago. He said, in what he meant for a 
reassuring tone, as they turned down a narrow road, "And this is Pod's End; 
is it, Jupe?"
"This is it, sir, and - if you wouldn't mind, sir - this is the house."
She stopped, at twilight, at the door of a mean little public house, with 
dim red lights in it. As haggard and as shabby, as if, for want of custom, 
it had itself taken to drinking, and had gone the way all drunkards go, and 
was very near the end of it.

"It's only crossing the bar, sir, and up the stairs, if you wouldn't mind, 
and waiting there for a moment till I get a candle. If you should hear a 
dog, sir, it's only Merrylegs, and he only barks."
"Merrylegs and nine oils, eh!" said Mr Bounderby, entering last with his 
metallic laugh. "Pretty well this, for a self-made man!"


Chapter 6

Sleary's Horsemanship

The name of the public house was the Pegasus's Arms. The Pegasus's legs 
might have been more to the purpose; but, underneath the winged horse upon 
the signboard, the Pegasus's Arms was inscribed in Roman letters. Beneath 
that inscription again, in a flowing scroll, the painter had touched off 
the lines:

Good malt makes good beer,
Walk in, and they'll draw it here;
Good wine makes good brandy,
Give us a call, and you'll find it handy.

Framed and glazed upon the wall behind the dingy little bar, was another 
Pegasus - a theatrical one - with real gauze let in for his wings, golden 
stars stuck on all over him, and his ethereal harness made of red silk.
As it had grown too dusky without, to see the sign, and as it had not grown 
light enough within to see the picture, Mr Gradgrind and Mr Bounderby 
received no offence from these idealities. They followed the girl up some 
steep corner-stairs without meeting anyone, and stopped in the dark while 
she went on for a candle. They expected every moment to hear Merrylegs give 
tongue, but the highly trained performing dog had not barked when the girl 
and the candle appeared together.
"Father is not in our room, sir," she said, with a face of great surprise. 
"If you wouldn't mind walking in, I'll find him directly."
They walked in; and Sissy, having set two chairs for them, sped away with a 
quick light step. It was a mean, shabbily furnished room, with a bed in it. 
The white night-cap, embellished with two peacock's feathers and a pigtail 
bolt upright, in which Signor Jupe had that very afternoon enlivened the 
varied performances with his chaste Shakespearean quips and retorts, hung 
upon a nail; but no other portion of his wardrobe, or other token of 
himself or his pursuits, was to be seen anywhere. As to Merrylegs, that 
respectable ancestor of the highly trained animal who went aboard the ark, 
might have been accidentally shut out of it, for any sign of the dog that 
was manifest to eye or ear in the Pegasus's Arms.
They heard the doors of rooms above, opening and shutting as Sissy went 
from one to another in quest of her father; and presently they heard voices 
expressing surprise. She came bounding down again in a great hurry, opened 
a battered and mangy old hair trunk, found it empty, and looked round with 
her hands clasped and her face full of terror.
"Father must have gone down to the Booth, sir. I don't know why he should 
go there, but he must be there; I'll bring him in a minute!" She was gone 
directly, without her bonnet; with her long, dark, childish hair streaming 
behind her.
"What does she mean!" said Mr Gradgrind. "Back in a minute? It's more than 
a mile off."
Before Mr Bounderby could reply, a young man appeared at the door, and 
introducing himself with the words, "By your leaves, gentlemen!" walked in 
with his hands in his pockets. His face, close-shaven, thin, and sallow, 
was shaded by a great quantity of dark hair, brushed into a roll all round 
his head, and parted up the centre. His legs were very robust, but shorter 
than legs of good proportions should have been. His chest and back were as 
much too broad, as his legs were too short. He was dressed in a Newmarket 
coat and tight-fitting trousers; wore a shawl round his neck; smelt of lamp-
oil, straw, orange-peel, horse's provender, and sawdust; and looked a most 
remarkable sort of Centaur, compounded of the stable and the play-house. 
Where the one began, and the other ended, nobody could have told with any 
precision. This gentleman was mentioned in the bills of the day as Mr E. W. 
B. Childers, so justly celebrated for his daring vaulting act as the Wild 
Huntsman of the North American prairies; in which popular performance, a 
diminutive boy with an old face, who now accompanied him, assisted as his 
infant son: being carried upside down over his father's shoulder, by one 
foot, and held by the crown of his head, heels upwards, in the palm of his 
father's hand, according to the violent paternal manner in which wild 
huntsmen may be observed to fondle their offspring. Made up with curls, 
wreaths, wings, white bismuth, and carmine, this hopeful young person 
soared into so pleasing a Cupid as to constitute the chief delight of the 
maternal part of the spectators; but in private, where his characteristics 
were a precocious cutaway coat and an extremely gruff voice, he became of 
the Turf, turfy.
"By your leaves, gentlemen," said Mr E. W. B. Childers, glancing round the 
room. "It was you, I believe, that were wishing to see Jupe?"
"It was," said Mr Gradgrind. "His daughter has gone to fetch him, but I 
can't wait; therefore, if you please, I will leave a message for him with 
you."
"You see, my friend," Mr Bounderby put in, "we are the kind of people who 
know the value of time; and you are the kind of people who don't know the 
value of time."
"I have not," retorted Mr Childers, after surveying him from head to foot, 
"the honour of knowing you; - but if you mean that you can make more money 
of your time than I can of mine, I should judge from your appearance, that 
you are about right."
"And when you have made it, you can keep it too, I should think," said 
Cupid.
"Kidderminster, stow that!" said Mr Childers. (Master Kidderminster was 
Cupid's mortal name.)
"What does he come here cheeking us for, then?" cried Master Kidderminster, 
showing a very irascible temperament. "If you want to cheek us, pay your 
ochre at the doors and take it out."
"Kidderminster," said Mr Childers, raising his voice, "stow that! - Sir," 
to Mr Gradgrind, "I was addressing myself to you. You may or you may not be 
aware (for perhaps you have not been much in the audience), that Jupe has 
missed his tip very often, lately."
"Has - what has he missed?" asked Mr Gradgrind, glancing at the potent 
Bounderby for assistance.
"Missed his tip."
"Offered at the Garters four times last night, and never done 'em once," 
said Master Kidderminster. "Missed his tip at the banners, too, and was 
loose in his ponging."
"Didn't do what he ought to do. Was short in his leaps and bad in his 
tumbling," Mr Childers interpreted.
"Oh!" said Mr Gradgrind, "that is tip, is it?"
"In a general way that's missing his tip," Mr E. W. B. Childers answered.
"Nine oils, Merrylegs, missing tips, garters, banners, and Ponging, eh?" 
ejaculated Bounderby, with his laugh of laughs. "Queer sort of company, 
too, for a man who has raised himself."
"Lower yourself, then," retorted Cupid, "Oh Lord! if you've raised yourself 
so high as all that comes to, let yourself down a bit."
"This is a very obtrusive lad!" said Mr Gradgrind turning, and knitting his 
brows on him.
"We'd have had a young gentleman to meet you, if we had known you were 
coming," retorted Master Kidderminster, nothing abashed. "It's a pity you 
don't have a bespeak, being so particular. You're on the Tight-Jeff, ain't 
you?"
"What does this unmannerly boy mean," asked Mr Gradgrind, eyeing him in a 
sort of desperation, "by Tight-Jeff?"
"There! Get out, get out!" said Mr Childers, thrusting his young friend 
from the room, rather in the prairie manner. "Tight-Jeff or Slack-Jeff, it 
don't much signify: it's only tight-rope and slack-rope. You were going to 
give me a message for Jupe?"
"Yes, I was."
"Then," continued Mr Childers, quickly, "my opinion is, he will never 
receive it. Do you know much of him?"
"I never saw the man in my life."
"I doubt if you ever will see him now. It's pretty plain to me, he's off."
"Do you mean that he has deserted his daughter?"
"Ay! I mean," said Mr Childers, with a nod, "that he has cut. He was goosed 
last night, he was goosed the night before last, he was goosed today. He 
has lately got in the way of being always goosed, and he can't stand it."
"Why has he been - so very much - Goosed?" asked Mr Gradgrind, forcing the 
word out of himself, with great solemnity and reluctance.
"His joints are turning stiff, and he is getting used up," said Childers. 
"He has his points as a Cackler still, but he can't get a living out of 
them."
"A Cackler!" Bounderby repeated. "Here we go again!"
"A speaker, if the gentleman likes it better," said Mr E. W. B. Childers, 
superciliously throwing the interpretation over his shoulder, and 
accompanying it with a shake of his long hair - which all shook at once. 
"Now, it's a remarkable fact, sir, that it cut that man deeper, to know 
that his daughter knew of his being goosed, than to go through with it."
"Good!" interrupted Mr Bounderby. "This is good, Gradgrind! A man so fond 
of his daughter, that he runs away from her! This is devilish good! Ha! ha! 
Now, I'll tell you what, young man. I haven't always occupied my present 
station of life. I know what these things are. You may be astonished to 
hear it, but my mother ran away from me."
E. W. B. Childers replied pointedly that he was not at all astonished to 
hear it.
"Very well," said Bounderby. "I was born in a ditch, and my mother ran away 
from me. Do I excuse her for it? No. Have I ever excused her for it? Not I. 
What do I call her for it? I call her probably the very worst woman that 
ever lived in the world, except my drunken grandmother. There's no family 
pride about, me there's no imaginative sentimental humbug about me, there's 
no imaginative sentimental humbug about me. I call a spade a spade; and I 
call the mother of Josiah Bounderby of Coketown, without any fear or any 
favour, what I should call her if she had been the mother of Dick Jones of 
Wapping. So, with this man. He is a runaway rogue and a vagabond, that's 
what he is, in English."
"It's all the same to me what he is or what he is not, whether in English 
or whether in French," retorted Mr E. W. B. Childers, facing about. "I am 
telling your friend what's the fact; if you don't like to hear it, you can 
avail yourself of the open air. You give it mouth enough, you do; but give 
it mouth in your own building at least," remonstrated E. W. B. with stern 
irony. "Don't give it mouth in this building, till you're called upon. You 
have got some building of your own, I dare say, now?"
"Perhaps so," replied Mr Bounderby, rattling his money and laughing.
"Then give it mouth in your own building, will you, if you please?" said 
Childers. "Because this isn't a strong building, and too much of you might 
bring it down!"
Eyeing Mr Bounderby from head to foot again, he turned from him, as from a 
man finally disposed of, to Mr Gradgrind.
"Jupe sent his daughter out on an errand not an hour ago, and then was seen 
to slip out himself, with his hat over his eyes and a bundle tied up in a 
handkerchief under his arm. She will never believe it of him, but he has 
cut away and left her."
"Pray," said Mr Gradgrind, "why will she never believe it of him?"
"Because those two were one. Because they were never asunder. Because, up 
to this time, he seemed to dote upon her," said Childers, taking a step or 
two to look into the empty trunk. Both Mr Childers and Master Kidderminster 
walked in a curious manner; with their legs wider apart than the general 
run of men, and with a very knowing assumption of being stiff in the knees. 
This walk was common to all the male members of Sleary's company, and was 
understood to express, that they were always on horseback.

"Poor Sissy! He had better have apprenticed her," said Childers, giving his 
hair another shake, as he looked up from the empty box. "Now, he leaves her 
without anything to take to."
"It is creditable to you, who have never been apprenticed, to express that 
opinion," returned Mr Gradgrind, approvingly.
"I never apprenticed? I was apprenticed when I was seven year old."
"Oh! Indeed?" said Mr Gradgrind, rather resentfully, as having been 
defrauded of his good opinion. "I was not aware of its being the custom to 
apprentice young persons to - "
"Idleness," Mr Bounderby put in with a loud laugh. "No; by the Lord Harry! 
Nor I!"
"Her father always had it in his head," resumed Childers, feigning 
unconsciousness of Mr Bounderby's existence, "that she was to be taught the 
deuce-and-all of education. How it got into his head, I can't say; I can 
only say that it never got out. He has been picking up a bit of reading for 
her, here - and a bit of writing for her, there - and a bit of ciphering 
for her, somewhere else - these seven years."
Mr E. W. B. Childers took one of his hands out of his pockets, stroked his 
face and chin, and looked, with a good deal of doubt and a little hope, at 
Mr Gradgrind. From the first he had sought to conciliate that gentleman, 
for the sake of the deserted girl.
"When Sissy got into the school here," he pursued, "her father was as 
pleased as Punch. I couldn't altogether make out why, myself, as we were 
not stationary here, being but comers and goers anywhere. I suppose, 
however, he had this move in his mind - he was always half-cracked - and 
then considered her provided for. If you should happen to have looked in 
tonight, for the purpose of telling him that you were going to do her any 
little service," said Mr Childers, stroking his face again, and repeating 
his look, "it would be very fortunate and well-timed; very fortunate and 
well-timed."
"On the contrary," returned Mr Gradgrind. "I came to tell him that her 
connections made her not an object for the school, and that she must not 
attend any more. Still, if her father really has left her, without any 
connivance on her part - Bounderby, let me have a word with you."
Upon this, Mr Childers politely betook himself, with his equestrian walk, 
to the landing outside the door, and there stood stroking his face and 
softly whistling. While thus engaged, he overheard such phrases in Mr 
Bounderby's voice as "No. I say no. I advise you not. I say by no means." 
While, from Mr Gradgrind, he heard in his much lower tone the words, "But 
even as an example to Louisa, of what this pursuit which has been the 
subject of a vulgar curiosity, leads to and ends in. Think of it, 
Bounderby, in that point of view."
Meanwhile, the various members of Sleary's company gradually gathered 
together from the upper regions, where they were quartered, and, from 
standing about, talking in low voices to one another and to Mr Childers, 
gradually insinuated themselves and him into the room. There were two or 
three handsome young women among them, with their two or three husbands, 
and their two or three mothers, and their eight or nine little children, 
who did the fairy business when required. The father of one of the families 
was in the habit of balancing the father of another of the families on the 
top of a great pole; the father of a third family often made a pyramid of 
both those fathers, with Master Kidderminster for the apex, and himself for 
the base; all the fathers could dance upon rolling casks, stand upon 
bottles, catch knives and balls, twirl hand-basins, ride upon anything, 
jump over everything, and stick at nothing. All the mothers could (and did) 
dance, upon the slack wire, and performed rapid acts on bare-backed steeds; 
none of them were at all particular in respect of showing their legs; and 
one of them, alone in a Greek chariot, drove six in hand into every town 
they came to. They all assumed to be mighty rakish and knowing, they were 
not tidy in their private dresses, they were not at all orderly in their 
domestic arrangements, and the combined literature of the whole company 
would have produced but a poor letter on any subject. Yet there was 
remarkable gentleness and childishness about these people, a special 
inaptitude for any kind of sharp practice, and an untiring readiness to 
help and pity one another, deserving, often of as much respect, and always 
of as much generous construction, as the every-day virtues of any class of 
people in the world.
Last of all appeared Mr Sleary: a stout man as already mentioned, with one 
fixed eye and one loose eye, a voice (if it can be called so) like the 
efforts of a broken old pair of bellows, a flabby surface, and a muddled 
head which was never sober and never drunk.
"Thquire!" said Mr Sleary, who was troubled with asthma, and whose breath 
came far too thick and heavy for the letters, "Your thervant! Thith ith a 
bad piethe of bithnith, thith ith. You've heard of my Clown and hith dog 
being thuppothed to have morrithed?"
He addressed Mr Gradgrind, who answered "Yes."
"Well Thquire," he returned, taking off his hat, and rubbing the lining 
with his pocket-handkerchief, which he kept inside for the purpose. "Ith it 
you intenthion to do anything for the poor girl, Thquire?"
"I shall have something to propose to her when she comes back," said Mr 
Gradgrind.
"Glad to hear it, Thquire. Not that I want to get rid of the child, any 
more than I want to thtand in her way. I'm willing to take her prenthith, 
though at her age ith late. My voithe ith a little huthky, Thquire, and not 
eathy heard by them ath don't know me; but if you'd been chilled and 
heated, heated and chilled, chilled and heated in the ring when you wath 
young, ath often ath I have been, your voithe wouldn't have lathted out, 
Thquire, no more than mine."
"I dare say not," said Mr Gradgrind.
"What thall it be, Thquire, while you wait? Thall it be Therry? Give it a 
name, Thquire!" said Mr Sleary, with hospitable ease.
"Nothing for me, I thank you," said Mr Gradgrind.
"Don't thay nothing, Thquire. What doth your friend thay? If you haven't 
took your feed yet, have a glath of bitterth."
Here his daughter Josephine - a pretty fair-haired girl of eighteen, who 
had been tied on a horse at two years old, and had made a will at twelve, 
which she always carried about with her, expressive of her dying desire to 
be drawn to the grave by the two piebald ponies - cried "Father, hush! she 
has come back!" then came Sissy Jupe, running into the room as she had run 
out of it. And when she saw them all assembled, and saw their looks, and 
saw no father there, she broke into a most deplorable cry, and took refuge 
on the bosom of the most accomplished tight-rope lady (herself in the 
family way), who knelt down on the floor to nurse her, and to weep over 
her.
"Ith an infernal thame, upon my thoul it ith," said Sleary.
"O my dear father, my good kind father, where are you gone? You are gone to 
try to do me some good, I know! You are gone away for my sake, I am sure. 
And how miserable and helpless you will be without me, poor, poor father, 
until you come back!" It was so pathetic to hear her saying many things of 
this kind, with her face turned upward, and her arms stretched out as if 
she were trying to stop this departing shadow and embrace it, that no one 
spoke a word until Mr Bounderby (growing impatient) took the case in hand.
"Now, good people all," said he, "this is wanton waste of time. Let the 
girl understand the fact. Let her take it from me, if you like, who have 
been run away from, myself. Here, what's your name! Your father has 
absconded - deserted you - and you mustn't expect to see him again as long 
as you live."
They cared so little for plain Fact, these people, and were in that 
advanced state of degeneracy on the subject, that instead of being 
impressed by the speaker's strong common sense, they took it in 
extraordinary dudgeon. The men muttered "Shame!" and the women "Brute!" and 
Sleary, in some haste, communicated the following hint, apart to Mr 
Bounderby.
"I tell you what, Thquire. To thpeak plain to you, my opinion ith that you 
had better cut it thort, and drop it. They're a very good-natured people, 
my people, but they're accuthtomed to be quick in their movement; and if 
you don't act upon my advithe, I'm damned if I don't believe they'll pith 
you out o' winder."
Mr Bounderby being restrained by this mild suggestion, Mr Gradgrind found 
an opening for his eminently practical exposition of the subject.
"It is of no moment," said he, "whether this person is to be expected back 
at any time, or the contrary. He is gone away, and there is no present 
expectation of his return. That, I believe, is agreed on all hands."
"Thath agreed, Thquire. Thick to that!" From Sleary.
"Well then. I, who came here to inform the father of the poor girl, Jupe, 
that she could not be received at the school any more, in consequence of 
there being practical objections, into which I need not enter, to the 
reception there of the children of persons so employed, am prepared in 
these altered circumstances to make a proposal. I am willing to take charge 
of you, Jupe, and to educate you, and provide for you. The only condition 
(over and above your good behaviour) I make is, that you decide now, at 
once, whether to accompany me or remain here. Also, that if you accompany 
me now, it is understood that you communicate no more with any of your 
friends who are here present. These observations comprise the whole of the 
case."
"At the thame time," said Sleary, "I muth put in my word, Thquire, tho that 
both thides of the banner may be equally theen. If you like, Thethilia, to 
be prentitht, you know the natur of the work and you know your companionth. 
Emma Gordon, in whothe lap you're a lying at prethent, would be a mother to 
you, and Joth'phine would be a thithther to you. I don't pretend to be of 
the angel breed myself, and I don't thay but what, when you mith'd your 
tip, you'd find me cut up rough, and thwear a oath or two at you. But what 
I thay, Thquire, ith, that good tempered or bad tempered, I never did a 
horthe a injury yet, no more than thwearing at him went, and that I don't 
expect I shall begin otherwithe at my time of life, with a rider. I never 
wath much of a Cackler, Thquire, and I have thed my thay."
The latter part of this speech was addressed to Mr Gradgrind, who received 
it with a grave inclination of his head, and then remarked:
"The only observation I will make to you, Jupe, in the way of influencing 
your decision, is, that it is highly desirable to have a sound practical 
education, and that even your father himself (from what I understand) 
appears, on your behalf, to have known and felt that much."
The last words had a visible effect upon her. She stopped in her wild 
crying, a little detached herself from Emma Gordon, and turned her face 
full upon her patron. The whole company perceived the force of the change, 
and drew a long breath together, that plainly said, "she will go."
"Be sure you know your own mind, Jupe," Mr Gradgrind cautioned her; "I say 
no more. Be sure you know your own mind!"
"When father comes back," cried the girl, bursting into tears again after a 
minute's silence, "how will he ever find me if I go away!"
"You may be quite at ease," said Mr Gradgrind, calmly; he worked out the 
whole matter like a sum: "you may be quite at ease, Jupe, on that score. In 
such a case, your father, I apprehend, must find out Mr - "
"Thleary. Thath my name, Thquire. Not athamed of it. Known all over 
England, and alwayth paythe ith way."
"Must find out Mr Sleary, who would then let him know where you went. I 
should have no power of keeping you against his wish, and he would have no 
difficulty at any time, in finding Mr Thomas Gradgrind of Coketown. I am 
well known."
"Well known," assented Mr Sleary, rolling his loose eye.
"You're one of the thort, Thquire, that keepth a prethiouth thight out 
money out of the houthe. But never mind that at prethent."
There was another silence; and then she exclaimed, sobbing with her hands 
before her face, "Oh give me my clothes, give me my clothes, and let me go 
away before I break my heart!"
The women sadly bestirred themselves to get the clothes together - it was 
soon done, for they were not many - and to pack them in a basket which had 
often travelled with them. Sissy sat all the time, upon the ground, still 
sobbing, and covering her eyes. Mr Gradgrind and his friend Bounderby stood 
near the door, ready to take her away. Mr Sleary stood in the middle of the 
room, with the male members of the company about him, exactly as he would 
have stood in the centre of the ring during his daughter Josephine's 
performance. He wanted nothing but his whip.
The basket packed in silence, they brought her bonnet to her, and smoothed 
her disordered hair, and put it on. Then they pressed about her, and bent 
over her in very natural attitudes, kissing and embracing her: and brought 
the children to take leave of her; and were a tender-hearted, simple, 
foolish set of women altogether.
"Now, Jupe," said Mr Gradgrind. "If you are quite determined, come!"
But she had to take her farewell of the male part of the company yet, and 
every one of them had to unfold his arms (for they all assumed the 
professional attitude when they found themselves near Sleary), and give her 
a parting kiss - Master Kidderminister excepted, in whose young nature 
there was an original flavour of the misanthrope, who was also known to 
have harboured matrimonial views, and who moodily withdrew. Mr Sleary was 
reserved until the last. Opening his arms wide he took her by both her 
hands, and would have sprung her up and down, after the riding-master 
manner of congratulating young ladies on their dismounting from a rapid 
act; but there was no rebound in Sissy, and she only stood before him 
crying.
"Good bye, my dear!" said Sleary. "You'll make your fortun, I hope, and 
none of our poor folkth will ever trouble you, I'll pound it. I with your 
father hadn't taken hith dog with him; ith a ill-conwenienth to have the 
dog out of the billth. But on thecond thoughth, he wouldn't have performed 
without hith mathter, tho ith ath broad ath ith long!"
With that he regarded her attentively with his fixed eye, surveyed his 
company with his loose one, kissed her, shook his head, and handed her to 
Mr Gradgrind as to a horse.
"There the ith, Thquire," he said, sweeping her with a professional glance 
as if she were being adjusted in her seat, "and the'll do you juthtithe. 
Good bye, Thethilia!"
"Good bye, Cecilia!" "Good bye, Sissy!" "Good bless you, dear!" In a 
variety of voices from all the room.
But the riding-master's eye had observed the bottle of the nine oils in her 
bosom, and he now interposes with "Leave the bottle, my dear; ith large to 
carry; it will be of no uthe to you now. Give it to me!"
"No, no!" she said, in another burst of tears. "Oh no! Pray let me keep it 
for father till he comes back! He will want it when he comes back. He had 
never thought of going away, when he sent me for it. I must keep it for 
him, if you please!"
"Tho be it, my dear. (You thee how it ith, Thquire!) Farewell, Thethilia! 
My latht wordth to you ith thith, Thtick to the termth of your engagement, 
be obedient to the Thquire, and forget uth. But if, when you're grown up 
and married and well off, you come upon any horthe-riding ever, don't be 
hard upon it, don't be croth with it, give it a Bethpeak if you can, and 
think you might do wurth. People must be amuthed, Thquire, thomehow," 
continued Sleary, rendered more pursy than ever, by so much talking; "they 
can't be alwayth a working, nor yet they can't be alwayth a learning. Make 
the betht of uth; not the wurtht. I've got my living out of the horthe-
riding all my life, I know; but I conthider that I lay down the philothophy 
of the thubject when I thay to you, Thquire, make the betht of us: not the 
wurtht!"
The Sleary philosophy was propounded as they went downstairs; and the fixed 
eye of Philosophy - and its rolling eye, too - soon lost the three figures 
and the basket in the darkness of the street.


Chapter 7

Mrs Sparsit

Mr Bounderby being a bachelor, an elderly lady presided over his 
establishment, in consideration of a certain annual stipend. Mrs Sparsit 
was this lady's name; and she was a prominent figure in attendance on Mr 
Bounderby's car, as it rolled along in triumph with the Bully of humility 
inside.
For, Mrs Sparsit had not only seen different days, but was highly 
connected. She had a great aunt living in these very times called lady 
Scadgers. Mr Sparsit, deceased, of whom she was the relict, had been by the 
mother's side what Mrs Sparsit still called "a Powler." Strangers of 
limited information and dull apprehension were sometimes observed not to 
know what a Powler was, and even to appear uncertain whether it might be a 
business, or a political party, or a profession of faith. The better class 
of minds, however, did not need to be informed that the Powlers were an 
ancient stock, who could trace themselves so exceedingly far back that it 
was not surprising if they sometimes lost themselves - which they had 
rather frequently done, as respected horseflesh, blind-hookey, Hebrew 
monetary transactions, and the Insolvent Debtors Court.
The late Mr Sparsit, being by the mother's side a Powler, married this 
lady, being by the father's side a Scadgers. Lady Scadgers (an immensely 
fat old woman, with an inordinate appetite for butcher's meat, and a 
mysterious leg which had now refused to get out of bed for fourteen years) 
contrived the marriage, at a period when Sparsit was just of age, and 
chiefly noticeable for a slender body, weakly supported on two long slim 
props, and surmounted by no head worth mentioning. He inherited a fair 
fortune from his uncle, but owed it all before he came into it, and spent 
it twice over immediately afterwards. Thus when he died, at twenty-four 
(the scene of his decease, Calais, and the cause brandy), he did not leave 
his widow, from whom he had been separated soon after the honeymoon, in 
affluent circumstances. That bereaved lady, fifteen years older than he, 
fell presently at deadly feud with her only relative, Lady Scadgers; and, 
partly to spite her ladyship, and partly to maintain herself, went out at a 
salary. And here she was now, in her elderly days, with the Coriolanian 
style of nose and the dense black eyebrows which had captivated Sparsit, 
making Mr Bounderby's tea as he took his breakfast.
If Bounderby had been a Conqueror, and Mrs Sparsit a captive Princess whom 
he took about as a feature in his state processions, he could not have made 
a greater flourish with her than he habitually did. Just as it belonged to 
his boastfulness to depreciate his own extraction, so it belonged to it to 
exalt Mrs Sparsit's. In the measure that he would not allow his own youth 
to have been attended by a single favourable circumstance, he brightened 
Mrs Sparsit's juvenile career with every possible advantage, and showered 
wagon-loads of early roses all over that lady's path. "And yet, sir," he 
would say, "how does it turn out after all? Why here she is at a hundred a 
year (I give her a hundred, which she is pleased to term handsome), keeping 
the house of Josiah Bounderby of Coketown!"
Nay, he made this foil of his so very widely known, that third parties took 
it up, and handled it on some occasions with considerable briskness. It was 
one of the most exasperating attributes of Bounderby, that he not only sang 
his own praises but stimulated other men to sing them. There was a moral 
infection of clap-trap in him. Strangers, modest enough elsewhere, started 
up at dinners in Coketown, and boasted, in quite a rampant way, of 
Bounderby. They made him out to be the Royal arms, the Union-Jack, Magna 
Charta, John Bull, Habeas Corpus, the Bill of Rights, an Englishman's house 
is his castle, Church and State, and God save the Queen, all put together. 
And as often (as it was very often) as an orator of this kind brought into 
his peroration,

Princes and Lords may flourish or may fade,
A breath can make them, as a breath has made.

- it was, for certain, more or less understood among the company that he 
had heard of Mrs Sparsit.
"Mr Bounderby," said Mrs Sparsit, "you are unusually slow, sir, with your 
breakfast this morning."
"Why, ma'am," he returned, "I am thinking about Tom Gradgrind's whim;" Tom 
Gradgrind, for a bluff independent manner of speaking - as if somebody were 
always endeavouring to bribe him with immense sums to say Thomas, and he 
wouldn't; "Tom Gradgrind's whim, ma'am of bringing up the tumbling girl."
"The girl is now waiting to know," said Mrs Sparsit, "whether she is to go 
straight to the school, or up to the Lodge."
"She must wait, ma'am," answered Bounderby, "till I know myself. We shall 
have Tom Gradgrind down here presently, I suppose. If he should wish her to 
remain here a day or two longer, of course she can, ma'am."
"Of course she can if you wish it, Mr Bounderby."
"I told him I would give her a shake-down here, last night, in order that 
he might sleep on it before he decided to let her have any association with 
Louisa."
"Indeed, Mr Bounderby? Very thoughtful of you!"
Mrs Sparsit's Coriolanian nose underwent a slight expansion of the 
nostrils, and her black eyebrows contracted as she took a sip of tea.
"It's tolerably clear to me," said Bounderby, "that the little puss can get 
small good out of such companionship."
"Are you speaking of young Miss Gradgrind, Mr Bounderby?"
"Yes, ma'am, I am speaking of Louisa."
"Your observation being limited to 'little puss,'" said Mrs Sparsit, "and 
there being two little girls in question, I did not know which might be 
indicated by that expression."
"Louisa," repeated Mr Bounderby. "Louisa, Louisa."
"You are quite another father to Louisa, sir." Mrs Sparsit took a little 
more tea; and, as she bent her again contracted eyebrows over her steaming 
cup, rather looked as if her classical countenance were invoking the 
infernal gods.
"If you had said I was another father to Tom - young Tom, I mean, not my 
friend, Tom Gradgrind - you might have been nearer the mark. I am going to 
take young Tom into my office. Going to have him under my wing, ma'am."
"Indeed? Rather young for that, is he not, sir?" Mrs Sparsit's "sir," in 
addressing Mr Bounderby, was a word of ceremony, rather exacting 
consideration for herself in the use, than honouring him.
"I'm not going to take him at once; he is to finish his educational 
cramming before then," said Bounderby. "By the Lord Harry, he'll have 
enough of it, first and last! He'd open his eyes, that boy would, if he 
knew how empty of learning my young maw was, at his time of life." Which, 
by the by, he probably did know, for he had heard of it often enough. "But 
it's extraordinary the difficulty I have on scores of such subjects, in 
speaking to any one on equal terms. Here, for example, I have been speaking 
to you this morning about tumblers. Why, what do you know about tumblers? 
At the time when, to have been a tumbler in the mud of the streets, would 
have been a godsend to me, a prize in the lottery to me, you were at the 
Italian Opera. You were coming out of the Italian Opera, ma'am, in white 
satin and jewels, a blaze of splendour, when I hadn't a penny to buy a link 
to light you."
"I certainly, sir," returned Mrs Sparsit, with a dignity serenely mournful, 
"was familiar with the Italian Opera at a very early age."
"Egad, ma'am, so was I," said Bounderby, "- with the wrong side of it. A 
hard bed the pavement of it's Arcade used to make, I assure you. People 
like you, ma'am, accustomed from infancy to lie on Down feathers, have no 
idea how hard a paving-stone is, without trying it. No, no, it's of no use 
my talking to you about tumblers. I should speak of foreign dancers, and 
the West End of London, and May Fair, and lords and ladies and 
honourables."
"I trust, sir," said Mrs Sparsit, with decent resignation, "it is not 
necessary that you should do anything of that kind. I hope I have learnt 
how to accommodate myself to the changes of life. If I have acquired an 
interest in hearing of your instructive experiences, and can scarcely hear 
enough of them, I claim no merit for that, since I believe it is a general 
sentiment."
"Well, ma'am," said her patron, "perhaps some people may be pleased to say 
that they do like to hear, in his own unpolished way, what Josiah Bounderby 
of Coketown, has gone through. But you must confess that you were born in 
the lap of luxury, yourself. Come, ma'am, you know you were born in the lap 
of luxury."
"I do not, sir," returned Mrs Sparsit with a shake of her head, "deny it."
Mr Bounderby was obliged to get up from the table, and stand with his back 
to the fire, looking at her; she was such an enhancement of his position.
"And you were in crack society. Devilish high society," he said, warming 
his legs.
"It is true, sir," returned Mrs Sparsit, with an affectation of humility 
the very opposite of his, and therefore in no danger of jostling it.
"You were in the tiptop fashion, and all the rest of it," said Mr 
Bounderby.
"Yes, sir," returned Mrs Sparsit, with a kind of social widowhood upon her. 
"It is unquestionably true."
Mr Bounderby, bending himself at the knees, literally embraced his legs in 
his great satisfaction and laughed aloud. Mr and Miss Gradgrind being then 
announced, he received the former with a shake of the hand, and the latter 
with a kiss.
"Can Jupe be sent here, Bounderby?" asked Mr Gradgrind.
Certainly. So Jupe was sent there. On coming in, she curtseyed to Mr 
Bounderby, and to his friend Tom Gradgrind, and also to Louisa; but in her 
confusion unluckily omitted Mrs Sparsit. Observing this, the blustrous 
Bounderby had the following remarks to make:
"Now, I tell you what, my girl. The name of that lady by the teapot, is Mrs 
Sparsit. That lady acts as mistress of this house, and she is a highly 
connected lady. Consequently, if ever you come again into any room in this 
house, you will make a short stay in it if you don't behave towards that 
lady in your most respectful manner. Now, I don't care a button what you do 
to me, because I don't affect to be anybody. So far from having high 
connections, I have no connections at all, and I come of the scum of the 
earth. But towards that lady, I do care what you do; and you shall do what 
is deferential and respectful, or you shall not come here."
"I hope, Bounderby," said Mr Gradgrind, in a conciliatory voice, "that this 
was merely an oversight."
"My friend Tom Gradgrind suggests, Mrs Sparsit," said Bounderby, "that this 
was merely an oversight. Very likely. However, as you are aware, ma'am, I 
don't allow of even oversights towards you."
"You are very good indeed, sir," returned Mrs Sparsit, shaking her head 
with her State humility. "It is not worth speaking of."
Sissy, who all this time had been faintly excusing herself with tears in 
her eyes, was now waved over by the master of the house to Mr Gradgrind. 
She stood, looking intently at him, and Louisa stood coldly by, with her 
eyes upon the ground, while he proceeded thus:
"Jupe, I have made up my mind to take you into my house; and, when you are 
not in attendance at the school, to employ you about Mrs Gradgrind, who is 
rather an invalid. I have explained to Miss Louisa - this is Miss Louisa - 
the miserable but natural end of your late career; and you are to expressly 
understand that the whole of that subject is past, and is not to be 
referred to any more. From this time you begin your history. You are, at 
present, ignorant, I know."
"Yes, sir, very," she answered, curtseying.
"I shall have the satisfaction of causing you to be strictly educated; and 
you will be a living proof to all who come into communication with you, of 
the advantages of the training you will receive. You will be reclaimed and 
formed. You have been in the habit now of reading to your father, and those 
people I found you among, I dare say?" said Mr Gradgrind, beckoning her 
nearer to him before he said so, and dropping his voice.
"Only to father and Merrylegs, sir. At least I mean to father, when 
Merrylegs was always there."
"Never mind Merrylegs, Jupe," said Mr Gradgrind, with a passing frown. "I 
don't ask about him. I understand you to have been in the habit of reading 
to your father?"
"O yes, sir, thousands of times. They were the happiest - O, of all the 
happy times we had together, sir!"
It was only now when her sorrow broke out, that Louisa looked at her.
"And what," asked Mr Gradgrind, in a still lower voice, "did you read to 
your father, Jupe?"
"About the Fairies, sir, and the Dwarf, and the Hunchback, and the Genies," 
she sobbed out; "and about - "
"Hush!" said Mr Gradgrind, "that is enough. Never breathe a word of such 
destructive nonsense any more. Bounderby, this a case of rigid training, 
and I shall observe it with interest."
"Well," returned Mr Bounderby, "I have given you my opinion already, and I 
shouldn't do as you do. But, very well, very well. Since you are bent upon 
it, very well!"
So, Mr Gradgrind and his daughter took Cecilia Jupe off with them to Stone 
Lodge, and on the way Louisa never spoke one word, good or bad. And Mr 
Bounderby went about his daily pursuits. And Mrs Sparsit got behind her 
eyebrows and meditated in the gloom of that retreat, all the evening.


Chapter 8

Never Wonder

Let us strike the key-note again, before pursuing the tune. When she was 
half a dozen years younger, Louisa had been overheard to begin a 
conversation with her brother on one day, by saying, "Tom, I wonder" - upon 
which Mr Gradgrind, who was the person overhearing, stepped forth into the 
light, and said, "Louisa, never wonder!"
Herein lay the spring of the mechanical art and mystery of educating the 
reason without stooping to the cultivation of the sentiments and 
affections. Never wonder. By means of addition, subtraction, 
multiplication, and division, settle everything somehow, and never wonder. 
Bring to me, says M'Choakumchild, yonder baby just able to walk, and I will 
engage that it shall never wonder.
Now, besides very many babies just able to walk, there happened to be in 
Coketown a considerable population of babies who had been walking against 
time towards the infinite world, twenty, thirty, forty, fifty years and 
more. These portentous infants being alarming creatures to stalk about in 
any human society, the eighteen denominations incessantly scratched one 
another's faces and pulled one another's hair by way of agreeing on the 
steps to be taken for their improvement - which they never did; a 
surprising circumstance, when the happy adaptation of the means to the end 
is considered. Still, although they differed in every other particular, 
conceivable and inconceivable (especially inconceivable), they were pretty 
well united on the point that these unlucky infants were never to wonder. 
Body number one, said they must take everything on trust. Body number two, 
said they must take everything on political economy. Body number three, 
wrote leaden little books for them, showing how the good grown-up baby 
invariably got to the Savings-bank, and the bad grown-up baby invariably 
got transported. Body number four, under dreary pretences of being droll 
(when it was very melancholy indeed), made the shallowest pretences of 
concealing pitfalls of knowledge, into which it was the duty of these 
babies to be smuggled and inveigled. But, all the bodies agreed that they 
were never to wonder.
There was a library in Coketown, to which general access was easy. Mr 
Gradgrind greatly tormented his mind about what the people read in this 
library: a point whereon little rivers of tabular statements periodically 
flowed into the howling ocean of tabular statements, which no diver ever 
got to any depth in and came up sane. It was a disheartening circumstance, 
but a melancholy fact, that even these readers persisted in wondering.
They wondered about human nature, human passions, human hopes and fears, 
the struggles, triumphs and defeats, the cares and joys and sorrows, the 
lives and deaths, of common men and women! They sometimes, after fifteen 
hours' work, sat down to read mere fables about men and women, more or less 
like themselves, and about children, more or less like their own. They took 
Defoe to their bosoms, instead of Euclid, and seemed to be on the whole 
more comforted by Goldsmith than by Cocker. Mr Gradgrind was for ever 
working, in print and out of print, at this eccentric sum, and he never 
could make out how it yielded this unaccountable product.
"I am sick of my life, Loo. I hate it altogether, and I hate everybody 
except you," said the unnatural young Thomas Gradgrind in the hair-cutting 
chamber at twilight.
"You don't hate Sissy, Tom?"
"I hate to be obliged to call her Jupe. And she hates me," said Tom 
moodily.
"No she does not, Tom, I am sure."
"She must," said Tom. "She must just hate and detest the whole set-out of 
us. They'll bother her head off, I think, before they have done with her. 
Already she's getting as pale as wax, and as heavy as - I am."
Young Thomas expressed these sentiments sitting astride of a chair before 
the fire, with his arms on the back, and his sulky face on his arms. His 
sister sat in the darker corner by the fireside, now looking at him, now 
looking at the bright sparks as they dropped upon the hearth.
"As to me," said Tom, tumbling his hair all manner of ways with his sulky 
hands, "I am a Donkey, that's what I am. I am as obstinate as one, I am 
more stupid than one, I get as much pleasure as one, and I should like to 
kick like one."
"Not me, I hope, Tom?"
"No, Loo; I wouldn't hurt you. I made an exception of you at first. I don't 
know what this - jolly old - Jaundiced Jail," Tom had paused to find a 
sufficiently complimentary and expressive name for the parental roof, and 
seemed to relieve his mind for a moment by the strong alliteration of this 
one "would be without you."
"Indeed, Tom? Do you really and truly say so?"
"Why, of course I do. What's the use of talking about it!" returned Tom, 
chafing his face on his coat-sleeve, as if to mortify his flesh, and have 
it in unison with his spirit.
"Because, Tom," said his sister, after silently watching the sparks a 
while, "as I get older, and nearer growing up, I often sit wondering here, 
and think how unfortunate it is for me that I can't reconcile you to home 
better than I am able to do. I don't know what other girls know. I can't 
play to you, or sing to you. I can't talk to you so as to lighten your 
mind, for I never see any amusing sights or read any amusing books that it 
would be a pleasure or relief to you to talk about, when you are tired."
"Well, no more do I. I am as bad as you in that respect; and I am a Mule 
too, which you're not. If father was determined to make me either a Prig or 
a Mule, and I am not a Prig, why, it stands to reason, I must be a Mule. 
And so I am," said Tom, desperately.
"It's a great pity," said Louisa, after another pause, and speaking 
thoughtfully out of her dark corner; it's a great pity, Tom. It's very 
unfortunate for both of us."
"Oh! You," said Tom; "you are a girl, Loo, and a girl comes out of it 
better than a boy does. I don't miss anything in you. You are the only 
pleasure I have - you can brighten even this place - and you can always 
lead me as you like."
"You are a dear brother, Tom; and while you think I can do such things, I 
don't so much mind knowing better. Though I do know better, Tom, and am 
very sorry for it." She came and kissed him, and went back into a corner 
again.
"I wish I could collect all the Facts we hear so much about," said Tom, 
spitefully setting his teeth, "and all the Figures, and all the people who 
found them out; and I wish I could put a thousand barrels of gunpowder 
under them, and blow them all up together! However, when I go to live with 
old Bounderby, I'll have my revenge."
"Your revenge, Tom?"
"I mean, I'll enjoy myself a little, and go about and see something and 
hear something. I'll recompense myself for the way in which I have been 
brought up."
"But don't disappoint yourself beforehand, Tom. Mr Bounderby thinks, as 
father thinks, and is a great deal rougher, and not half so kind."
"Oh;" said Tom, laughing; "I don't mind that. I shall very well know how to 
manage and smooth old Bounderby!"
Their shadows were defined upon the wall, but those of the high presses in 
the room were all blended together on the wall and on the ceiling as if the 
brother and sister were overhung by a dark cavern. Or, a fanciful 
imagination - if such treason could have been there - might have made it 
out to be the shadow of their subject, of its lowering association with 
their future.
"What is your great mode of smoothing and managing, Tom? Is it a secret?"
"Oh!" said Tom, "if it is a secret, it's not far off. It's you. You are his 
little pet, you are his favourite; he'll do anything for you. When he says 
to me what I don't like, I shall say to him, 'My sister Loo will be hurt 
and disappointed, Mr Bounderby. She always used to tell me she was sure you 
would be easier with me than this.' That'll bring him about, or nothing 
will."
After waiting for some answering remark, and getting none, Tom wearily 
relapsed into the present time, and twined himself yawning round and about 
the rails of his chair, and rumpled his head more and more, until he 
suddenly looked up, and asked:
"Have you gone to sleep, Loo?"
"No, Tom. I am looking at the fire."
"You seem to find more to look at in it than ever I could find," said Tom. 
"Another of the advantages, I suppose, of being a girl."
"Tom," enquired his sister, slowly, and in a curious tone, as if she were 
reading what she asked in the fire, and it were not quite plainly written 
there, "do you look forward with any satisfaction to this change to Mr 
Bounderby's?"
"Why, there's one thing to be said of it," returned Tom, pushing his chair 
from him, and standing up; "it will be getting away from home."
"There's one thing to be said of it," Louise repeated in her former curious 
tone; "it will be getting away from home. Yes."
"Not but what I shall be very unwilling, both to leave you, Loo, and to 
leave you here. But I must go, you know, whether I like it or not; and I 
had better go where I can take with me some advantage of your influence, 
than where I should lose it altogether. "Don't you see?"
"Yes, Tom."
The answer was so long in coming, though there was no indecision in it, 
that Tom went and leaned on the back of her chair, to contemplate the fire 
which so engrossed her, from her point of view, and see what he could make 
of it.
"Except that it is a fire," said Tom, "it looks to me as stupid and blank 
as everything else looks. What do you see in it? Not a circus?"
"I don't see anything in it, Tom, particularly. But since I have been 
looking it, I have been wondering about you and me grown up."
"Wondering again!" said Tom.
"I have such unmanageable thoughts," returned his sister, "that they will 
wonder."
"Then I beg of you, Louisa," said Mrs Gradgrind, who had entered the door 
without being heard, "to do nothing of that description, for goodness' 
take, you inconsiderate girl, or I shall never hear the last of it from 
your father. And Thomas, it is really shameful, with my poor head 
continually wearing me out, that a boy brought up as you have been, and 
whose education has cost what yours has, should be found encouraging his 
sister to wonder, when he knows his father has expressly said that she is 
not to do it."
Louisa denied Tom's participation in the offence; but her mother stopped 
her with the conclusive answer, "Louisa, don't tell me, in my state of 
health; for unless you have been encouraged, it is morally and physically 
impossible that you could have done it."
"I was encouraged by nothing, mother, but by looking at the red sparks 
dropping out of the fire, and whitening and dying. It made me think, after 
all, how short my life would be, and how little I could hope to do in it."
"Nonsense!" said Mrs Gradgrind, rendered almost energetic. "Nonsense! Don't 
stand there and tell me such stuff, Louisa, to my face, when you know very 
well that if it was ever to reach your father's ears I should never hear 
the last of it. After all the trouble that has been taken with you! After 
the lectures you have attended, and the experiments you have seen! After I 
have heard you myself, when the whole of my right side has been benumbed, 
going on with your master about combustion, and calcination, and 
calorification, and I may say every kind of action that could drive a poor 
invalid distracted, to hear you talking in this absurd way about sparks and 
ashes! I wish," whimpered Mrs Gradgrind, taking a chair and discharging her 
strongest point before succumbing under these mere shadows of facts, "yes, 
I really do wish that I had never had a family, and then you would have 
known what it was to do without me!"


Chapter 9

Sissy's Progress

Sissy Jupe had not an easy time of it, between Mr M'Choakumchild and Mrs 
Gradgrind, and was not without strong impulses, in the first months of her 
probation, to run away. It hailed facts all day long so very hard, and life 
in general was opened to her as such a closely ruled ciphering-book, that 
surely she would have run away, but for only one restraint.
It is lamentable to think of; but this restraint was the result of no 
arithmetical progress, was self-imposed in defiance of all calculation, and 
went dead against any table of probabilities that any Actuary would have 
drawn up from the premises. The girl believed that her father had not 
deserted her; she lived in the hope that he would come back, and in the 
faith that he would be made the happier by her remaining where she was.
The wretched ignorance with which Jupe clung to this consolation, rejecting 
the superior comfort of knowing, on a sound arithmetical basis, that her 
father was an unnatural vagabond, filled Mr Gradgrind with pity. Yet, what 
was to be done? M'Choakumchild reported that she had a very dense head for 
figures; that, once possessed with a general idea of the globe, she took 
the smallest conceivable interest in its exact measurements; that she was 
extremely slow in the acquisition of dates, unless some pitiful incident 
happened to be connected therewith; that she would burst into tears on 
being required (by the mental process) immediately to name the cost of two 
hundred and forty-seven muslin caps at fourteenpence halfpenny; that she 
was as low down, in the school, as low could be; that after eight weeks of 
induction into the elements of Political Economy, she had only yesterday 
been set right by a prattler three feet high, for returning to the 
question, "What is the first principle of this science?" the absurd answer, 
"To do unto others as I would that they should do unto me."
Mr Gradgrind observed, shaking his head, that all this was very bad; that 
it showed the necessity of infinite grinding at the mill of knowledge, as 
per system, schedule, blue book, report, and tabular statements A to Z; and 
that Jupe "must be kept to it." So Jupe was kept to it, and became low-
spirited, but no wiser.
"It would be a fine thing to be you, Miss Louisa!" she said, one night when 
Louisa had endeavoured to make her perplexities for next day something 
clearer to her."
"Do you think so?"
"I should know so much, Miss Louisa. All that is difficult to me now, would 
be so easy then."
"You might not be the better for it, Sissy."
Sissy submitted, after a little hesitation, "I should not be the worse, 
Miss Louisa." To which Miss Louisa answered, "I don't know that."
There had been so little communication between these two - both because 
life at Stone Lodge went monotonously round like a piece of machinery which 
discouraged human interference, and because of the prohibition relative to 
Sissy's past career - that they were still almost strangers. Sissy, with 
her dark eyes wonderingly directed to Louisa's face, was uncertain whether 
to say more or to remain silent.
"You are more useful to my mother, and more pleasant with her than I can 
ever be," Louisa resumed. "You are pleasanter to yourself, than I am to my 
self."
"But, if you please Miss Louisa," Sissy pleaded, "I am - O so stupid!"
Louisa, with a brighter laugh than usual, told her she would be wiser by 
and by.
"You don't know," said Sissy, half crying, "what a stupid girl I am. All 
through school hours I make mistakes. Mr and Mrs M'Choakumchild call me up, 
over and over again, regularly to make mistakes. I can't help them. They 
seem to come natural to me."
"Mr and Mrs M'Choakumchild never make any mistakes themselves, I suppose, 
Sissy?"
"O no!" she eagerly returned. "They know everything."
"Tell me some of your mistakes."
"I am almost ashamed," said Sissy, with reluctance. "But today, for 
instance, Mr M'Choakumchild was explaining to us about Natural Prosperity."
"National, I think it must have been," observed Louisa.
"Yes, it was. - But isn't it the same?" she timidly asked.
"You had better say, National, as he said so," returned Louisa, with her 
dry reserve.
"National Prosperity. And he said, Now, this schoolroom is a Nation. And in 
this nation, there are fifty millions of money. Isn't this a prosperous 
nation? Girl number twenty, isn't this a prosperous nation, and a'n't you 
in a thriving state?"
"What did you say?" asked Louisa.
"Miss Louisa, I said I didn't know. I thought I couldn't know whether it 
was a prosperous nation or not, and whether I was in a thriving state or 
not, unless I knew who had got the money, and whether any of it was mine. 
But that had nothing to do with it. It was not in the figures at all," said 
Sissy, wiping her eyes.
"That was a great mistake of yours," observed Louisa.
"Yes, Miss Louisa, I know it was, now. Then Mr M'Choakumchild said he would 
try me again. And he said, This school-room is an immense town, and in it 
there are a million of inhabitants, and only five-and-twenty are starved to 
death in the streets, in the course of a year. What is your remark on that 
proportion? And my remark was - for I couldn't think of a better one - that 
I thought it must be just as hard upon those who were starved, whether the 
others were a million, or a million million. And that was wrong too."
"Of course it was."
"Then Mr M'Choakumchild said he would try me once more. And he said, Here 
are the stutterings - "
"Statistics," said Louisa.
"Yes, Miss Louisa - they always remind me of stutterings, and that's 
another of my mistakes - of accidents upon the sea. And I find (Mr 
M'Choakumchild said) that in a given time a hundred thousand persons went 
to sea on long voyages, and only five hundred of them were drowned or burnt 
to death. What is the percentage? And I said, Miss;" here Sissy fairly 
sobbed as confessing with extreme contrition to her greatest error; "I said 
it was nothing."
"Nothing, Sissy?"
"Nothing, Miss - to the relations and friends of the people who were 
killed. I shall never learn," said Sissy. "And the worst of all is, that 
although my poor father wished me so much to learn, and although I am so 
anxious to learn, because he wished me to, I am afraid I don't like it."
Louisa stood looking at the pretty modest head, as it drooped abashed 
before her, until it was raised again to glance at her face. Then she 
asked:
"Did your father know so much himself, that he wished you to be well taught 
too, Sissy?"
Sissy hesitated before replying, and so plainly showed her sense that they 
were entering on forbidden ground, that Louisa added, "No one hears us; and 
if any one did, I am sure no harm could be found in such an innocent 
question."
"No, Miss Louisa," answered Sissy, upon this encouragement, shaking her 
head; "father knows very little indeed. It's as much as he can do to write; 
and it's more than people in general can do to read his writing. Though 
it's plain to me."
"Your mother?"
"Father said she was quite a scholar. She died when I was born. She was;" 
Sissy made the terrible communication nervously; "she was a dancer."
"Did your father love her?" Louisa asked these questions with a strong, 
wild, wandering interest peculiar to her; an interest gone astray like a 
banished creature, and hiding in solitary places.
"Oh yes! As dearly as he loves me. Father loved me, first, for her sake. He 
carried me about with him when I was quite a baby. We have never been 
asunder from that time."
"Yet he leaves you now, Sissy?"
"Only for my good. Nobody understands him as I do, nobody knows him as I 
do. When he left me for my good - he never would have left me for his own - 
I know he was almost broken-hearted with the trial. He will not be happy 
for a single minute, till he comes back."
"Tell me more about him," said Louisa, "I will never ask you again. Where 
did you live?"
"We travelled about the country, and had no fixed place to live in. 
Father's a;" Sissy whispered the awful word "a clown."
"To make the people laugh?" said Louisa, with a nod of intelligence.
"Yes. But they wouldn't laugh sometimes, and then father cried. Lately, 
they very often wouldn't laugh, and he used to come home despairing. 
Father's not like most. Those who didn't know him as well as I do, and 
didn't love him as dearly as I do, might believe he was not quite right. 
Sometimes they played tricks upon him; but they never knew how he felt 
them, and shrunk up when he was alone with me. He was far, far timider than 
they thought!"
"And you were his comfort through everything?"
She nodded, with the tears rolling down her face. "I hope so, and father 
said I was. It was because I grew so scared and trembling, and because he 
felt himself to be a poor, weak, ignorant, helpless man, (those used to be 
his words), that he wanted me so much to know a great deal, and be 
different from him. I used to read to him to cheer his courage, and he was 
very fond of that. They were wrong books - I am never to speak of them here 
- but we didn't know there was any harm in them."
"And he liked them?" said Louisa, with her searching gaze on Sissy all this 
time.
"O very much! They kept him, many times, from what did him real harm. And 
often and often of a night, he used to forget all his troubles in wondering 
whether the Sultan would let the lady go on with the story, or would have 
her head cut off before it was finished."
"And your father was always kind! To the last?" asked Louisa; contravening 
the great principle, and wondering very much.
"Always, always!" returned Sissy, clasping her hands. "Kinder and kinder 
than I can tell. He was angry only one night, and that was not to me, but 
Merrylegs. Merrylegs;" she whispered the awful fact; "is his performing 
dog."
"Why was he angry with the dog?" Louisa demanded.
"Father, soon after they came home from performing, told Merrylegs to jump 
up on the backs of the two chairs and stand across them - which is one of 
his tricks. He looked at father, and didn't do it at once. Everything of 
father's had gone wrong that night, and he hadn't pleased the public at 
all. He cried out that the very dog knew he was failing, and had no 
compassion on him. Then he beat the dog, and I was frightened and said, 
'Father, father! Pray don't hurt the creature who is so fond of you! O 
Heaven forgive you, father, stop!' And he stopped, and the dog was bloody, 
and father lay down crying on the floor with his dog in his arms, and the 
dog licked his face."
Louisa saw that she was sobbing; and going to her, kissed her, took her 
hand, and sat down beside her.
"Finish by telling me how your father left you, Sissy. Now that I have 
asked you so much, tell me the end. The blame, if there is any blame, is 
mine, not yours."
"Dear Miss Louisa," said Sissy, covering her eyes, and sobbing yet; "I came 
home from the school that afternoon, and found poor father just come home 
too from the booth. And he sat rocking himself over the fire, as if he was 
in pain. And I said, 'Have you hurt yourself father?' (as he did sometimes, 
like they all did,) and he said, 'A little, my darling.' And when I came to 
stoop down and look up at his face, I saw that he was crying. The more I 
spoke to him, the more he hid his face; and at first he shook all over, and 
said nothing but 'My darling; and 'My love!'"
Here Tom came lounging in, and stared at the two with a coolness not 
particularly savouring of interest in anything but himself, and not much of 
that at present.
"I am asking Sissy a few questions, Tom," observed his sister. "You have no 
occasion to go away; but don't interrupt us for a moment, Tom dear."
"Oh! very well!" returned Tom. "Only father has brought old Bounderby home, 
and I want you to come into the drawing-room. Because if you come, there's 
a good chance of old Bounderby's asking me to dinner; and if you don't 
there's none."
"I'll come directly."
"I'll wait for you," said Tom, "to make sure."
Sissy resumed in a lower voice. "At last poor father said that he had given 
no satisfaction again, and never did give any satisfaction now, and that he 
was a shame and disgrace, and I should have done better without him all 
along. I said all the affectionate things to him that came into my heart, 
and presently he was quiet, and I sat down by him, and told him all about 
the school and everything that had been said and done there. When I had no 
more left to tell, he put his arms round my neck, and kissed me a great 
many times. Then he asked me to fetch some of the stuff he used, for the 
little hurt he had had, and to get it at the best place, which was at the 
other end of town from there; and then, after kissing me again, he let me 
go. When I had gone downstairs, I turned back that I might be a little bit 
more company to him yet, and looked in at the door, and said, 'Father dear, 
shall I take Merrylegs?' Father shook his head and said, 'No, Sissy, no; 
take nothing that's known to be mine, my darling;' and I left him sitting 
by the fire. Then the thought must have come upon him, poor, poor father! 
of going away to try something for my sake; for, when I came back he was 
gone."
"I say! Look sharp for old Bounderby, Loo!" Tom remonstrated.
"There's no more to tell, Miss Louisa. I keep the nine oils ready for him 
and I know he will come back. Every letter that I see in Mr Gradgrind's 
hand takes my breath away and blinds my eyes, for I think it comes from 
father, or from Mr Sleary about father. Mr Sleary promised to write as soon 
as ever father should be heard of, and I trust to him to keep his word."
"Do look sharp for old Bounderby, Loo!" said Tom, with an impatient 
whistle. "He'll be off if you don't look sharp!"
After this, whenever Sissy dropped a curtsey to Mr Gradgrind in the 
presence of his family, and said in a faltering way, "I beg your pardon, 
sir, for being troublesome - but - have you had any letter yet about me?" 
Louisa would suspend the occupation of the moment, whatever it was, and 
look for the reply as earnestly as Sissy did. And when Mr Gradgrind 
regularly answered, "No, Jupe, nothing of the sort," the trembling of 
Sissy's lip would be repeated in Louisa's face, and her eyes would follow 
Sissy with compassion to the door. Mr Gradgrind usually improved these 
occasions by remarking, when she was gone, that if Jupe had been properly 
trained from an early age she would have demonstrated to herself on sound 
principles the baselessness of these fantastic hopes. Yet it did seem 
(though not to him, for he saw nothing of it) as if fantastic hope could 
take as strong a hold as Fact.
This observation must be limited exclusively to his daughter. As to Tom, he 
was becoming that not unprecedented triumph of calculation which is usually 
at work on number one. As to Mrs Gradgrind, if she said anything on the 
subject, she would come a little way out of her wrappers, like a feminine 
dormouse, and say:
"Good gracious bless me, how my poor head is vexed and worried by that girl 
Jupe's so perseveringly asking, over and over again, about her tiresome 
letters! Upon my word and honour I seem to be fated, and destined, and 
ordained, to live in the midst of things that I am never to hear the last 
of. It really is a most extraordinary circumstance that it appears as if I 
never were to hear the last of anything!"
At about this point, Mr Gradgrind's eye would fall upon her; and under the 
influence of that wintry piece of fact, she would become torpid again.


Chapter 10

Stephen Blackpool

I entertain a weak idea that the English people are as hard worked as any 
people upon whom the sun shines. I acknowledge to this ridiculous 
idiosyncrasy, as a reason why I would give them a little more play.
In the hardest working part of Coketown; in the innermost fortifications of 
that ugly citadel, where Nature was as strongly bricked out as killing airs 
and gases were bricked in; at the heart of the labyrinth of narrow courts 
upon courts, and close streets upon streets, which had come into existence 
piecemeal, every piece in a violent hurry for some one man's purpose, and 
the whole an unnatural family, shouldering, and trampling, and pressing one 
another to death; in the last close nook of this great exhausted receiver, 
where the chimneys, for want of air to make a draught, were built an 
immense variety of stunted and crooked shapes, as though every house put 
out a sign of the kind of people who might be expected to be born in it; 
among the multitude of Coketown, generically called "the Hands," - a race 
who would have found more favour with some people, if Providence had seen 
fit to make them only hands, or, like the lower creatures of the sea-shore, 
only hands and stomachs - lived a certain Stephen Blackpool, forty years of 
age.
Stephen looked older, but he had had a hard life. It is said that every 
life has its roses and thorns; there seemed, however, to have been a 
misadventure or mistake in Stephen's case, whereby somebody else had become 
possessed of his roses and he had become possessed of the same somebody 
else's thorns in addition to his own. He had known, to use his words, a 
peck of trouble. He was usually called Old Stephen, in a kind of rough 
homage to the fact.
A rather stooping man, with a knitted brow, a pondering expression of face, 
and a hard-looking head sufficiently capacious, on which his iron-grey hair 
lay long and thin, Old Stephen might have passed for a particularly 
intelligent man in his condition. Yet he was not. He took no place among 
those remarkable "Hands," who, piecing together their broken intervals of 
leisure through many years, had mastered difficult sciences, and acquired a 
knowledge of most unlikely things. He held no station among the Hands who 
could make speeches and carry on debates. Thousands of his compeers could 
talk much better than he, at any time. He was a good power-loom weaver, and 
a man of perfect integrity. What more he was, or what else he had in him, 
if anything, let him show for himself.
The lights in the great factories, which looked, when they were 
illuminated, like Fairy palaces - or the travellers by express-train said 
so - were all extinguished; and the bells had rung for knocking off for the 
night, and had ceased again; and the Hands, men and women, boy and girl, 
were clattering home. Old Stephen was standing in the street, with the odd 
sensation upon him which the stoppage of the machinery always produced - 
the sensation of its having worked and stopped in his own head.
"Yet I don't see Rachael, still!" said he.
It was a wet night, and many groups of young women passed him, with their 
shawls drawn over their bare heads and held close under their chins to keep 
the rain out. He knew Rachael well, for a glance at any one of these groups 
was sufficient to show him that she was not there. At last, there was no 
more to come; and then he turned away, saying in a tone of disappointment, 
"Why, then, I ha' missed her!"
But, he had not gone the length of three streets, when he saw another of 
the shawled figures in advance of him, at which he looked so keenly that 
perhaps its mere shadow indistinctly reflected on the wet pavement - if he 
could have seen it without the figure itself moving along from lamp to 
lamp, brightening and fading as it went - would have been enough to tell 
him who was there. Making his pace at once much quicker and much softer, he 
darted on until he was very near this figure, then fell into his former 
walk, and called "Rachael!"
She turned, being then in the brightness of a lamp; and raising her hood a 
little, showed a quite oval face, dark and rather delicate, irradiated by a 
pair of very gentle eyes, and further set off by the perfect order of her 
shining black hair. It was not a face in its first bloom; she was a woman 
five and thirty years of age.
"Ah, lad! 'Tis thou?" When she had said this, with a smile which would have 
been quite expressed, though nothing of her had been seen but her pleasant 
eyes, she replaced her hood again, and they went on together.
"I thought thou wast ahind me, Rachael?"
"No."
"Early t'night, lass?"
"'Times I'm a little early, Stephen; 'times a little late. I'm never to be 
counted on, going home."
"Nor going t'other way, neither, 't seems to me, Rachael?"
"No, Stephen."
He looked at her with some disappointment in his face, but with a 
respectful and patient conviction that she must be right in whatever she 
did. The expression was not lost upon her; she laid her hand lightly on his 
arm a moment as if to thank him for it.
"We are such true friends, lad, and such old friends, and getting to be 
such old folk, now."
"No, Rachael, thou'rt as young as ever thou wast."
"One of us would be puzzled how to get old, Stephen, without t'other 
getting so too, both being alive," she answered, laughing; "but, any ways, 
we're such old friends, that t' hide a word of honest truth fro' one 
another would be a sin and a pity. 'Tis better not to walk too much 
together. 'Times, yes! 'Twould be hard, indeed, if 'twas not to be at all," 
she said, with a cheerfulness she sought to communicate to him.
"'Tis hard, anyways, Rachel."
"Try to think not; and 'twill seem better."
"I've tried a long time, and 'ta'nt got better. But thou'rt right; 'tmight 
mak fok talk, even of thee. Thou hast been that to me, Rachel, through so 
many year: thou hast done me so much good, and heartened of me in that 
cheering way, that thy word is a law to me. Ah lass, and a bright good law! 
Better than some real ones."
"Never fret about them, Stephen," she answered quickly, and not without an 
anxious glance at his face. "Let the laws be."
"Yes," he said, with a slow nod or two. "Let 'em be. Let everything be. Let 
all sorts alone. 'Tis a muddle, and that's aw."
"Always a muddle?" said Rachael, with another gentle touch upon his arm, as 
if to recall him out of the thoughtfulness, in which he was biting the long 
ends of his loose neckerchief as he walked along. The touch had its 
instantaneous effect. He let them fall, turned a smiling face upon her, and 
said, as he broke into a good-humoured laugh, "Ay, Rachael, lass, awlus a 
muddle. That's where I stick. I come to the muddle many times and agen, and 
I never get beyond it."
They had walked some distance, and were near their own homes. The woman's 
was the first reached. It was in one of the many small streets for which 
the favourite undertaker (who turned a handsome sum out of the one poor 
ghastly pomp of the neighbourhood) kept a black ladder, in order that those 
who had done their daily groping up and down the narrow stairs might slide 
out of this working world by the windows. She stopped at the corner, and 
putting her hand in his, wished him good night.
"Good night, dear lass; good night!"
She went, with her neat figure and her sober womanly step, down the dark 
street, and he stood looking after her until she turned into one of the 
small houses. There was not a flutter of her coarse shawl, perhaps, but had 
its interest in this man's eyes; not a tone of her voice but had its echo 
in his innermost heart.
When she was lost to his view, he pursued his homeward way, glancing up 
sometimes at the sky, where the clouds were sailing fast and wildly. But, 
they were broken now, and the rain had ceased, and the moon shone - looking 
down the high chimneys of Coketown on the deep furnaces below, and casting 
Titanic shadows of the steam engines at rest, upon the walls where they 
were lodged. The man seemed to have brightened with the night, as he went 
on.
His home, in such another street as the first, saving that it was narrower, 
was over a little shop. How it came to pass that any people found it worth 
their while to sell or buy the wretched little toys, mixed up in its window 
with cheap newspapers and pork (there was a leg to be raffled for tomorrow 
night), matters not here. He took his end of candle from a shelf, lighted 
it at another end of candle on the counter, without disturbing the mistress 
of the shop who was asleep in her little room, and went upstairs into his 
lodging.
It was a room, not unacquainted with the black ladder under various 
tenants; but as neat, at present, as such a room could be. A few books and 
writings were on an old bureau in a corner, the furniture was decent and 
sufficient, and though the atmosphere was tainted, the room was clean.
Going to the hearth to set the candle down upon a round three-legged table 
standing there, he stumbled against something. As he recoiled, looking down 
at it, it raised itself up into the form of a woman in a sitting attitude.
"Heaven's mercy, woman!" he cried, falling farther off from the figure. 
"Hast thou come back again!"
Such a woman! A disabled, drunken creature, barely able to preserve her 
sitting posture by steadying herself with one begrimed hand on the floor, 
while the other was so purposeless in trying to push away her tangled hair 
from her face, that it only blinded her the more with the dirt upon it. A 
creature so foul to look at, in her tatters, stains and splashes, but so 
much fouler than that in her moral infamy, that it was a shameful thing 
even to see her.
After an impatient oath or two, and some stupid clawing of herself with the 
hand not necessary to her support, she got her hair away from her eyes 
sufficiently to obtain a sight of him. Then she sat swaying her body to and 
fro, and making gestures with her unnerved arm, which seemed intended as 
the accompaniment to a fit of laughter, though her face was stolid and 
drowsy.
"Eigh lad? What, yo'r there?" Some hoarse sounds meant for this, came 
mockingly out of her at last; and her head dropped forward on her breast.
"Back agen?" she screeched, after some minutes, as if he had that moment 
said it. "Yes! And back agen. Back agen ever and ever so often. Back? Yes, 
back. Why not?"
Roused by the unmeaning violence with which she cried it out, she scrambled 
up, and stood supporting herself with her shoulders against the wall; 
dangling in one hand by the strings, a dunghill-fragment of a bonnet, and 
trying to look scornfully at him.
"I'll sell thee off again, and I'll sell thee off again, and I'll sell thee 
off a score of times!" she cried, with something between a furious menace 
and an effort at a defiant dance. "Come awa' from th' bed!" He was sitting 
on the side of it, with his face hidden in his hands. "Come awa' from 't. 
'Tis mine, and I've a right to 't!"
As she staggered to it, he avoided her with a shudder, and passed - his 
face still hidden - to the opposite end of the room. She threw herself upon 
the bed heavily, and soon was snoring hard. He sunk into a chair, and moved 
but once all that night. It was to throw a covering over her; as if his 
hands were not enough to hide her, even in the darkness.


Chapter 11

No Way Out

The Fairy palaces burst into illumination, before pale morning showed the 
monstrous serpents of smoke trailing themselves over Coketown. A clattering 
of clogs upon the pavement; a rapid ringing of bells; and all the 
melancholy mad elephants, polished and oiled up for the day's monotony, 
were at their heavy exercise again.
Stephen bent over his loom, quiet, watchful, and steady. A special 
contrast, as every man was in the forest of looms where Stephen worked to 
the crashing, smashing, tearing piece of mechanism at which he laboured. 
Never fear, good people of an anxious turn of mind, that Art will consign 
Nature to oblivion. Set anywhere, side by side, the work of God and the 
work of man; and the former, even though it be a troop of Hands of very 
small account, will gain in dignity from the comparison.
So many hundred Hands in this Mill; so many hundred horse Steam Power. It 
is known, to the force of a single pound weight, what the engine will do; 
but, not all the calculators of the National Debt can tell me the capacity 
for good or evil, for love or hatred, for patriotism or discontent, for the 
decomposition of virtue into vice, or the reverse, at any single moment in 
the soul of one of these its quiet servants, with the composed faces and 
the regulated actions. There is no mystery in it; there is an unfathomable 
mystery in the meanest of them, for ever. - Supposing we were to reserve 
our arithmetic for material objects, and to govern these awful unknown 
quantities by other means!
The day grew strong, and showed itself outside even against the flaming 
lights within. The lights were turned out, and the work went on. The rain 
fell, and the Smoke-serpents, submissive to the curse of all that tribe, 
trailed themselves upon the earth. In the waste-yard outside, the steam 
from the escape pipe, the litter of barrels and old iron, the shining heaps 
of coals, the ashes everywhere, were shrouded in a veil of mist and rain.
The work went on, until the noon-bell rang. More clattering upon the 
pavements. The looms, and wheels, and Hands all out of gear for an hour.
Stephen came out of the hot mill into the damp wind and cold wet streets, 
haggard and worn. He turned from his own class and his own quarter, taking 
nothing but a little bread as he walked along, towards the hill on which 
his principal employer lived in a red house with black outside shutters, 
green inside blinds, a black street door, up two white steps, Bounderby (in 
letters very like himself) upon a brazen plate, and a round brazen door-
handle underneath it, like a brazen full-stop.
Mr Bounderby was at his lunch. So Stephen had expected. Would his servant 
say that one of the Hands begged leave to speak to him? Message in return, 
requiring name of such Hand. Stephen Blackpool. There was nothing 
troublesome against Stephen Blackpool; yes, he might come in.
Stephen Blackpool in the parlour. Mr Bounderby (whom he just knew by 
sight), at lunch on chop and sherry. Mrs Sparsit netting at the fire-side, 
in a side-saddle attitude with one foot in a cotton stirrup. It was a part, 
at once of Mrs Sparsit's dignity and service, not to lunch. She supervised 
the meal officially, but implied that in her own stately person she 
considered lunch a weakness.
"Now, Stephen," said Mr Bounderby, "what's the matter with you?"
Stephen made a bow. Not a servile one - these Hands will never do that! 
Lord bless you, sir, you'll never catch them at that, if they have been 
with you twenty years! - and, as a complimentary toilet for Mrs Sparsit, 
tucked his neckerchief ends into his waistcoat.
"Now you know," said Mr Bounderby, taking some sherry, "we have never had 
any difficulty with you, and you have never been one of the unreasonable 
ones. You don't expect to be set up in a coach and six, and to be fed on 
turtle soup and venison, with a gold spoon, as a good many of 'em do!" Mr 
Bounderby always represented this to be the sole, immediate, and direct 
object of any Hand who was not entirely satisfied; "and therefore I know 
already that you have not come here to make a complaint. Now, you know, I 
am certain of that beforehand."
"No sir, sure I ha' not coom for nowt o' th' kind."
Mr Bounderby seemed agreeably surprised, notwithstanding his previous 
strong conviction. "Very well," he returned, "You're a steady Hand, and I 
was not mistaken. Now, let me hear what it's all about. As it's not that, 
let me hear what it is. What have you got to say? Out with it lad!"
Stephen happened to glance towards Mrs Sparsit. "I can go, Mr Bounderby, if 
you wish it," said that self-sacrificing lady, making a feint of taking her 
foot out of the stirrup.
Mr Bounderby stayed her, by holding a mouthful of chop in suspension before 
swallowing it, and putting out his left hand. Then, withdrawing his hand, 
and swallowing his mouthful of chop, he said to Stephen:
"Now you know, this good lady is a born lady, a high lady. You are not to 
suppose because she keeps my house for me, that she hasn't been very high 
up the tree - ah, up at the top of the tree! Now, if you have got anything 
to say that can't be said before a born lady, this lady will leave the 
room. If what you have got to say can be said before a born lady, this lady 
will stay where she is."
"Sir, I hope I never had nowt to say, not fitten for a born lady to year, 
sin' I were born mysen," was the reply, accompanied with a slight flush.
"Very well," said Mr Bounderby, pushing away his plate, and leaning back. 
"Fire away!"
"I ha' coom," Stephen began, raising his eyes from the floor, after a 
moment's consideration, "to ask yo yor advice. I need't overmuch. I were 
married on Eas'r Monday nineteen year sin, long and dree. She were a young 
lass - pretty enow - wi' good accounts of herseln. Well! She went bad - 
soon. Not along of me. Gonnows I were not a unkind husband to her."
"I have heard all this before," said Mr Bounderby. "She took to drinking, 
left off working, sold the furniture, pawned the clothes, and played old 
Gooseberry."
"I were patient wi' her."
("The more fool you, I think," said Mr Bounderby, in confidence to his wine-
glass.)
"I were very patient wi' her. I tried to wean her fra't ower and ower agen. 
I tried this, I tried that, I tried t'other. I ha' gone home, many's the 
time, and found all vanished as I had in the world, and her without a sense 
left to bless herseln lying on bare ground. I ha' dun't not once, not twice 
- twenty time!"
Every line in his face deepened as he said it, and put in its affecting 
evidence of the suffering he had undergone.
"From bad to worse, from worse to worsen. She left me. She disgraced 
herseln everyways, bitter and bad. She coom back, she coom back, she coom 
back. What could I do t' hinder her? I ha' walked the streets nights long, 
ere ever I'd go home. I ha' gone t' th' brigg, minded to fling myseln ower, 
and ha' no more on't. I ha' bore that much, that I were owd when I were 
young."
Mrs Sparsit, easily ambling along with her netting-needles, raised the 
Coriolanian eyebrows and shook her head, as much as to say, "The great know 
trouble as well as the small. Please to turn your humble eye in My 
direction."
"I ha' paid her to keep awa' fra' me. These five year I ha' paid her. I ha' 
gotten decent fewtrils about me agen. I ha' lived hard and sad, but not 
ashamed and fearfo' a' the minnits o' my life. Last night, I went home. 
There she lay upon my har-stone! There she is!"
In the strength of his misfortune, and the energy of his distress, he fired 
for the moment like a proud man. In another moment, he stood as he had 
stood all the time - his usual stoop upon him; his pondering face addressed 
to Mr Bounderby, with a curious expression on it, half shrewd, half 
perplexed, as if his mind were set upon unravelling something very 
difficult; his hat held tight in his left hand, which rested on his hip; 
his right arm, with a rugged propriety and force of action, very earnestly 
emphasising what he said: not least so when it always paused, a little 
bent, but not withdrawn, as he paused.
"I was acquainted with all this, you know," said Mr Bounderby, "except the 
last clause, long ago. It's a bad job; that's what it is. You had better 
have been satisfied as you were, and not have got married. However, it's 
too late to say that."
"Was it an unequal marriage, sir, in point of years?" asked Mrs Sparsit.
"You hear what this lady asks. Was it an unequal marriage in point of 
years, this unlucky job of yours?" said Mr Bounderby.
"Not e'en so. I were one-and-twenty myseln; she were twenty nighbut."
"Indeed, sir?" said Mrs Sparsit to her Chief, with great placidity. "I 
inferred, from its being so miserable a marriage, that it was probably an 
unequal one in point of years."
Mr Bounderby looked very hard at the good lady in a sidelong way that had 
an odd sheepishness about it. He fortified himself with a little more 
sherry.
"Well? Why don't you go on?" he then asked, turning rather irritably on 
Stephen Blackpool.
"I ha' coom to ask yo, sir, how I am to be ridded o' this woman." Stephen 
infused a yet deeper gravity into the mixed expression of his attentive 
face. Mrs Sparsit uttered a gentle ejaculation, as having received a moral 
shock.
"What do you mean?" said Bounderby, getting up to lean his back against the 
chimney-piece. "What are you talking about? You took her for better for 
worse."
"I mun' be ridden o' her. I cannot bear 't nommore. I ha' lived under 't so 
long, for that I ha' had'n the pity and comforting words o' th' best lass 
living or dead. Haply, but for her, I should ha' gone hottering mad."
"He wishes to be free, to marry the female of whom he speaks, I fear, sir," 
observed Mrs Sparsit in an undertone, and much dejected by the immorality 
of the people.
"I do. The lady says what's right. I do. I were a coming to 't. I ha' read 
i' th' papers that great fok (fair faw 'em a'! I wishes 'em no hurt!) are 
not bonded together for better for worse so fast, but that they can be set 
free fro' their misfortnet marriages, an marry ower agen. When they dunnot 
agree, for that their tempers is ill-sorted, they has rooms o' one kind an 
another in their houses, above a bit, and they can live asunders. We fok 
ha' only one room, an we can't. When that won't do, they ha' gowd an other 
cash, an they can say, 'This for yo', an that for me,' an they can go their 
separate ways. We can't. Spite o' all that, they can be set free for 
smaller wrongs than mine. So, I mun be ridden o' this woman, and I want t' 
know how?"
"No how," returned Mr Bounderby.
"If I do her any hurt, sir, there's a law to punish me?"
"Of course there is."
"If I flee from her, there's a law to punish me?"
"Of course there is."
"If I marry t'oother dear lass, there's a law to punish me?"
"Of course there is."
"If I was to live wi' her an not marry her - saying such a thing could be, 
which it never could or would, an her so good - there's a law to punish me, 
in every innocent child belonging to me?"
"Of course there is."
"Now, a' God's name," said Stephen Blackpool, "show me the law to help me!"
"Hem! There's a sanctity in this relation of life," said Mr Bounderby, "and 
- and - it must be kept up."
"No no, dunnot say that, sir. 'Tan't kep' up that way. Not that way. 'Tis 
kep' down that way. I'm a weaver, I were in a fact'ry when a chilt, but I 
ha' gotten een to see wi' and eern to year wi'. I read in th' papers every 
'Sizes, every Sessions - and you read too - I know it! - with dismay - how 
th' supposed unpossibility o' ever getting unchained from one another, at 
any price, on any terms, brings blood upon this land, and brings many 
common married fok to battle, murder, and sudden death. Let us ha' this, 
right understood. Mine's a grievous case, an I want - if yo will be so good 
- t'knaw the law that helps me."
"Now, I tell you what!" said Mr Bounderby, putting his hands in his 
pockets. "There is such a law."
Stephen, subsiding into his quiet manner, and never wandering in his 
attention gave a nod.
"But it's not for you at all. It costs money. It costs a mint of money."
"How much might that be?" Stephen calmly asked.
"Why, you'd have to go to Doctors' Commons with a suit, and you'd have to 
go to a court of Common Law with a suit, and you'd have to go to the House 
of Lords with a suit, and you'd have to get an Act of Parliament to enable 
you to marry again, and it would cost you (if it was a case of very plain-
sailing), I suppose from a thousand to fifteen hundred pounds," said Mr 
Bounderby. "Perhaps twice the money."
"There's no other law?"
"Certainly not."
"Why then, sir," said Stephen, turning white, and motioning with that right 
hand of his, as if he gave everything to the four winds, "'tis a muddle. 
'Tis just a muddle a'toogether, an the sooner I am dead, the better."
(Mrs Sparsit again dejected by the impiety of the people.)
"Pooh, pooh! Don't you talk nonsense, my good fellow," said Mr Bounderby, 
"about things you don't understand; and don't you call the Institutions of 
your country a muddle, or you'll get yourself into a real muddle one of 
these fine mornings. The institutions of your country are not your piece-
work, and the only thing you have got to do, is, to mind your piece-work. 
You didn't take your wife for fast and for loose; but for better for worse. 
If she has turned out worse - why, all we have got to say is, she might 
have turned out better."
"'Tis a muddle," said Stephen, shaking his head as he moved to the door. 
"'Tis a' a muddle!"
"Now, I'll tell you what!" Mr Bounderby resumed, as a valedictory address. 
"With what I shall call your unhallowed opinions, you have been quite 
shocking this lady: who, as I have already told you, is a born lady, and 
who, as I have not already told you, has had her own marriage misfortunes 
to the tune of tens of thousands of pounds - tens of Thou-sands of Pounds!" 
(he repeated it with great relish). "Now, you have always been a steady 
Hand hitherto; but my opinion is, and so I tell you plainly, that you are 
turning into the wrong road. You have been listening to some mischievous 
stranger or other - they're always about - and the best thing you can do 
is, to come out of that. Now you know;" here his countenance expressed 
marvellous acuteness; "I can see as far into a grindstone as another man; 
farther than a good many, perhaps, because I had my nose well kept to it 
when I was young. I see traces of the turtle soup, and venison, and gold 
spoon in this. Yes, I do!" cried Mr Bounderby, shaking his head with 
obstinate cunning. "By the Lord Harry, I do!"
With a very different shake of the head and deep sigh, Stephen said, "Thank 
you, sir, I wish you good day." So he left Mr Bounderby swelling at his own 
portrait on the wall, as if he were going to explode himself into it; and 
Mrs Sparsit still ambling on with her foot in her stirrup, looking quite 
cast down by the popular vices.


Chapter 12

The Old Woman

Old Stephen descended the two white steps, shutting the black door with the 
brazen door-plate, by the aid of the brazen full-stop, to which he gave a 
parting polish with the sleeve of his coat, observing that his hot hand 
clouded it. He crossed the street with his eyes bent upon the ground, and 
thus was walking sorrowfully away, when he felt a touch upon his arm.
It was not the touch he needed most at such a moment - the touch that could 
calm the wild waters of his soul, as the uplifted hand of the sublimest 
love and patience could abate the raging of the sea - yet it was a woman's 
hand too. It was an old woman, tall and shapely still, though withered by 
time, on whom his eyes fell when he stopped and turned. She was very 
cleanly and plainly dressed, had country mud upon her shoes, and was newly 
come from a journey. The flutter of her manner, in the unwonted noise of 
the streets; the spare shawl, carried unfolded on her arm; the heavy 
umbrella, and little basket; the loose long-fingered gloves, to which her 
hands were unused; all bespoke an old woman from the country, in her plain 
holiday clothes, come into Coketown on an expedition of rare occurrence. 
Remarking this at a glance, with the quick observation of his class, 
Stephen Blackpool bent his attentive face - his face, which like the faces 
of many of his order, by dint of long working with eyes and hands in the 
midst of a prodigious noise, had acquired the concentrated look with which 
we are familiar in the countenances of the deaf - the better to hear what 
she asked him.
"Pray, sir," said the old woman, "didn't I see you come out of that 
gentleman's house?" pointing back to Mr Bounderby's. "I believe it was you, 
unless I have had the bad luck to mistake the person in following?"
"Yes, missus," returned Stephen, "it were me."
"Have you - you'll excuse an old woman's curiosity - have you seen the 
gentleman?"
"Yes, missus."
"And how did he look, sir? Was he portly, bold, out-spoken, and hearty?" As 
she straightened her own figure, and held up her head in adapting her 
action to her words, the idea crossed Stephen that he had seen this old 
woman before, and had not quite liked her.
"Oh yes," he returned, observing her more attentively, "he were all that."
"And healthy," said the old woman, "as the fresh wind?"
"Yes," returned Stephen. "He were ett'n and drinking - as large and loud as 
a Hummobee."
"Thank you!" said the old woman with infinite content. "Thank you!"
He certainly never had seen this old woman before. Yet there was a vague 
remembrance in his mind, as if he had more than once dreamed of some old 
woman like her.
She walked along at his side, and, gently accommodating himself to her 
humour, he said Coketown was a busy place, was it not? To which she 
answered "Eigh sure! Dreadful busy!" Then he said, she came from the 
country, he saw? To which she answered in the affirmative.
"By Parliamentary, this morning. I came forty mile by Parliamentary this 
morning, and I'm going back the same forty mile this afternoon. I walked 
nine mile to the station this morning, and if I find nobody on the road to 
give me a lift; I shall walk the nine mile back tonight. That's pretty 
well, sir, at my age!" said the chatty old woman, her eye brightening with 
exultation.
"Deed 'tis. Don't do't too often, missus."
"No, no. Once a year," she answered, shaking her head. "I spend my savings 
so, once every year. I come regular, to tramp about the streets, and see 
the gentlemen."
"Only to see 'em?"
"That's enough for me," she replied, with great earnestness and interest of 
manner. "I ask no more! I have been standing about on this side of the way, 
to see that gentleman," turning her head back towards Mr Bounderby's again, 
"come out. But, he's late this year, and I have not seen him. You came out 
instead. Now if I am obliged to go back without a glimpse of him - I only 
want a glimpse - well! I have seen you, and you have seen him, and I must 
make that do." Saying this, she looked at Stephen as if to fix his features 
in her mind, and as her eye was not so bright as it had been.
With a large allowance for difference of tastes, and with all submission to 
the patricians of Coketown, this seemed so extraordinary a source of 
interest to take so much trouble about, that it perplexed him. But they 
were passing the church now, and his eye caught the clock, he quickened his 
pace.
He was going to his work? the old woman said, quickening hers, too, quite 
easily. Yes, time was nearly out. On his telling her where he worked, the 
old woman became a more singular old woman than before.
"An't you happy?" she asked him.
"Why - there's awmost nobody but has their troubles, missus." He answered 
evasively, because the old woman appeared to take it for granted that he 
would be very happy indeed, and he had not the heart to disappoint her. He 
knew that there was trouble enough in the world; and if the old woman had 
lived so long, and could count upon his having so little, why so much the 
better for her, and none the worse for him.
"Ay, ay! You have your troubles at home, you mean?" she said.
"Times. Just now and then," he answered slightly.
"But, working under such a gentleman, they don't follow you to the 
Factory?"
No, no; they didn't follow him there, said Stephen. All correct there. 
Everything accordant there. (He did not go so far as to say, for her 
pleasure, that there was a sort of Divine Right there; but, I have heard 
claims almost as magnificent of late years.)
They were now in the black by-road near the place, and the Hands were 
crowding in. The bell was ringing, and the Serpent was a Serpent of many 
coils, and the Elephant was getting ready. The strange old woman was 
delighted with the very bell. It was the beautifullest bell she had ever 
heard, she said, and sounded grand!
She asked him, when he stopped good-naturedly to shake hands with her 
before going in, how long he had worked there?
"A dozen year," he told her.
"I must kiss the hand," said she, "that has worked in this fine factory for 
a dozen years!" And she lifted it, though he would have prevented her, and 
put it to her lips. What harmony, besides her age and her simplicity, 
surrounded her, he did not know, but even in this fantastic action there 
was a something neither out of time nor place: a something which it seemed 
as if nobody else could have made as serious, or done with such a natural 
and touching air.
He had been at his loom full half an hour, thinking about this old woman, 
when, having occasion to move round the loom for its adjustment, he glanced 
through a window which was in his corner, and saw her still looking up at 
the pile of building, lost in admiration. Heedless of the smoke and mud and 
wet, and of her two long journeys, she was gazing at it, as if the heavy 
thrum that issued from its many stories were proud music to her.
She was gone by-and-by, and the day went after her, and the lights sprung 
up again, and the Express whirled in full sight of the Fairy Palace over 
the arches near: little felt amid the jarring of the machinery, and 
scarcely heard above its crash and battle. Long before then his thoughts 
had gone back to the dreary room above the little shop, and to the shameful 
figure heavy on the bed, but heavier on his heart.
Machinery slackened; throbbing feebly like a fainting pulse; stopped. The 
bell again; the glare of light and heat dispelled; the factories, looming 
heavy in the black wet night - their tall chimneys rising up into the air 
like competing Towers of Babel.
He had spoken to Rachael only last night, it was true, and had walked with 
her a little way; but he had his new misfortune on him in which no one else 
could give him a moment's relief, and, for the sake of it, and because he 
knew himself to want that softening of his anger which no voice but hers 
could effect, he felt he might so far disregard what she had said as to 
wait for her again. He waited, but she had eluded him. She was gone. On no 
other night in the year could he so ill have spared her patient face.
Oh! better to have no home in which to lay his head, than to have a home 
and dread to go to it, through such a cause. He ate and drank, for he was 
exhausted - but he little knew or cared what; and he wandered about in the 
chill rain, thinking and thinking, and brooding and brooding.
No word of a new marriage had ever passed between them; but Rachael had 
taken great pity on him years ago, and to her alone he had opened his 
closed heart all this time, on the subject of his miseries; and he knew 
very well that if he were free to ask her, she would take him. He thought 
of the home he might at that moment have been seeking with pleasure and 
pride: of the different man he might have been that night; of the lightness 
then in his now heavy-laden breast; of the then restored honour, self-
respect, and tranquillity all torn to pieces. He thought of the waste of 
the best part of his life, of the change it made in his character for the 
worse every day, of the dreadful nature of his existence, bound hand and 
foot, to a dead woman, and tormented by a demon in her shape. He thought of 
Rachael, how young when they were first brought together in these 
circumstances, how mature now, how soon to grow old. He thought of the 
number of girls and women she had seen marry, how many homes with children 
in them she had seen grow up around her, how she had contentedly pursued 
her own lone quiet path - for him - and how he had seen sometimes a shade 
of melancholy on her blessed face, that smote him with remorse and despair. 
He set the picture of her up, beside the infamous image of last night; and 
thought, Could it be, that the whole earthly course of one so gentle, good, 
and self-denying, was subjugate to such a wretch as that!
Filled with these thoughts - so filled that he had an unwholesome sense of 
growing larger, of being placed in some new and diseased relation towards 
the objects among which he passed, of seeing the iris round every misty 
light turn red - he went home for shelter.


Chapter 13

Rachael

A candle faintly burned in the window, to which the black ladder had often 
been raised for the sliding away of all that was most precious in this 
world to a striving wife and a brood of hungry babies; and Stephen added to 
his other thoughts the stern reflection, that of all the casualties of this 
existence upon earth, not one was dealt out with so unequal a hand as 
Death. The inequality of Birth was nothing to it. For, say that the child 
of a King and the child of a Weaver were born tonight in the same moment, 
what was that disparity, to the death of any human creature who was 
serviceable to, or beloved by another, while this abandoned woman lived on!
From the outside of his home he gloomily passed to the inside, with 
suspended breath and with slow footstep. He went up to his door and opened 
it, and so into the room. Quiet and peace were there. Rachael was there, 
sitting by the bed.
She turned her head, and the light of her face, shone in upon the midnight 
of his mind. She sat by the bed, watching and tending his wife. That is to 
say, he saw that some one lay there, and he knew too well it must be she; 
but Rachael's hands had put a curtain up, so that she was screened from his 
eyes. Her disgraceful garments were removed, and some of Rachael's were in 
the room. Everything was in its place and order as he had always kept it, 
the little fire was newly trimmed, and the hearth was freshly swept. It 
appeared to him that he saw all this in Rachael's face, and looked at 
nothing besides. While looking at it, it was shut out from his view by the 
softened tears that filled his eyes; but not before he had seen how 
earnestly she looked at him, and how her own eyes were filled too.
She turned again towards the bed, and satisfying herself that all was quiet 
there, spoke in a low, calm, cheerful voice.
"I am glad you have come at last, Stephen. You are very late."
"I ha' been walking up an' down."
"I thought so. But 'tis too bad a night for that. The rain falls very 
heavy, and the wind has risen."
The wind? True. It was blowing hard. Hark to the thundering in the chimney, 
and the surging noise! To have been out in such a wind, and not to have 
known it was blowing!
"I have been here once before today, Stephen Landlady came round for me at 
dinner-time. There was some one here who needed looking to, she said. And 
'deed she was right. All wandering and lost, Stephen. Wounded too, and 
bruised."
He slowly moved to a chair and sat down, drooping his head before her.
"I came to do what little I could, Stephen; first for that she worked with 
me when we were girls both, and for that you courted and married her when I 
was her friend - "
He laid his furrowed forehead on his hand, with a low groan.
"And next, for that I know your heart, and am right sure and certain, that 
'tis far too merciful to let her die, or even so much as suffer, for want 
of aid. Thou knowest who said, 'Let him who is without sin among you cast 
the first stone at her!' There have been plenty to do that. Thou art not 
the man to cast the last stone, Stephen, when she is brought so low."
"O Rachael, Rachael!"
"Thou hast been a cruel sufferer, Heaven reward thee!" she said, in 
compassionate accents. "I am thy poor friend, with all my heart and mind."
The wounds of which she had spoken, seemed to be about the neck of the self-
made outcast. She dressed them now, still without showing her. She steeped 
a piece of linen in a basin, into which she poured some liquid from a 
bottle, and laid it with a gentle hand upon the sore. The three-legged 
table had been drawn close to the bedside, and on it there were two 
bottles. This was one.
It was not so far off, but that Stephen, following her hands with his eyes, 
could read what was printed on it, in large letters. He turned of a deadly 
hue, and a sudden horror seemed to fall upon him.
"I will stay here, Stephen," said Rachael, quietly resuming her seat, "till 
the bells go Three. 'Tis to be done again at three, and then she may be 
left till morning."
"But thy rest agen tomorrow's work, my dear."
"I slept sound last night. I can wake many nights, when I am put to it. 
'Tis thou who art in need of rest - so white and tired. Try to sleep in the 
chair there, while I watch. Thou hadst no sleep last night, I can well 
believe. To-morrow's work is far harder for thee than for me."
He heard the thundering and surging out of doors, and it seemed to him as 
if his late angry mood were going about trying to get at him. She had cast 
it out; she would keep it out; he trusted to her to defend him from 
himself.
"She don't know me, Stephen; she just drowsily mutters and stares. I have 
spoken to her times and again, but she don't notice! 'Tis as well so. When 
she comes to her right mind once more, I shall have done what I can, and 
she never the wiser."
"How long, Rachael, is't looked for, that she'll be so?"
"Doctor said she would haply come to her mind tomorrow."
His eyes again fell on the bottle, and a tremble passed over him, causing 
him to shiver in every limb. She thought he was chilled with the wet. "No," 
he said; "it was not that. He had had a fright."
"A fright?"
"Ay, ay! coming in. When I were walking. When I were thinking. When I -" It 
seized him again; and he stood up, holding by the mantle-shelf, as he 
pressed his dank cold hair down with a hand that shook as if it were 
palsied.
"Stephen!"
She was coming to him, but he stretched out his arm to stop her.
"No! Don't please; don't! Let me see thee setten by the bed. Let me see 
thee, a' so good, and so forgiving. Let me see thee as I have seen thee 
when I coom in. I can never see thee better than so. Never, never, never!"
He had a violent fit of trembling, and then sunk into his chair. After a 
time he controlled himself, and resting with an elbow on one knee, and his 
head upon that hand, could look toward Rachael. Seen across the dim candle 
with his moistened eyes, she looked as if she had a glory shining round her 
head. He could have believed she had. He did believe it, as the noise 
without shook the window, rattled at the door below, and went about the 
house clamouring and lamenting.
"When she gets better, Stephen, 'tis to be hoped she'll leave thee to 
thyself again, and do thee no more hurt. Anyways we will hope so now. And 
now I shall keep silence, for I want thee to sleep."
He closed his eyes, more to please her than to rest his weary head; but, by 
slow degrees as he listened to the great noise of the wind, he ceased to 
hear it, or it changed into the working of his loom, or even into the 
voices of the day (his own included) saying what had been really said. Even 
this imperfect consciousness faded away at last, and he dreamed a long, 
troubled dream.
He thought that he, and some one on whom his heart had long been set - but 
she was not Rachael, and that surprised him, even in the midst of his 
imaginary happiness - stood in the church being married. While the ceremony 
was performing, and while he recognised among the witnesses some whom he 
knew to be living, and many whom he knew to be dead, darkness came on, 
succeeded by the shining of a tremendous light. It broke from one line in 
the table of commandments at the altar, and illuminated the building with 
the words. They were sounded through the church too, as if there were 
voices in the fiery letters. Upon this, the whole appearance before him and 
around him changed, and nothing was left as it had been, but himself and 
the clergyman. They stood in the daylight before a crowd so vast, that if 
all the people in the world could have been brought together into one 
space, they could not have looked, he thought, more numerous; and they all 
abhorred him, and there was not one pitying or friendly eye among the 
millions that were fastened on his face. He stood on a raised stage, under 
his own loom; and, looking up at the shape the loom took, and hearing the 
burial service distinctly read, he knew that he was there to suffer death. 
In an instant what he stood on fell below him, and he was gone.
Out of what mystery he came back to his usual life, and to places that he 
knew, he was unable to consider; but he was back in those places by some 
means, and with this condemnation upon him, that he was never, in this 
world or the next, through all the unimaginable ages of eternity, to look 
on Rachael's face or hear her voice. Wandering to fro, unceasingly, without 
hope, and in search of he knew not what (he only knew that he was doomed to 
seek it), he was the subject of a nameless, horrible dread, a mortal fear 
of one particular shape which everything took. Whatsoever he looked at, 
grew into that form sooner or later. The object of his miserable existence 
was to prevent its recognition by any one among the various people he 
encountered. Hopeless labour! If he led them out of rooms where it was, if 
he shut up drawers and closets where it stood, if he drew the curious from 
places where he knew it to be secreted, and got them out into the streets, 
the very chimneys of the mills assumed that shape, and round them was the 
printed word.
The wind was blowing again, the rain was beating on the housetops, and the 
larger spaces through which he had strayed contracted to the four walls of 
his room. Saving that the fire had died out, it was as his eyes had closed 
upon it. Rachael seemed to have fallen into a dose, in the chair by the 
bed. She sat wrapped in her shawl, perfectly still. The table stood in the 
same place, close by the bedside, and on it, in its real proportions and 
appearance, was the shape so often repeated.
He thought he saw the curtain move. He looked again, and he was sure it 
moved. He saw a hand come forth, and grope about a little. Then the curtain 
moved more perceptibly, and the woman in the bed put it back, and sat up.
With her woeful eyes, so haggard and wild, so heavy and large, she looked 
all round the room, and passed the corner where he slept in his chair. Her 
eyes returned to that corner, and she put her hand over them as a shade, 
while she looked into it. Again they went all round the room, scarcely 
heeding Rachael if at all, and returned to that corner. He thought, as she 
once more shaded them - not so much looking at him, as looking for him with 
a brutish instinct that he was there - that no single trace was left in 
those debauched features, or in the mind that went along with them, of the 
woman he had married eighteen years before. But that he had seen her come 
to this by inches, he never could have believed her to be the same.
All this time, as if a spell were on him, he was motionless and powerless, 
except to watch her.
Stupidly dozing, or communing with her incapable self about nothing, she 
sat for a little while with her hands at her ears, and her head resting on 
them. Presently, she resumed her staring round the room. And now, for the 
first time, her eyes stopped at the table with the bottles on it.
Straightway she turned her eyes back to his corner, with the defiance of 
last night, and, moving very cautiously and softly, stretched out her 
greedy hand. She drew a mug into the bed, and sat for a while considering 
which of the two bottles she should choose. Finally, she laid her insensate 
grasp upon the bottle that had swift and certain death in it, and, before 
his eyes, pulled out the cork with her teeth.
Dream or reality, he had no voice, nor had he power to stir. If this be 
real, and her allotted time be not yet come, wake, Rachael, wake!
She thought of that, too. She looked at Rachael, and very slowly, very 
cautiously, poured out the contents. The draught was at her lips. A moment 
and she would be past all help, let the whole world wake and come about her 
with its utmost power. But, in that moment Rachael started up with a 
suppressed cry. The creature struggled, struck her, seized her by the hair; 
but Rachael had the cup.
Stephen broke out of his chair. "Rachael, am I wakin' or dreamin' this 
dreadfo' night?"
"'Tis all well, Stephen. I have been asleep myself. 'Tis near three. Hush! 
I hear the bells."
The wind brought the sounds of the church clock to the window. They 
listened, and it struck three. Stephen looked at her, saw how pale she was, 
noted the disorder of her hair, and the red marks of fingers on her 
forehead, and felt assured that his senses of sight and hearing had been 
awake. She held the cup in her hand even now.
"I thought it must be near three," she said, calmly pouring from the cup 
into the basin, and steeping the linen as before. "I am thankful I stayed! 
'Tis done now, when I have put this on. There! And now she's quiet again. 
The few drops in the basin I'll pour away, for 'tis bad stuff to leave 
about, though ever so little of it." As she spoke as she drained the basin 
into the ashes of the fire, and broke the bottle on the hearth.
She had nothing to do, then, but to cover herself with her shawl before 
going out into the wind and rain.
"Thou'lt let me walk wi' thee at this hour, Rachael?"
"No, Stephen. 'Tis but a minute and I'm home."
"Thou'rt not fearfo';" he said it in a low voice, as they went out at the 
door; "to leave me alone wi' her!"
As she looked at him, saying "Stephen?" he went down on his knee before 
her, on the poor mean stairs, and put an end of her shawl to his lips.
"Thou art an Angel. Bless thee, bless thee!"
"I am, as I have told thee, Stephen, thy poor friend. Angels are not like 
me. Between them, and a working woman fu' of faults, there is a deep gulf 
set. My little sister is among them, but she is changed."
She raised her eyes for a moment as she said the words: and then they fell 
again, in all their gentleness and mildness, on his face.
"Thou changest me from bad to good. Thou mak'st me humbly wishfo' to be 
more like thee, and fearfo' to lose thee when this life is ower, and a' the 
muddle cleared awa'. Thou'rt an Angel; it may be, thou hast saved my soul 
alive!"
She looked at him on his knee at her feet, with her shawl still in his 
hand, and the reproof on her lips died away when she saw the working of his 
face.
"I coom home desp'rate. I coom home wi'out a hope, and mad wi' thinking 
that when I said a word o' complaint I was reckoned a onreasonable Hand. I 
told thee I had had a fright. It were the Poison-bottle on table. I never 
hurt a livin' creatur; but happenin' so suddenly upon't, I thowt, 'How can 
I say, what I may ha' done to myseln, or her, or both!'"
She put her two hands on his mouth, with a face of terror, to stop him from 
saying more. He caught them in his unoccupied hand, and holding them, and 
still clasping the border of her shawl, said hurriedly:
"But I see thee, Rachael, setten by the bed. I ha' seen thee, aw this 
night. In my troublous sleep I ha' known thee still to be there. Evermore I 
will see there. I nevermore will see her or think o' her, but thou shalt be 
beside her. I nevermore will see or think o' anything that angers me, but 
thou, so much better than me, shalt be by th' side on't. And so I will try 
t' look t' th' time, and so I will try t' trust t' th' time, when thou and 
me at last shall walk together far awa', beyond the deep gulf, in th' 
country where thy little sister is."
He kissed the border of her shawl again, and let her go. She bade him good-
night in a broken voice, and went out into the street.
The wind blew from the quarter where the day would soon appear, and still 
blew strongly. It had cleared the sky before it, and the rain had spent 
itself or travelled elsewhere, and the stars were bright. He stood 
bareheaded in the road, watching her quick disappearance. As the shining 
stars were to the heavy candle in the window, so was Rachael, in the rugged 
fancy of this man, to the common experiences of his life.


Chapter 14

The Great Manufacturer

Time went on in Coketown like its own machinery: so much material wrought 
up, so much fuel consumed, so many powers worn out, so much money made. 
But, less inexorable than iron, steel, and brass, it brought its varying 
seasons even into that wilderness of smoke and brick, and made the only 
stand that ever was made in the place against its direful uniformity.
"Louisa is becoming," said Mr Gradgrind, "almost a young woman."
Time, with his innumerable horse-power, worked away, not minding what 
anybody said, and presently turned out young Thomas a foot taller than when 
his father had last taken particular notice of him.
"Thomas is becoming," said Mr Gradgrind, "almost a young man."
Time passed Thomas on in the mill, while his father was thinking about it, 
and there he stood in a long-tailed coat and a stiff shirt-collar.
"Really," said Mr Gradgrind, "the period has arrived when Thomas ought to 
go to Bounderby."
Time, sticking to him, passed him on into Bounderby's Bank, made him an 
inmate of Bounderby's house, necessitated the purchase of his first razor, 
and exercised him diligently in his calculations relative to number one.
The same great manufacturer, always with an immense variety of work on 
hand, in every stage of development, passed Sissy onward in his mill, and 
worked her up into a very pretty article indeed.
"I fear, Jupe," said Mr Gradgrind, "that your continuance at the school any 
longer, would be useless."
"I am afraid it would, sir," Sissy answered with a curtsey.
"I cannot disguise from you, Jupe," said Mr Gradgrind, knitting his brow, 
"that the result of your probation there has disappointed me; has greatly 
disappointed me. You have not acquired, under Mr and Mrs M'Choakumchild, 
anything like that amount of exact knowledge which I looked for. You are 
extremely deficient in your facts. Your acquaintance with figures is very 
limited. You are altogether backward, and below the mark."
"I am sorry sir," she returned; "but I know it is quite true. Yet I have 
tried hard, sir."
"Yes," said Mr Gradgrind, "yes, I believe you have tried hard; I have 
observed you, and I can find no fault in that respect."
"Thank you, sir. I have thought sometimes;" Sissy very timid here; "that 
perhaps I tried to learn too much, and that if I had asked to be allowed to 
try a little less, I might have - "
"No, Jupe, no," said Mr Gradgrind, shaking his head in his profoundest and 
most eminently practical way. "No. The course you pursued, you pursued 
according to the system - the system - and there is no more to be said 
about it. I can only suppose that the circumstances of your early life were 
too unfavourable to the development of your reasoning powers, and that we 
began too late. Still, as I have said already, I am disappointed."
"I wish I could have a better acknowledgment, sir, of your kindness to a 
poor forlorn girl who had no claim upon you, and of your protection of 
her."
"Don't shed tears," said Mr Gradgrind. "Don't shed tears. I don't complain 
of you. You are an affectionate, earnest, good young woman, and - and we 
must make that do."
"Thank you, sir, very much," said Sissy, with a grateful curtsey."
"You are useful to Mrs Gradgrind, and (in a generally pervading way) you 
are serviceable in the family also; so I understand from Miss Louisa, and, 
indeed, so I have observed myself. I therefore hope," said Mr Gradgrind, 
"that you can make yourself happy in those relations."
"I should have nothing to wish, sir, if - "
"I understand you," said Mr Gradgrind; "you still refer to your father. I 
have heard from Miss Louisa that you still preserve that bottle. Well! If 
your training in the science of arriving at exact results had been more 
successful, you would have been wiser on these points. I will say no more."
He really liked Sissy too well to have contempt for her; otherwise he held 
her calculating powers in such very slight estimation that he must have 
fallen upon that conclusion. Somehow or other, he had become possessed by 
an idea that there was something in this girl which could hardly be set 
forth in a tabular form. Her capacity of definition might be easily stated 
at a very low figure, her mathematical knowledge at nothing; yet he was not 
sure that if he had been required, for example, to kick her off into 
columns in a parliamentary return, he would have quite known how to divide 
her.
In some stages of his manufacture of the human fabric, the processes of 
Time are very rapid. Young Thomas and Sissy being both at such a stage of 
their working up, these changes were effected in a year or two; while Mr 
Gradgrind himself seemed stationary in his course, and underwent no 
alteration. Except one, which was apart from his necessary progress through 
the mill. Time hustled him into a little noisy and rather dirty machinery, 
in a by-corner, and made him Member of Parliament for Coketown: one of the 
respected members for ounce weights and measures, one of the 
representatives of the multiplication table, one of the deaf honourable 
gentlemen, dumb honourable gentlemen, blind honourable gentlemen, lame 
honourable gentlemen, dead honourable gentlemen, to every other 
consideration. Else wherefore live we in a Christian land, eighteen hundred 
and odd years after our Master?
All this while, Louisa had been passing on, so quiet and reserved, and so 
much given to watching the bright ashes at twilight as they fell into the 
grate and became extinct, that from the period when her father had said she 
was almost a young woman - which seemed but yesterday - she had scarcely 
attracted his notice again, when he found her quite a young woman.
"Quite a young woman," said Mr Gradgrind, musing. "Dear me!"
Soon after this discovery he became more thoughtful than usual for several 
days, and seemed much engrossed by one subject. On a certain night, when he 
was going out, and Louisa came to bid him good-bye before his departure - 
as he was not to be home until late and she would not see him again until 
the morning - he held her in his arms, looking at her in his kindest 
manner, and said:
"My dear Louisa, you are a woman!"
She answered him with the old, quick, searching look of the night when she 
was found at the Circus; then cast down her eyes. "Yes, father."
"My dear," said Mr Gradgrind, "I must speak with you alone and seriously. 
Come to me in my room after breakfast tomorrow, will you?"
"Yes, father."
"Your hands are rather cold, Louisa. Are you not well?"
"Quite well, father
"And cheerful?"
She looked at him again, and smiled in her peculiar manner. "I am as 
cheerful, father, as I usually am, or usually have been."
"That's well," said Mr Gradgrind. So, he kissed her and went away; and 
Louisa returned to the serene apartment of the hair-cutting character, and 
leaning her elbow on her hand, looked again at the short-lived sparks that 
soon subsided into ashes.
"Are you there, Loo?" said her brother, looking in at the door. He was 
quite a young gentleman of pleasure now, and not quite a prepossessing one.
"Dear Tom," she answered, rising and embracing him, "how long it is since 
you have been to see me!"
"Why, I have been otherwise engaged, Loo, in the evenings; and in the 
daytime old Bounderby has been keeping me at it rather. But I touch him up 
with you, when he comes it too strong, and so we preserve an understanding. 
I say! Has father said anything particular to you, today or yesterday, 
Loo?"
"No, Tom. But he told me tonight that he wished to do so in the morning."
"Ah! that's what I mean," said Tom. "Do you know where he is tonight?" - 
with a deep expression.
"No."
"Then I'll tell you. He's with old Bounderby. They are having a regular 
confab together, up at the Bank. Why at the Bank, do you think? Well, I'll 
tell you again. To keep Mrs Sparsit's ears as far off as possible, I 
expect."
With her hand upon her brother's shoulder, Louisa still stood looking at 
the fire. Her brother glanced at her face with greater interest than usual, 
and encircling her waist with his arm, drew her coaxingly to him.
"You are very fond of me, an't you, Loo?"
"Indeed I am, Tom, though you do let such long intervals go by without 
coming to see me."
"Well, sister of mine," said Tom, "when you say that, you are near my 
thoughts. We might be so much oftener together - mightn't we? Always 
together, almost - mightn't we? It would do me a great deal of good if you 
were to make up your mind to I know what, Loo. It would be a splendid thing 
for me. It would be uncommonly jolly!"
Her thoughtfulness baffled his cunning scrutiny. He could make nothing of 
her face. He pressed her in his arm, and kissed her cheek. She returned the 
kiss, but still looked at the fire.
"I say, Loo! I thought I'd come, and just hint to you what was going on: 
though I supposed you'd most likely guess, even if you didn't know. I can't 
stay, because I'm engaged to some fellows tonight. You won't forget how 
fond you are of me?"
"No, dear Tom, I won't forget."
"That's a capital girl," said Tom. "Good-bye, Loo."
She gave him an affectionate good-night, and went out with him to the door, 
whence the fires of Coketown could be seen, making the distance lurid. She 
stood there looking steadfastly towards them, and listening to his 
departing steps. They retreated quickly, as glad to get away from Stone 
Lodge; and she stood there yet, when he was gone and all was quiet. It 
seemed as if, first in her own fire within the house, and then in the fiery 
haze without, she tried to discover what kind of woof Old Time, that 
greatest and longest-established Spinner of all, would weave from the 
threads he had already spun into a woman. But his factory is a secret 
place, his work is noiseless, and his Hands are mutes.


Chapter 15

Father And Daughter

Although Mr Gradgrind did not take after Blue Beard, his room was quite a 
blue chamber in its abundance of blue books. Whatever they could prove 
(which is usually anything you like), they proved there, in an army 
constantly strengthening by the arrival of new recruits. In that charmed 
apartment, the most complicated social questions were cast up, got into the 
exact totals, and finally settled - if those concerned could only have been 
brought to know it. As if an astronomical observatory should be made 
without any windows, and the astronomer within should arrange the starry 
universe solely by pen, ink, and paper, so Mr Gradgrind in his Observatory 
(and there are many like it), had no need to cast an eye upon the teeming 
myriads of human beings around him, but could settle all their destinies on 
a slate, and wipe out all their tears with one dirty little bit of sponge.
To this Observatory, then: a stern room, with a deadly statistical clock in 
it, which measured every second with a beat like a rap upon a coffin-lid: 
Louisa repaired on the appointed morning. A window looked towards Coketown; 
and when she sat down near her father's table, she saw the high chimneys 
and the long tracts of smoke looming in the heavy distance gloomily.
"My dear Louisa," said her father, "I prepared you last night to give me 
your serious attention in the conversation we are now going to have 
together. You have been so well trained, and you do, I am happy to say, so 
much justice to the education you have received, that I have perfect 
confidence in your good sense. You are not impulsive, you are not romantic, 
you are accustomed to view everything from the strong dispassionate ground 
of reason and calculation. From that ground alone, I know you will view and 
consider what I am going to communicate."
He waited, as if he would have been glad that she said something. But she 
said never a word.
"Louisa, my dear, you are the subject of a proposal of marriage that has 
been made to me."
Again he waited, and again she answered not one word. This so far surprised 
him, as to induce him gently to repeat, "a proposal of marriage, my dear." 
To which she returned, without any visible emotion whatever:
"I hear you, father. I am attending, I assure you."
"Well!" said Mr Gradgrind, breaking into a smile, after being for the 
moment at a loss, "you are even more dispassionate than I expected, Louisa. 
Or, perhaps, you are not unprepared for the announcement I have in charge 
to make?"
"I cannot say that, father, until I hear it. Prepared or unprepared, I wish 
to hear it all from you. I wish to hear you state it to me, father."
Strange to relate, Mr Gradgrind was not so collected at this moment as his 
daughter was. He took a paper-knife in his hand, turned it over, laid it 
down, took it up again, and even then had to look along the blade of it, 
considering how to go on.
"What you say, my dear Louisa, is perfectly reasonable. I have undertaken 
then to let you know that - in short, that Mr Bounderby has informed me 
that he has long watched your progress with particular interest and 
pleasure, and has long hoped that the time might ultimately arrive when he 
should offer you his hand in marriage. That time to which he has so long, 
and certainly with great constancy, looked forward, is now come. Mr 
Bounderby has made his proposal of marriage to me, and has entreated me to 
make it known to you, and to express his hope that you will take it into 
your favourable consideration."
Silence between them. The deadly statistical clock very hollow. The distant 
smoke very black and heavy.
"Father," said Louisa, "do you think I love Mr Bounderby?"
Mr Gradgrind was extremely discomfited by this unexpected question. "Well, 
my child," he returned, "I - really - cannot take upon myself to say."
"Father," pursued Louisa in exactly the same voice as before, "do you ask 
me to love Mr Bounderby?"
"My dear Louisa, no. No. I ask nothing."
"Father," she still pursued, "does Mr Bounderby ask me to love him?"
"Really, my dear," said Mr Gradgrind, "It is difficult to answer your 
question - "
"Difficult to answer it, Yes or No, father?"
"Certainly, my dear. Because;" here was something to demonstrate, and it 
set him up again; "because the reply depends so materially, Louisa, on the 
sense in which we use the expression. Now, Mr Bounderby does not do you the 
injustice, and does not do himself the injustice, of pretending to anything 
fanciful, fantastic, or (I am using synonymous terms) sentimental. Mr 
Bounderby would have seen you grow up under his eyes, to very little 
purpose, if he could so far forget what is due to your good sense, not to 
say to his, as to address you from any such ground. Therefore, perhaps the 
expression itself - I merely suggest this to you, my dear - may be a little 
misplaced."
"What would you advise me to use in its stead, father?"
"Why, my dear Louisa," said Mr Gradgrind, completely recovered by this 
time, "I would advise you (since you ask me) to consider this question, as 
you have been accustomed to consider every other question, simply as one of 
tangible Fact. The ignorant and the giddy may embarrass such subjects with 
irrelevant fancies, and other absurdities that have no existence, properly 
viewed - really no existence - but it is no compliment to you to say, that 
you know better. Now, what are the Facts of this case? You are, we will say 
in round numbers, twenty years of age; Mr Bounderby is, we will say in 
round numbers, fifty. There is some disparity in your respective years, but 
in your means and positions there is none; on the contrary, there is a 
great suitability. Then the question arises, Is this one disparity 
sufficient to operate as a bar to such a marriage? In considering this 
question, it is not unimportant to take into account the statistics of 
marriage, so far as they have yet been obtained, in England and Wales. I 
find, on reference to the figures, that a large proportion of these 
marriages are contracted between parties of very unequal ages, and that the 
elder of these contracting parties, is, in rather more than three-fourths 
of these instances, the bridegroom. It is remarkable as showing the wide 
prevalence of this law, that among the natives of the British possessions 
in India, also in a considerable part of China, and among the Calmucks of 
Tartary, the best means of computation yet furnished us by travellers, 
yield similar results. The disparity I have mentioned, therefore, almost 
ceases to be disparity, and (virtually) all but disappears."
"What do you recommend, father," asked Louisa, her reserved composure not 
in the least affected by these gratifying results, "that I should 
substitute for the term I used just now? For the misplaced expression?"
"Louisa," returned her father, "it appears to me that nothing can be 
plainer. Confining yourself rigidly to Fact, the question of Fact you state 
to yourself is: Does Mr Bounderby ask me to marry him? Yes, he does. The 
sole remaining question then is: Shall I marry him? I think nothing can be 
plainer than that."
"Shall I marry him?" repeated Louisa, with great deliberation.
"Precisely. And it is satisfactory to me, as your father, my dear Louisa, 
to know that you do not come to the consideration of that question with the 
previous habits of mind, and habits of life, that belong to many young 
women."
"No, father," she returned, "I do not."
"I now leave you to judge for yourself," said Mr Gradgrind. "I have stated 
the case, as such cases are usually stated among practical minds; I have 
stated it, as the case of your mother and myself was stated in its time. 
The rest, my dear Louisa, is for you to decide."
From the beginning she had sat looking at him fixedly. As he now leaned 
back in his chair, and bent his deep-set eyes upon her in his turn, perhaps 
he might have seen one wavering moment in her, when she was impelled to 
throw herself upon his breast and give him the pent-up confidences of her 
heart. But, to see it, he must have overleaped at a bound the artificial 
barriers he had for many years been erecting, between himself and all those 
subtle essences of humanity which will elude the utmost cunning of algebra 
until the last trumpet ever to be sounded shall blow even algebra to wreck. 
The barriers were too many and too high for such a leap. With his 
unbending, utilitarian, matter-of-fact face, he hardened her again; and the 
moment shot away into the plumbless depths of the past, to mingle with all 
the lost opportunities that are drowned there.
Removing her eyes from him, she sat so long looking silently towards the 
town, that he said, at length: "Are you consulting the chimneys of the 
Coketown works, Louisa?"
"There seems to be nothing there but languid and monotonous smoke. Yet when 
the night comes, Fire bursts out, father!" she answered, turning quickly.
"Of course I know that, Louisa. I do not see the application of the 
remark." To do him justice, he did not, at all.
She passed it away with a slight motion of her hand, and concentrating her 
attention upon him again, said "Father, I have often thought that life is 
very short" - This was so distinctly one of his subjects that he 
interposed:
"It is short, no doubt, my dear. Still the average duration of human life 
is proved to have increased of late years. The calculations of various life 
assurance and annuity offices, among other figures which cannot go wrong, 
have established the fact."
"I speak of my own life, father."
"O indeed? Still," said Mr Gradgrind, "I need not point out to you, Louisa, 
that it is governed by the laws which govern lives in the aggregate."
"While it lasts, I would wish to do the little I can, and the little I am 
fit for. What does it matter!"
Mr Gradgrind seemed rather at a loss to understand the last four words; 
replying, "How, matter? What matter, my dear?"
"Mr Bounderby," she went on in a steady, straight way, without regarding 
this, "asks me to marry him. The question I have to ask myself is, Shall I 
marry him? That is so, father, is it not? You have told me so, father. Have 
you not?"
"Certainly, my dear."
"Let it be so. Since Mr Bounderby likes to take me thus, I am satisfied to 
accept his proposal. Tell him, father, as soon as you please, that this was 
my answer. Repeat it, word for word, if you can, because I should wish him 
to know what I said."
"It is quite right, my dear," retorted her father approvingly, "to be 
exact. I will observe your very proper request. Have you any wish in 
reference to the period of your marriage, my child?"
"None, father. What does it matter!"
Mr Gradgrind had drawn his chair a little nearer to her, and taken her 
hand. But, her repetition of these words seemed to strike with some little 
discord on his ear. He paused to look at her, and, still holding her hand, 
said:
"Louisa, I have not considered it essential to ask you one question, 
because the possibility implied in it appeared to me to be too remote. But 
perhaps, I ought to do so. You have never entertained in secret any other 
proposal?"
"Father," she returned, almost scornfully, "what other proposal can have 
been made to me? Whom have I seen? Where have I been? What are my heart's 
experiences?"
"My dear Louisa," returned Mr Gradgrind, reassured and satisfied, "you 
correct me justly. I merely wished to discharge my duty."
"What do I know father," said Louisa in her quiet manner, "of tastes and 
fancies; of aspirations and affections; of all that part of my nature in 
which such light things might have been nourished? What escape have I had 
from problems that could be demonstrated, and realities that could be 
grasped?" As she said it, she unconsciously closed her hand, as if upon a 
solid object, and slowly opened it as though she were releasing dust or 
ash.
"My dear," assented her eminently practical parent, "quite true, quite 
true."
"Why, father," she pursued, "what a strange question to ask me! The baby-
preference that even I have heard of as common among children, has never 
had its innocent resting-place in my breast. You have been so careful of 
me, that I never had a child's heart. You have trained me so well, that I 
never dreamed a child's dream. You have dealt so wisely with me, father, 
from my cradle to this hour, that I never had a child's belief or a child's 
fear."
Mr Gradgrind was quite moved by his success, and by this testimony to it. 
"My dear Louisa," said he, "you abundantly repay my care. Kiss me, my dear 
girl."
So, his daughter kissed him. Detaining her in his embrace, he said, "I may 
assure you now, my favourite child, that I am made happy by the sound 
decision at which you have arrived. Mr Bounderby is a very remarkable man; 
and what little disparity can be said to exist between you - if any - is 
more than counterbalanced by the tone your mind has acquired. It has always 
been my object so to educate you, as that you might, while still in your 
early youth, be (if I may so express myself) almost any age. Kiss me once 
more, Louisa. Now, let us go and find your mother."
Accordingly, they went down to the drawing-room, where the esteemed lady 
with no nonsense about her, was recumbent as usual, while Sissy worked 
beside her. She gave some feeble signs of returning animation when they 
entered, and presently the faint transparency was presented in a sitting 
attitude.
"Mrs Gradgrind," said her husband, who had waited for the achievement of 
this feat with some impatience, "allow me to present to you Mrs Bounderby."
"Oh!" said Mrs Gradgrind, "so you have settled it! Well, I'm sure I hope 
your health may be good, Louisa; for if your head begins to split as soon 
as you are married, which was the case with mine, I cannot consider that 
you are to be envied, though I have no doubt you think you are, as all 
girls do. However, I give you joy, my dear - and I hope you may now turn 
all your ological studies to good account, I am sure I do! I must give you 
a kiss of congratulation, Louisa; but don't touch my right shoulder, for 
there's something running down it all day long. And now, you see," 
whimpered Mrs Gradgrind, adjusting her shawls after the affectionate 
ceremony, "I shall be worrying myself, morning, noon, and night, to know 
what I am to call him!"
"Mrs Gradgrind," said her husband, solemnly, "what do you mean?"
"Whatever I am to call him, Mr Gradgrind, when he is married to Louisa! I 
must call him something. It's impossible," said Mrs Gradgrind, with a 
mingled sense of politeness and injury, "to be constantly addressing him 
and never giving him a name. I cannot call him Josiah, for the name is 
insupportable to me. You yourself wouldn't hear of Joe, you very well know. 
Am I to call my own son-in-law, Mister. Not, I believe, unless the time has 
arrived when, as an invalid, I am to be trampled upon by my relations. 
Then, what am I to call him!"
Nobody present having any suggestion to offer in the remarkable emergency, 
Mrs Gradgrind departed this life for the time being, after delivering the 
following codicil to her remarks already executed:
"As to the wedding, all I ask, Louisa, is, - and I ask it with a fluttering 
in my chest, which actually extends to the soles of my feet, - that it may 
take place soon. Otherwise, I know it is one of those subjects I shall 
never hear the last of."
When Mr Gradgrind had presented Mrs Bounderby, Sissy had suddenly turned 
her head, and looked, in wonder, in pity, in sorrow, in doubt, in a 
multitude of emotions, towards Louisa. Louisa had known it, and seen it, 
without looking at her. From that moment she was impassive, proud, and cold 
- held Sissy at a distance - changed to her altogether.


Chapter 16

Husband And Wife

Mr Bounderby's first disquietude on hearing of his happiness, was 
occasioned by the necessity of imparting it to Mrs Sparsit. He could not 
make up his mind how to do that, or what the consequences of the step might 
be. Whether she would instantly depart, bag and baggage, to Lady Scadgers, 
or would positively refuse to budge from the premises; whether she would be 
plaintive or abusive, tearful or tearing; whether she would break her 
heart, or break the looking-glass; Mr Bounderby could not at all foresee. 
However, as it must be done, he had no choice but to do it; so, after 
attempting several letters, and failing in them all, he resolved to do it 
by word of mouth.
On his way home, on the evening he set aside for this momentous purpose, he 
took the precaution of stepping into a chemist's shop and buying a bottle 
of the very strongest smelling-salts. "By George!" said Mr Bounderby, "if 
she takes it in the fainting way, I'll have the skin off her nose, at all 
events!" But, in spite of being thus forearmed, he entered his own house 
with anything but a courageous air; and appeared before the object of his 
misgivings, like a dog who was conscious of coming direct from the pantry.
"Good evening, Mr Bounderby!"
"Good evening, ma'am, good evening." He drew up his chair, and Mrs Sparsit 
drew back hers as who should say, "Your fireside, sir. I freely admit it. 
It is for you to occupy it all, if you think proper."
"Don't go to the North Pole, ma'am!" said Mr Bounderby.
"Thank you, sir," said Mrs Sparsit, and returned, though short of her 
former position.
Mr Bounderby sat looking at her, as, with the points of a stiff, sharp pair 
of scissors, she picked out holes for some inscrutable ornamental purpose, 
in a piece of cambric. An operation which, taken in connection with the 
bushy eyebrows and the Roman nose, suggested with some liveliness the idea 
of a hawk engaged upon the eyes of a tough little bird. She was so 
steadfastly occupied, that many minutes elapsed before she looked up from 
her work: when she did so, Mr Bounderby bespoke her attention with hitch of 
his head.
"Mrs Sparsit ma'am," said Mr Bounderby, putting his hands in his pockets, 
and assuring himself with his right hand that the cork of the little bottle 
was ready for use, "I have no occasion to say to you, that you are not only 
a lady born and bred, but a devilish sensible woman."
"Sir," returned the lady, "this is indeed not the first time that you have 
honoured me with similar expressions of your good opinion."
"Mrs Sparsit ma'am," said Mr Bounderby, "I am going to astonish you."
"Yes. sir?" returned Mrs Sparsit, interrogatively, and in the most tranquil 
manner possible. She generally wore mittens, and she now laid down her 
work, and smoothed those mittens.
"I am going, ma'am," said Bounderby, "to marry Tom Gradgrind's daughter."
"Yes, sir?" returned Mrs Sparsit. "I hope you may be happy, Mr Bounderby. 
Oh, indeed I hope you may be happy, sir!" And she said it with such great 
condescension, as well as with such great compassion for him, that 
Bounderby, - far more disconcerted than if she had thrown her work-box at 
the mirror, or swooned on the hearth-rug, - corked up the smelling-salts 
tight in his pocket, and thought, "Now confound this woman, who could have 
ever guessed that she would take it in this way!"
"I wish with all my heart, sir," said Mrs Sparsit, in a highly superior 
manner; somehow she seemed, in a moment, to have established a right to 
pity him ever afterwards; "that you may be in all respects very happy."
"Well, ma'am," returned Bounderby, with some resentment in his tone: which 
was clearly lowered, though in spite of himself, "I am obliged to you. I 
hope I shall be."
"Do you, sir!" said Mrs Sparsit, with great affability. "But naturally you 
do; of course you do."
A very awkward pause on Mr Bounderby's part, succeeded. Mrs Sparsit 
sedately resumed her work, and occasionally gave a small cough, which 
sounded like the cough of conscious strength and forbearance.
"Well, ma'am," resumed Bounderby, "under these circumstances, I imagine it 
would not be agreeable to a character like yours to remain here, though you 
would be very welcome here?"
"Oh dear no, sir, I could on no account think of that!" Mrs Sparsit shook 
her head, still in her highly superior manner, and a little changed the 
small cough - coughing now, as if the spirit of prophecy rose within her, 
but had better be coughed down.
"However, ma'am," said Bounderby, "there are apartments at the Bank, where 
a born and bred lady, as keeper of the place, would be rather a catch than 
otherwise; and if the same terms - "
"I beg your pardon, sir. You were so good as to promise that you would 
always substitute the phrase, annual compliment."
"Well, ma'am, annual compliment. If the same annual compliment would be 
acceptable there, why, I see nothing to part us unless you do."
"Sir," returned Mrs Sparsit, "the proposal is like yourself, and if the 
position I shall assume at the Bank is one that I could occupy without 
descending lower in the social scale - "
"Why, of course it is," said Bounderby. "If it was not, ma'am, you don't 
suppose that I should offer it to a lady who has moved in the society you 
have moved in. Not that I care for such society, you know! But you do."
"Mr Bounderby, you are very considerate."
"You'll have your own private apartments, and you'll have your coals and 
your candles and all the rest of it, and you'll have your maid to attend 
upon you, and you'll have your light porter to protect you, and you'll be 
what I take the liberty of considering precious comfortable," said 
Bounderby.
"Sir," rejoined Mrs Sparsit, "say no more. In yielding up my trust here, I 
shall not be freed from the necessity of eating the bread of dependence;" 
she might have said the sweet-bread, for that delicate article in a savoury 
brown sauce was her favourite supper; "and I would rather receive it from 
your hand, than from any other. Therefore, sir, I accept your offer 
gratefully, and with many sincere acknowledgments for past favours. And I 
hope sir," said Mrs Sparsit, concluding in an impressively compassionate 
manner, "I fondly hope that Miss Gradgrind may be all you desire, and 
deserve!"
Nothing moved Mrs Sparsit from that position any more. It was in vain for 
Bounderby to bluster, or to assert himself in any of his explosive ways; 
Mrs Sparsit was resolved to have compassion on him, as a Victim. She was 
polite, obliging, cheerful, hopeful; but, the more polite, the more 
obliging, the more cheerful, the more hopeful, the more exemplary 
altogether, she; the forlorner Sacrifice and the Victim, he. She had that 
tenderness for his melancholy fate, that his great red countenance used to 
break out into cold perspirations when she looked at him.
Meanwhile the marriage was appointed to be solemnised in eight weeks time, 
and Mr Bounderby went every evening to Stone Lodge as an accepted wooer. 
Love was made on these occasions in the form of bracelets; and, on all 
occasions during the period of betrothal, took a manufacturing aspect. 
Dresses were made, jewellery was made, cakes and gloves were made, 
settlements were made, and an extensive assortment of Facts did appropriate 
honour to the contract. The business was all Fact, from first to last. The 
Hours did not go through any of those rosy performances, which foolish 
poets have ascribed to them at such times; neither did the clocks go any 
faster, or any slower, than at any other seasons. The deadly statistical 
recorder in the Gradgrind observatory knocked every second on the head as 
it was born, and buried it with his accustomed regularity.
So the day came, as all other days come to people who will only stick to 
reason; and when it came, there were married in the church of the florid 
wooden legs - that popular order of architecture - Josiah Bounderby Esquire 
of Coketown, to Louisa eldest daughter of Thomas Gradgrind Esquire of Stone 
Lodge, M. P. for that borough. And when they were united in holy matrimony, 
they went home to breakfast at Stone Lodge aforesaid.
There was an improving party assembled on the auspicious occasion, who knew 
what everything they had to eat and drink was made of, and how it was 
imported or exported, and in what quantities, and in what bottoms, whether 
native or foreign, and all about it. The bridesmaids, down to little Jane 
Gradgrind, were, in an intellectual point of view, fit helpmates for the 
calculating boy; and there was no nonsense about any of the company.
After breakfast, the bridegroom addressed them in the following terms.
"Ladies and gentlemen, I am Josiah Bounderby of Coketown. Since you have 
done my wife and myself the honour of drinking our healths and happiness, I 
suppose I must acknowledge the same; though, as you all know me, and know 
what I am, and what my extraction was, you won't expect a speech from a man 
who, when he sees a Post, says 'that's a Post,' and when he sees a Pump 
says 'that's a Pump,' and is not to be got to call a Post a Pump, or a Pump 
a Post, or either of them a Toothpick. If you want a speech this morning, 
my friend and father-in-law, Tom Gradgrind, is a Member of Parliament, and 
you know where to get it. I am not your man. However, if I feel a little 
independent when I look around this table today, and reflect how little I 
thought of marrying Tom Gradgrind's daughter when I was a ragged street-
boy, who never washed his face unless it was at a pump, and that not 
oftener than once a fort-night, I hope I may be excused. So, I hope you 
like my feeling independent; if you don't I can't help it. I do feel 
independent. Now I have mentioned, and you have mentioned, that I am this 
day married to Tom Gradgrind's daughter. I am very glad to be so. It has 
long been my wish to be so. I have watched her bringing up, and I believe 
she is worthy of me. At the same time - not to deceive you - I believe I am 
worthy of her. So, I thank you, on both our parts, for the good-will you 
have shown towards us; and the best wish I can give the unmarried part of 
the present company, is this: I hope every bachelor may find as good a wife 
as I have found. And I hope every spinster may find as good a husband as my 
wife has found."
Shortly after which oration, as they were going on a nuptial trip to Lyons, 
in order that Mr Bounderby might take the opportunity of seeing how the 
Hands got on in those parts, and whether they, too, required to be fed with 
gold spoons; the happy pair departed for the railroad. The bride, in 
passing downstairs, dressed for her journey, found Tom waiting for her - 
flushed, either with his feelings or the vinous part of the breakfast.
"What a game girl you are, to be such a first-rate sister, Loo!" whispered 
Tom.
She clung to him as she should have clung to some far better nature that 
day, and was a little shaken in her reserved composure for the first time.
"Old Bounderby's quite ready," said Tom. "Time's up. Good-bye! I shall be 
on the look-out for you, when you come back. I say, my dear Loo! An't it 
uncommonly jolly now!"





Book 2: Reaping











Chapter 1

Effects In The Bank

A sunny midsummer day. There was such a thing sometimes, even in Coketown.
Seen from a distance in such weather, Coketown lay shrouded in a haze of 
its own, which appeared impervious to the sun's rays. You only knew the 
town was there, because you knew there would have been no such sulky blotch 
upon the prospect without a town. A blur of soot and smoke, now confusedly 
tending this way, now that way, now aspiring to the vault of Heaven, now 
murkily creeping along the earth, as the wind rose and fell, or changed its 
quarter: a dense formless jumble, with sheets of cross light in it, that 
showed nothing but masses of darkness: - Coketown in the distance was 
suggestive of itself, though not a brick of it could be seen.
The wonder was, it was there at all. It had been ruined so often, that it 
was amazing how it had borne so many shocks. Surely there never was such 
fragile china-ware as that of which the millers of Coketown were made. 
Handle them never so lightly, and they fell to pieces with such ease that 
you might suspect them of having been flawed before. They were ruined, when 
they were required to send labouring children to school; they were ruined, 
when inspectors were appointed to look into their works; they were ruined 
when such inspectors considered it doubtful whether they were quite 
justified in chopping people up with their machinery; they were utterly 
undone, When it was hinted that perhaps they need not always make quite so 
much smoke. Besides Mr Bounderby's gold spoon which was generally received 
in Coketown, another prevalent fiction was very popular there. It took the 
form of a threat. Whenever a Coketowner felt he was ill-used - that is to 
say, whenever he was not left entirely alone, and it was proposed to hold 
him accountable for the consequences of any of his acts he was sure to come 
out with the awful menace, that he would "sooner pitch his property into 
the Atlantic". This had terrified the Home Secretary within an inch of his 
life, on several occasions.
However, the Coketowners were so patriotic after all, that they never had 
pitched their property into the Atlantic yet, but on the contrary, had been 
kind enough to take mighty good care of it. So there it was, in the haze 
yonder; and it increased and multiplied.
The streets were hot and dusty on the summer day, and the sun was so bright 
that it even shone through the heavy vapour drooping over Coketown, and 
could not be looked at steadily. Stokers emerged from low underground 
doorways into factory yards, and sat on steps, and posts, and palings, 
wiping their swarthy visages, and contemplating coals. The whole town 
seemed to be frying in oil. There was a stifling smell of hot oil 
everywhere. The steam-engines shone with it, the dresses of the Hands were 
soiled with it, the mills throughout their many storeys oozed and trickled 
it. The atmosphere of those Fairy Palaces was like the breath of the 
simoon; and their inhabitants, wasting with heat, toiled languidly in the 
desert. But no temperature made the melancholy mad elephants more mad or 
more sane. Their wearisome heads went up and down at the same rate, in hot 
weather and cold, wet weather and dry, fair weather and foul. The measured 
motion of their shadows on the walls, was the substitute Coketown had to 
show for the shadows of rustling woods; while, for the summer hum of 
insects, it could offer, all the year round, from the dawn of Monday to the 
night of Saturday, the whirr of shafts and wheels.
Drowsily they whirred all through this sunny day, making the passenger more 
sleepy and more hot as he passed the humming walls of the mills. Sun-
blinds, and sprinklings of water, a little cooled the main streets and the 
shops; but the mills, and the courts and alleys, baked at a fierce heat. 
Down upon the river that was black and thick with dye, some Coketown boys 
who were at large - a rare sight there - rowed a crazy boat, which made a 
spumous track upon the water as it jogged along, while every dip of an oar 
stirred up vile smells. But the sun itself, however beneficent generally, 
was less kind to Coketown than hard frost, and rarely looked intently into 
any of its closer regions without engendering more death than life. So does 
the eye of Heaven itself become an evil eye, when incapable or sordid hands 
are interposed between it and the things it looks upon to bless.
Mrs Sparsit sat in her afternoon apartment at the Bank, on the shadier side 
of the frying street. Office-hours were over: and at that period of the 
day, in warm weather, she usually embellished with her genteel presence, a 
managerial boardroom over the public office. Her own private sitting-room 
was a storey higher, at the window of which post of observation she was 
ready, every morning, to greet Mr Bounderby as he came across the road, 
with the sympathising recognition appropriate to a Victim. He had been 
married now, a year; and Mrs Sparsit had never released him from her 
determined pity a moment.
The Bank offered no violence to the wholesome monotony of the town. It was 
another red brick house, with black outside shutters, green inside blinds, 
a black street-door up two white steps, a brazen door-plate, and a brazen 
door-handle full stop. It was a size larger than Mr Bounderby's house, as 
other houses were from a size to half-a-dozen sizes smaller; in all other 
particulars, it was strictly according to pattern.
Mrs Sparsit was conscious that by coming in the evening-tide among the 
desks and writing implements, she shed a feminine, not to say also 
aristocratic, grace upon the office. Seated, with her needlework or netting 
apparatus, at the window, she had a self-laudatory sense of correcting, by 
her ladylike deportment, the rude business aspect of the place. With this 
impression of her interesting character upon her, Mrs Sparsit considered 
herself, in some sort, the Bank Fairy. The townspeople who, in their 
passing and repassing, saw her there, regarded her as the Bank Dragon, 
keeping watch over the treasures of the mine.
What those treasures were, Mrs Sparsit knew as little as they did. Gold and 
silver coin, precious paper, secrets that if divulged would bring vague 
destruction upon vague persons (generally, however, people whom she 
disliked), were the chief items in her ideal catalogue thereof. For the 
rest, she knew that after office-hours, she reigned supreme over all the 
office furniture, and over a locked-up iron room with three locks, against 
the door of which strong chamber the light porter laid his head every 
night, on a truckle bed, that disappeared at cockcrow. Further, she was 
lady paramount over certain vaults in the basement, sharply spiked off from 
communication with the predatory world; and over the relics of the current 
day's work, consisting of blots of ink, worn-out pens, fragments of wafers, 
and scraps of paper torn so small, that nothing interesting could ever be 
deciphered on them when Mrs Sparsit tried. Lastly she was guardian over a 
little armoury of cutlasses and carbines, arrayed in vengeful order above 
one of the official chimney-pieces; and over that respectable tradition 
never to be separated from a place of business claiming to be wealthy - a 
row of fire-buckets - vessels calculated to be of no physical utility on 
any occasion, but observed to exercise a fine moral influence, almost equal 
to bullion, on most beholders.
A deaf serving-woman and the light porter completed Mrs Sparsit's empire. 
The deaf serving-woman was rumoured to be wealthy; and a saying had for 
years gone about among the lower orders of Coketown, that she would be 
murdered some night when the Bank was shut, for the sake of her money. It 
was generally considered, indeed, that she had been due some time, and 
ought to have fallen long ago; but she had kept her life, and her 
situation, with an ill-conditioned tenacity that occasioned much offence 
and disappointment.
Mrs Sparsit's tea was just set for her on a pert little table, with its 
tripod of legs in an attitude, which she insinuated after office-hours, 
into the company of the stern, leathern-topped, long board-table that 
bestrode the middle of the room. The light porter placed the tea-tray on 
it, knuckling his forehead as a form of homage.
"Thank you, Bitzer," said Mrs Sparsit.
"Thank you, ma'am," returned the light porter. He was a very light porter 
indeed; as light as in the days when he blinkingly defined a horse, for 
girl number twenty.
"All is shut up, Bitzer?" said Mrs Sparsit.
"All is shut up, ma'am."
"And what," said Mrs Sparsit, pouring out her tea, "is the news of the day? 
Anything?"
"Well, ma'am, I can't say that I have heard anything particular. Our people 
are a bad lot, ma'am; but that is no news, unfortunately. "
"What are the restless wretches doing now?" asked Mrs Sparsit.
"Merely going on in the old way, ma'am. Uniting, and leaguing, and engaging 
to stand by one another."
"It is much to be regretted," said Mrs Sparsit, making her nose more Roman 
and her eyebrows more Coriolanian in the strength of her severity, "that 
the united masters allow of any such class-combinations."
"Yes, ma'am," said Bitzer.
"Being united themselves, they ought one and all to set their faces against 
employing any man who is united with any other man," said Mrs Sparsit.
"They have done that, ma'am," returned Bitzer; "but it rather fell through, 
ma'am."
"I do not pretend to understand these things," said Mrs Sparsit, with 
dignity, "my lot having been originally cast in a widely different sphere; 
and Mr Sparsit, as a Powler, being also quite out of the pale of any such 
dissensions. I only know that these people must be conquered, and that it's 
high time it was done, once for all."
"Yes, ma'am," returned Bitzer, with a demonstration of great respect for 
Mrs Sparsit's oracular authority. "You couldn't put it clearer, I am sure, 
ma'am."
As this was his usual hour for having a little confidential chat with Mrs 
Sparsit, and as he had already caught her eye and seen that she was going 
to ask him something, he made a pretence of arranging the rulers, 
inkstands, and so forth, while that lady went on with her tea, glancing 
through the open window down into the street.
"Has it been a busy day, Bitzer?" asked Mrs Sparsit.
"Not a very busy day, my lady. About an average day." He now and then 
slided into my lady, instead of ma'am, as an involuntary acknowledgement of 
Mrs Sparsit's personal dignity and claims to reverence.
"The clerks," said Mrs Sparsit, carefully brushing an imperceptible crumb 
of bread and butter from her left-hand mitten, "are trustworthy, punctual, 
and industrious, of course?"
"Yes, ma'am, pretty fair, ma'am. With the usual exception."
He held the respectable office of general spy and informer in the 
establishment, for which volunteer service he received a present at 
Christmas, over and above his weekly wage. He had grown into an extremely 
clear-headed, cautious, prudent young man, who was safe to rise in the 
world. His mind was so exactly regulated, that he had no affections or 
passions. All his proceedings were the result of the nicest and coldest 
calculation; and it was not without cause that Mrs Sparsit habitually 
observed of him, that he was a young man of the steadiest principle she had 
ever known. Having satisfied himself, on his father's death, that his 
mother had a right of settlement in Coketown, this excellent young 
economist had asserted that right for her with such a steadfast adherence 
to the principle of the case, that she had been shut up in the workhouse 
ever since. It must be admitted that he allowed her half a pound of tea a 
year, which was weak in him: first, because all gifts have an inevitable 
tendency to pauperise the recipient, and secondly, because his only 
reasonable transaction in that commodity would have been to buy it for as 
little as he could possibly give, and sell it for as much as he could 
possibly get; it having been clearly ascertained by philosophers that in 
this is comprised the whole duty of man - not a part of man's duty, but the 
whole.
"Pretty fair, ma'am. With the usual exception, ma'am," repeated Bitzer.
"Ah - h!" said Mrs Sparsit, shaking her head over her teacup, and taking a 
long gulp.
"Mr Thomas, ma'am, I doubt Mr Thomas very much, ma'am, I don't like his 
ways at all."
"Bitzer," said Mrs Sparsit, in a very impressive manner, "do you recollect 
my having said anything to you respecting names?"
"I beg your pardon, ma'am. It's quite true that you did object to names 
being used, and they're always best avoided."
"Please to remember that I have a charge here," said Mrs Sparsit, with her 
air of state. "I hold a trust here, Bitzer, under Mr Bounderby. However 
improbable both Mr Bounderby and myself might have deemed it years ago, 
that he would ever become my patron, making me an annual compliment, I 
cannot but regard him in that light. From Mr Bounderby I have received 
every acknowledgement of my social station, and every recognition of my 
family descent, that I could possibly expect. More, far more. Therefore, to 
my patron I will be scrupulously true. And I do not consider, I will not 
consider, I cannot consider," said Mrs Sparsit, with a most extensive stock 
on hand of honour and morality, "that I should be scrupulously true, if I 
allowed names to be mentioned under this roof, that are unfortunately - 
most unfortunately - no doubt of that connected with his."
Bitzer knuckled his forehead again, and again begged pardon.
"No, Bitzer," continued Mrs Sparsit, "say an individual, and I will hear 
you; say Mr Thomas, and you must excuse me."
"With the usual exception, ma'am," said Bitzer, trying back, "of an 
individual."
"Ah - h!" Mrs Sparsit repeated the ejaculation, the shake of the head over 
her teacup, and the long gulp, as taking up the conversation again at the 
point where it had been interrupted.
"An individual, ma'am," said Bitzer, "has never been what he ought to have 
been, since he first came into the place. He is a dissipated, extravagant 
idler. He is not worth his salt, ma'am. He wouldn't get it either, if he 
hadn't a friend and relation at court, ma'am!"
"Ah - h!" said Mrs Sparsit, with another melancholy shake of her head.
"I only hope, ma'am," pursued Bitzer, "that his friend and relation may not 
supply him with the means of carrying on. Otherwise, ma'am, we know out of 
whose pocket that money comes. "
"Ah - h!" sighed Mrs Sparsit again, with another melancholy shake of her 
head.
"He is to be pitied, ma'am. The last party I have alluded to, is to be 
pitied, ma'am", said Bitzer.
"Yes, Bitzer," said Mrs Sparsit. "I have always pitied the delusion, 
always."
"As to an individual, ma'am," said Bitzer, dropping his voice and drawing 
nearer, "he is as improvident as any of the people in this town. And you 
know what their improvidence is, ma'am. No one could wish to know it better 
than a lady of your eminence does."
"They would do well," returned Mrs Sparsit, "to take example by you, 
Bitzer."
"Thank you, ma'am. But, since you do refer to me, now look at me, ma'am. I 
have put by a little, ma'am, already. That gratuity which I receive at 
Christmas, ma'am: I never touch it. I don't even go the length of my wages, 
though they're not high, ma'am. Why can't they do as I have done, ma'am? 
What one person can do, another can do."
This, again, was among the fictions of Coketown. Any capitalist there, who 
had made sixty thousand pounds out of sixpence, always professed to wonder 
why the sixty thousand nearest Hands didn't each make sixty thousand pounds 
out of sixpence, and more or less reproached them every one for not 
accomplishing the little feat. What I did you can do. Why don't you go and 
do it?
"As to their wanting recreations, ma'am," said Bitzer, "it's stuff and 
nonsense. I don't want recreations. I never did, and I never shall; I don't 
like 'em. As to their combining together; there are many of them, I have no 
doubt, that by watching and informing upon one another could earn a trifle 
now and then, whether in money or good will, and improve their livelihood. 
Then, why don't they improve it, ma'am? It's the first consideration of a 
rational creature, and it's what they pretend to want."
"Pretend indeed!" said Mrs Sparsit.
"I am sure we are constantly hearing ma'am, till it becomes quite nauseous, 
concerning their wives and families," said Bitzer. "Why, look at me, ma'am! 
I don't want a wife and family. Why should they?"
"Because they are improvident," said Mrs Sparsit.
"Yes, ma'am," returned Bitzer, "that's where it is. If they were more 
provident, and less perverse, ma'am, what would they do? They would say, 
"While my hat covers my family," or, "While my bonnet covers my family" - 
as the case might be, ma'am - "I have only one to feed, and that's the 
person I most like to feed.""
"To be sure," assented Mrs Sparsit, eating muffin.
"Thank you, ma'am," said Bitzer, knuckling his forehead again in return for 
the favour of Mrs Sparsit's improving conversation. "Would you wish a 
little more hot water, ma'am, or is there anything else that I could fetch 
you?"
"Nothing just now, Bitzer."
"Thank you, ma'am. I shouldn't wish to disturb you at your meals, ma'am, 
particularly tea, knowing your partiality for it," said Bitzer, craning a 
little to look over into the street from where he stood; "but there's a 
gentleman been looking up here for a minute or so, ma'am, and he has come 
across as if he was going to knock. That is his knock, ma'am, no doubt."
He stepped to the window; and looking out, and drawing in his head again, 
confirmed himself with, "Yes, ma'am. Would you wish the gentleman to be 
shown in, ma'am?"
"I don't know who it can be," said Mrs Sparsit, wiping her mouth and 
arranging her mittens.
"A stranger, ma'am, evidently."
"What a stranger can want at the Bank at this time of the evening, unless 
he comes upon some business for which he is too late, I don't know," said 
Mrs Sparsit; "but I hold a charge in this establishment from Mr Bounderby, 
and I will never shrink from it. If to see him is any part of the duty I 
have accepted, I will see him. Use your own discretion, Bitzer."
Here, the visitor, all unconscious of Mrs Sparsit's magnanimous words, 
repeated his knock so loudly that the light porter hastened down to open 
the door; while Mrs Sparsit took the precaution of concealing her little 
table, with all its appliances upon it, in a cupboard, and then decamped up 
stairs that she might appear, if needful, with the greater dignity.
"If you please, ma'am, the gentleman would wish to see you," said Bitzer, 
with his light eye at Mrs Sparsit's keyhole. So, Mrs Sparsit, who had 
improved the interval by touching up her cap, took her classical features 
downstairs again, and entered the boardroom in the manner of a Roman matron 
going outside the city walls to treat with an invading general.
The visitor having strolled to the window, and being then engaged in 
looking carelessly out, was as unmoved by this impressive entry as man 
could possibly be. He stood whistling to himself with all imaginable 
coolness, with his hat still on, and a certain air of exhaustion upon him, 
in part arising from excessive summer, and in part from excessive 
gentility. For, it was to be seen with half an eye that he was a thorough 
gentleman, made to the model of the time; weary of everything and putting 
no more faith in anything than Lucifer.
"I believe, sir," quoth Mrs Sparsit, "you wished to see me."
"I beg your pardon," he said, turning and removing his hat; "pray excuse 
me."
"Humph!" thought Mrs Sparsit, as she made a stately bend. "Five and thirty, 
good-looking, good figure, good teeth, good voice, good breeding, well-
dressed, dark hair, bold eyes." All which Mrs Sparsit observed in her 
womanly way - like the Sultan who put his head in the pail of water - 
merely in dipping down and coming up again.
"Please to be seated, sir," said Mrs Sparsit.
"Thank you. Allow me." He placed a chair for her, but remained himself 
carelessly lounging against the table. "I left my servant at the railway 
looking after the luggage - very heavy train and vast quantity of it in the 
van - and strolled on, looking about me. Exceedingly odd place. Will you 
allow me to ask you if it's always as black as this?"
"In general much blacker," returned Mrs Sparsit, in her uncompromising way.
"Is it possible! Excuse me: you are not a native, I think?"
"No, sir," returned Mrs Sparsit. "It was once my good or ill fortune, as it 
may be - before I became a widow - to move in a very different sphere. My 
husband was a Powler."
"Beg your pardon, really!" said the stranger. "Was -"
Mrs Sparsit repeated, "A Powler."
"Powler Family," said the stranger, after reflecting a few moments. Mrs 
Sparsit signified assent. The stranger seemed a little more fatigued than 
before.
"You must be very much bored here?" was the inference he drew from the 
communication.
"I am the servant of circumstances, sir," said Mrs Sparsit, "and I have 
long adapted myself to the governing power of my life. "
"Very philosophical," returned the stranger, "and very exemplary and 
laudable, and -" It seemed to be scarcely worth his while to finish the 
sentence, so he played with his watch-chain wearily.
"May I be permitted to ask, sir," said Mrs Sparsit, "to what I am indebted 
for the favour of -"
"Assuredly," said the stranger. "Much obliged to you for reminding me. I am 
the bearer of a letter of introduction to Mr Bounderby the banker. Walking 
through this extraordinarily black town, while they were getting dinner 
ready at the hotel, I asked a fellow whom I met; one of the working people; 
who appeared to have been taking a shower-bath of something fluffy, which I 
assume to be the raw material; -"
Mrs Sparsit inclined her head.
"- Raw material - where Mr Bounderby the banker, might reside. Upon which, 
misled no doubt by the word Banker, he directed me to the Bank. Fact being, 
I presume, that Mr Bounderby the Banker, does not reside in the edifice in 
which I have the honour of offering this explanation?"
"No, sir," returned Mrs Sparsit, "he does not."
"Thank you. I had no intention of delivering my letter at the present 
moment, nor have I. But, strolling on to the Bank to kill time, and having 
the good fortune to observe at the window," towards which he languidly 
waved his hand, then slightly bowed, "a lady of a very superior and 
agreeable appearance, I considered that I could not do better than take the 
liberty of asking that lady where Mr Bounderby the Banker, does live. Which 
I accordingly venture, with all suitable apologies, to do."
The inattention and indolence of his manner were sufficiently relieved, to 
Mrs Sparsit's thinking, by a certain gallantry at ease, which offered her 
homage too. Here he was, for instance, at this moment, all but sitting on 
the table, and yet lazily bending over her, as if he acknowledged an 
attraction in her that made her charming - in her way.
"Banks, I know, are always suspicious, and officially must be," said the 
stranger, whose lightness and smoothness of speech were pleasant likewise; 
suggesting matter far more sensible and humorous than it ever contained - 
which was perhaps a shrewd device of the founder of this numerous sect, 
whosoever may have been that great man; "therefore I may observe that my 
letter - here it is - is from the member for this place - Gradgrind - whom 
I have had the pleasure of knowing in London."
Mrs Sparsit recognised the hand, intimated that such confirmation was quite 
unnecessary, and gave Mr Bounderby's address, with all needful clues and 
directions in aid.
"Thousand thanks," said the stranger. "Of course you know the Banker well?"
"Yes, sir," rejoined Mrs Sparsit. "In my dependent relation towards him, I 
have known him ten years."
"Quite an eternity! I think he married Gradgrind's daughter?"
"Yes," said Mrs Sparsit, suddenly compressing her mouth. "He had that - 
honour."
"The lady is quite a philosopher, I am told?"
"Indeed, sir," said Mrs Sparsit. "Is she?"
"Excuse my impertinent curiosity," pursued the stranger, fluttering over 
Mrs Sparsit's eyebrows, with a propitiatory air, "but you know the family, 
and know the world. I am about to know the family, and may have much to do 
with them. Is the lady so very alarming? Her father gives her such a 
portentously hard-headed reputation, that I have a burning desire to know. 
Is she absolutely unapproachable? Repellently and stunningly clever? I see, 
by your meaning smile, you think not. You have poured balm into my anxious 
soul. As to age, now. Forty! Five and thirty?"
Mrs Sparsit laughed outright. "A chit," said she. "Not twenty when she was 
married."
"I give you my honour, Mrs Powler," returned the stranger, detaching 
himself from the table, "that I never was so astonished in my life!"
It really did seem to impress him, to the utmost extent of his capacity of 
being impressed. He looked at his informant for full a quarter of a minute, 
and appeared to have the surprise in his mind all the time. "I assure you, 
Mrs Powler," he then said, much exhausted, "that the father's manner 
prepared me for a grim and stony maturity. I am obliged to you, of all 
things, for correcting so absurd a mistake. Pray excuse my intrusion Many 
thanks. Good day!"
He bowed himself out; and Mrs Sparsit, hiding in the window-curtain, saw 
him languishing down the street on the shady side of the way, observed of 
all the town.
"What do you think of the gentleman, Bitzer?" she asked the light porter, 
when he came to take away.
"Spends a deal of money on his dress, ma'am."
"It must be admitted," said Mrs Sparsit, "that it's very tasteful. "
"Yes, ma'am," returned Bitzer, "if that's worth the money."
"Besides which, ma'am," resumed Bitzer, while he was polishing the table, 
"he looks to me as if he gamed."
"It's immoral to game," said Mrs Sparsit.
"It's ridiculous, ma'am," said Bitzer, "because the chances are against the 
players."
Whether it was that the heat prevented Mrs Sparsit from working, or whether 
it was that her hand was out, she did not work that night. She sat at the 
window, when the sun began to sink behind the smoke; she sat there, when 
the smoke was burning red, when the colour faded from it, when darkness 
seemed to rise slowly out of the ground, and creep upward, upward, up to 
the house-tops, up the church steeple, up to the summits of the factory 
chimneys, up to the sky. Without a candle in the room, Mrs Sparsit sat at 
the window, with her hands before her, not thinking much of the sounds of 
evening: the whooping of boys, the barking of dogs, the rumbling of wheels, 
the steps and voices of passengers, the shrill street cries, the clogs upon 
the pavement when it was their hour for going by, the shutting-up of shop-
shutters. Not until the light porter announced that her nocturnal 
sweetbread was ready, did Mrs Sparsit arouse herself from her reverie, and 
convey her dense black eyebrows - by that time creased with meditation, as 
if they needed ironing out - upstairs.
"O, you Fool!" said Mrs Sparsit, when she was alone at her supper. Whom she 
meant, she did not say; but she could scarcely have meant the sweetbread.


Chapter 2

Mr James Harthouse

The Gradgrind party wanted assistance in cutting the throats of the Graces. 
They went about recruiting; and where could they enlist recruits more 
hopefully, than among the fine gentlemen who, having found out everything 
to be worth nothing, were equally ready for anything?
Moreover, the healthy spirits who had mounted to this sublime height were 
attractive to many of the Gradgrind school. They liked fine gentlemen; they 
pretended that they did not, but they did. They became exhausted in 
imitation of them; and they yawyawed in their speech like them; and they 
served out, with an enervated air, the little mouldy rations of political 
economy, on which they regaled their disciples. There never before was seen 
on earth such a wonderful hybrid race as was thus produced.
Among the fine gentlemen not regularly belonging to the Gradgrind school, 
there was one of a good family and a better appearance, with a happy turn 
of humour which had told immensely with the House of Commons on the 
occasion of his entertaining it with his (and the Board of Directors') view 
of a railway accident, in which the most careful officers ever known, 
employed by the most liberal managers ever heard of, assisted by the finest 
mechanical contrivances ever devised, the whole in action on the best line 
ever constructed, had killed five people and wounded thirty-two, by a 
casualty without which the excellence of the whole system would have been 
positively incomplete. Among the slain was a cow, and among the scattered 
articles unowned, a widow's cap. And the honourable member had so tickled 
the House (which has a delicate sense of humour) by putting the cap on the 
cow, that it became impatient of any serious reference to the Coroner's 
Inquest, and brought the railway off with Cheers and Laughter.
Now, this gentleman had a younger brother of still better appearance than 
himself, who had tried life as a Cornet of Dragoons, and found it a bore; 
and had afterwards tried it in the train of an English minister abroad, and 
found it a bore; and had then strolled to Jerusalem, and got bored there; 
and had then gone yachting about the world, and got bored everywhere. To 
whom this honourable and jocular member fraternally said one day, "Jem, 
there's a good opening among the hard Fact fellows, and they want men. I 
wonder you don't go in for statistics." Jem, rather taken by the novelty of 
the idea, and very hard up for a change, was as ready to "go in" for 
statistics as for anything else. So, he went in. He coached himself up with 
a blue book or two; and his brother put it about among the hard Fact 
fellows, and said, "If you want to bring in, for any place, a handsome dog 
who can make you a devilish good speech, look after my brother Jem, for 
he's your man." After a few dashes in the public meeting way, Mr Gradgrind 
and a council of political sages approved of Jem, and it was resolved to 
send him down to Coketown, to become known there and in the neighbourhood. 
Hence the letter Jem had last night shown to Mrs Sparsit, which Mr 
Bounderby now held in his hand; superscribed, "Josiah Bounderby, Esquire, 
Banker, Coketown. Specially to introduce James Harthouse, Esquire. Thomas 
Gradgrind."
Within an hour of the receipt of this dispatch and Mr James Harthouse's 
card, Mr Bounderby put on his hat and went down to the Hotel. There he 
found Mr James Harthouse looking out of window, in a state of mind so 
disconsolate, that he was already half disposed to "go in" for something 
else.
"My name, sir," said his visitor, "is Josiah Bounderby of Coketown. "
Mr James Harthouse was very happy indeed (though he scarcely looked so), to 
have a pleasure he had long expected.
"Coketown, sir," said Bounderby, obstinately taking a chair, "is not the 
kind of place you have been accustomed to. Therefore, if you'll allow me - 
or whether you will or not, for I am a plain man - I'll tell you something 
about it before we go any further. "
Mr Harthouse would be charmed.
"Don't be too sure of that," said Bounderby. "I don't promise it. First of 
all, you see our smoke. That's meat and drink to us. It's the healthiest 
thing in the world in all respects, and particularly for the lungs. If you 
are one of those who want us to consume it, I differ from you. We are not 
going to wear the bottoms of our boilers out any faster than we wear 'em 
out now, for all the humbugging sentiment in Great Britain and Ireland. "
By way of "going in" to the fullest extent, Mr Harthouse rejoined, "Mr 
Bounderby, I assure you I am entirely and completely of your way of 
thinking. On conviction."
"I am glad to hear it," said Bounderby. "Now, you have heard a lot of talk 
about the work in our mills, no doubt. You have? Very good. I'll state the 
fact of it to you. It's the pleasantest work there is, and it's the 
lightest work there is, and it's the best paid work there is. More than 
that, we couldn't improve the mills themselves, unless we laid down Turkey 
carpets on the floors. Which we're not a-going to do."
"Mr Bounderby, perfectly right."
"Lastly," said Bounderby, "as to our Hands. There's not a Hand in this 
town, sir, man, woman, or child, but has one ultimate object in life. That 
object is, to be fed on turtle soup and venison with a gold spoon. Now, 
they're not a-going none of 'em - ever to be fed on turtle soup and venison 
with a gold spoon. And now you know the place."
Mr Harthouse professed himself in the highest degree instructed and 
refreshed, by this condensed epitome of the whole Coketown question.
"Why, you see," replied Mr Bounderby, "it suits my disposition to have a 
full understanding with a man, particularly with a public man, when I make 
his acquaintance. I have only one thing more to say to you, Mr Harthouse, 
before assuring you of the pleasure with which I shall respond to the 
utmost of my poor ability, to my friend Tom Gradgrind's letter of 
introduction. You are a man of family. Don't you deceive yourself by 
supposing for a moment that I am a man of family. I am a bit of dirty riff-
raff, and a genuine scrap of tag, rag, and bobtail. "
If anything could have exalted Jem's interest in Mr Bounderby, it would 
have been this very circumstance. Or, so he told him.
"So now," said Bounderby, "we may shake hands on equal terms. I say, equal 
terms because although I know what I am, and the exact depth of the gutter 
I have lifted myself out of, better than any man does, I am as proud as you 
are. I am just as proud as you are. Having now asserted my independence in 
a proper manner, I may come to how do you find yourself, and I hope you're 
pretty well."
The better, Mr Harthouse gave him to understand as they shook hands, for 
the salubrious air of Coketown. Mr Bounderby received the answer with 
favour.
"Perhaps you know," said he, "or perhaps you don't know, I married Tom 
Gradgrind's daughter. If you have nothing better to do than to walk up town 
with me, I shall be glad to introduce you to Tom Gradgrind's daughter."
"Mr Bounderby," said Jem, "you anticipate my dearest wishes. "
They went out without further discourse; and Mr Bounderby piloted the new 
acquaintance who so strongly contrasted with him, to the private red brick 
dwelling, with the black outside shutters, the green inside blinds, and the 
black street door up the two white steps. In the drawing-room of which 
mansion, there presently entered to them the most remarkable girl Mr James 
Harthouse had ever seen. She was so constrained, and yet so careless; so 
reserved, and yet so watchful; so cold and proud, and yet so sensitively 
ashamed of her husband's braggart humility - from which she shrunk as if 
every example of it were a cut or a blow; that it was quite a new sensation 
to observe her. In face she was no less remarkable than in manner. Her 
features were handsome; but their natural play was so locked up, that it 
seemed impossible to guess at their genuine expression. Utterly 
indifferent, perfectly self-reliant, never at a loss, and yet never at her 
ease, with her figure in company with them there, and her mind apparently 
quite alone - it was of no use "going in" yet awhile to comprehend this 
girl, for she baffled all penetration.
From the mistress of the house, the visitor glanced to the house itself. 
There was no mute sign of a woman in the room. No graceful little 
adornment, no fanciful little device, however trivial, anywhere expressed 
her influence. Cheerless and comfortless, boastfully and doggedly rich, 
there the room stared at its present occupants, unsoftened and unrelieved 
by the least trace of any womanly occupation. As Mr Bounderby stood in the 
midst of his household gods, so those unrelenting divinities occupied their 
places around Mr Bounderby, and they were worthy of one another, and well 
matched.
"This, sir," said Bounderby, "is my wife, Mrs Bounderby: Tom Gradgrind's 
eldest daughter. Loo, Mr James Harthouse. Mr Harthouse has joined your 
father's muster-roll. If he is not Tom Gradgrind's colleague before long, I 
believe we shall at least hear of him in connection with one of our 
neighbouring towns. You observe, Mr Harthouse, that my wife is my junior. I 
don't know what she saw in me to marry me, but she saw something in me, I 
suppose, or she wouldn't have married me. She has lots of expensive 
knowledge, sir, political and otherwise. If you want to cram for anything, 
I should be troubled to recommend you to a better adviser than Loo 
Bounderby. "
To a more agreeable adviser, or one from whom he would be more likely to 
learn, Mr Harthouse could never be recommended.
"Come!" said his host. "If you're in the complimentary line, you'll get on 
here, for you'll meet with no competition. I have never been in the way of 
learning compliments myself, and I don't profess to understand the art of 
paying 'em. In fact, despise 'em. But, your bringing-up was different from 
mine; mine was a real thing, by George! You're a gentleman, and I don't 
pretend to be one. I am Josiah Bounderby of Coketown, and that's enough for 
me. However, though I am not influenced by manners and station, Loo 
Bounderby may be. She hadn't my advantages - disadvantages you would call 
'em, but I call 'em advantages - so you'll not waste your power, I dare 
say."
"Mr Bounderby," said Jem, turning with a smile to Louisa, "is a noble 
animal in a comparatively natural state, quite free from the harness in 
which a conventional hack like myself works."
"You respect Mr Bounderby very much," she quietly returned. "It is natural 
that you should."
He was disgracefully thrown out, for a gentleman who had seen so much of 
the world, and thought, "Now, how am I to take this?"
"You are going to devote yourself, as I gather from what Mr Bounderby has 
said, to the service of your country. You have made up your mind," said 
Louisa, still standing before him where she had first stopped - in all the 
singular contrariety of her self-possession, and her being obviously very 
ill at ease - "to show the nation the way out of all its difficulties."
"Mrs Bounderby," he returned, laughing, "upon my honour, no. I will make no 
such pretence to you. I have seen a little, here and there, up and down; I 
have found it all to be very worthless, as everybody has, and as some 
confess they have, and some do not; and I am going in for your respected 
father's opinions - really because I have no choice of opinions, and may as 
well back them as anything else."
"Have you none of your own?" asked Louisa.
"I have not so much as the slightest predilection left. I assure you I 
attach not the least importance to any opinions. The result of the 
varieties of boredom I have undergone, is a conviction (unless conviction 
is too industrious a word for the lazy sentiment I entertain on the 
subject), that any set of ideas will do just as much good as any other set, 
and just as much harm as any other set. There's an English family with a 
charming Italian motto. What will be, will be. It's the only truth going!"
This vicious assumption of honesty in dishonesty - a vice so dangerous, so 
deadly, and so common - seemed, he observed, a little to impress her in his 
favour. He followed up the advantage, by saying in his pleasantest manner: 
a manner to which she might attach as much or as little meaning as she 
pleased: "The side that can prove anything in a line of units, tens, 
hundreds, and thousands, Mrs Bounderby, seems to me to afford the most fun 
and to give a man the best chance. I am quite as much attached to it as if 
I believed it. I am quite ready to go in for it, to the same extent as if I 
believed it. And what more could I possibly do, if I did believe it!"
"You're a singular politician," said Louisa.
"Pardon me; I have not even that merit. We are the largest party in the 
state, I assure you, Mrs Bounderby, if we all fell out of our adopted ranks 
and were reviewed together."
Mr Bounderby, who had been in danger of bursting in silence, interposed 
here with a project for postponing the family dinner till half-past six, 
and taking Mr James Harthouse in the meantime on a round of visits to the 
voting and interesting notabilities of Coketown and its vicinity. The round 
of visits was made; and Mr James Harthouse, with a discreet use of his blue 
coaching, came off triumphantly, though with a considerable accession of 
boredom.
In the evening, he found the dinner-table laid for four, but they sat down 
only three. It was an appropriate occasion for Mr Bounderby to discuss the 
flavour of the hap'orth of stewed eels he had purchased in the streets at 
eight years old; and also of the inferior water, specially used for laying 
the dust, with which he had washed down that repast. He likewise 
entertained his guest, over the soup and fish, with the calculation that he 
(Bounderby) had eaten in his youth at least three horses under the guise of 
polonies and saveloys. These recitals, Jem, in a languid manner, received 
with "charming!" every now and then; and they probably would have decided 
him to "go in" for Jerusalem again tomorrow morning, had he been less 
curious respecting Louisa.
"Is there nothing," he thought, glancing at her as she sat at the head of 
the table, where her youthful figure, small and slight, but very graceful, 
looked as pretty as it looked misplaced; "is there nothing that will move 
that face?"
Yes! By Jupiter, there was something, and here it was, in an unexpected 
shape! Tom appeared. She changed as the door opened, and broke into a 
beaming smile.
A beautiful smile. Mr James Harthouse might not have thought so much of it, 
but that he had wondered so long at her impassive face. She put out her 
hand - a pretty little soft hand; and her fingers closed upon her 
brother's, as if she would have carried them to her lips.
"Ay, ay?" thought the visitor. "This whelp is the only creature she cares 
for. So, so!"
The whelp was presented, and took his chair. The appellation was not 
flattering, but not unmerited.
"When I was your age, young Tom," said Bounderby, "I was punctual, or I got 
no dinner!"
"When you were my age," returned Tom, "you hadn't a wrong balance to get 
right, and hadn't to dress afterwards."
"Never mind that now," said Bounderby.
"Well, then," grumbled Tom. "Don't begin with me."
"Mrs Bounderby," said Harthouse, perfectly hearing this understrain as it 
went on; "your brother's face is quite familiar to me. Can I have seen him 
abroad? Or at some public school perhaps?"
"No," she returned, quite interested, "he has never been abroad yet, and 
was educated here, at home. Tom, love, I am telling Mr Harthouse that he 
never saw you abroad."
"No such luck, sir," said Tom.
There was little enough in him to brighten her face, for he was a sullen 
young fellow, and ungracious in his manner even to her. So much the greater 
must have been the solitude of her heart, and her need of someone on whom 
to bestow it. "So much the more is this whelp the only creature she has 
ever cared for," thought Mr James Harthouse, turning it over and over. "So 
much the more. So much the more."
Both in his sister's presence, and after she had left the room, the whelp 
took no pains to hide his contempt for Mr Bounderby, whenever he could 
indulge it without the observation of that independent man, by making wry 
faces, or shutting one eye. Without responding to these telegraphic 
communications, Mr Harthouse encouraged him much in the course of the 
evening, and showed an unusual liking for him. At last, when he rose to 
return to his hotel, and was a little doubtful whether he knew the way by 
night, the whelp immediately proffered his services as guide, and turned 
out with him to escort him thither.


Chapter 3

The Whelp

It was very remarkable that a young gentleman who had been brought up under 
one continuous system of unnatural restraint, should be a hypocrite; but it 
was certainly the case with Tom. It was very strange that a young gentleman 
who had never been left to his own guidance for five consecutive minutes, 
should be incapable at last of governing himself; but so it was with Tom. 
It was altogether unaccountable that a young gentleman whose imagination 
had been strangled in his cradle, should be still inconvenienced by its 
ghost in the form of grovelling sensualities; but such a monster, beyond 
all doubt, was Tom.
"Do you smoke?" asked Mr James Harthouse, when they came to the hotel.
"I believe you!" said Tom.
He could do no less than ask Tom up; and Tom could do no less than go up. 
What with a cooling drink adapted to the weather, but not so weak as cool; 
and what with a rarer tobacco than was to be bought in those parts; Tom was 
soon in a highly free and easy state at his end of the sofa, and more than 
ever disposed to admire his new friend at the other end.
Tom blew his smoke aside, after he had been smoking a little while, and 
took an observation of his friend. "He don't seem to care about his dress," 
thought Tom, "and yet how capitally he does it. What an easy swell he is!"
Mr James Harthouse, happening to catch Tom's eye, remarked that he drank 
nothing, and filled his glass with his own negligent hand.
"Thank'ee," said Tom, "Thank'ee. Well, Mr Harthouse, I hope you have had 
about a dose of old Bounderby tonight." Tom said this with one eye shut up 
again, and looking over his glass knowingly, at his entertainer.
"A very good fellow indeed!" returned Mr James Harthouse.
"You think so, don't you?" said Tom. And shut up his eye again.
Mr James Harthouse smiled; and rising from his end of the sofa, and 
lounging with his back against the chimney-piece, so that he stood before 
the empty fire-grate as he smoked, in front of Tom and looking down at him, 
observed:
"What a comical brother-in-law you are!"
"What a comical brother-in-law old Bounderby is, I think you mean," said 
Tom.
"You are a piece of caustic, Tom," retorted Mr James Harthouse.
There was something so very agreeable in being so intimate with such a 
waistcoat; in being called Tom, in such an intimate way, by such a voice; 
in being on such offhand terms so soon, with such a pair of whiskers; that 
Tom was uncommonly pleased with himself.
"Oh! I don't care for old Bounderby," said he, "if you mean that. I have 
always called old Bounderby by the same name when I have talked about him, 
and I have always thought of him in the same way. I am not going to begin 
to be polite now, about old Bounderby. It would be rather late in the day."
"Don't mind me," returned James; "but take care when his wife is by, you 
know."
"His wife?" said Tom. "My sister Loo? O yes!" And he laughed, and took a 
little more of the cooling drink.
James Harthouse continued to lounge in the same place and attitude, smoking 
his cigar in his own easy way, and looking pleasantly at the whelp, as if 
he knew himself to be a kind of agreeable demon who had only to hover over 
him, and he must give up his whole soul if required. It certainly did seem 
that the whelp yielded to this influence. He looked at his companion 
sneakingly, he looked at him admiringly, he looked at him boldly, and put 
up one leg on the sofa.
"My sister Loo?" said Tom, "She never cared for old Bounderby. "
"That's the past tense, Tom," returned Mr James Harthouse, striking the ash 
from his cigar with his little finger. "We are in the present tense, now."
"Verb neuter, not to care. Indicative mood, present tense. First person 
singular, I do not care; second person singular, thou dost not care; third 
person singular, she does not care," returned Tom.
"Good! Very quaint!" said his friend. "Though you don't mean it."
"But I do mean it," cried Tom. "Upon my honour! Why, you won't tell me, Mr 
Harthouse, that you really suppose my sister Loo does care for old 
Bounderby."
"My dear fellow," returned the other, "what am I bound to suppose, when I 
find two married people living in harmony and happiness?"
Tom had by this time got both his legs on the sofa. If his second leg had 
not been already there when he was called a dear fellow, he would have put 
it up at that great stage of the conversation. Feeling it necessary to do 
something then, he stretched himself out at greater length, and, reclining 
with the back of his head on the end of the sofa, and smoking with an 
infinite assumption of negligence, turned his common face, and not too 
sober eyes, towards the face looking down upon him so carelessly yet so 
potently.
"You know our governor, Mr Harthouse," said Tom, "and therefore you needn't 
be surprised that Loo married old Bounderby. She never had a lover, and the 
governor proposed old Bounderby, and she took him."
"Very dutiful in your interesting sister," said Mr James Harthouse.
"Yes, but she wouldn't have been as dutiful, and it would not have come off 
as easily," returned the whelp, "if it hadn't been for me."
The tempter merely lifted his eyebrows; but the whelp was obliged to go on.
"I persuaded her," he said, with an edifying air of superiority. "I was 
stuck into old Bounderby's bank (where I never wanted to be), and I knew I 
should get into scrapes there, if she put old Bounderby's pipe out; so I 
told her my wishes, and she came into them. She would do anything for me. 
It was very game of her, wasn't it?"
"It was charming, Tom!"
"Not that it was altogether so important to her as it was to me," continued 
Tom coolly, "because my liberty and comfort, and perhaps my getting on, 
depended on it; and she had no other lover, and staying at home was like 
staying in jail especially when I was gone. It wasn't as if she gave up 
another lover for old Bounderby; but still it was a good thing in her."
"Perfectly delightful. And she gets on so placidly."
"Oh," returned Tom, with contemptuous patronage, "she's a regular girl. A 
girl can get on anywhere. She has settled down to the life, and she don't 
mind. It does just as well as another. Besides, though Loo is a girl, she's 
not a common sort of girl. She can shut herself up within herself, and 
think - as I have often known her sit and watch the fire - for an hour at a 
stretch."
"Ay, ay? Has resources of her own," said Harthouse, smoking quietly.
"Not so much of that as you may suppose," returned Tom; "for our governor 
had her crammed with all sorts of dry bones and sawdust. It's his system."
"Formed his daughter on his own model?" suggested Harthouse.
"His daughter? Ah! and everybody else. Why, he formed Me that way," said 
Tom.
"Impossible!"
"He did though," said Tom, shaking his head. "I mean to say, Mr Harthouse, 
that when I first left home and went to old Bounderby's, I was as flat as a 
warming-pan, and knew no more about life, than any oyster does."
"Come, Tom! I can hardly believe that. A joke's a joke."
"Upon my soul!" said the whelp. "I am serious; I am indeed!" He smoked with 
great gravity and dignity for a little while, and then added, in a highly 
complacent tone, "Oh! I have picked up a little since. I don't deny that. 
But I have done it myself; no thanks to the governor."
"And your intelligent sister?"
"My intelligent sister is about where she was. She used to complain to me 
that she had nothing to fall back upon, that girls usually fall back upon; 
and I don't see how she is to have got over that since. But she don't 
mind," he sagaciously added, puffing at his cigar again. "Girls can always 
get on, somehow."
"Calling at the Bank yesterday evening, for Mr Bounderby's address, I found 
an ancient lady there, who seems to entertain great admiration for your 
sister," observed Mr James Harthouse, throwing away the last small remnant 
of the cigar he had now smoked out.
"Mother Sparsit?" said Tom. "What! you have seen her already, have you?"
His friend nodded. Tom took his cigar out of his mouth, to shut up his eye 
(which had grown rather unmanageable) with the greater expression, and to 
tap his nose several times with his finger.
"Mother Sparsit's feeling for Loo is more than admiration, I should think," 
said Tom. "Say affection and devotion. Mother Sparsit never set her cap at 
Bounderby when he was a bachelor. Oh no!"
These were the last words spoken by the whelp, before a giddy drowsiness 
came upon him, followed by complete oblivion. He was roused from the latter 
state by an uneasy dream of being stirred up with a boot, and also of a 
voice saying: "Come, it's late. Be off!"
"Well!" he said, scrambling from the sofa. "I must take my leave of you 
though. I say. Yours is very good tobacco. But it's too mild."
"Yes, it's too mild," returned his entertainer.
"It's - it's ridiculously mild," said Tom. "Where's the door? Good night!"
He had another odd dream of being taken by a waiter through a mist, which, 
after giving him some trouble and difficulty, resolved itself into the main 
street, in which he stood alone. He then walked home pretty easily, though 
not yet free from an impression of the presence and influence of his new 
friend - as if he were lounging somewhere in the air, in the same negligent 
attitude, regarding him with the same look.
The whelp went home, and went to bed. If he had had any sense of what he 
had done that night, and had been less of a whelp and more of a brother, he 
might have turned short on the road, might have gone down to the ill-
smelling river that was dyed black, might have gone to bed in it for good 
and all, and have curtained his head for ever with its filthy waters.


Chapter 4

Men And Brothers

"Oh my friends, the down-trodden operatives of Coketown! Oh my friends and 
fellow-countrymen, the slaves of an iron-handed and a grinding despotism! 
Oh my friends and fellow-sufferers, and fellow-workmen, and fellow-men! I 
tell you that the hour is come, when we must rally round one another as One 
united power, and crumble into dust the oppressors that too long have 
battened upon the plunder of our families, upon the sweat of our brows, 
upon the labour of our hands, upon the strength of our sinews, upon the God-
created glorious rights of Humanity, and upon the holy and eternal 
privileges of Brotherhood! "
"Good!" "Hear, hear, hear!" "Hurrah!" and other cries arose in many voices 
from various parts of the densely crowded and suffocatingly close Hall, in 
which the orator, perched on a stage, delivered himself of this and what 
other froth and fume he had in him. He had declaimed himself into a violent 
heat, and was as hoarse as he was hot. By dint of roaring at the top of his 
voice under a flaring gaslight, clenching his fists, knitting his brows, 
setting his teeth, and pounding with his arms, he had taken so much out of 
himself by this time, that he was brought to a stop and called for a glass 
of water.
As he stood there, trying to quench his fiery face with his drink of water, 
the comparison between the orator and the crowd of attentive faces turned 
towards him, was extremely to his disadvantage. Judging him by Nature's 
evidence, he was above the mass in very little but the stage on which he 
stood. In many great respects, he was essentially below them. He was not so 
honest, he was not so manly, he was not so good-humoured; he substituted 
cunning for their simplicity, and passion for their safe solid sense. An 
ill-made high-shouldered man, with lowering brows, and his features crushed 
into an habitually sour expression, he contrasted most unfavourably, even 
in his mongrel dress, with the great body of his hearers in their plain 
working clothes. Strange as it always is to consider any assembly in the 
act of submissively resigning itself to the dreariness of some complacent 
person, lord or commoner, whom three-fourths of it could, by no human 
means, raise out of the slough of inanity to their own intellectual level, 
it was particularly strange, and it was even particularly affecting, to see 
this crowd of earnest faces, whose honesty in the main no competent 
observer free from bias could doubt, so agitated by such a leader.
Good! Hear, hear! Hurrah! The eagerness, both of attention and intention, 
exhibited in all the countenances, made them a most impressive sight. There 
was no carelessness, no languor, no idle curiosity; none of the many shades 
of indifference to be seen in all other assemblies, visible for one moment 
there. That every man felt his condition to be, somehow or other, worse 
than it might be; that every man considered it incumbent on him to join the 
rest, towards the making of it better; that every man felt his only hope to 
be in his allying himself to the comrades by whom he was surrounded; and 
that in this belief, right or wrong (unhappily wrong then), the whole of 
that crowd were gravely, deeply, faithfully in earnest; must have been as 
plain to any one who chose to see what was there, as the bare beams of the 
roof, and the whitened brick walls. Nor could any such spectator fail to 
know in his own breast, that these men, through their very delusions, 
showed great qualities, susceptible of being turned to the happiest and 
best account; and that to pretend (on the strength of sweeping axioms, 
howsoever cut and dried) that they went astray wholly without cause, and of 
their own irrational wills, was to pretend that there could be smoke 
without fire; death without birth, harvest without seed, anything or 
everything produced from nothing.
The orator having refreshed himself, wiped his corrugated forehead from 
left to right several times with his handkerchief folded into a pad, and 
concentrated all his revived forces in a sneer of great disdain and 
bitterness.
"But, oh my friends and brothers! Oh men and Englishmen, the down-trodden 
operatives of Coketown! What shall we say of that man - that working-man, 
that I should find it necessary so to libel the glorious name - who, being 
practically and well acquainted with the grievances and wrongs of you, the 
injured pith and marrow of this land, and having heard you, with a noble 
and majestic unanimity that will make Tyrants tremble, resolve for to 
subscribe to the funds of the United Aggregate Tribunal, and to abide by 
the injunctions issued by that body for your benefit, whatever they may be -
 what, I ask you, will you say of that working-man, since such I must 
acknowledge him to be, who, at such a time, deserts his post, and sells his 
flag; who, at such a time, turns a traitor and a craven and a recreant; 
who, at such a time, is not ashamed to make to you the dastardly and 
humiliating avowal that he will hold himself aloof and will not be one of 
those associated in the gallant stand for Freedom and for Right?"
The assembly was divided at this point. There were some groans and hisses, 
but the general sense of honour was much too strong for the condemnation of 
a man unheard. "Be sure you're right, Slackbridge!" "Put him up!" "Let's 
hear him!" Such things were said on many sides. Finally, one strong voice 
called out, "Is the man heer? If the man's heer, Slackbridge, let's hear 
the man himseln, 'stead o' yo." Which was received with a round of 
applause.
Slackbridge, the orator, looked about him with a withering smile; and, 
holding out his right hand at arm's length (as the manner of all 
Slackbridges is), to still the thundering sea, waited until there was a 
profound silence.
"Oh my friends and fellow-men!" said Slackbridge then, shaking his head 
with violent scorn, "I do not wonder that you, the prostrate sons of 
labour, are incredulous of the existence of such a man. But he who sold his 
birthright for a mess of pottage existed, and Judas Iscariot existed, and 
Castlereagh existed, and this man exists!"
Here, a brief press and confusion near the stage, ended in the man himself 
standing at the orator's side before the concourse. He was pale and a 
little moved in the face - his lips especially showed it; but he stood 
quiet, with his left hand at his chin, waiting to be heard. There was a 
chairman to regulate the proceedings, and this functionary now took the 
case into his own hands.
"My friends," said he, "by virtue o' my office as your president, I ashes 
o' our friend Slackbridge, who may be a little over hetter in this 
business, to take his seat, whiles this man Stephen Blackpool is heern. You 
all know this man Stephen Blackpool. You know him awlung o' his misfort'ns, 
and his good name."
With that, the chairman shook him frankly by the hand, and sat down again. 
Slackbridge likewise sat down, wiping his hot forehead - always from left 
to right, and never the reverse way.
"My friends," Stephen began, in the midst of a dead calm; "I ha' hed what's 
been spok'n o' me, and 'tis lickly that I shan't mend it. But I'd liefer 
you'd hearn the truth concernin myseln, fro my lips than for onny other 
man's, though I never cud'n speak afore so monny, wi'out bein moydert and 
muddled."
Slackbridge shook his head as if he would shake it off, in his bitterness.
"I'm th' one single Hand in Bounderby's mill, o' a' the men theer, as don't 
coom in wi' th' proposed reg'lations. I canna coom in wi' 'em. My friends, 
I doubt their doin' yo onny good. Licker they'll do you hurt."
Slackbridge laughed, folded his arms, and frowned sarcastically.
"But 't ant sommuch for that as I stands out. If that were aw, I'd coom in 
wi' th' rest. But I ha' my reasons - mine, yo see - for being hindered; not 
on'y now, but awlus - awlus - life long!"
Slackbridge jumped up and stood beside him, gnashing and tearing. "Oh my 
friends, what but this did I tell you? Oh my fellow-countrymen, what 
warning but this did I give you? And how shows this recreant conduct in a 
man on whom unequal laws are known to have fallen heavy? Oh you Englishmen, 
I ask you how does this subornation show in one of yourselves, who is thus 
consenting to his own undoing and to yours, and to your children's and your 
children's children?"
There was some applause, and some crying of Shame upon the man; but the 
greater part of the audience were quiet. They looked at Stephen's worn 
face, rendered more pathetic by the homely emotions it evinced; and, in the 
kindness of their nature, they were more sorry than indignant.
"'Tis this Delegate's trade for t' speak," said Stephen, "an he's paid 
for't, and he knows his work. Let him keep to't. Let him give no heed to 
what I ha had'n to bear. That's not for him. That's not for nobbody but 
me."
There was a propriety, not to say a dignity in these words, that made the 
hearers yet more quiet and attentive. The same strong voice called out, 
"Slackbridge, let the man be heern, and howd thee tongue!" Then the place 
was wonderfully still.
"My brothers," said Stephen, whose low voice was distinctly heard, "and my 
fellow-workmen - for that yo are to me, though not, as I knows on, to this 
delegate heer - I ha but a word to sen, and I could sen nommore if I was to 
speak till Strike o' day. I know weel, aw what's afore me. I know weel that 
yo are aw resolved to ha nommore ado wi' a man who is not wi' yo in this 
matther. I know weel that if I was a lyin' parisht i' th' road, yo'd feel 
it right to pass me by, as a forrenner and stranger. What I ha getn, I mun 
mak th' best on."
"Stephen Blackpool," said the chairman, rising, "think on't agen. Think 
on't once agen, lad, afore thour't shunned by aw owd friends."
There was an universal murmur to the same effect, though no man articulated 
a word. Every eye was fixed on Stephen's face. To repent of his 
determination, would be to take a load from all their minds. He looked 
around him, and knew that it was so. Not a grain of anger with them was in 
his heart; he knew them, far below their surface weaknesses and 
misconceptions, as no one but their fellow-labourer could.
"I ha thowt on't, above a bit, sir. I simply canna comm in. I mun go th' 
way as lays afore me. I mun tak my leave o' aw heer. "
He made a sort of reverence to them by holding up his arms, and stood for 
the moment in that attitude: not speaking until they slowly dropped at his 
sides.
"Monny's the pleasant word as soom heer has spoke'n wi' me; monny's the 
face I see heer, as I first seen when I were yoong and lighter heart'n than 
now. I ha never had no fratch afore, sin ever I were born, wi' any o' my 
like; Gonnows I ha' none now that's o' my makin'. Yo'll ca' me traitor and 
that yo I mean t' say," addressing Slackbridge, "but 'tis easier to ca' 
than mak' out. So let be."
He had moved away a pace or two to come down from the platform, when he 
remembered something he had not said, and returned again.
"Haply," he said, turning his furrowed face slowly about that he might as 
it were individually address the whole audience, those both near and 
distant; "haply, when this question has been tak'n up and discoosed, 
there'll be a threat to turn out if I'm let to work among yo. I hope I 
shall die ere ever such a time cooms, and I shall work solitary among yo 
unless it cooms - truly, I mun do 't, my friends; not to brave yo, but to 
live. I ha nobbut work to live by; and wheerever can I go, I who ha worked 
sin I were no heighth at aw, in Coketown heer? I mak' no complaints o' bein 
turned to the wa', o' being outcasten and overlooken fro this time forrard, 
but I hope I shall be let to work. If there is any right for me at aw, my 
friends, I think 'tis that."
Not a word was spoken. Not a sound was audible in the building, but the 
slight rustle of men moving a little apart, all along the centre of the 
room, to open a means of passing out, to the man with whom they had all 
bound themselves to renounce companionship. Looking at no one, and going 
his way with a lowly steadiness upon him that asserted nothing and sought 
nothing, Old Stephen, with all his troubles on his head, left the scene.
Then Slackbridge, who had kept his oratorical arm extended during the going 
out, as if he were repressing with infinite solicitude and by a wonderful 
moral power the vehement passions of the multitude, applied himself to 
raising their spirits. Had not the Roman Brutus, oh my British countrymen, 
condemned his son to death; and had not the Spartan mothers, oh my soon to 
be victorious friends, driven their flying children on the points of their 
enemies' swords? Then was it not the sacred duty of the men of Coketown, 
with forefathers before them, an admiring world in company with them, and a 
posterity to come after them, to hurl out traitors from the tents they had 
pitched in a sacred and a Godlike cause? The winds of Heaven answered Yes; 
and bore Yes, east, west, north, and south. And consequently three cheers 
for the United Aggregate Tribunal!
Slackbridge acted as fugleman, and gave the time. The multitude of doubtful 
faces (a little conscience-stricken) brightened at the sound, and took it 
up. Private feeling must yield to the common cause. Hurrah! The roof yet 
vibrated with the cheering, when the assembly dispersed.
Thus easily did Stephen Blackpool fall into the loneliest of lives, the 
life of solitude among a familiar crowd. The stranger in the land who looks 
into ten thousand faces for some answering look and never finds it, is in 
cheering society as compared with him who passes ten averted faces daily, 
that were once the countenances of friends. Such experience was to be 
Stephen's now, in every waking moment of his life; at his work, on his way 
to it and from it, at his door, at his window, everywhere. By general 
consent, they even avoided that side of the street on which he habitually 
walked; and left it, of all the working men, to him only.
He had been for many years, a quiet silent man, associating but little with 
other men, and used to companionship with his own thoughts. He had never 
known before, the strength of the want in his heart for the frequent 
recognition of a nod, a look, a word; or the immense amount of relief that 
had been poured into it by drops, through such small means. It was even 
harder than he could have believed possible, to separate in his own 
conscience his abandonment by all his fellows, from a baseless sense of 
shame and disgrace.
The first four days of his endurance were days so long and heavy, that he 
began to be appalled by the prospect before him. Not only did he see no 
Rachael all the time, but he avoided every chance of seeing her; for, 
although he knew that the prohibition did not yet formally extend to the 
women working in the factories, he found that some of them with whom he was 
acquainted were changed to him, and he feared to try others, and dreaded 
that Rachael might be even singled out from the rest if she were seen in 
his company. So, he had been quite alone during the four days, and had 
spoken to no one, when, as he was leaving his work at night, a young man of 
a very light complexion accosted him in the street.
"Your name's Blackpool, an't it?" said the young man.
Stephen coloured to find himself with his hat in his hand, in his gratitude 
for being spoken to, or in the suddenness of it, or both. He made a feint 
of adjusting the lining, and said, "Yes."
"You are the Hand they have sent to Coventry, I mean?" said Bitzer, the 
very light young man in question.
Stephen answered "Yes," again.
"I supposed so, from their all appearing to keep away from you. Mr 
Bounderby wants to speak to you. You know his house, don't you?"
Stephen said "Yes," again.
"Then go straight up there, will you?" said Bitzer. "You're expected, and 
have only to tell the servant it's you. I belong to the Bank; so, if you go 
straight up without me (I was sent to fetch you), you'll save me a walk."
Stephen, whose way had been in the contrary direction, turned about, and 
betook himself as in duty bound, to the red brick castle of the giant 
Bounderby.



Chapter 5

Men And Masters

"Well, Stephen," said Bounderby, in his windy manner, "what's this I hear? 
What have these pests of the earth been doing to you? Come in and speak 
up."
It was into the drawing-room that he was thus bidden. A tea-table was set 
out; and Mr Bounderby's young wife, and her brother, and a great gentleman 
from London, were present. To whom Stephen made his obeisance, closing the 
door and standing near it, with his hat in his hand.
"This is the man I was telling you about, Harthouse," said Mr Bounderby. 
The gentleman he addressed, who was talking to Mrs Bounderby on the sofa, 
got up, saying in an indolent way, "Oh really?" and dawdled to the 
hearthrug where Mr Bounderby stood.
"Now," said Bounderby, "speak up!"
After the four days he had passed, this address fell rudely and 
discordantly on Stephen's ear. Besides being a rough handling of his 
wounded mind, it seemed to assume that he really was the self-interested 
deserter he had been called.
"What were it, sir," said Stephen, "as yo were pleased to want wi' me?"
"Why, I have told you," returned Bounderby. "Speak up like a man, since you 
are a man, and tell us about yourself and this Combination."
"Wi' yor pardon, sir," said Stephen Blackpool, "I ha' nowt to sen about 
it."
Mr Bounderby, who was always more or less like a Wind, finding something in 
his way here, began to blow at it directly.
"Now, look here, Harthouse," said he, "here's a specimen of 'em. When this 
man was here once before, I warned this man against the mischievous 
strangers who are always about - and who ought to be hanged wherever they 
are found - and I told this man that he was going in the wrong direction. 
Now, would you believe it, that although they have put this mark upon him, 
he is such a slave to them still, that he's afraid to open his lips about 
them?"
"I sed as I had nowt to sen, sir; not as I was fearfo o' openin' my lips."
"You said. Ah! I know what you said; more than that, I know what you mean, 
you see. Not always the same thing, by the Lord Harry! Quite different 
things. You had better tell us at once, that that fellow Slackbridge is not 
in the town, stirring up the people to mutiny; and that he is not a regular 
qualified leader of the people: that is, a most confounded scoundrel. You 
had better tell us so at once; you can't deceive me. You want to tell us 
so. Why don't you?"
"I'm as sooary as yo, sir, when the people's leaders is bad," said Stephen, 
shaking his head. "They taks such as offers. Haply 'tis na' the sma'est o' 
their misfortuns when they can get no better."
The wind began to get boisterous.
"Now, you'll think this pretty well, Harthouse," said Mr Bounderby. "You'll 
think this tolerably strong. You'll say, upon my soul this is a tidy 
specimen of what my friends have to deal with; but this is nothing, sir! 
You shall hear me ask this man a question. Pray, Mr Blackpool" - wind 
springing up very fast - "may I take the liberty of asking you how it 
happens that you refused to be in this Combination?"
"How't happens?"
"Ah!" said Mr Bounderby, with his thumbs in the arms of his coat, and 
jerking his head and shutting his eyes in confidence with the opposite 
wall: "how it happens."
"I'd liefer not coom to 't, sir; but sin you put th' question - an not 
want'n t' be ill-manner'n - I'll answer. I ha passed a promess."
"Not to me, you know," said Bounderby. (Gusty weather with deceitful calms. 
One now prevailing.)
"O no, sir. Not to yo."
"As for me, any consideration for me has had just nothing at all to do with 
it," said Bounderby, still in confidence with the wall. "If only Josiah 
Bounderby of Coketown had been in question, you would have joined and made 
no bones of it?"
"Why yes, sir. 'Tis true."
"Though he knows," said Mr Bounderby, now blowing a gale, "that these are a 
set of rascals and rebels whom transportation is too good for! Now, Mr Hart 
house, you have been knocking about in the world some time. Did you ever 
meet with anything like that man out of this blessed country?" And Mr 
Bounderby pointed him out for inspection, with an angry finger.
"Nay, ma'am," said Stephen Blackpool, staunchly protesting against the 
words that had been used, and instinctively addressing himself to Louisa, 
after glancing at her face. "Not rebels, nor yet rascals. Nowt o' th' kind, 
ma'am, nowt o th' kind. They've not doon me a kindness, ma'am, as I know 
and feel. But, there's not a dozen men amoong 'em, ma'am - a dozen? Not six 
- but what believes as he has doon his duty by the rest and by himseln. God 
forbid as I, that ha known, and had'n experience o' these men aw my life - 
I, that ha' ett'n an droonken wi' em, an seet'n wi' em, an seet'n wi' em, 
and toil'n wi' em, and lov'n 'em, should fail fur to stan by 'em wi' the 
truth, let 'em ha doon to me what they may!"
He spoke with the rugged earnestness of his place and character - deepened 
perhaps by a proud consciousness that he was faithful to his class under 
all their mistrust; but he fully remembered where he was, and did not even 
raise his voice.
"No ma'am, no. They're true to one another, faithfo' to one another, 
fectionate to one another, e'en to death. Be poor amoong 'em, be sick 
amoong 'em, grieve amoong 'em for onny o' th' monny causes that carries 
grief to the poor man's door, an they'll be tender wi' yo, gentle wi' yo, 
comfortable wi' yo, Chrisen wi' yo. Be sure o' that, ma'am. They'd be riven 
to bits, ere ever they'd be different."
"In short," said Mr Bounderby, "it's because they are so full of virtues 
that they have turned you adrift. Go through with it while you are about 
it. Out with it."
"How 'tis, ma'am," resumed Stephen, appearing still to find his natural 
refuge in Louisa's face, "that what is best in us fok, seems to turn us 
most to trouble an misfort'n an mistake, I dunno. But 'tis so. I know 'tis, 
as I know the heavens is over me ahint the smoke. We're patient too, and 
wants in general to do right. An' I canna think the fawt is aw wi' us."
"Now, my friend," said Mr Bounderby, whom he could not have exasperated 
more, quite unconscious of it though he was, than by seeming to appeal to 
any one else, "if you will favour me with your attention for half a minute, 
I should like to have a word or two with you. You said just now, that you 
had nothing to tell us about this business. You are quite sure of that 
before we go any further?"
"Sir, I am sure on 't."
"Here's a gentleman from London present," Mr Bounderby made a back-handed 
point at Mr James Harthouse with his thumb, "Parliament gentleman. I should 
like him to hear a short bit of dialogue between you and me, instead of 
taking the substance of it - for I know precious well, before-hand, what it 
will be; nobody knows better than I do, take notice! - instead of receiving 
it on trust, from your mouth."
Stephen bent his head to the gentleman from London, and showed a rather 
more troubled mind than usual. He turned his eyes involuntarily to his 
former refuge, but at a look from that quarter (expressive though 
instantaneous) he settled them on Mr Bounderby's face.
"Now, what do you complain of?" asked Mr Bounderby.
"I ha' not coom here, sir," Stephen reminded him, "to complain. I coom for 
that I were sent for."
"What," repeated Mr Bounderby, folding his arms, "do you people, in a 
general way, complain of?"
Stephen looked at him with some little irresolution for a moment, and 
seemed to make up his mind.
"Sir, I were never good at showin o't, though I ha had'n my share in 
feeling o't. 'Deed we are in a muddle, sir. Look round town - so rich as 
'tis - and see the numbers o' people as has been broughten into bein heer, 
fur to weave, and to card, and to piece out a livin', aw the same one way, 
somehows, 'twixt their cradles and their graves. Look how we live, an wheer 
we live, an in what numbers, an by what chances, and wi' what sameness; and 
look how the mills is awlus a goin, and how they never works us no nigher 
to only dis'ant object - ceptin awlus, Death. Look how you considers of us, 
an writes of us an talks of us, an goes up wi' yor deputations to 
Secretaries o' State 'bout us, an how yo are awlus right, and how we are 
awlus wrong, and never had'n no reason in us sin ever we were born. Look 
how this ha growen an growen, sir, bigger an bigger, broader an broader, 
harder an harder, fro year to year, fro generation unto generation. Who can 
look on 't, sir, and fairly tell a man 'tis not a muddle?"
"Of course," said Mr Bounderby. "Now perhaps you'll let the gentleman know, 
how you would set this muddle (as you're so fond of calling it) to rights."
"I donno, sir. I canna be expecten to 't. 'Tis not me as should be looked 
to for that, sir. 'Tis them as is put ower me, and ower aw the rest of us. 
What do they tak upon themseln, sir, if not to do 't?"
"I'll tell you something towards it, at any rate," returned Mr Bounderby. 
"We will make an example of half a dozen Slackbridges. We'll indict the 
blackguards for felony, and get 'em shipped off to penal settlements."
Stephen gravely shook his head.
"Don't tell me we won't, man," said Mr Bounderby by this time blowing a 
hurricane, "because we will, I tell you!"
"Sir," returned Stephen, with the quiet confidence of absolute certainty, 
"if yo was t' tak a hundred Slackbridges - aw as there is, and aw the 
number ten times towd - and was t' sew 'em up in separate sacks, and sink 
'em in the deepest ocean as were made ere ever dry land coom to be, yo'd 
leave the muddle just wheer 'tis. Mischeevous strangers!" said Stephen with 
an anxious smile; "when ha we not heern, I am sure, sin ever we can call to 
mind, o' th' mischeevous strangers! 'Tis not by them the trouble's made, 
sir. 'Tis not wi' them 't commences. I ha no favour for'em - I ha no reason 
to favour 'em - but 'tis hopeless and useless to dream o' takin them fro 
their trade, 'stead o' takin their trade fro them! Aw that's now about me 
in this room were heer afore I coom, and will be heer when I am gone. Put 
that clock aboard a ship and pack it off to Norfolk Island, an the time 
will go on just the same. So 'tis wi' Slackbridge every bit."
Reverting for a moment to his former refuge, he observed a cautionary 
movement of her eyes towards the door. Stepping back, he put his hand upon 
the lock. But he had not spoken out of his own will and desire; and he felt 
it in his heart a noble return for his late injurious treatment to be 
faithful to the last to those who had repudiated him. He stayed to finish 
what was in his mind.
"Sir, I canna, wi' my little learning an my common way, tell the genelman 
what will be better aw this - though some workingmen o' this town could, 
above my powers - but I can tell him what I know will never do 't. The 
strong hand will never do 't. Vict'ry and triumph will never do 't. 
Agreeing for to mak one side unnat'rally awlus and forever right, and 
toother side unnat'rally awlus forever wrong, will never, never do 't. Nor 
yet lettin alone will never do 't. Let thousands upon thousands alone, aw 
leadin the like lives and aw faw'en into the like muddle, and they will be 
as one, and yo will be as anoother, wi' a black unpassable world betwixt 
yo, just as long or short a time as sitch-like misery can last. Not drawin 
nigh to fok, wi' kindness and patience an cheery ways, that so draws nigh 
to one another in their monny trobles, and so cherishes one another in 
their distresses wi' what they need themseln - like, I humbly believe, as 
no people the genelman ha seen in aw his travels can beat - will never do 
't till th' Sun turns t' ice. Most o' aw, ratin 'em as so much Power, and 
reg'latin 'em as if they was figures in a soom or machines: wi'out loves 
and likens, wi'out memories and inclinations, wi'out souls to weary and 
souls to hope - when aw goes quiet, draggin on wi' 'em as if they'd nowt o' 
th' kind, and when aw goes onquiet, reproachin 'em for their want o' sitch 
humanly feelins in their dealins wi' yo - this will never do 't, sir, till 
God's work is unmade."
Stephen stood with the open door in his hand, waiting to know if anything 
more were expected of him.
"Just stop a moment," said Mr Bounderby, excessively red in the face. "I 
told you, the last time you were here with a grievance, that you had better 
turn about and come out of that. And I also told you, if you remember, that 
I was up to the gold spo'on look-out."
"I were not up to 't myseln, sir; I do assure yo."
"Now it's clear to me," said Mr Bounderby, "that you are one of those chaps 
who have always got a grievance. And you go about, sowing it and raising 
crops. That's the business of your life, my friend."
Stephen shook his head, mutely protesting that indeed he had other business 
to do for his life.
"You are such a waspish, raspish, ill-conditioned chap, you see," said Mr 
Bounderby, "that even your own Union, the men who know you best, will have 
nothing to do with you. I never thought those fellows could be right in 
anything; but I tell you what! I so far go along with them for a novelty 
that I'll have nothing to do with you either."
Stephen raised his eyes quickly to his face.
"You can finish off what you're at," said Mr Bounderby, with a meaning nod, 
"and then go elsewhere."
"Sir, yo know weel," said Stephen expressively, "that if I canna get work 
wi' yo, I canna get it else-wheer."
The reply was, "What I know, I know; and what you know, you know. I have no 
more to say about it."
Stephen glanced at Louisa again, but her eyes were raised to his no more; 
therefore, with a sigh, and saying, barely above his breath, "Heaven help 
us aw in this world!" he departed.


Chapter 6

Fading Away

It was falling dark when Stephen came out of Mr Bounderby's house. The 
shadows of night had gathered so fast, that he did not look about him when 
he closed the door, but plodded straight along the street. Nothing was 
further from his thoughts than the curious old woman he had encountered on 
his previous visit to the same house, when he heard a step behind him that 
he knew, and, turning, saw her in Rachael's company.
He saw Rachael first, as he had heard her only.
"Ah Rachael, my dear! Missus, thou we' her!"
"Well, and now you are surprised to be sure, and with reason I must say," 
the old woman returned. "Here I am again, you see."
"But how wi' Rachael?" said Stephen, falling into their step, walking 
between them, and looking from the one to the other.
"Why, I come to be with this good lass pretty much as I came to be with 
you," said the old woman cheerfully, taking the reply upon herself. "My 
visiting time is later this year than usual, for I have been rather 
troubled with shortness of breath, and so put it off till the weather was 
fine and warm. For the same reason I don't make all my journey in one day, 
but divide it into two days, and get a bed tonight at the Travellers' 
Coffee House down by the railroad (a nice clean house), and go back 
Parliamentary, at six in the morning. Well, but what has this to do with 
this good lass, says you? I'm going to tell you. I have heard of Mr 
Bounderby being married. I read it in the paper, where it looked grand - 
oh, it looked fine!" the old woman dwelt on it with a strange enthusiasm: 
"and I want to see his wife. I have never seen her yet. Now, if you'll 
believe me, she hasn't come out of that house since noon today. So not to 
give her up too easily, I was waiting about, a little last bit more, when I 
passed close to this good lass two or three times; and her face being so 
friendly I spoke to her, and she spoke to me. There!" said the old woman to 
Stephen, "you can make all the rest out for yourself now, a deal shorter 
than I can, I dare say!"
Once again, Stephen had to conquer an instinctive propensity to dislike 
this old woman, though her manner was as honest and simple as a manner 
possibly could be. With a gentleness that was natural to him as he knew it 
to be to Rachael, he pursued the subject that interested her in her old 
age.
"Well, Missus," said he, "I ha seen the lady, and she were yoong and 
hansom. Wi' fine dark thinkin eyes, and a still way, Rachael, as I ha never 
seen the like on."
"Young and handsome. Yes!" cried the old woman, quite delighted. "As bonny 
as a rose! And what a happy wife!"
"Aye, missus, I suppose she be," said Stephen. But with a doubtful glance 
at Rachael.
"Suppose she be? She must be. She's your master's wife," returned the old 
woman.
Stephen nodded assent. "Though as to master," said he, glancing again at 
Rachael, "not master onny more. That's aw enden twixt him and me."
"Have you left his work, Stephen?" asked Rachael, anxiously and quickly.
"Why Rachael," he replied, "whether I ha lef'n his work or whether his work 
ha lef'n me, cooms t' th same. His work and me are parted. 'Tis as weel so -
 better, I were thinken when yo coom up wi' me. It would ha brought'n 
trouble upon trouble if I had stayed theer. Haply 'tis a kindness to monny 
that I go; haply 'tis a kindness to myseln; anyways it mun be done. I mun 
turn my face fro Coketown fur th' time, and seek a fort'n, dear, by 
beginnin fresh."
"Where will you go, Stephen?"
"I donno t'night," said he, lifting off his hat, and smoothing his thin 
hair with the flat of his hand. "But I'm not goin t'night, Rachael, nor yet 
t'morrow. Tan't easy overmuch, t'know weer 't turn, but a good heart will 
coom to me."
Herein, too, the sense of even thinking unselfishly aided him. Before he 
had so much as closed Mr Bounderby's door, he had reflected that at least 
his being obliged to go away was good for her, as it would save her from 
the chance of being brought into question for not withdrawing from him. 
Though it would cost him a hard pang to leave her, and though he could 
think of no similar place in which his condemnation would not pursue him, 
perhaps it was almost a relief to be forced away from the endurance of the 
last four days, even to unknown difficulties and distresses.
So he said, with truth, "I'm more leetsome, Rachael, under 't than I 
could'n ha believed." It was not her part to make his burden heavier. She 
answered with her comforting smile, and the three walked on together.
Age, especially when it strives to be self-reliant and cheerful, finds much 
consideration among the poor. The woman was so decent and contented, and 
made so light of her infirmities, though they had increased upon her since 
her former interview with Stephen, that they both took an interest in her. 
She was too sprightly to allow of their walking at a slow pace on her 
account, but she was very grateful to be talked to, and very willing to 
talk to any extent: so, when they came to their part of the town, she was 
more brisk and vivacious than ever.
"Coom to my poor place, missus," said Stephen, "and tak a coop o' tea. 
Rachael will coom then; and arterwards I'll see thee safe t' thy 
Travellers' lodgin. 'T may be long, Rachael, ere ever I ha' th' chance o' 
thy company agin."
They complied, and the three went on to the house where he lodged. When 
they turned into a narrow street, Stephen glanced at his window with a 
dread that always haunted his desolate home; but it was open, as he had 
left it, and no one was there. The evil spirit of his life had flitted away 
again, months ago, and he had heard no more of her since. The only 
evidences of her last return now, were the scantier moveables in his room, 
and the greyer hair upon his head.
He lighted a candle, set out his little tea-board, got hot water from 
below, and brought in small portions of tea and sugar, a loaf, and some 
butter, from the nearest shop. The bread was new and crusty, the butter 
fresh, and the sugar lump, of course - in fulfilment of the standard 
testimony of the Coketown magnates, that these people lived like princes, 
sir. Rachael made the tea (so large a party necessitated the borrowing of a 
cup), and the visitor enjoyed it mightily. It was the first glimpse of 
sociality the host had had for many days. He too, with the world a wide 
heath before him, enjoyed the meal - again in corroboration of the 
magnates, as exemplifying the utter want of calculation on the part of 
these people, sir.
"I ha never thowt yet, missus," said Stephen, "o' askin thy name."
The old lady announced herself as "Mrs Pegler."
"A widder, I think?" said Stephen.
"Oh, many years!" Mrs Pegler's husband (one of the best on record) was 
already dead, by Mrs Pegler's calculation, when Stephen was born.
"'Twere a bad job too, to lose so good a one," said Stephen. "Onny 
children?"
Mrs Pegler's cup, rattling against her saucer as she held it, denoted some 
nervousness on her part. "No," she said. "Not now, not now."
"Dead, Stephen," Rachael softly hinted.
"I'm sooary I ha' spok'n on 't," said Stephen, "I ought t' hadn in my mind 
as I might touch a sore place. I - I blame myseln."
While he excused himself, the old lady's cup rattled more and more. "I had 
a son," she said, curiously distressed, and not by any of the usual 
appearances of sorrow; "and he did well, wonderfully well. But he is not to 
be spoken of if you please. He is -" Putting down her cup, she moved her 
hands as if she would have added, by her action, "dead!" Then she said 
aloud, "I have lost him."
Stephen had not yet got the better of his having given the old lady pain, 
when his landlady came stumbling up the narrow stairs, and calling him to 
the door, whispered in his ear. Mrs Pegler was by no means deaf, for she 
caught a word as it was uttered.
"Bounderby!" she cried, in a suppressed voice, starting up from the table. 
"Oh hide me! Don't let me be seen for the world. Don't let him come up till 
I've got away. Pray, pray!" She trembled, and was excessively agitated; 
getting behind Rachael, when Rachael tried to reassure her; and not seeming 
to know what she was about.
"But hearken, missus, hearken;" said Stephen, astonished, "'Tisn't Mr 
Bounderby; 'tis his wife. Your not fearfo' o' her. Yo was hey-go-mad about 
her, but an hour sin."
"But are you sure it's the lady, and not the gentleman?" she asked, still 
trembling.
"Certain sure!"
"Well then, pray don't speak to me, nor yet take any notice of me," said 
the old woman. "Let me be quite to myself in this corner."
Stephen nodded; looking to Rachael for an explanation, which she was quite 
unable to give him; took the candle, went downstairs, and in a few moments 
returned, lighting Louisa into the room. She was followed by the whelp.
Rachel had risen, and stood apart with her shawl and bonnet in her hand, 
when Stephen, himself profoundly astonished by this visit, put the candle 
on the table. Then he too stood, with his doubled hand upon the table near 
it, waiting to be addressed.
For the first time in her life, Louisa had come into one of the dwellings 
of Coketown hands; for the first time in her life, she was face to face 
with anything like individuality in connection with them. She knew of their 
existence by hundreds and by thousands. She knew what results in work a 
given number of them would produce, in a given space of time. She knew them 
in crowds passing to and from their nests, like ants or beetles. But she 
knew from her reading infinitely more of the ways of toiling insects than 
of these toiling men and women.
Something to be worked so much and paid so much, and there ended; something 
to be infallibly settled by laws of supply and demand; something that 
blundered against those laws, and floundered into difficulty; something 
that was a little pinched when wheat was dear, and over-ate itself when 
wheat was cheap; something that increased at such a rate of percentage, and 
yielded such another percentage of crime, and such another percentage of 
pauperism; something wholesale, of which vast fortunes were made; something 
that occasionally rose like the sea, and did some harm and waste (chiefly 
to itself), and fell again; this she knew the Coketown Hands to be. But, 
she had scarcely thought more of separating them into units, than of 
separating the sea itself into component drops.
She stood for some moments looking round the room. From the few chairs, the 
few books, the common prints, and the bed, she glanced to the two women, 
and to Stephen.
"I have come to speak to you, in consequence of what passed just now. I 
should like to be serviceable to you, if you will let me. Is this your 
wife?"
Rachael raised her eyes, and they sufficiently answered no, and dropped 
again.
"I remember," said Louisa, reddening at her mistake, "I recollect, now, to 
have heard your domestic misfortunes spoken of, though I was not attending 
to the particulars at the time. It was not my meaning to ask a question 
that would give pain to any one here. If I should ask any other question 
that may happen to have that result, give me credit, if you please, for 
being in ignorance how to speak to you as I ought."
As Stephen had but a little while ago instinctively addressed himself to 
her, so she now instinctively addressed herself to Rachel. Her manner was 
short and abrupt, yet faltering and timid.
"He has told you what has passed between himself and my husband? You would 
be his first resource, I think."
"I have heard the end of it, young lady," said Rachael.
"Did I understand, that, being rejected by one employer, he would probably 
be rejected by all? I thought he said as much?"
"The chances are very small, young lady - next to nothing - for a man who 
gets a bad name among them."
"What shall I understand that you mean by a bad name?"
"The name of being troublesome."
"Then, by the prejudices of his own class, and by the prejudices of the 
other, he is sacrificed alike? Are the two so deeply separated in this 
town, that there is no place whatever, for an honest workman between them?"
Rachael shook her head in silence.
"He fell into suspicion," said Louisa, "with his fellow-weavers, because he 
had made a promise not to be one of them. I think it must have been to you 
that he made that promise. Might I ask you why he made it?"
Rachael burst into tears. "I didn't seek it of him, poor lad, I prayed him 
to avoid trouble for his own good, little thinking he'd come to it through 
me. But I know he'd die a hundred deaths, ere ever he'd break his word. I 
know that of him well."
Stephen had remained quietly attentive, in his usual thoughtful attitude, 
with his hand at his chin. He now spoke in a voice rather less steady than 
usual.
"No one, excepting myseln, can ever know what honour, an what love, and 
respect, I bear to Rachael, or wi' what cause. When I passed that promess, 
I towd her true, she were th' Angel o' my life. 'Twere a solemn promess. 
'Tis gone fro' me, for ever."
Louisa turned her head to him, and bent it with a deference that was new in 
her. She looked from him to Rachael, and her features softened. "What will 
you do?" she asked him. And her voice had softened too.
"Weel, ma'am," said Stephen, making the best of it, with a smile; "when I 
ha finished off, I mun quit this part, and try another. Fortnet or 
misfortnet, a man can but try; there's nowt to be done wi'out tryin' - cept 
laying down and dying."
"How will you travel?"
"Afoot, my kind ledy, afoot."
Louisa coloured, and a purse appeared in her hand. The rustling of a 
banknote was audible, as she unfolded one and laid it on the table.
"Rachael, will you tell him - for you know how, without offence - that this 
is freely his, to help him on his way? Will you entreat him to take it?"
"I canna do that, young lady," she answered, turning her head aside. "Bless 
you for thinking o' the poor lad wi' such tenderness. But 'tis for him to 
know his heart and what is right according to it."
Louisa looked, in part incredulous, in part frightened, in part overcome 
with quick sympathy, when this man of so much self-command, who had been so 
plain and steady through the late interview, lost his composure in a 
moment, and now stood with his hand before his face. She stretched out 
hers, as if she would have touched him; then checked herself and remained 
still.
"Not e'en Rachael," said Stephen, when he stood again with his face 
uncovered, "could mak sitch a kind offerin, by onny words, kinder T' show 
that I'm not a man wi'out reason and gratitude, I'll tak two pound. I'll 
borrow 't for t' pay 't back. 'Twill be the sweetest work as ever I ha 
done, that puts it in my power t' acknowledge once more my lasting 
thankfulness for this present action."
She was fain to take up the note again, and to substitute the much smaller 
sum he had named. He was neither courtly, nor handsome, nor picturesque, in 
any respect; and yet his manner of accepting it, and of expressing his 
thanks without more words, had a grace in it that Lord Chesterfield could 
not have taught his son in a century.
Tom had sat upon the bed, swinging one leg, and sucking his walking-stick 
with sufficient unconcern, until the visit had attained this stage. Seeing 
his sister ready to depart, he got up, rather hurriedly, and put in a word.
"Just wait a moment, Loo! Before we go, I should like to speak to him a 
moment. Something comes into my head. If you'll step out on the stairs, 
Blackpool, I'll mention it. Never mind a light, man!" Tom was remarkably 
impatient of his moving towards the cupboard to get one. "It don't want a 
light."
Stephen followed him out, and Tom closed the room door, and held the lock 
in his hand.
"I say!" he whispered. "I think I can do you a good turn. Don't ask me what 
it is, because it may not come to anything. But there's no harm in my 
trying."
His breath fell like a flame of fire on Stephen's ear, it was so hot.
"That was our light porter at the Bank," said Tom, "who brought you the 
message tonight. I call him our light porter, because I belong to the Bank 
too."
Stephen thought, "What a hurry he is in!" He spoke so confusedly.
"Well!" said Tom. "Now look here! When are you off?"
"T' day's Monday," replied Stephen, considering. "Why, sir, Friday or 
Saturday, nigh 'bout."
"Friday or Saturday," said Tom. "Now, look here! I am not sure that I can 
do you the good turn I want to do you - that's my sister, you know, in your 
room - but I may be able to, and if I should not be able to, there's no 
harm done. So I tell you what. You'll know our light porter again?"
"Yes, sure," said Stephen.
"Very well," returned Tom. "When you leave work of a night, between this 
and your going away, just hang about the Bank an hour or so, will you? 
Don't take on, as if you meant anything, if he should see you hanging about 
there; because I shan't put him up to speak to you, unless I find I can do 
you the service I want to do you. In that case he'll have a note or a 
message for you, but not else. Now look here! You are sure you understand."
He had wormed a finger, in the darkness, through a button-hole of Stephen's 
coat, and was screwing that corner of the garment tight up, round and 
round, in an extraordinary manner.
"I understand, sir," said Stephen.
"Now look here," repeated Tom. "Be sure you don't make any mistake then, 
and don't forget. I shall tell my sister as we go home, what I have in 
view, and she'll approve, I know. Now look here! You're all right, are you? 
You understand all about it? Very well then. Come along, Loo!"
He pushed the door open as he called to her, but did not return into the 
room, or wait to be lighted down the narrow stairs. He was at the bottom 
when she began to descend, and was in the street before she could take his 
arm.
Mrs Pegler remained in her corner until the brother and sister were gone, 
and until Stephen came back with the candle in his hand. She was in a state 
of inexpressible admiration of Mrs Bounderby, and, like an unaccountable 
old woman, wept, "because she was such a pretty dear." Yet Mrs Pegler was 
so flurried lest the object of her admiration should return by chance, or 
anybody else should come, that her cheerfulness was ended for that night. 
It was late too, to people who rose early and worked hard; therefore the 
party broke up; and Stephen and Rachael escorted their mysterious 
acquaintance to the door of the Traveller's Coffee House, where they parted 
from her.
They walked back together to the corner of the street where Rachael lived, 
and as they drew nearer and nearer to it, silence crept upon them. When 
they came to the dark corner where their unfrequent meetings always ended, 
they stopped, still silent, as if both were afraid to speak.
"I shall strive t' see thee agen, Rachael, afore I go, but if not - "
"Thou wilt not, Stephen, I know. 'Tis better that we make up our minds to 
be open wi' one another."
"Thou'rt awlus right. 'Tis bolder and better. I ha been thinkin then, 
Rachael, that as 'tis but a day or two that remains 'twere better for thee, 
my dear, not t' be seen wi' me. 'T might bring thee into trouble fur no 
good."
"'Tis not for that, Stephen, that I mind. But thou know'st our old 
agreement. 'Tis for that."
"Well, well," said he. "'Tis better onyways."
"Thou'lt write to me, and tell me all that happens, Stephen?"
"Yes. What can I say now, but Heaven be wi' thee, Heaven bless thee, Heaven 
thank thee and reward thee!"
"May it bless thee, Stephen, too, in all thy wanderings, and send thee 
peace and rest at last!"
"I towd thee, my dear," said Stephen Blackpool - "that night - that I would 
never see or think o' onything that angered me, but thou, so much better 
than me, shouldst be beside it. Thou'rt beside it now. Thou mak'st me see 
it wi' a better eye. Bless thee. Good night. Good-bye!"
It was but a hurried parting in a common street, yet it was a sacred 
remembrance to these two common people. Utilitarian economists, skeletons 
of schoolmasters, Commissioners of Fact, genteel and used-up infidels, 
gabblers of many little dog's-eared creeds, the poor you will have always 
with you. Cultivate in them, while there is yet time, the utmost graces of 
the fancies and affections, to adorn their lives so much in need of 
ornament; or, in the day of your triumph, when romance is utterly driven 
out of their souls, and they and a bare existence stand face to face, 
Reality will take a wolfish turn, and make an end of you.
Stephen worked the next day, and the next, uncheered by a word from any 
one, and shunned in all his comings and goings, as before. At the end of 
the second day, he saw land; at the end of the third, his loom stood empty.
He had overstayed his hour in the street outside the Bank, on each of the 
two first evenings; and nothing had happened there, good or bad. That he 
might not be remiss in his part of the engagement, he resolved to wait full 
two hours, on this third and last night.
There was the lady who had once kept Mr Bounderby's house, sitting at the 
first floor window as he had seen her before; and there was the light 
porter, sometimes talking with her there, and sometimes looking over the 
blind below which had Bank upon it, and sometimes coming to the door and 
standing on the steps for a breath of air. When he first came out, Stephen 
thought he might be looking for him, and passed near; but the light porter 
only cast his winking eyes upon him slightly, and said nothing.
Two hours were a long stretch of lounging about, after a long day's labour. 
Stephen sat upon the step of a door, leaned against a wall under an 
archway, strolled up and down, listened for the church clock, stopped and 
watched children playing in the street. Some purpose or other is so natural 
to every one, that a mere loiterer always looks and feels remarkable. When 
the first hour was out, Stephen even began to have an uncomfortable 
sensation upon him of being for the time a disreputable character.
Then came the lamplighter, and two lengthening lines of light all down the 
long perspective of the street, until they were blended and lost in the 
distance. Mrs Sparsit closed the first floor window, drew down the blind, 
and went upstairs. Presently, a light went upstairs after her, passing 
first the fanlight of the door, and afterwards the two staircase windows, 
on its way up. By-and-by, one corner of the second floor blind was 
disturbed, as if Mrs Sparsit's eye were there; also the other corner, as if 
the light porter's eye were on that side. Still no communication was made 
to Stephen. Much relieved when the two hours were at last accomplished, he 
went away at a quick pace, as a recompense for so much loitering.
He had only to take leave of his landlady, and lie down on his temporary 
bed upon the floor; for his bundle was made up for tomorrow, and all was 
arranged for his departure. He meant to be clear of the town very early; 
before the Hands were in the streets.
It was barely daybreak, when, with a parting look round his room, 
mournfully wondering whether he should ever see it again, he went out. The 
town was as entirely deserted as if the inhabitants had abandoned it, 
rather than hold communication with him. Everything looked wan at that 
hour. Even the coming sun made but a pale waste in the sky, like a sad sea.
By the place where Rachael lived, though it was not in his way; by the red 
brick streets; by the great silent factories, not trembling yet; by the 
railway, where the danger-lights were waning in the strengthening day; by 
the railway's crazy neighbourhood, half pulled down and half built up; by 
scattered red brick villas, where the besmoked evergreens were sprinkled 
with a dirty powder, like untidy snuff-takers; by coal-dust paths and many 
varieties of ugliness; Stephen got to the top of the hill, and looked back.
Day was shining radiantly upon the town then, and the bells were going for 
the morning work. Domestic fires were not yet lighted, and the high 
chimneys had the sky to themselves. Puffing out their poisonous volumes, 
they would not be long in hiding it; but, for half an hour, some of the 
many windows were golden, which showed the Coketown people a sun eternally 
in eclipse, through a medium of smoked glass.
So strange to turn from the chimneys to the birds. So strange to have the 
road-dust on his feet instead of the coal-grit. So strange to have lived to 
his time of life, and yet to be beginning like a boy this summer morning! 
With these musings in his mind, and his bundle under his arm, Stephen took 
his attentive face along the high road. And the trees arched over him, 
whispering that he left a true and loving heart behind.


Chapter 7

Gunpowder

Mr James Harthouse, "going in" for his adopted party, soon began to score. 
With the aid of a little more coaching for the political sages, a little 
more genteel listlessness for the general society, and a tolerable 
management of the assumed honesty in dishonesty, most effective and most 
patronised of the polite deadly sins, he speedily came to be considered of 
much promise. The not being troubled with earnestness was a grand point in 
his favour, enabling him to take to the hard Fact fellows with as good a 
grace as if he had been born one of the tribe, and to throw all other 
tribes overboard, as conscious hypocrites.
"Whom none of us believe, my dear Mrs Bounderby, and who do not believe 
themselves. The only difference between us and the professors of virtue or 
benevolence, or philanthropy - never mind the name - is, that we know it is 
all meaningless, and say so; while they know it equally and will never say 
so."
Why should she be shocked or warned by this reiteration? It was not so 
unlike her father's principles, and her early training, that it need 
startle her. Where was the great difference between the two schools, when 
each chained her down to material realities, and inspired her with no faith 
in anything else? What was there in her soul for James Harthouse to 
destroy, which Thomas Gradgrind had nurtured there in its state of 
innocence!
It was even the worse for her at this pass, that in her mind - implanted 
there before her eminently practical father began to form it - a struggling 
disposition to believe in a wider and nobler humanity than she had ever 
heard of, constantly strove with doubts and resentments. With doubts, 
because the aspiration had been so laid waste in her youth. With 
resentments, because of the wrong that had been done her, if it were indeed 
a whisper of the truth. Upon a nature long accustomed to self-suppression, 
thus torn and divided, the Harthouse philosophy came as a relief and 
justification. Everything being hollow and worthless, she had missed 
nothing and sacrificed nothing. What did it matter, she had said to her 
father, when he proposed her husband. What did it matter, she said still. 
With a scornful self-reliance, she asked herself, What did anything matter -
 and went on.
Towards what? Step by step, onward and downward, towards some end, yet so 
gradually, that she believed herself to remain motionless. As to Mr 
Harthouse, whither he tended he neither considered nor cared. He had no 
particular design or plan before him: no energetic wickedness ruffled his 
lassitude. He was as much amused and interested at present, as it became so 
fine a gentleman to be; perhaps even more than it would have been 
consistent with his reputation to confess. Soon after his arrival he 
languidly wrote to his brother, the honourable and jocular member, that the 
Bounderbys were "great fun;" and further, that the female Bounderby, 
instead of being the Gorgon he expected, was young, and remarkably pretty. 
After that, he wrote no more about them, and devoted his leisure chiefly to 
their house. He was very often in their house, in his flittings and 
visitings about the Coketown district; and was much encouraged by Mr 
Bounderby. It was quite in Mr Bounderby's gusty way to boast to all his 
world that he didn't care about your highly connected people, but that if 
his wife, Tom Gradgrind's daughter, did, she was welcome to their company.
Mr James Harthouse began to think it would be a new sensation, if the face 
which changed so beautifully for the whelp, would change for him.
He was quick enough to observe; he had a good memory, and did not forget a 
word of the brother's revelations. He interwove them with everything he saw 
of the sister, and he began to understand her. To be sure, the better and 
profounder part of her character was not within his scope of perception; 
for in natures, as in seas, depth answers unto depth; but he soon began to 
read the rest with a student's eye.
Mr Bounderby had taken possession of a house and grounds, about fifteen 
miles from the town, and accessible within a mile or two, by a railway 
striding on many arches over a wild country, undermined by deserted coal-
shafts, and spotted at night by fires and black shapes of stationary 
engines at pits' mouths. This country, gradually softening towards the 
neighbourhood of Mr Bounderby's retreat, there mellowed into a rustic 
landscape, golden with heath, and snowy with hawthorn in the spring of the 
year, and tremulous with leaves and their shadows all the summer time. The 
bank had foreclosed a mortgage effected on the property thus pleasantly 
situated, by one of the Coketown magnates, who, in his determination to 
make a shorter cut than usual to an enormous fortune, overspeculated 
himself by about two hundred thousand pounds. These accidents did sometimes 
happen in the best-regulated families of Coketown, but the bankrupts had no 
connection whatever with the improvident classes.
It afforded Mr Bounderby supreme satisfaction to install himself in this 
snug little estate, and with demonstrative humility to grow cabbages in the 
flower garden. He delighted to live, barrack-fashion, among the elegant 
furniture, and he bullied the very pictures with his origin. "Why, sir," he 
would say to a visitor, "I am told that Nickits," the late owner, "gave 
seven hundred pound for that Sea-beach. Now to be plain with you, if I 
ever, in the whole course of my life, take seven looks at it, at a hundred 
pound a look, it will be as much as I shall do. No, by George! I don't 
forget that I am Josiah Bounderby of Coketown. For years upon years, the 
only pictures in my possession, or that I could have got into my possession 
by any means, unless I stole 'em, were the engravings of a man shaving 
himself in a boot, on the blacking bottles that I was overjoyed to use in 
cleaning boots with, and that I sold when they were empty for a farthing 
apiece, and glad to get it!"
Then he would address Mr Harthouse in the same style.
"Harthouse, you have a couple of horses down here. Bring half a dozen more 
if you like, and we'll find room for 'em. There's stabling in this place 
for a dozen horses; and unless Nickits is belied, he kept the full number. 
A round dozen of 'em, sir. When that man was a boy, he went to Westminster 
School. Went to Westminster School as a King's Scholar, when I was 
principally living on garbage, and sleeping in market baskets. Why, if I 
wanted to keep a dozen horses - which I don't, for one's enough for me - I 
couldn't bear to see 'em in their stalls here, and think what my own 
lodging used to be. I couldn't look at 'em, sir, and not order 'em out. Yet 
so things come round. You see this place; you know what sort of a place it 
is; you are aware that there's not a completer place of its size in this 
kingdom or elsewhere - I don't care where - and here, got into the middle 
of it, like a maggot into a nut, is Josiah Bounderby. While Nickits (as a 
man came into my office, and told me yesterday), Nickits, who used to act 
in Latin, in Westminster School plays, with the chief-justices and nobility 
of this country applauding him till they were black in the face, is 
drivelling at this minute - drivelling, sir! - in a fifth floor up a narrow 
dark back street in Antwerp."
It was among the leafy shadows of this retirement, in the long sultry 
summer days, that Mr Harthouse began to prove the face which had set him 
wondering when he first saw it, and to try if it would change for him.
"Mrs Bounderby, I esteem it a most fortunate accident that I find you alone 
here. I have for some time had a particular wish to speak to you."
It was not by any wonderful accident that he found her, the time of day 
being that at which she was always alone, and the place being her favourite 
resort. It was an opening in a dark wood, where some felled trees lay, and 
where she would sit watching the fallen leaves of last year, as she had 
watched the falling ashes at home.
He sat down beside her, with a glance at her face.
"Your brother. My young friend Tom - "
Her colour brightened, and she turned to him with a look of interest. "I 
never in my life," he thought, "saw anything so remarkable and so 
captivating as the lighting of those features!" His face betrayed his 
thoughts - perhaps without betraying him, for it might have been according 
to its instructions so to do.
"Pardon me. The expression of your sisterly interest is so beautiful - Tom 
should be so proud of it - I know this is inexcusable, but I am so 
compelled to admire."
"Being so impulsive," she said composedly.
"Mrs Bounderby, no: you know I make no pretence with you. You know I am a 
sordid piece of human nature, ready to sell myself at any time for any 
reasonable sum, and altogether incapable of any Arcadian proceeding 
whatever."
"I am waiting," she returned, "for your further reference to my brother."
"Your are rigid with me, and I deserve it. I am as worthless a dog as you 
will find, except that I am not false - not false. But you surprised and 
started me from my subject, which was your brother. I have an interest in 
him."
"Have you an interest in anything, Mr Harthouse?" she asked, half 
incredulously and half gratefully.
"If you had asked me when I first came here, I should have said no. I must 
say now - even at the hazard of appearing to make a pretence, and of justly 
awakening your incredulity - yes."
She made a slight movement, as if she were trying to speak, but could not 
find voice; at length she said, "Mr Harthouse, I give you credit for being 
interested in my brother."
"Thank you. I claim to deserve it. You know how little I do claim, but I 
will go that length. You have done so much for him, you are so fond of him; 
your whole life, Mrs Bounderby, expresses such charming self-forgetfulness 
on his account - pardon me again - I am running wide of the subject. I am 
interested in him for his own sake."
She had made the slightest action possible, as if she would have risen in a 
hurry and gone away. He had turned the course of what he said at that 
instant, and she remained.
"Mrs Bounderby," he resumed, in a lighter manner, yet with a show of effort 
in assuming it, which was even more expressive than the manner he 
dismissed; "it is no irrevocable offence in a young fellow of your 
brother's years, if he is heedless, inconsiderate, and expensive - a little 
dissipated, in the common phrase. Is he?"
"Yes."
"Allow me to be frank. Do you think he games at all?"
"I think he makes bets." Mr Harthouse waiting as if that were not her whole 
answer, she added, "I know he does."
"Of course he loses?"
"Yes."
"Everybody does lose who bets. May I hint at the probability of your 
sometimes supplying him with money for these purposes?"
She sat, looking down; but, at this question, raised her eyes searchingly 
and a little resentfully.
"Acquit me of impertinent curiosity, my dear Mrs Bounderby. I think Tom may 
be gradually falling into trouble, and I wish to stretch out a helping hand 
to him from the depths of my wicked experience. - Shall I say again, for 
his sake? Is that necessary?"
She seemed to try to answer, but nothing came of it.
"Candidly to confess everything that has occurred to me," said James 
Harthouse, again gliding with the same appearance of effort into his more 
airy manner; "I will confide to you my doubt whether he has had many 
advantages. Whether - forgive my plainness - whether any great amount of 
confidence is likely to have been established between himself and his most 
worthy father."
"I do not," said Louisa, flushing with her own great remembrance in that 
wise, "think it likely."
"Or, between himself, and - I may trust to your perfect understanding of my 
meaning, I am sure - and his highly esteemed brother-in-law."
She flushed deeper and deeper, and was burning red when she replied in a 
fainter voice, "I do not think that likely either."
"Mrs Bounderby," said Harthouse, after a short silence, "may there be a 
better confidence between yourself and me? Tom has borrowed a considerable 
sum of you?"
"You will understand, Mr Harthouse," she returned, after some indecision: 
she had been more or less uncertain, and troubled throughout the 
conversation, and yet had in the main preserved her self contained manner; 
"you will understand that if I tell you what you press to know, it is not 
by way of complaint or regret. I would never complain of anything, and what 
I have done I do not in the least regret."
"So spirited too!" thought James Harthouse.
"When I married, I found that my brother was even at that time heavily in 
debt. Heavily for him, I mean. Heavily enough to oblige me to sell some 
trinkets. They were no sacrifice. I sold them very willingly. I attached no 
value to them. They were quite worthless to me."
Either she saw in his face that he knew, or she only feared in her 
conscience that he knew, that she spoke of some of her husband's gifts. She 
stopped, and reddened again. If he had not known it before, he would have 
known it then, though he had been a much duller man than he was.
"Since then, I have given my brother, at various times, what money I could 
spare: in short, what money I have had. Confiding in you at all, on the 
faith of the interest you profess for him, I will not do so by halves. 
Since you have been in the habit of visiting here, he has wanted in one sum 
as much as a hundred pounds. I have not been able to give it to him. I have 
felt uneasy for the consequences of his being so involved, but I have kept 
these secrets until now, when I trust them to your honour. I have held no 
confidence with any one, be cause - you anticipated my reason just now." 
She abruptly broke off.
He was a ready man, and he saw, and seized, an opportunity here of 
presenting her own image to her, slightly disguised as her brother.
"Mrs Bounderby, though a graceless person, of the world worldly, I feel the 
utmost interest, I assure you, in what you tell me. I cannot possibly be 
hard upon your brother. I understand and share the wise consideration with 
which you regard his errors. With all possible respect both for Mr 
Gradgrind and for Mr Bounderby, I think I perceive that he has not been 
fortunate in his training. Bred at a disadvantage towards the society in 
which he has his part to play, he rushes into these extremities for 
himself, from opposite extremes that have long been forced - with the very 
best intentions we have no doubt - upon him. Mr Bounderby's fine bluff 
English independence, though a most charming characteristic, does not - as 
we have agreed - invite confidence. If I might venture to remark that it is 
the least in the world deficient in that delicacy to which a youth 
mistaken, a character misconceived, and abilities misdirected, would turn 
for relief and guidance, I should express what it presents to my own view."
As she sat looking straight before her, across the changing lights upon the 
grass into the darkness of the wood beyond, he saw in her face her 
application of his very distinctly uttered words.
"All allowance," he continued, "must be made. I have one great fault to 
find with Tom, however, which I cannot forgive, and for which I take him 
heavily to account."
Louisa turned her eyes to his face, and asked him what fault was that?
"Perhaps," he returned, "I have said enough. Perhaps it would have been 
better, on the whole, if no allusion to it had escaped me."
"You alarm me, Mr Harthouse. Pray let me know it."
"To relieve you from needless apprehension - and as this confidence 
regarding your brother, which I prize I am sure above all possible things, 
has been established between us - I obey. I cannot forgive him for not 
being more sensible in every word, look, and act of his life, of the 
affection of his best friend; of the devotion of his best friend; of her 
unselfishness; of her sacrifice. The return he makes her, within my 
observation, is a very poor one. What she has done for him demands his 
constant love and gratitude, not his ill-humour and caprice. Careless 
fellow as I am, I am not so indifferent, Mrs Bounderby, as to be regardless 
of this vice in your brother, or inclined to consider it a venial offence."
The wood floated before her, for her eyes were suffused with tears. They 
rose from a deep well, long concealed, and her heart was filled with acute 
pain that found no relief in them.
"In a word, it is to correct your brother in this, Mrs Bounderby, that I 
must aspire. My better knowledge of his circumstances, and my direction and 
advice in extricating him - rather valuable, I hope, as coming from a 
scapegrace on a much larger scale - will give me some influence over him, 
and all I gain I shall certainly use towards this end. I have said enough, 
and more than enough. I seem to be protesting that I am a sort of good 
fellow, when, upon my honour, I have not the least intention to make any 
protestation to that effect, and openly announce that I am nothing of the 
sort. Yonder, among the trees," he added, having lifted up his eyes and 
looked about; for he had watched her closely until now; "is your brother 
himself; no doubt, just come down. As he seems to be loitering in this 
direction, it may be as well, perhaps, to walk towards him, and throw 
ourselves in his way. He has been very silent and doleful of late. Perhaps 
his brotherly conscience is touched - if there are such things as 
consciences. Though, upon my honour, I hear of them much too often to 
believe in them."
He assisted her to rise, and she took his arm, and they advanced to meet 
the whelp. He was idly beating the branches as he lounged along: or he 
stooped viciously to rip the moss from the trees with his stick. He was 
startled when they came upon him while he was engaged in this latter 
pastime, and his colour changed.
"Halloa!" he stammered; "I didn't know you were here."
"Whose name, Tom," said Mr Harthouse, putting his hand upon his shoulder 
and turning him, so that they all three walked towards the house together, 
have you been carving on the trees?"
"Whose name?" returned Tom. "Oh! You mean what girl's name?"
"You have a suspicious appearance of inscribing some fair creature's on the 
bark, Tom."
"Not much of that, Mr Harthouse, unless some fair creature with a slashing 
fortune at her own disposal would take a fancy to me. Or she might be as 
ugly as she was rich, without any fear of losing me. I'd carve her name as 
often as she liked."
"I am afraid you are mercenary, Tom."
"Mercenary," repeated Tom. "Who is not mercenary? Ask my sister."
"Have you so proved it to be a failing of mine, Tom?" said Louisa, showing 
no other sense of his discontent and ill-nature.
"You know whether the cap fits you, Loo," returned her brother sulkily. "If 
it does, you can wear it."
"Tom is misanthropical today, as all bored people are now and then," said 
Mr Harthouse. "Don't believe him, Mrs Bounderby. He knows much better. I 
shall disclose some of his opinions of you, privately expressed to me, 
unless he relents a little.
"At all events, Mr Harthouse," said Tom, softening in his admiration of his 
patron, but shaking his head sullenly too, "you can't tell her that I ever 
praised her for being mercenary. I may have praised her for being the 
contrary, and I should do it again if I had as good reason. However, never 
mind this now; it's not very interesting to you, and I am sick of the 
subject."
They walked on to the house, where Louisa quitted her visitor's arm and 
went in. He stood looking after her, as she ascended the steps, and passed 
into the shadow of the door; then put his hand upon her brother's shoulder 
again, and invited him with a confidential nod to a walk in the garden.
"Tom, my fine fellow, I want to have a word with you."
They had stopped among a disorder of roses - it was part of Mr Bounderby's 
humility to keep Nickits's roses on a reduced scale - and Tom sat down on a 
terrace-parapet plucking buds and picking them to pieces; while his 
powerful Familiar stood over him, with a foot upon the parapet, and his 
figure easily resting on the arm supported by that knee. They were just 
visible from her window. Perhaps she saw them.
"Tom, what's the matter?"
"Oh! Mr Harthouse," said Tom, with a groan, "I am hard up, and bothered out 
of my life."
"My good fellow, so am I."
"You!" returned Tom. "You are the picture of independence. Mr Harthouse, I 
am in a horrible mess. You have no idea what a state I have got myself into 
- what a state my sister might have got me out of, if she would only have 
done it."
He took to biting the rosebuds now, and tearing them away from his teeth 
with a hand that trembled like an infirm old man's. After one exceedingly 
observant look at him, his companion relapsed into his lightest air.
"Tom, you are inconsiderate: you expect too much of your sister. You have 
had money of her, you dog, you know you have."
"Well, Mr Harthouse, I know I have. How else was I to get it? Here's old 
Bounderby always boasting that at my age he lived upon two-pence a month, 
or something of that sort. Here's my father drawing what he calls a line, 
and tying me down to it from a baby, neck and heels. Here's my mother who 
never has anything of her own, except her complaints. What is a fellow to 
do for money, and where am I to look for it, if not to my sister?"
He was almost crying, and scattered the buds about by dozens. Mr Harthouse 
took him persuasively by the coat.
"But, my dear Tom, if your sister has not got it - "
"Not got it, Mr Harthouse? I don't say she has got it. I may have wanted 
more than she was likely to have got. But then she ought to get it. She 
could get it. It's of no use pretending to make a secret of matters now, 
after what I have told you already: you know she didn't marry old Bounderby 
for her own sake, or for his sake, but for my sake. Then why doesn't she 
get what I want, out of him, for my sake? She is not obliged to say what 
she is going to do with it; she is sharp enough; she could manage to coax 
it out of him, if she chose. Then why doesn't she choose, when I tell her 
of what consequence it is? But no. There she sits in his company like a 
stone, instead of making herself agreeable and getting it easily. I don't 
know what you may call this, but I call it unnatural conduct."
There was a piece of ornamental water immediately below the parapet, on the 
other side, into which Mr James Harthouse had a very strong inclination to 
pitch Mr Thomas Gradgrind Junior, as the injured men of Coketown threatened 
to pitch their property into the Atlantic. But he preserved his easy 
attitude; and nothing more solid went over the stone balustrades than the 
accumulated rosebuds now floating about, a little surface-island.
"My dear Tom," said Harthouse, "let me try to be your banker."
"For God sake," replied Tom, suddenly, "don't talk about bankers!" and very 
white he looked, in contrast with the roses. Very white.
Mr Harthouse, as a thoroughly well bred man, accustomed to the best 
society, was not to be surprised - he could as soon have been affected - 
but he raised his eyelids a little more, as if they were lifted by a feeble 
touch of wonder. Albeit it was as much against the precepts of his school 
to wonder, as it was against the doctrines of the Gradgrind College.
"What is the present need, Tom? Three figures? Out with them. Say what they 
are."
"Mr Harthouse," returned Tom, now actually crying; and his tears were 
better than his injuries, however pitiful a figure he made; "it's too late; 
the money is of no use to me at present. I should have had it before to be 
of use to me. But I am very much obliged to you; you're a true friend."
A true friend! "Whelp, whelp!" thought Mr Harthouse, lazily; "what an Ass 
you are!"
"And I take your offer as a great kindness," said Tom grasping his hand. 
"As a great kindness, Mr Harthouse."
"Well," returned the other, "it may be of more use by and by. And, my good 
fellow, if you will open your bedevilments to me when they come thick upon 
you, I may show you better ways out of them than you can find for 
yourself."
"Thank you," said Tom, shaking his head dismally, and chewing rosebuds. "I 
wish I had known you sooner, Mr Harthouse."
"Now, you see, Tom," said Mr Harthouse in conclusion, himself tossing over 
a rose or two, as a contribution to the island, which was always drifting 
to the wall as if it wanted to become a part of the mainland: "every man is 
selfish in everything he does, and I am exactly like the rest of my fellow 
creatures. I am desperately intent;" the languor of his desperation being 
quite tropical; "on your softening towards your sister - which you ought to 
do; and on your being a more loving and agreeable sort of brother - which 
you ought to be."
"I will be, Mr Harthouse."
"No time like the present, Tom. Begin at once."
"Certainly I will. And my sister Loo shall say so."
"Having made which bargain, Tom," said Harthouse, clapping him on the 
shoulder again, with an air which left him at liberty to infer - as he did, 
poor fool - that this condition was imposed upon him in mere careless good 
nature to lessen his sense of obligation, "we will tear ourselves asunder 
until dinner-time."
When Tom appeared before dinner, though his mind seemed heavy enough, his 
body was on the alert; and he appeared before Mr Bounderby came in. "I 
didn't mean to be cross, Loo," he said, giving her his hand, and kissing 
her. "I know you are fond of me, and you know I am fond of you."
After this, there was a smile upon Louisa's face that day, for some one 
else. Alas, for some one else!
"So much the less is the whelp the only creature that she cares for," 
thought James Harthouse, reversing the reflection of his first day's 
knowledge of her pretty face. "So much the less, so much the less."


Chapter 8

Explosion

The next morning was too bright a morning for sleep, and James Harthouse 
rose early, and sat in the pleasant bay window of his dressing-room, 
smoking the rare tobacco that had had so wholesome an influence on his 
young friend. Reposing in the sunlight, with the fragrance of his eastern 
pipe about him, and the dreamy smoke vanishing into the air, so rich and 
soft with summer odours, he reckoned up his advantages as an idle winner 
might count his gains. He was not at all bored for the time, and could give 
his mind to it.
He had established a confidence with her, from which her husband was 
excluded. He had established a confidence with her, that absolutely turned 
upon her indifference towards her husband, and the absence, now and at all 
times, of any congeniality between them. He had artfully, but plainly 
assured her, that he knew her heart in its most delicate recesses; he had 
come so near to her through its tenderest sentiment; he had associated 
himself with that feeling; and the barrier behind which she lived, melted 
away. All very odd, and very satisfactory!
And yet he had not even now, any earnest wickedness of purpose in him. 
Publicly and privately, it were much better for the age in which he lived, 
that he and the legion of whom he was one were designedly bad, than 
indifferent and purposeless. It is the drifting icebergs setting with any 
current anywhere, that wreck the ships.
When the Devil goeth about like a roaring lion, he goeth about in a shape 
by which few but savages and hunters are attracted. But, when he is 
trimmed, smoothed, and varnished, according to the mode: when he is aweary 
of vice, and aweary of virtue, used up as to brimstone, and used up as to 
bliss; then, whether he take to the serving out of red tape, or to the 
kindling of red fire, he is the very Devil.
So, James Harthouse reclined in the window, indolently smoking, and 
reckoning up the steps he had taken on the road by which he happened to be 
travelling. The end to which it led was before him, pretty plainly; but he 
troubled himself with no calculations about it. What will be, will be.
As he had rather a long ride to take that day - for there was a public 
occasion "to do" at some distance, which afforded a tolerable opportunity 
of going in for the Gradgrind men - he dressed early, and went down to 
breakfast. He was anxious to see if she had relapsed since the previous 
evening. No. He resumed where he had left off. The was a look of interest 
for him again.
He got through the day as much (or as little) to his own satisfaction, as 
was to be expected under the fatiguing circumstances; and came riding back 
at six o'clock. There was a sweep of some half mile between the lodge and 
the house, and he was riding along at a foot pace over the smooth gravel, 
once Nickits's, when Mr Bounderby burst out of the shrubbery, with such 
violence as to make his horse shy across the road.
"Harthouse," cried Mr Bounderby. "Have you heard?"
"Heard what?" said Harthouse, soothing his horse, and inwardly favouring Mr 
Bounderby with no good wishes.
"Then you haven't heard!"
"I have heard you, and so has this brute. I have heard nothing else."
Mr Bounderby, red and hot, planted himself in the centre of the path before 
the horse's head, to explode his bombshell with more effect.
"The Bank's robbed!"
"You don't mean it!"
"Robbed last night, sir. Robbed in an extraordinary manner. Robbed with a 
false key."
"Of much?"
Mr Bounderby, in his desire to make the most of it, really seemed mortified 
by being obliged to reply, "Why, no; not of very much. But it might have 
been."
"Of how much?"
"Oh! as a sum - if you stick to a sum - of not more than a hundred and 
fifty pound," said Bounderby, with impatience. "But it's not the sum; it's 
the fact. It's the fact of the bank being robbed, that's the important 
circumstance. I am surprised you don't see it."
"My dear Bounderby," said James, dismounting, and giving his bridle to his 
servant, "I do see it; and am as overcome as you can possibly desire me to 
be, by the spectacle afforded to my mental view. Nevertheless, I may be 
allowed, I hope, to congratulate you - which I do with all my soul, I 
assure you - on your not having sustained a greater loss."
"Thank'ee," replied Bounderby, in a short, ungracious manner. "But I tell 
you what. It might have been twenty thousand pound."
"I suppose it might."
"Suppose it might! By the Lord, you may suppose so. By George!" said Mr 
Bounderby, with sundry menacing nods and shakes of his head, "It might have 
been twice twenty. There's no knowing what it would have been, or wouldn't 
have been, as it was, but for the fellows' being disturbed."
Louisa had come up now, and Mrs Sparsit, and Bitzer.
"Here's Tom Gradgrind's daughter knows pretty well what it might have been, 
if you don't," blustered Bounderby. "Dropped, sir, as if she was shot when 
I told her! Never knew her to do such a thing before. Does her credit, 
under the circumstances, in my opinion!"
She still looked faint and pale. James Harthouse begged her to take his 
arm; and as they moved on very slowly, asked her how the robbery had been 
committed.
"Why, I am going to tell you," said Bounderby, irritably giving his arm to 
Mrs Sparsit. "If you hadn't been so mighty particular about the sum, I 
should have begun to tell you before. You know this lady (for she is a 
lady), Mrs Sparsit?"
"I have already had the honour - "
"Very well. And this young man, Bitzer, you saw him too on the same 
occasion?" Mr Harthouse inclined his head in assent, and Bitzer knuckled 
his forehead.
"Very well. They live at the Bank. You know they live at the Bank, perhaps? 
Very well. Yesterday afternoon, at the close of business hours, everything 
was put away as usual. In the iron room that this young fellow sleeps 
outside of, there was never mind how much. In the little safe in young 
Tom's closet, the safe used for petty purposes, there was a hundred and 
fifty odd pound."
"A hundred and fifty-four, seven, one," said Bitzer.
"Come!" retorted Bounderby, stopping to wheel round upon him, "let's have 
none of your interruptions. It's enough to be robbed while you're snoring 
because you're too comfortable, without being put right with your four 
seven ones. I didn't snore, myself, when I was your age, let me tell you. I 
hadn't victuals enough to snore. And I didn't four seven one. Not if knew 
it."
Bitzer knuckled his forehead again, in a sneaking manner, and seemed at 
once particularly impressed and depressed by the instance last given of Mr 
Bounderby's moral abstinence.
"A hundred and fifty odd pound," resumed Mr Bounderby. "That sum of money, 
young Tom locked in his safe; not a very strong safe, but that's no matter 
now. Everything was left, all right. Some time in the night, while this 
young fellow snored - Mrs Sparsit, ma'am, you say you have heard him 
snore?"
"Sir," returned Mrs Sparsit, "I cannot say that I have heard him precisely 
snore, and therefore must not make that statement. But on winter evenings, 
when he has fallen asleep at his table, I have heard him, what I should 
prefer to describe as partially choke. I have heard him on such occasions 
produce sounds of a nature similar to what may be sometimes heard in Dutch 
clocks. Not," said Mrs Sparsit, with a lofty sense of giving strict 
evidence, "that I would convey any imputation on his moral character. Far 
from it. I have always considered Bitzer a young man of the most upright 
principle; and to that I beg to bear my testimony."
"Well!" said the exasperated Bounderby, "while he was snoring, or choking, 
or Dutch-clocking, or something or other - being asleep - some fellows, 
somehow, whether previously concealed in the house or not remains to be 
seen, got to young Tom's safe, forced it, and abstracted the contents. 
Being then disturbed, they made off; letting themselves out at the main 
door, and double-locking it again (it was double-locked, and the key under 
Mrs Sparsit's pillow) with a false key, which was picked up in the street 
near the Bank, about twelve o'clock today. No alarm takes place, till this 
chap, Bitzer, turns out this morning, and begins to open and prepare the 
offices for business. Then, looking at Tom's safe, he sees the door ajar, 
and finds the lock forced, and the money gone."
"Where is Tom, by the by?" asked Harthouse, glancing round.
"He has been helping the police," said Bounderby, "and stays behind at the 
Bank. I wish these fellows had tried to rob me when I was at his time of 
life. They would have been out of pocket if they had invested eighteenpence 
in the job: I can tell 'em that."
"Is anybody suspected?"
"Suspected? I should think there was somebody suspected. Egod!" said 
Bounderby, relinquishing Mrs Sparsit's arm to wipe his heated head. "Josiah 
Bounderby, of Coketown is not to be plundered and nobody suspected. No, 
thank you!"
Might Mr Harthouse inquire Who was suspected?
"Well," said Bounderby, stopping and facing about to confront them all, 
"I'll tell you. It's not to be mentioned everywhere, it's not to be 
mentioned anywhere: in order that the scoundrels concerned (there's a gang 
of 'em) may be thrown off their guard. So take this in confidence. Now wait 
a bit." Mr Bounderby wiped his head again. "What should you say to;" here 
he violently exploded: "to a Hand being in it?"
"I hope," said Harthouse, lazily, "not our friend Blackpot?"
"Say Pool instead of Pot, sir," returned Bounderby, "and that's the man."
Louisa faintly uttered some word of incredulity and surprise.
"O yes! I know!" said Bounderby, immediately catching at the sound. "I 
know! I am used to that. I know all about it. They are the finest people in 
the world, these fellows are. They have got the gift of the gab, they have. 
They only want to have their rights explained to them, they do. But I tell 
you what. Show me a dissatisfied Hand, and I'll show you a man that's fit 
for anything bad, I don't care what it is."
Another of the popular fictions of Coketown, which some pains had been 
taken to disseminate - and which some people really believed.
"But I am acquainted with those chaps," said Bounderby. "I can read 'em 
off, like books. Mrs Sparsit, ma'am, I appeal to you. What warning did I 
give that fellow, the first time he set foot in the house, when the express 
object of his visit was to know how he could knock Religion over, and floor 
the Established Church? Mrs Sparsit, in point of high connections, you are 
on a level with the aristocracy, - did I say, or did I not say, to that 
fellow, 'you can't hide the truth from me: you are not the kind of fellow I 
like; you'll come to no good'?"
"Assuredly, sir," returned Mrs Sparsit, "you did in a highly impressive 
manner, give him such an admonition."
"When he shocked you, ma'am," said Bounderby, "when he shocked your 
feelings?"
"Yes, sir," returned Mrs Sparsit, with a meek shake of her head, "he 
certainly did so. Though I did not mean to say but that my feelings may be 
weaker on such points - more foolish if the term is preferred - than they 
might have been; if I had always occupied my present position."
Mr Bounderby stared with a bursting pride at Mr Harthouse, as much as to 
say, "I am the proprietor of this female, and she's worth your attention, I 
think." Then, resumed his discourse.
"You can recall for yourself, Harthouse, what I said to him when you saw 
him. I didn't mince the matter with him. I am never mealy with 'em. I know 
'em. Very well, sir. Three days after that, he bolted. Went off, nobody 
knows where: as my mother did in my infancy - only with this difference, 
that he is a worse subject than my mother, if possible. What did he do 
before he went? What do you say;" Mr Bounderby, with his hat in his hand, 
gave a beat upon the crown at every little division of his sentences, as if 
it were a tambourine; "to his being seen - night after night - watching the 
Bank? - to his lurking about there - after dark? - to its striking Mrs 
Sparsit - that he could be lurking for no good - to her calling Bitzer's 
attention to him, and their both taking notice of him - And to its 
appearing on inquiry today - that he was also noticed by the neighbours?" 
Having come to the climax, Mr Bounderby, like an oriental dancer, put his 
tambourine on his head.
"Suspicious," said James Harthouse, "certainly."
"I think so, sir," said Bounderby, with a defiant nod. "I think so. But 
there are more of 'em in it. There's an old woman. One never hears of these 
things till the mischief's done; all sorts of defects are found out in the 
stable door after the horse is stolen; there's an old woman turns up now. 
An old woman who seems to have been flying into town on a broomstick, every 
now and then. She watches the place a whole day before this fellow begins, 
and on the night when you saw him, she steals away with him, and holds a 
council with him - I suppose, to make her report on going off duty, and be 
damned to her."
There was such a person in the room that night, and she shrunk from 
observation, thought Louisa.
"This is not all of 'em, even as we already know 'em," said Bounderby, with 
many nods of hidden meaning. "But I have said enough for the present. 
You'll have the goodness to keep it quiet, and mention it to no one. It may 
take time, but we shall have 'em. It's policy to give 'em line enough, and 
there's no objection to that."
"Of course, they will be punished with the utmost rigour of the law, as 
notice-boards observe," replied John Harthouse, "and serve them right. 
Fellows who go in for Banks must take the consequences. If there were no 
consequences, we should all go in for Banks." He had gently taken Louisa's 
parasol from her hand, and had put it up for her; and she walked under its 
shade, though the sun did not shine there.
"For the present, Loo Bounderby," said her husband, "here's Mrs Sparsit to 
look after. Mrs Sparsit's nerves have been acted upon by this business, and 
she'll stay here a day or two. So, make her comfortable."
"Thank you very much, sir," that discreet lady observed, "but pray do not 
let My comfort be a consideration. Anything will do for Me."
It soon appeared that if Mrs Sparsit had a failing in her association with 
that domestic establishment, it was that she was so excessively regardless 
of herself and regardful of others, as to be a nuisance. On being shown her 
chamber, she was so dreadfully sensible of its comforts as to suggest the 
inference that she would have preferred to pass the night on the mangle in 
the laundry. True, the Powlers, and the Scadgerses were accustomed to 
splendour, "but it is my duty to remember," Mrs Sparsit was fond of 
observing with a lofty grace: particularly when any of the domestics were 
present, "that what I was, I am no longer. Indeed," said she, "if I could 
altogether cancel the remembrance that Mr Sparsit was a Powler, or that I 
myself am related to the Scadgers family; or if I could even revoke the 
fact, and make myself a person of common descent and ordinary connections; 
I would gladly do so. I should think it, under existing circumstances, 
right to do so." The same Hermitical state of mind led to her renunciation 
of made dishes and wines at dinner, until fairly commanded by Mr Bounderby 
to take them; when she said, "Indeed you are very good, sir;" and departed 
from a resolution of which she had made rather formal and public 
announcement, to "wait for the simple mutton." She was likewise deeply 
apologetic for wanting the salt; and feeling amiably bound to bear out Mr 
Bounderby to the fullest extent in the testimony he had borne to her 
nerves, occasionally sat back in her chair and silently wept; at which 
periods a tear of large dimensions, like a crystal earring, might be 
observed (or rather, must be, for it insisted on public notice) sliding 
down her Roman nose.
But Mrs Sparsit's greatest point, first and last, was her determination to 
pity Mr Bounderby. There were occasions when in looking at him she was 
involuntarily moved to shake her head, as who would say, "Alas poor 
Yorick!" After allowing herself to be betrayed into these evidences of 
emotion, she would force a lambent brightness, and would be fitfully 
cheerful, and would say, "You have still good spirits, sir, I am thankful 
to find;" and would appear to hail it as a blessed dispensation that Mr 
Bounderby bore up as he did. One idiosyncrasy for which she often 
apologised, she found it excessively difficult to conquer. She had a 
curious propensity to call Mrs Bounderby "Miss Gradgrind," and yielded to 
it some three or four score times in the course of the evening. Her 
repetition of this mistake covered Mrs Sparsit with modest confusion; but 
indeed, she said, it seemed so natural to say Miss Gradgrind: whereas, to 
persuade herself that the young lady whom she had had the happiness of 
knowing from a child could be really and truly Mrs Bounderby, she found 
almost impossible. It was a further singularity of this remarkable case, 
that the more she thought about it, the more impossible it appeared; "the 
differences," she observed, "being such."
In the drawing-room after dinner, Mr Bounderby tried the case of the 
robbery, examined the witnesses, made notes of the evidence, found the 
suspected persons guilty, and sentenced them to the extreme punishment of 
the law. That done, Bitzer was dismissed to town with instructions to 
recommend Tom to come home by the mail-train.
When candles were brought, Mrs Sparsit murmured, "Don't be low, sir. Pray 
let me see you cheerful, sir, as I used to do." Mr Bounderby, upon whom 
these consolations had begun to produce the effect of making him, in a bull 
headed blundering way, sentimental, sighed like some large sea-animal. "I 
cannot bear to see you so, sir," said Mrs Sparsit. "Try a hand at 
backgammon, sir, as you used to do when I had the honour of living under 
your roof."
"I haven't played backgammon, ma'am," said Mr Bounderby, "since that time."
"No, sir," said Mrs Sparsit, soothingly, "I am aware that you have not. I 
remember that Miss Gradgrind takes no interest in the game. But I shall be 
happy, sir, if you will condescend."
They played near a window, opening on the garden. It was a fine night: not 
moonlight, but sultry and fragrant. Louisa and Mr Harthouse strolled out 
into the garden, where their voices could be heard in the stillness, though 
not what they said. Mrs Sparsit, from her place at the backgammon board, 
was constantly straining her eyes to pierce the shadows without. "What's 
the matter, ma'am?" said Mr Bounderby; "you don't see a Fire, do you?"
"Oh dear no, sir," returned Mrs Sparsit, "I was thinking of the dew."
"What have you got to do with the dew, ma'am?" said Mr Bounderby. "It's not 
myself, sir," returned Mrs Sparsit, "I am fearful of Miss Gradgrind's 
taking cold."
"She never takes cold," said Mr Bounderby. "Really sir?" said Mrs Sparsit. 
And was affected with a cough in her throat.
When the time drew near for retiring, Mr Bounderby took a glass of water. 
"Oh, sir?" said Mrs Sparsit. "Not your sherry warm, with lemon-peel and 
nutmeg?"
"Why I have got out of the habit of taking it now, ma'am," said Mr 
Bounderby. "The more's the pity, sir," returned Mrs Sparsit; "you are 
losing all your good old habits. Cheer up, sir! If Miss Gradgrind will 
permit me, I will offer to make it for you, as I have often done."
Miss Gradgrind readily permitting Mrs Sparsit to do anything she pleased, 
that considerate lady made the beverage, and handed it to Mr Bounderby. "It 
will do you good, sir. It will warm your heart. It is the sort of thing you 
want, and ought to take, sir." And when Mr Bounderby said, "Your health, 
ma'am!" she answered with great feeling. "Thank you, sir. The same to you, 
and happiness also." Finally, she wished him good night, with great pathos; 
and Mr Bounderby went to bed, with a maudlin persuasion that he had been 
crossed in something tender, though he could not, for his life, have 
mentioned what it was.
Long after Louisa had undressed and lain down, she watched and waited for 
her brother's coming home. That could hardly be, she knew, until an hour 
past midnight; but in the country silence, which did anything but calm the 
trouble of her thoughts, time lagged wearily. At last, when the darkness 
and stillness had seemed for hours to thicken one another, she heard the 
bell at the gate. She felt as though she would have been glad that it rang 
on until day-light; but it ceased, and the circles of its last sound spread 
out fainter and wider in the air, and all was dead again.
She waited yet some quarter of an hour, as she judged. Then she arose, put 
on a loose robe, and went out of her room in the dark, and up the staircase 
to her brother's room. His door being shut, she softly opened it and spoke 
to him, approaching his bed with a noiseless step.
She kneeled down beside it, passed her arm over his neck, and drew his face 
to hers. She knew that he only feigned to be asleep, but she said nothing 
to him.
He started by and by as if he were just then awakened, and asked who that 
was, and what was the matter?
"Tom, have you anything to tell me? If ever you loved me in your life, and 
have anything concealed from every one besides, tell it to me."
"I don't know what you mean, Loo. You have been dreaming."
"My dear brother:" she laid her head down on his pillow, and her hair 
flowed over him as if she would hide him from every one but herself: "is 
there nothing that you have to tell me? Is there nothing you can tell me if 
you will? You can tell me nothing that will change me. O Tom, tell me the 
truth!"
"I don't know what you mean, Loo!"
"As you lie here alone, my dear, in the melancholy night, so you must lie 
somewhere one night, when even I, if I am living then, shall have left you. 
As I am here beside you, barefoot, unclothed, undistinguishable in 
darkness, so must I lie through all the night of my decay, until I am dust. 
In the name of that time, Tom, tell me the truth now!"
"What is it you want to know?"
"You may be certain;" in the energy of her love she took him to her bosom 
as if he were a child; "that I will not reproach you. You may be certain 
that I will be compassionate and true to you. You may be certain that I 
will save you at whatever cost. O Tom, have you nothing to tell me? Whisper 
very softly. Say only 'yes,' and I shall understand you!"
She turned her ear to his lips, but he remained doggedly silent.
"Not a word, Tom?"
"How can I say Yes, or how can I say No, when I don't know what you mean? 
Loo, you are a brave, kind girl, worthy I begin to think of a better 
brother than I am. But I have nothing more to say. Go to bed, go to bed."
"You are tired," she whispered presently, more in her usual way.
"Yes, I am quite tired out."
"You have been so hurried and disturbed today. Have any fresh discoveries 
been made?"
"Only those you have heard of, from - him."
"Tom, have you said to any one that we made a visit to those people, and 
that we saw those three together?"
"No. Didn't you yourself particularly ask me to keep it quiet, when you 
asked me to go there with you?"
"Yes. But I did not know then what was going to happen."
"Nor I neither. How could I?"
He was very quick upon her with this retort.
"Ought I to say, after what has happened," said his sister, standing by the 
bed - she had gradually withdrawn herself and risen, "that I made that 
visit? Should I say so? Must I say so?"
"Good Heavens, Loo," returned her brother, "you are not in the habit of 
asking my advice. Say what you like. If you keep it to yourself, I shall 
keep it to myself. If you disclose it, there's an end of it."
It was too dark for either to see the other's face; but each seemed very 
attentive, and to consider before speaking.
"Tom, do you believe the man I gave the money to, is really implicated in 
this crime?"
"I don't know. I don't see why he shouldn't be."
"He seemed to me an honest man."
"Another person may seem to you dishonest, and yet not be so."
There was a pause, for he had hesitated and stopped.
"In short," resumed Tom, as if he had made up his mind, "if you come to 
that, perhaps I was so far from being altogether in his favour, that I took 
him outside the door to tell him quietly, that I thought he might consider 
himself very well off to get such a windfall as he had got from my sister, 
and that I hoped he would make good use of it. You remember whether I took 
him out or not. I say nothing against the man; he may be a very good 
fellow, for anything I know; I hope he is."
"Was he offended by what you said?"
"No, he took it pretty well; he was civil enough. Where are you, Loo?" He 
sat up in bed and kissed her. "Good night, my dear, good night!"
"You have nothing more to tell me?"
"No. What should I have? You wouldn't have me tell you a lie?"
"I wouldn't have you do that tonight, Tom, of all the nights in your life; 
many and much happier as I hope they will be."
"Thank you, my dear Loo. I am so tired, that I am sure I wonder I don't say 
anything to get to sleep. Go to bed, go to bed."
Kissing her again, he turned round, drew the coverlet over his head, and 
lay as still as if that time had come by which she had adjured him. She 
stood for some time at the bedside before she slowly moved away. She 
stopped at the door, looked back when she had opened it, and asked him if 
he had called her? But he lay still, and she softly closed the door and 
returned to her room.
Then the wretched boy looked cautiously up and found her gone, crept out of 
bed, and threw himself upon his pillow again: tearing his hair, morosely 
crying, grudgingly loving her, hatefully but impenitently spurning himself, 
and no less hatefully and unprofitably spurning all the good in the world.


Chapter 9

Hearing The Last Of It

Mrs Sparsit, lying by to recover the tone of her nerves in Mr Bounderby's 
retreat, kept such a sharp look-out, night and day, under her Coriolanian 
eyebrows, that her eyes, like a couple of lighthouses on an iron-bound 
coast, might have warned all prudent mariners from that bold rock her Roman 
nose and the dark and craggy region in its neighbourhood, but for the 
placidity of her manner. Although it was hard to believe that her retiring 
for the night could be anything but a form, so severely wide awake were 
those classical eyes of hers, and so impossible did it seem that her rigid 
nose could yield to any relaxing influence, yet her manner of sitting, 
smoothing her uncomfortable, not to say, gritty mittens (they were 
constructed of a cool fabric like a meat-safe), or of ambling to unknown 
places of destination with her foot in her cotton stirrup, was so perfectly 
serene, that most observers would have been constrained to suppose her a 
dove, embodied by some freak of nature, in the earthly tabernacle of a bird 
of the hook-beaked order.
She was a most wonderful woman for prowling about the house. How she got 
from story to story was a mystery beyond solution. A lady so decorous in 
herself, and so highly connected, was not to be suspected of dropping over 
the banisters or sliding down them, yet her extraordinary facility of 
locomotion suggested the wild idea. Another noticeable circumstance in Mrs 
Sparsit was, that she was never hurried. She would shoot with consummate 
velocity from the roof to the hall, yet would be in full possession of her 
breath and dignity on the moment of her arrival there. Neither was she ever 
seen by human vision to go at a great pace.
She took very kindly to Mr Harthouse, and had some pleasant conversation 
with him soon after her arrival. She made him her stately curtsey in the 
garden, one morning before breakfast.
"It appears but yesterday, sir," said Mrs Sparsit, "that I had the honour 
of receiving you at the Bank, when you were so good as to wish to be made 
acquainted with Mr Bounderby's address."
"An occasion, I am sure, not to be forgotten by myself in the course of 
Ages," said Mr Harthouse, inclining his head to Mrs Sparsit with the most 
indolent of all possible airs.
"We live in a singular world, sir," said Mrs Sparsit.
"I have had the honour, by a coincidence of which I am proud, to have made 
a remark, similar in effect, though not so epigrammatically expressed."
"A singular world I would say, sir," pursued Mrs Sparsit; after 
acknowledging the compliment with a drooping of her dark eyebrows, not 
altogether so mild in its expression as her voice was in its dulcet tones; 
"as regards the intimacies we form at one time, with individuals we were 
quite ignorant of, at another. I recall, sir, that on that occasion you 
went so far as to say you were actually apprehensive of Miss Gradgrind."
"Your memory does me more honour than my insignificance deserves. I availed 
myself of your obliging hints to correct my timidity, and it is unnecessary 
to add that they were perfectly accurate. Mrs Sparsit's talent for - in 
fact for anything requiring accuracy - with a combination of strength of 
mind - and Family - is too habitually developed to admit of any question." 
He was almost falling asleep over this compliment; it took him so long to 
get through, and his mind wandered so much in the course of its execution.
"You found Miss Gradgrind - I really cannot call her Mrs Bounderby; it's 
very absurd of me - as youthful as I described her?" asked Mrs Sparsit, 
sweetly.
"You drew her portrait perfectly," said Mr Harthouse. "Presented her dead 
image."
"Very engaging, sir," said Mrs Sparsit, causing her mittens slowly to 
revolve over one another.
"Highly so."
"It used to be considered," said Mrs Sparsit, "that Miss Gradgrind was 
wanting in animation, but I confess she appears to me considerably and 
strikingly improved in that respect. Ay, and indeed here is Mr Bounderby!" 
cried Mrs Sparsit, nodding her head a great many times, as if she had been 
talking and thinking of no one else. "How do you find yourself this 
morning, sir? Pray let us see you cheerful, sir."
Now, these persistent assuagements of his misery, and lightenings of his 
load, had by this time begun to have the effect of making Mr Bounderby 
softer than usual towards Mrs Sparsit, and harder than usual to most other 
people from his wife downward. So, when Mrs Sparsit said with forced 
lightness of heart, "You want your breakfast, sir, but I daresay Miss 
Gradgrind will soon be here to preside at the table," Mr Bounderby replied, 
"If I waited to be taken care of by my wife, ma'am, I believe you know 
pretty well I should wait till Doomsday, so I'll trouble you to take charge 
of the teapot." Mrs Sparsit complied, and assumed her old position at 
table.
This again made the excellent woman vastly sentimental. She was so humble 
withal, that when Louisa appeared, she rose, protesting she never could 
think of sitting in that place under existing circumstances, often as she 
had the honour - of making Mr Bounderby's breakfast, before Mrs Gradgrind - 
she begged pardon, she meant to say, Miss Bounderby - she hoped to be 
excused, but she really could not get it right yet, though she trusted to 
become familiar with it by and by - had assumed her present position. It 
was only (she observed) because Miss Gradgrind happened to be a little 
late, and Mr Bounderby's time is so very precious, and she knew it of old 
to be so essential that he should breakfast to the moment, that she had 
taken the liberty of complying with his request, long as his will had been 
a law to her.
"There! Stop where you are, ma'am," said Mr Bounderby, "stop where you are! 
Mrs Bounderby will be very glad to be relieved of the trouble, I believe."
"Don't say that, sir," returned Mrs Sparsit, almost with severity, "because 
that is very unkind to Mrs Bounderby. And to be unkind is not to be you, 
sir."
"You may set your mind at rest, ma'am. - You can take it can take it very 
quietly, can't you, Loo?" said Mr Bounderby, in a blustering way to his 
wife.
"Of course. It is of no moment. Why should it be of any importance to me?"
"Why should it be of any importance to any one, Mrs Sparsit, ma'am?" said 
Mr Bounderby, swelling with a sense of slight. "You attach too much 
importance to these things, ma'am. By George, you'll be corrupted in some 
of your notions here. You are old fashioned, ma'am. You are behind Tom 
Gradgrind's children's time."
"What is the matter with you?" asked Louisa, coldly surprised. "What has 
given you offence?"
"Offence!" repeated Bounderby. "Do you suppose if there was any offence 
given me, I shouldn't name it, and request to have it corrected? I am a 
straightforward man, I believe. I don't go beating about for side winds."
"I suppose no one ever had occasion to think you too diffident, or too 
delicate," Louisa answered him composedly: "I have never made that 
objection to you, either as a child or as a woman. I don't understand what 
you would have."
"Have?" returned Mr Bounderby. "Nothing. Otherwise, don't you, Loo 
Bounderby, know thoroughly well that I, Josiah Bounderby of Coketown, would 
have it?"
She looked at him, as he struck the table and made the teacups ring, with a 
proud colour in her face that was a new change, Mr Harthouse thought. "You 
are incomprehensible this morning," said Louisa. "Pray take no further 
trouble to explain yourself. I am not curious to know your meaning. What 
does it matter!"
Nothing more was said on this theme, and Mr Harthouse was soon idly gay on 
indifferent subjects. But from this day, the Sparsit action upon Mr 
Bounderby threw Louisa and James Harthouse more together, and strengthened 
the dangerous alienation from her husband and confidence against him with 
another, into which she had fallen by degrees so fine that she could not 
retrace them if she tried. But, whether she ever tried or no, lay hidden in 
her own closed heart.
Mrs Sparsit was so much affected on this particular occasion, that, 
assisting Mr Bounderby to his hat after breakfast, and being then alone 
with him in the hall, she imprinted a chaste kiss upon his hand, murmured 
"My benefactor!" and retired, overwhelmed with grief. Yet it is an 
indubitable fact, within the cognisance of this history, that five minutes 
after he had left the house in the self-same hat, the same descendant of 
the Scadgerses and connection by matrimony of the Powlers, shook her right-
hand mitten at his portrait, made a contemptuous grimace at that work of 
art, and said "Serve you right, you Noodle, and I am glad of it!"
Mr Bounderby had not been long gone, when Bitzer appeared. Bitzer had come 
down by train, shrieking and rattling over the long line of arches that 
bestrode the wild country of past and present coal-pits, with an express 
from Stone Lodge. It was a hasty note to inform Louisa, that Mrs Gradgrind 
lay very ill. She had never been well within her daughter's knowledge; but, 
she had declined within the last few days, had continued sinking all 
through the night, and was now as nearly dead, as her limited capacity of 
being in any state that implied the ghost of an intention to get out of it, 
allowed.
Accompanied by the lightest of porters, fit colourless servitor at Death's 
door when Mrs Gradgrind knocked, Louisa rumbled to Coketown, over the coal-
pits past and present, and was whirled into its smoky jaws. She dismissed 
the messenger to his own devices, and rode away to her old home.
She had seldom been there since her marriage. Her father was usually 
sifting and sifting at his parliamentary cinder-heap in London (without 
being observed to turn up many precious articles among the rubbish), and 
was still hard at it in the national dust-yard. Her mother had taken it 
rather as a disturbance than otherwise, to be visited, as she reclined upon 
her sofa; young people, Louisa felt herself all unfit for; Sissy she had 
never softened to again, since the night when the stroller's child had 
raised her eyes to look at Mr Bounderby's intended wife. She had no 
inducements to go back, and had rarely gone.
Neither, as she approached her old home now, did any of the best influences 
of old home descend upon her. The dreams of childhood - its airy fables; 
its graceful, beautiful, humane, impossible adornments of the world beyond: 
so good to be believed in once, so good to be remembered when outgrown, for 
then the least among them rises to the stature of a great Charity in the 
heart, suffering little children to come into the midst of it, and to keep 
with their pure hands a garden in the stony ways of this world, wherein it 
were better for all the children of Adam that they should oftener sun 
themselves, simple and trustful, and not worldly-wise - what had she to do 
with these? Remembrances of how she had journeyed to the little that she 
knew, by the enchanted roads of what she and millions of innocent creatures 
had hoped and imagined; of how, first coming upon Reason through the tender 
light of Fancy, she had seen it a beneficent god, deferring to gods as 
great as itself: not a grim Idol, cruel and cold, with its victims bound 
hand to foot, and its big dumb shape set up with a sightless stare, never 
to be moved by anything but so many calculated tons of leverage - what had 
she to do with these? Her remembrances of home and childhood were 
remembrances of the drying up of every spring and fountain in her young 
heart as it gushed out. The golden waters were not there. They were flowing 
for the fertilisation of the land where grapes are gathered from thorns, 
and figs from thistles.
She went, with a heavy, hardened kind of sorrow upon her, into the house 
and into her mother's room. Since the time of her leaving home, Sissy had 
lived with the rest of the family on equal terms. Sissy was at her mother's 
side; and Jane, her sister, now ten or twelve years old, was in the room.
There was great trouble before it could be made known to Mrs Gradgrind that 
her eldest child was there. She reclined, propped up, from mere habit, on a 
couch: as nearly in her old usual attitude, as anything so helpless could 
be kept in. She had positively refused to take to her bed; on the ground 
that if she did, she would never hear the last of it.
Her feeble voice sounded so far away in her bundle of shawls, and the sound 
of another voice addressing her seemed to take such a long time in getting 
down to her ears, that she might have been lying at the bottom of a well. 
The old lady was nearer Truth than she ever had been: which had much to do 
with it.
On being told that Mrs Bounderby was there, she replied, at cross-purposes, 
that she had never called him by that name, since he married Louisa; that 
pending her choice of an objectionable name, she had called him J; and that 
she could not at present depart from that regulation, not being yet 
provided with a permanent substitute. Louisa had sat by her for some 
minutes, and had spoken to her often, before she arrived at a clear 
understanding who it was. She then seemed to come to it all at once.
"Well, my dear," said Mrs Gradgrind, "and I hope you are going on 
satisfactorily to yourself. It was all your father's doing. He set his 
heart upon it. And he ought to know."
"I want to hear of you, mother; not of myself."
"You want to hear of me, my dear? That's something new, I am sure, when 
anybody wants to hear of me. Not at all well, Louisa. Very faint and 
giddy."
"Are you in pain, dear mother?"
"I think there's a pain somewhere in the room," said Mrs Gradgrind, "but I 
couldn't positively say that I have got it."
After this strange speech, she lay silent for some time. Louisa, holding 
her hand, could feel no pulse; but kissing it, could see a slight thin 
thread of life in fluttering motion.
"You very seldom see your sister," said Mrs Gradgrind. "She grows like you. 
I wish you would look at her. Sissy, bring her here."
She was brought, and stood with her hand in her sister's. Louisa had 
observed her with her arm round Sissy's neck, and she felt the difference 
of this approach.
"Do you see the likeness, Louisa?"
"Yes, mother. I should think her like me. But - "
"Eh? Yes, I always say so," Mrs Gradgrind cried, with unexpected quickness. 
"And that reminds me. I - I want to speak to you, my dear. Sissy my good 
girl, leave us alone a minute."
Louisa had relinquished the hand: had thought that her sister's was a 
better and brighter face than hers had ever been; had seen in it, not 
without a rising feeling of resentment, even in that place and at that 
time, something of the gentleness of the other face in the room: the sweet 
face with the trusting eyes, made paler than watching and sympathy made it, 
by the rich dark hair.
Left alone with her mother, Louisa saw her lying with an awful lull upon 
her face, like one who was floating away upon some great water, all 
resistance over, content to be carried down the stream. She put the shadow 
of a hand to her lips again, and recalled her.
"You were going to speak to me, mother."
"Eh? Yes, to be sure, my dear. You know that your father is almost always 
away now, and therefore I must write to him about it."
"About what, mother? Don't be troubled. About what!"
"You must remember, my dear, that whenever I have said anything, on any 
subject, I have never heard the last of it: and consequently, that I have 
long left off saying anything."
"I can hear you, mother." But it was only by dint of bending down her ear, 
and at the same time attentively watching the lips as they moved, that she 
could link such faint and broken sounds into any chain of connection.
"You learnt a great deal, Louisa, and so did your brother. Ologies of all 
kinds from morning to night. If there is any Ology left, of any 
description, that has not been worn to rags in this house, all I can say 
is, I hope I shall never hear its name."
"I can hear you, mother, when you have strength to go on." This, to keep 
her from floating away.
"But there is something - not an Ology at all - that your father has 
missed, or forgotten, Louisa. I don't know what it is. I have often sat 
with Sissy near me, and thought about it. I shall never get its name now. 
But your father may. It makes me restless. I want to write to him, to find 
out for God's sake what it is. Give me a pen, give me a pen."
Even the power of restlessness was gone, except from the poor head, which 
could just turn from side to side.
She fancied, however, that her request had been complied with, and that the 
pen she could not have held was in her hand. It matters little what figures 
of wonderful no-meaning she began to trace upon her wrappers. The hand soon 
stopped in the midst of them; the light that had always been feeble and dim 
behind the weak transparency, went out, and even Mrs Gradgrind, emerged 
from the shadow in which man walketh and disquieteth himself in vain, took 
upon her the dread solemnity of the sages, and patriarchs.


Chapter 10

Mrs Sparsit's Staircase

Mrs Sparsit's nerves being slow to recover their tone, the worthy woman 
made a stay of some weeks in duration at Mr Bounderby's retreat, where, 
notwithstanding her anchorite turn of mind based upon her becoming 
consciousness of her altered station, she resigned herself with noble 
fortitude to lodging, as one may say, in clover, and feeding on the fat of 
the land. During the whole term of this recess from the guardianship of the 
Bank, Mrs Sparsit was a pattern of consistency; continuing to take such 
pity on Mr Bounderby to his face, as is rarely taken on man, and to call 
his portrait a Noodle to its face, with the greatest acrimony and contempt.
Mr Bounderby, having got it into his explosive composition that Mrs Sparsit 
was a highly superior woman to perceive that he had that general cross upon 
him in his deserts (for he had not yet settled what it was), and further, 
that Louisa would have objected to her as a frequent visitor if it had 
comported with his greatness that she should object to anything he choose 
to do, resolved not to lose sight of Mrs Sparsit easily. So when her nerves 
were strung up to the pitch of again consuming sweet-breads in solitude, he 
said to her at the dinner-table, on the day before her departure, "I tell 
you what, ma'am; you shall come down here of a Saturday, while the fine 
weather lasts, and stay till Monday." To which Mrs Sparsit returned, in 
effect, though not of the Mohammedan persuasion: "To hear is to obey."
Now Mrs Sparsit was not a poetical woman; but she took an idea in the 
nature of an allegorical fancy, into her head. Much watching of Louisa, and 
much consequent observation of her impenetrable demeanour, which keenly 
whetted and sharpened Mrs Sparsit's edge, must have given her as it were a 
lift, in the way of inspiration. She erected in her mind a mighty 
Staircase, with a dark pit of shame and ruin at the bottom; and down those 
stairs, from day to day and hour to hour, she saw Louisa coming.
It became the business of Mrs Sparsit's life, to look up at her staircase, 
and to watch Louisa coming down. Sometimes slowly, sometimes quickly, 
sometimes several steps at one bout, sometimes stopping, never turning 
back. If she had once turned back, it might have been the death of Mrs 
Sparsit in spleen and grief.
She had been descending steadily, to the day, and on the day, when Mr 
Bounderby issued the weekly invitation recorded above. Mrs Sparsit was in 
good spirits, and inclined to be conversational.
"And pray, sir," said she, "if I may venture to ask a question appertaining 
to any subject on which you show reserve - which is indeed hardly in me, 
for I well know you have a reason for everything you do - have you received 
intelligence respecting the robbery?"
"Why, ma'am, no; not yet. Under the circumstances, I didn't expect it yet. 
Rome wasn't built in a day, ma'am."
"Very true, sir," said Mrs Sparsit, shaking her head.
"Nor yet in a week, ma'am."
"No, indeed, sir," returned Mrs Sparsit, with a gentle melancholy upon her.
"In a similar manner, ma'am," said Bounderby, "I can wait, you know. If 
Romulus and Remus could wait, Josiah Bounderby can wait. They were better 
off in their youth than I was, however, They had a she-wolf for a nurse; I 
had only a she-wolf for a grandmother. She didn't give any milk, ma'am; she 
gave bruises. She was a regular Alderney at that."
"Ah!" Mrs Sparsit sighed and shuddered.
"No, ma'am," continued Bounderby, "I have not heard anything more about it. 
It's in hand, though; and young Tom, who rather sticks to business at 
present - something new for him; he hadn't the schooling I had - is 
helping. My injunction is, Keep it quiet, and let it seem to blow over. Do 
what you like under the rose, but don't give a sign of what you're about; 
or half a hundred of 'em will combine together and get this fellow who has 
bolted, out of reach for good. Keep it quiet, and the thieves will grow in 
confidence by little and little, and we shall have 'em."
"Very sagacious indeed, sir," said Mrs Sparsit. "Very interesting. The old 
woman you mentioned, sir - "
"The old woman I mentioned, ma'am," said Bounderby, cutting the matter 
short, as it was nothing to boast about, "is not laid hold of; but she may 
take her oath she will be, if that is any satisfaction to her villainous 
old mind. In the mean time, ma'am, I am of opinion, if you ask me my 
opinion, that the less she is talked about, the better."
That same evening, Mrs Sparsit, in her chamber window, resting from her 
packing operations, looked towards her great staircase and saw Louisa still 
descending.
She sat by Mr Harthouse, in an alcove in the garden, talking very low, he 
stood leaning over her, as they whispered together, and his face almost 
touched her hair. "If not quite!" said Mrs Sparsit, straining her hawk's 
eyes to the utmost. Mrs Sparsit was too distant to hear a word of their 
discourse, or even to know that they were speaking softly, otherwise than 
from the expression of their figures; but what they said was this:
"You recollect the man, Mr Harthouse?"
"Oh, perfectly!"
"His face, and his manner, and what he said?"
"Perfectly. And an infinitely dreary person he appeared to me to be. 
Lengthy and prosy in the extreme. It was knowing to hold forth, in the 
humble-virtue school of eloquence; but, I assure you I thought at the time, 
'My good fellow, you are over-doing this!'"
"It has been very difficult to me to think ill of that man."
"My dear Louisa - as Tom says." Which he never did say. "You know no good 
of the fellow?"
"No, certainly."
"Nor of any other such person?"
"How can I," she returned, with more of her first manner on her than he had 
lately seen, "when I know nothing of them, men or women?"
"My dear Louisa, then consent to receive the submissive representation of 
your devoted friend, who knows something of several varieties of his 
excellent fellow-creatures - for excellent they are, I am quite ready to 
believe, in spite of such little foibles as always helping themselves to 
what they can get hold of. This fellow talks. Well; every fellow talks. He 
professes morality. Well; all sorts of humbugs profess morality. From the 
House of Commons to the House of Correction, there is a general profession 
of morality, except among our people; it really is that exception which 
makes our people quite reviving. You saw and heard the case. Here was one 
of the fluffy classes pulled up extremely short by my esteemed friend Mr 
Bounderby - who, as we know, is not possessed of that delicacy which would 
soften so tight a hand. The member of the fluffy classes was injured, 
exasperated, left the house grumbling, met somebody who proposed to him to 
go in for some share in this Bank business, went in, put something in his 
pocket which had nothing in it before, and relieved his mind extremely. 
Really he would have been an uncommon, instead of a common, fellow, if he 
had not availed himself of such an opportunity. Or he may have originated 
it altogether, if he had the cleverness."
"I almost feel as though it must be bad in me," returned Louisa, after 
sitting thoughtful awhile, to be so ready to agree with you, and to be so 
lightened in my heart by what you say."
"I only say what is reasonable; nothing worse. I have talked it over with 
my friend Tom more than once - of course I remain on terms of perfect 
confidence with Tom - and he is quite of my opinion, and I am quite of his. 
Will you walk?"
They strolled away, among the lanes beginning to be indistinct in the 
twilight - she leaning on his arm - and she little thought how she was 
going down, down, down, Mrs Sparsit's staircase.
Night and day, Mrs Sparsit kept it standing. When Louisa had arrived at the 
bottom and disappeared in the gulf, it might fall in upon her if it would; 
but, until then, there it was to be a Building, before Mrs Sparsit's eyes. 
And there Louisa always was, upon it. And always gliding down, down, down!
Mrs Sparsit saw James Harthouse come and go; she heard of him here and 
there; she saw the changes of the face he had studied; she, too, remarked 
to a nicety how and when it clouded, how and when it cleared; she kept her 
black eyes wide open, with no touch of pity, with no touch of compunction, 
all absorbed in interest. In the interest of seeing her, ever drawing, with 
no hand to stay her, nearer and nearer to the bottom of this new Giant's 
Staircase.
With all her deference for Mr Bounderby as contra-distinguished from his 
portrait, Mrs Sparsit had not the smallest intention of interrupting the 
descent. Eager to see it accomplished, and yet patient, she waited for the 
last fall, as for the ripeness and fulness of the harvest of her ropes. 
Hushed in expectancy, she kept her wary gaze upon the stairs; and seldom so 
much as darkly shook her right mitten (with her fist in it), at the figure 
coming down.


Chapter 11

Lower And Lower

The figure descended the great stairs steadily, steadily; always verging, 
like a weight in deep water, to the black gulf at the bottom.
Mr Gradgrind, apprised of his wife's decease, made an expedition from 
London, and buried her in a businesslike manner. He then returned with 
promptitude to the national cinder-heap, and resumed his sifting for the 
odds and ends he wanted, and his throwing of the dust about into the eyes 
of other people who wanted other odds and ends - in fact resumed his 
parliamentary duties.
In the mean time, Mrs Sparsit kept unwinking watch and ward. Separated from 
her staircase, all the week, by the length of iron road dividing Coketown 
from the country-house, she yet maintained her cat-like observation of 
Louisa, through her husband, through her brother, through James Harthouse, 
through the outsides of letters and packets, through everything animate and 
inanimate that at any time went near the stairs. "Your foot is on the last 
step, my lady," said Mrs Sparsit, apostrophising the descending figure, 
with the aid of her threatening mitten, "and all your art shall never blind 
me."
Art or nature though, the original stock of Louisa's character or the graft 
of circumstances upon it, - her curious reserve did baffle, while it 
stimulated, one as sagacious as Mrs Sparsit. There were times when Mr James 
Harthouse was not sure of her. There were times when he could not read the 
face he had studied so long; and when this lonely girl was a greater 
mystery to him, than any woman of the world with a ring of satellites to 
help her.
So the time went on; until it happened that Mr Bounderby was called away 
from home by business which required his presence elsewhere, for three or 
four days. It was on a Friday that he intimated this to Mrs Sparsit at the 
Bank, adding: "But you'll go down tomorrow, ma'am, all the same. You'll go 
down just as if I was there. It will make no difference to you."
"Pray, sir," returned Mrs Sparsit, reproachfully, "let me beg you not to 
say that. Your absence will make a vast difference to me, sir, as I think 
you very well know."
"Well, ma'am, then you must get on in my absence as well as you can," said 
Bounderby, not displeased.
"Mr Bounderby," retorted Mrs Sparsit, "your will is to me a law, sir; 
otherwise, it might be my inclination to dispute your kind commands, not 
feeling sure that it will be quite so agreeable to Miss Gradgrind to 
receive me, as it ever is to your own munificent hospitality. But you shall 
say no more, sir. I will go, upon your invitation."
"Why, when I invite you to my house, ma'am," said Bounderby, opening his 
eyes, "I should hope you want no other invitation."
"No, indeed, sir," returned Mrs Sparsit, "I should hope not. Say no more, 
sir, I would, sir, I could see you gay again."
"What do you mean, ma'am?" blustered Bounderby.
"Sir," rejoined Mrs Sparsit, "there was wont to be an elasticity in you 
which I sadly miss. Be buoyant, sir!"
Mr Bounderby, under the influence of this difficult adjuration, backed up 
by her compassionate eye, could only scratch his head in a feeble and 
ridiculous manner, and afterwards assert himself at a distance, by being 
heard to bully the small fry of business all the morning.
"Bitzer," said Mrs Sparsit that afternoon, when her patron was gone on his 
journey, and the Bank was closing, "present my compliments to young Mr 
Thomas, and ask him if he would step up and partake of a lamb chop and 
walnut ketchup, with a glass of India ale?" Young Mr Thomas being usually 
ready for anything in that way, returned a gracious answer, and followed on 
its heels. "Mr Thomas," said Mrs Sparsit, "these plain viands being on 
table, I thought you might be tempted."
"Thank'ee, Mrs Sparsit," said the whelp. And gloomily fell to.
"How is Mr Harthouse, Mr Tom?" asked Mrs Sparsit.
"Oh, he's all right," said Tom.
"Where may he be at present?" Mrs Sparsit asked in a light conversational 
manner, after mentally devoting the whelp to the Furies for being so 
uncommunicative.
"He is shooting in Yorkshire," said Tom. "Sent Loo a basket half as big as 
a church, yesterday."
"The kind of gentleman, now," said Mrs Sparsit, sweetly, "whom one might 
wager to be a good shot!"
"Crack," said Tom.
He had long been a down-looking young fellow, but this characteristic had 
so increased of late, that he never raised his eyes to any face for three 
seconds together. Mrs Sparsit consequently had ample means of watching his 
looks, if she were so inclined.
"Mr Harthouse is a great favourite of mine," said Mrs Sparsit, "as indeed 
he is of most people. May we expect to see him again shortly, Mr Tom?"
"Why, I expect to see him tomorrow," returned the whelp.
"Good news!" cried Mrs Sparsit, blandly.
"I have got an appointment with him to meet him in the evening at the 
station here," said Tom, "and I am going to dine with him afterwards, I 
believe. He is not coming down to the country house for a week or so, being 
due somewhere else. At least, he says so; but I shouldn't wonder if he was 
to stop here over Sunday, and stray that way."
"Which reminds me!" said Mrs Sparsit. "Would you remember a message to your 
sister, Mr Tom, if I was to charge you with one?"
"Well? I'll try," returned the reluctant whelp, "if it isn't a long un."
"It is merely my respectful compliments," said Mrs Sparsit, "and I fear I 
may not trouble her with my society this week; being still a little 
nervous, and better perhaps by my poor self."
"Oh! if that's all," observed Tom, "it wouldn't much matter, even if I was 
to forget it, for Loo's not likely to think of you unless she sees you."
Having paid for his entertainment with this agreeable compliment, he 
relapsed into a hangdog silence until Mrs Sparsit, I must be off!" and went 
off.
Next day, Saturday, Mrs Sparsit sat at her window all day long: looking at 
the customers coming and out, watching the postman, keeping an eye on the 
general traffic of the street, revolving many things in her mind, but, 
above all, keeping her attention on her staircase. The evening came, she 
put on her bonnet and shawl, and went quietly out: having her reasons for 
hovering in a furtive way about the station by which a passenger would 
arrive from Yorkshire, and for preferring to peep into it round pillars and 
corners, and out of ladies' waiting-room windows, to appearing in its 
precincts openly.
Tom was in attendance, and loitered about until the expected train came in. 
It brought no Mr Harthouse. Tom waited until the crowd had dispersed, and 
the bustle was over; and then referred to a posted list of strolled away 
idly, stopping in the street and looking up it and down it, and lifting his 
hat off and putting it on again, and yawning and stretching himself, and 
exhibiting all the symptoms of mortal weariness to be expected in one who 
had still to wait until the next train should come in, an hour and forty 
minutes hence.
"This is a device to keep him out of the way," said Mrs Sparsit, starting 
from the dull office window whence she had watched him last. "Harthouse is 
with his sister now!"
It was the conception of an inspired moment, and she shot off with her 
utmost swiftness to work it out. The station for the country house was at 
the opposite end of the town, the time was short, the road not easy; but 
she was so quick on pouncing on a disengaged coach, so quick in darting out 
of it, producing her money, seizing her ticket, and diving into the train, 
that she was borne along the arches spanning the land of coal-pits past and 
present, as if she had been caught up in a cloud and whirled away.
All the journey, immovable in the air though never left behind; plain to 
the dark eyes of her mind, as the electric wires which ruled a colossal 
strip of music paper out of the evening sky, was plain to the dark eyes of 
her body; Mrs Sparsit saw her staircase with the figure coming down. Very 
near the bottom now. Upon the brink of the abyss.
An overcast September evening, just at nightfall, saw beneath its drooping 
eyelid Mrs Sparsit glide out of her carriage, pass down the wooden steps of 
the little station into a stony road, cross it into a green lane, and 
become hidden in a summer-growth of leaves and branches. One or two late 
birds sleepily chirping in their nests, and a bat heavily crossing and 
recrossing her, and the reek of her own tread in the thick dust that felt 
like velvet, were all Mrs Sparsit heard or saw until she very softly closed 
a gate.
She went up to the house, keeping within the shrubbery, and went round it, 
peeping between the leaves at the lower windows. Most of them were open, as 
they usually were in such warm weather, but there were no lights yet, and 
all was silent. She tried the garden with no better effect. She thought of 
the wood, and stole towards it, heedless of long grass and briers: of 
worms, snails, and slugs, and all the creeping things that be. With her 
dark eyes and her hook nose warily in advance of her, Mrs Sparsit softly 
crushed her way through the thick undergrowth, so intent upon her object 
that she probably would have done no less, if the wood had been a wood of 
adders.
Hark!
The smaller birds might have tumbled out of their nests, fascinated by the 
glittering of Mrs Sparsit's eyes in the gloom, as she stopped and listened.
Low voices close at hand. His voice and hers. The appointment was a device 
to keep the brother away! There they were yonder, by the felled tree.
Bending low among the dewy grass, Mrs Sparsit advanced closer to them. She 
drew herself up, and stood behind a tree, like Robinson Crusoe in his 
ambuscade against the savages; so near to them that at a spring, and that 
no great one, she could have touched them both. He was there secretly, and 
had not shown himself at the house. He had come on horseback, and must have 
passed through the neighbouring fields, for his horse was tied to the 
meadow side of the fence, within a few paces.
"My dearest love," said he, "what could I do? Knowing you were alone, was 
it possible that I could stay away?"
"You may hang your head, to make yourself the more attractive; I don't know 
what they see in you when you hold it up," thought Mrs Sparsit, "but you 
little think, my dearest love, whose eyes are on you!"
That she hung her head was certain. She urged him to go away, she commanded 
him to go away; but she neither turned her face to him, nor raised it. Yet 
it was remarkable that she sat as still as ever the amiable woman in 
ambuscade had seen her sit, at any period in her life. Her hands rested in 
one another, like the hands of a statue; and even her manner of speaking 
was not hurried.
"My dear child," said Harthouse; Mrs Sparsit saw with delight that his arm 
embraced her; "will you not bear with my society for a little while?"
"Not here."
"Where, Louisa?"
"Not here."
"But we have so little time to make so much of, and I have come so far, and 
am altogether so devoted and distracted. There never was a slave at once so 
devoted and ill-used by his mistress. To look for your sunny welcome that 
has warmed me into life, and to be received in your frozen manner, is heart-
rending."
"Am I to say again, that I must be left to myself here?"
"But we must meet, my dear Louisa. Where shall we meet?"
They both started. The listener started, guiltily, too; for she thought 
there was another listener among the trees. It was only rain, beginning to 
fall fast, in heavy drops.
"Shall I ride up to the house a few minutes hence, innocently supposing 
that its master is at home and will be charmed to receive me?"
"No!"
"Your cruel commands are implicitly to be obeyed; though I am the most 
unfortunate fellow in the world, I believe, to have been insensible to all 
other women, and to have fallen prostrate at last under the foot of the 
most beautiful, and the most engaging, and the most imperious. My dearest 
Louisa, I cannot go myself, or let you go, in this hard abuse of your 
power."
Mrs Sparsit saw him detain her with his encircling arm, and heard him then 
and there, within her (Mrs Sparsit's) greedy hearing, tell her how he loved 
her, and how she was the stake for which he ardently desired to play away 
all that he had in life. The objects he had lately pursued, turned 
worthless beside her; such success as was almost in his grasp, he flung 
away from him like the dirt it was, compared with her. Its pursuit, 
nevertheless, if it kept him near her, or its renunciation if it took him 
from her, or flight if she shared it, or secrecy if she commanded it or any 
fate, or every fate, all was alike to him, so that she was true to him, - 
the man who had seen how cast away she was, whom she had inspired at their 
first meeting with an admiration, an interest, of which he had thought 
himself incapable, whom she had received into her confidence, who was 
devoted to her and adored her. All this, and more, in his hurry, and in 
hers, in the whirl of her own gratified malice, in the dread of being 
discovered, in the rapidly increasing noise of heavy rain among the leaves, 
and a thunder-storm rolling up - Mrs Sparsit received into her mind, set 
off with such an unavoidable halo of confusion and indistinctness, that 
when at length he climbed the fence and led his horse away, she was not 
sure where they were to meet, or when, except that they had said it was to 
be that night.
But one of them yet remained in the darkness before her; and while she 
tracked that one she must be right. "Oh, my dearest love," thought Mrs 
Sparsit, "you little think how well attended you are!"
Mrs Sparsit saw her out of the wood, and saw her enter the house. What to 
do next? It rained now, in a sheet of water. Mrs Sparsit's white stockings 
were of many colours, green predominating; prickly things were in her 
shoes; caterpillars slung themselves in hammocks of their own making, from 
various parts of her dress; rills ran from her bonnet, and her Roman nose. 
In such condition, Mrs Sparsit stood hidden in the density of the 
shrubbery, considering what next?
Lo, Louisa coming out of the house! Hastily cloaked and muffled, and 
stealing away. She elopes! She falls from the lowermost stair, and is 
swallowed up in the gulf!
Indifferent to the rain, and moving with a quick determined step, she 
struck into a side-path parallel with the ride. Mrs Sparsit followed in the 
shadow of the trees, at but a short distance; for it was not easy to keep a 
figure in view going quickly through the umbrageous darkness.
When she stopped to close the side-gate without noise, Mrs Sparsit stopped. 
When she went on, Mrs Sparsit went on. She went by the way Mrs Sparsit had 
come, emerged from the green lane, crossed the stony road, and ascended the 
wooden steps to the railroad. A train for Coketown would come through 
presently, Mrs Sparsit knew; so she understood Coketown to be her first 
place of destination.
In Mrs Sparsit's limp and streaming state, no extensive precautions were 
necessary to change her usual appearance; but, she stopped under the lee of 
the station wall, tumbled her shawl into a new shape, and put it on over 
her bonnet. So disguised, she had no fear of being recognised when she 
followed up the railroad steps, and paid her money in the small office. 
Louisa sat waiting in a corner. Mrs Sparsit sat waiting in another corner. 
Both listened to the thunder, which was loud, and to the rain, as it washed 
off the roof, and pattered on the parapets of the arches. Two or three 
lamps were rained out and blown out; so, both saw the lightning to 
advantage as it quivered and zig-zagged on the iron tracks.
The seizure of the station with a fit of trembling, gradually deepening to 
a complaint of the heart, announced the train. Fire and steam, and smoke, 
and red light; a hiss, a crash, a bell, and a shriek; Louisa put into one 
carriage, Mrs Sparsit put into another: the little station a desert speck 
in the thunder-storm.
Though her teeth chattered in her head from wet and cold, Mrs Sparsit 
exulted hugely. The figure had plunged down the precipice, and she felt 
herself, as it were, attending on the body. Could she, who had been so 
active in the getting up of the funeral triumph, do less than exult? "She 
will be at Coketown long before him," thought Mrs Sparsit, "though his 
horse is never so good. Where will she wait for him? And where will they go 
together? Patience. We shall see."
The tremendous rain occasioned infinite confusion, when the train stopped 
at its destination. Gutters and pipes had burst, drains had overflowed, and 
streets were under water. In the first instant of alighting, Mrs Sparsit 
turned her distracted eyes towards the waiting coaches, which were in great 
request. "She will get into one," she considered, "and will be away before 
I can follow in another. At all risks of being run over, I must see the 
number, and hear the order given to the coachman."
But, Mrs Sparsit was wrong in her calculation. Louisa got into no coach, 
and was already gone. The black eyes kept upon the railroad-carriage in 
which she had travelled, settled upon it a moment too late. The door not 
being opened after several minutes, Mrs Sparsit passed it and repassed it, 
saw nothing, looked in, and found it empty. Wet through and through: with 
her feet squelching and squashing in her shoes whenever she moved; with a 
rash of rain upon her classical visage; with a bonnet like an overripe fig; 
with all her clothes spoiled; with damp impressions of every button, 
string, and hook-and-eye she wore, printed off upon her highly connected 
back; with a stagnant verdure on her general exterior, such as accumulates 
on an old park fence in a mouldy lane; Mrs Sparsit had no resource but to 
burst into tears of bitterness and say, "I have lost her!"


Chapter 12

Down

The national dustmen, after entertaining one another with a great many 
noisy little fights among themselves, had dispersed for the present, and Mr 
Gradgrind was at home for the vacation.
He sat writing in the room with the deadly statistical clock, proving 
something no doubt - probably, in the main, that the Good Samaritan was a 
Bad Economist. The noise of the rain did not disturb him much; but it 
attracted his attention sufficiently to make him raise his head sometimes, 
as if he were rather remonstrating with the elements. When it thundered 
very loudly, he glanced towards Coketown, having it in his mind that some 
of the tall chimneys might be struck by lightning.
The thunder was rolling into distance, and the rain was pouring down like a 
deluge, when the door of his room opened. He looked round the lamp upon his 
table, and saw, with amazement, his eldest daughter.
"Louisa!"
"Father, I want to speak to you."
"What is the matter? How strange you look! And good Heaven," said Mr 
Gradgrind, wondering more and more, "have you come here exposed to this 
storm?"
She put her hands to her dress, as if she hardly knew.
"Yes." Then she uncovered her head, and letting her cloak and hood fall 
where they might, stood looking at him; so colourless, so dishevelled, so 
defiant and despairing, that he was afraid of her.
"What is it? I conjure you, Louisa, tell me what is the matter."
She dropped into a chair before him, and put her cold hand on his arm.
"Father, you have trained me from my cradle?"
"Yes, Louisa."
"I curse the hour in which I was born to such a destiny."
He looked at her in doubt and dread, vacantly repeating, "Curse the hour? 
Curse the hour?"
"How could you give me life, and take from me all the inappreciable things 
that raise it from the state of conscious death? Where are the graces of my 
soul? Where are the sentiments of my heart? What have you done, O father, 
what have you done, with the garden that should have bloomed once, in this 
great wilderness here!"
She struck herself with both her hands upon her bosom.
"If it had ever been here, its ashes alone would save me from the void in 
which my whole life sinks. I did not mean to say this; but, father, you 
remember the last time we conversed in this room?"
He had been so wholly unprepared for what he heard now, that it was with 
difficulty he answered, "Yes, Louise."
"What has risen to my lips now, would have risen to my lips then, if you 
had given me a moment's help. I don't reproach you, father. What you have 
never nurtured in me, you have never nurtured in yourself; but O! if you 
had only done so long ago, or if you had only neglected me, what a much 
better and much happier creature I should have been this day!"
On hearing this, after all his care, he bowed his head upon his hand and 
groaned aloud.
"Father, if you had known, when we were last together here, what even I 
feared while I strove against it - as it has been my task from infancy to 
strive against every natural prompting that has arisen in my heart; if you 
had known that there lingered in my breast, sensibilities, affections, 
weaknesses capable of being cherished into strength, defying all the 
calculations ever made by man, and no more known to his arithmetic than his 
Creator is, - would you have given me to the husband whom I am now sure 
that I hate?"
He said, "No. No, my poor child."
"Would you have doomed me, at any time, to the frost and blight that have 
hardened and spoiled me? Would you have robbed me - for one's enrichment - 
only for the greater desolation of this world - of the immaterial part of 
my life, the spring and summer of my belief, my refuge from what is sordid 
and bad in the real things around me, my school in which I should have 
learned to be more humble and more trusting with them, and to hope in my 
little sphere to make them better?"
"O no, no. No, Louisa."
"Yet, father, if I had been stone blind; if I had groped my way by my sense 
of touch, and had been free, while I knew the shapes and surfaces of 
things, to exercise my fancy somewhat, in regard to them; I should have 
been a million times wiser, happier, more loving, more contended, more 
innocent and human in all good respects, than I am with the eyes I have. 
Now, hear what I have come to say."
He moved, to support her with his arm. She rising as he did so, they stood 
close together: she, with a hand upon his shoulder, looking fixedly in his 
face.
"With a hunger and thirst upon me, father, which have never been for a 
moment appeased; with an ardent impulse towards some region where rules, 
and figures, and definitions were not quite absolute; I have grown up, 
battling every inch of my way."
"I never knew you were unhappy, my child."
"Father, I always knew it. In this strife I have almost repulsed and 
crushed my better angel into a demon. What I have learned has left me 
doubting, misbelieving, despising, regretting, what I have not learned; and 
my dismal resource has been to think that life would soon go by, and that 
nothing in it could be worth the pain and trouble of a contest."
"And you so young, Louisa!" he said with pity.
"And I so young. In this condition, father - for I show you now, without 
fear or favour, the ordinary deadened state of my mind as I know it - you 
proposed my husband to me. I took him. I never made a pretence to him or 
you that I love him. I knew, and, father, you knew, and he knew, that I 
never did. I was not wholly indifferent, for I had a hope of being pleasant 
and useful to Tom. I made that wild escape into something visionary, and 
have slowly found out how wild it was. But Tom had been the subject of all 
the little tenderness of my life; perhaps he became so because I knew so 
well how to pity him. It matters little now, except as it may dispose you 
think more leniently of his errors."
As her father held her in his arms, she put her other hand upon his other 
shoulder, and still looking fixedly in his face went on.
"When I was irrevocably married, there rose up into rebellion against the 
tie, the old strife, made fiercer by all those causes of disparity which 
arise out of our two individual natures, and which no general laws shall 
ever rule or state for me, father, until they shall be able to direct the 
anatomist where to strike his knife into the secrets of my soul."
"Louisa!" he said, and said imploringly; for he well remembered what had 
passed between them in their former interview.
"I do not reproach you, father; I make no complaint. I am here with another 
object."
"What can I do, child? Ask me what you will."
"I am coming to it. Father, chance then threw into my way a new 
acquaintance; a man such as I had had no experience of; used to the world; 
light, polished, easy; making no pretences; avowing the low estimate of 
everything, that I was half afraid to form in secret; conveying to me 
almost immediately, though I don't know how or by what degrees, that he 
understood me, and read my thoughts. I could not find that he was worse 
than I. These seemed to be a near affinity between us. I only wondered it 
should be worth his while, who cared for nothing else, to care to so much 
for me."
"For you, Louisa?"
Her father might instinctively have loosened his hold, but that he felt her 
strength departing from her, and saw a wild dilating fire in the eyes 
steadfastly regarding him.
"I say nothing of his plea for claiming my confidence. It matters very 
little how he gained it. Father, he did gain it. What you know of the story 
of my marriage, he soon knew, just as well."
Her father's face was ashy white, and he held her in both his arms.
"I have done no worse; I have not disgraced you. But if you ask me whether 
I have loved him, or do love him, I tell you plainly, father, that it may 
be so. I don't know!"
She took her hands suddenly from his shoulders and pressed them both upon 
her side; while in her face, not like itself - and in her figure, drawn up, 
resolute to finish by a last effort what she had to say - the feelings long 
suppressed broke loose.
"This night, my husband being away, he has been with me, declaring himself 
my lover. This minute he expects me, for I could release myself of his 
presence by no other means. I do not know that I am sorry, I do not know 
that I am ashamed, I do not know that I am degraded in my own esteem. All 
that I know is, your philosophy and your teaching will not save me. Now, 
father, you have brought me to this. Save me by some other means!"
He tightened his hold in time to prevent her sinking on the floor, but she 
cried out in a terrible voice, "I shall die if you hold me! Let me fall 
upon the ground!" And he laid her down there, and saw the pride of his 
heart and the triumph of his system, lying an insensible heap, at his feet.







Book 3: Garnering










Chapter 1

Another Thing Needful

Louisa awoke from a torpor, and her eyes languidly opened on her old bed at 
home, and her old room. It seemed, at first, as if all that had happened 
since the days when these objects were familiar to her were the shadows of 
a dream; but gradually, as the objects became more real to her sight, the 
events became more real to her mind.
She could scarcely move her head for pain and heaviness, her eyes were 
strained and sore, and she was very weak. A curious passive inattention had 
such possession of her, that the presence of her little sister in the room 
did not attract her notice for some time. Even when their eyes had met, and 
her sister had approached the bed, Louisa lay for minutes looking at her in 
silence, and suffering her timidly to hold her passive hand, before she 
asked:
"When was I brought to this room?"
"Last night, Louisa."
"Who brought me here?"
"Sissy, I believe."
"Why do you believe so?"
"Because I found her here this morning. She didn't come to my bedside to 
wake me, as she always does; and I went to look for her. She was not in her 
own room either; and I went looking for her all over the house, until I 
found her here, taking care of you and cooling your head. Will you see 
father? Sissy said I was to tell him when you woke."
"What a beaming face you have, Jane!" said Louisa, as her young sister - 
timidly still - bent down to kiss her.
"Have l? I am very glad you think so. I am sure it must be Sissy's doing."
The arm Louisa had begun to twine about her neck, unbent itself. "You can 
tell father, if you will." Then, staying her a moment, she said, "It was 
you who made my room so cheerful, and gave it this look of welcome?"
"Oh no, Louisa, it was done before I came. It was -"
Louisa turned upon her pillow, and heard no more. When her sister had 
withdrawn, she turned her head back again, and lay with her face towards 
the door, until it opened and her father entered.
He had a jaded anxious look upon him, and his hand, usually steady, 
trembled in hers. He sat down at the side of the bed, tenderly asking how 
she was, and dwelling on the necessity of her keeping very quiet after her 
agitation and exposure to the weather last night. He spoke in a subdued and 
troubled voice, very different from his usual dictatorial manner; and was 
often at a loss for words.
"My dear Louisa. My poor daughter." He was so much at a loss at that place, 
that he stopped altogether. He tried again.
"My unfortunate child." The place was so difficult to get over, that he 
tried again.
"It would be hopeless for me, Louisa, to endeavour to tell you how 
overwhelmed I have been, and still am, by what broke upon me last night. 
The ground on which I stand has ceased to be solid under my feet. The only 
support on which I leaned, and the strength of which it seemed and still 
does seem, impossible to question, has given way in an instant. I am 
stunned by these discoveries. I have no selfish meaning in what I say; but 
I find the shock of what broke upon me last night, to be very heavy 
indeed."
She could give him no comfort herein. She had suffered the wreck of her 
whole life upon the rock.
"I will not say, Louisa, that if you had by any happy chance undeceived me 
some time ago, it would have been better for us both; better for your 
peace, and better for mine. For I am sensible that it may not have been a 
part of my system to invite any confidence of that kind. I have proved my - 
my system to myself, and I have rigidly administered it; and I must bear 
the responsibility of its failures. I only entreat you to believe, my 
favourite child, I have meant to do right."
He said it earnestly, and to do him justice he had. In gauging fathomless 
deeps with his little mean excise-rod, and in staggering over the universe 
with his rusty stiff-legged compasses, he had meant to do great things. 
Within the limits of his short tether he had tumbled about, annihilating 
the flowers of existence with greater singleness of purpose than many of 
the blatant personages whose company he kept.
"I am well assured of what you say, father. I know I have been your 
favourite child. I know you have intended to make me happy. I have never 
blamed you, and I never shall."
He took her outstretched hand, and retained it in his.
"My dear, I have remained all night at my table, pondering again and again 
on what has so painfully passed between us. When I consider your character; 
when I consider that what has been known to me for hours, has been 
concealed by you for years; when I consider under what immediate pressure 
it has been forced from you at last; I come to the conclusion that I cannot 
but mistrust myself."
He might have added more than all, when he saw the face now looking at him. 
He did add it in effect, perhaps, as he softly moved her scattered hair 
from her forehead with his hand. Such little actions, slight in another 
man, were very noticeable in him; and his daughter received them as if they 
had been words of contrition.
"But," said Mr Gradgrind, slowly, and with hesitation, as well as with a 
wretched sense of helplessness, "if I see reason to mistrust myself for the 
past, Louisa, I should also mistrust myself for the present and the future. 
To speak unreservedly to you, I do. I am far from feeling convinced now, 
however differently I might have felt only this time yesterday, that I am 
fit for the trust you repose in me; that I know how to respond to the 
appeal you have come home to make to me; that I have the right instinct - 
supposing it for the moment to be some quality of that nature - how to help 
you, and to set you right, my child."
She had turned upon her pillow, and lay with her face upon her arm, so that 
he could not see it. All her wildness and passion had subsided; but, though 
softened, she was not in tears. Her father was changed in nothing so much 
as in the respect that he would have been glad to see her in tears.
"Some persons hold," he pursued, still hesitating, "that there is a wisdom 
of the Head, and that there is a wisdom of the Heart. I have not supposed 
so; but, as I have said, I mistrust myself now. I have supposed the Head to 
be all-sufficient. It may not be all-sufficient; how can I venture this 
morning to say it is! If that other kind of wisdom should be what I have 
neglected, and should be the instinct that is wanted, Louisa -"
He suggested it very doubtfully, as if he were half unwilling to admit it 
even now. She made him no answer; lying before him on her bed, still half-
dressed, much as he had seen her lying on the floor of his room last night.
"Louisa," and his hand rested on her hair again, "I have been absent from 
here, my dear, a good deal of late; and though your sister's training has 
been pursued according to - the system," he appeared to come to that word 
with great reluctance always, "it has necessarily been modified by daily 
associations begun, in her case, at an early age. I ask you - ignorantly 
and humbly, my daughter - for the better, do you think?"
"Father," she replied, without stirring, "if any harmony has been awakened 
in her young breast that was mute in mine until it turned to discord, let 
her thank Heaven for it, and go upon her happier way, taking it as her 
greatest blessing that she has avoided my way."
"O my child, my child!" he said, in a forlorn manner, "I am an unhappy man 
to see you thus! What avails it to me that you do not reproach me, if I so 
bitterly reproach myself!" He bent his head, and spoke low to her. "Louisa, 
I have a misgiving that some change may have been slowly working about me 
in this house, by mere love and gratitude; that what the Head had left 
undone and could not do, the Heart may have been doing silently. Can it be 
so?"
She made him no reply.
"I am not too proud to believe it, Louisa. How could I be arrogant, and you 
before me! Can it be so? Is it so, my dear?"
He looked upon her, once more, lying cast away there; and without another 
word went out of the room. He had not been long gone, when she heard a 
light tread near the door, and knew that some one stood beside her.
She did not raise her head. A dull anger that she should be seen in her 
distress, and that the involuntary look she had so resented should come to 
this fulfilment, smouldered within her like an unwholesome fire. All 
closely imprisoned forces rend and destroy. The air that would be healthful 
to the earth, the water that would enrich it, the heat that would ripen it, 
tear it when caged up. So in her bosom even now; the strongest qualities 
she possessed, long turned upon themselves, became a heap of obduracy, that 
rose against a friend.
It was well that soft touch came upon her neck, and that she understood 
herself to be supposed to have fallen asleep. The sympathetic hand did not 
claim her resentment. Let it lie there, let it lie.
It lay there, warming into life a crowd of gentler thoughts; and she 
rested. As she softened with the quiet, and the consciousness of being so 
watched, some tears made their way into her eyes. The face touched hers, 
and she knew that there were tears upon it too, and she the cause of them.
As Louisa feigned to rouse herself, and sat up, Sissy retired, so that she 
stood placidly near the bed-side.
"I hope I have not disturbed you. I have come to ask if you would let me 
stay with you."
"Why should you stay with me? My sister will miss you. You are everything 
to her."
"Am l?" returned Sissy, shaking her head. "I would be something to you, if 
I might."
"What?" said Louisa, almost sternly.
"Whatever you want most, if I could be that. At all events, I would like to 
try to be as near it as I can. And however far off that may be, I will 
never tire of trying. Will you let me?"
"My father sent you to ask me."
"No indeed," replied Sissy. "He told me that I might come in now, but he 
sent me away from the room this morning - or at least -" She hesitated and 
stopped.
"At least, what?" said Louisa, with her searching eyes upon her.
"I thought it best myself that I should be sent away, for I felt very 
uncertain whether you would like to find me here."
"Have I always hated you so much?"
"I hope not, for I have always loved you, and have always wished that you 
should know it. But you changed to me a little, shortly before you left 
home. Not that I wondered at it. You knew so much, and I knew so little, 
and it was so natural in many ways, going as you were among other friends, 
that I had nothing to complain of, and was not at all hurt."
Her colour rose as she said it modestly and hurriedly. Louisa understood 
the loving pretence, and her heart smote her.
"May I try?" said Sissy, emboldened to raise her hand to the neck that was 
insensibly drooping towards her.
Louisa, taking down the hand that would have embraced her in another 
moment, held it in one of hers, and answered:
"First, Sissy, do you know what I am? I am so proud and so hardened, so 
confused and troubled, so resentful and unjust to every one and to myself, 
that everything is stormy, dark, and wicked to me. Does not that repel 
you?"
"No! "
"I am so unhappy, and all that should have made me otherwise is so laid 
waste, that if I had been bereft of sense to this hour, and instead of 
being as learned as you think me, had to begin to acquire the simplest 
truths, I could not want a guide to peace, contentment, honour, all the 
good of which I am quite devoid, more abjectly than I do. Does not that 
repel you?"
"No! "
In the innocence of her brave affection, and the brimming up of her old 
devoted spirit, the once deserted girl shone like a beautiful light upon 
the darkness of the other.
Louisa raised the hand that it might clasp her neck, and join its fellow 
there. She fell upon her knees, and clinging to this stroller's child 
looked up at her almost with veneration.
"Forgive me, pity me, help me! Have compassion on my great need, and let me 
lay this head of mine upon a loving heart! "
"O lay it here!" cried Sissy. "Lay it here, my dear."


Chapter 2

Very Ridiculous

Mr James Harthouse passed a whole night and a day in a state of so much 
hurry, that the World, with its best glass in its eye, would scarcely have 
recognised him during that insane interval, as the brother Jem of the 
honourable and jocular member. He was positively agitated. He several times 
spoke with an emphasis, similar to the vulgar manner. He went in and went 
out in an unaccountable way, like a man without an object. He rode like a 
highwayman. In a word, he was so horribly bored by existing circumstances, 
that he forgot to go in for boredom in the manner prescribed by the 
authorities.
After putting his horse at Coketown through the storm, as if it were a 
leap, he waited up all night: from time to time ringing his bell with the 
greatest fury, charging the porter who kept watch with delinquency in 
withholding letters or messages that could not fail to have been entrusted 
to him, and demanding restitution on the spot. The dawn coming, the morning 
coming, and the day coming, and neither message nor letter coming with 
either, he went down to the country-house. There, the report was, Mr 
Bounderby away, and Mrs Bounderby in town. Left for town suddenly last 
evening. Not even known to be gone until receipt of message, importing that 
her return was not to be expected for the present.
In these circumstances he had nothing for it but to follow her to town. He 
went to the house in town. Mrs Bounderby not there. He looked in at the 
Bank. Mr Bounderby away, and Mrs Sparsit away. Mrs Sparsit away? Who could 
have been reduced to sudden extremity for the company of that griffin!
"Well! I don't know," said Tom, who had his own reasons for being uneasy 
about it. "She was off somewhere at daybreak this morning. She's always 
full of mystery; I hate her. So I do that white chap; he's always got his 
blinking eyes upon a fellow. "
"Where were you last night, Tom?"
"Where was I last night!" said Tom. "Come! I like that. I was waiting for 
you, Mr Harthouse, till it came down as I never saw it come down before. 
Where was I too! Where were you, you mean."
"I was prevented from coming - detained."
"Detained!" murmured Tom. "Two of us were detained. I was detained looking 
for you, till I lost every train but the mail. It would have been a 
pleasant job to go down by that on such a night, and have to walk home 
through a pond. I was obliged to sleep in town after all."
"Where? "
"Where? Why, in my own bed at Bounderby's."
"Did you see your sister?"
"How the deuce," returned Tom, staring, "could I see my sister when she was 
fifteen miles off?"
Cursing these quick retorts of the young gentleman to whom he was so true a 
friend, Mr Harthouse disembarrassed himself of that interview with the 
smallest conceivable amount of ceremony, and debated for the hundredth time 
what all this could mean? He made only one thing clear. It was, that 
whether she was in town or out of town, whether he had been premature with 
her who was so hard to comprehend, or she had lost courage, or they were 
discovered, or some mischance or mistake, at present incomprehensible had 
occurred, he must remain to confront his fortune, whatever it was. The 
hotel where he was known to live when condemned to that region of 
blackness, was the stake to which he was tied. As to all the rest - What 
will be, will be.
"So, whether I am waiting for a hostile message, or an assignation, or a 
penitent remonstrance, or an impromptu wrestle with my friend Bounderby in 
the Lancashire manner - which would seem as likely as anything else in the 
present state of affairs - I'll dine," said Mr James Harthouse. "Bounderby 
has the advantage in point of weight; and if anything of a British nature 
is to come off between us, it may be as well to be in training. "
Therefore he rang the bell, and tossing himself negligently on a sofa, 
ordered "Some dinner at six - with a beefsteak in it," and got through the 
intervening time as well as he could. That was not particularly well; for 
he remained in the greatest perplexity, and, as the hours went on, and no 
kind of explanation offered itself, his perplexity augmented at compound 
interest.
However, he took affairs as coolly as it was in human nature to do, and 
entertained himself with the facetious idea of the training more than once. 
"It wouldn't be bad," he yawned at one time, "to give the waiter five 
shillings, and throw him." At another time it occurred to him, "Or a fellow 
of about thirteen or fourteen stone might be hired by the hour." But these 
jests did not tell materially on the afternoon, or his suspense; and, sooth 
to say, they both lagged fearfully.
It was impossible, even before dinner, to avoid often walking about in the 
pattern of the carpet, looking out of the window, listening at the door for 
footsteps, and occasionally becoming rather hot when any steps approached 
that room. But, after dinner, when the day turned to twilight, and the 
twilight turned to night, and still no communication was made to him, it 
began to be as he expressed it, "like the Holy Office and slow torture". 
However, still true to his conviction that indifference was the genuine 
high-breeding (the only conviction he had), he seized this crisis as the 
opportunity for ordering candles and a newspaper.
He had been trying in vain, for half an hour, to read this newspaper, when 
the waiter appeared and said, at once mysteriously and apologetically:
"Beg your pardon, sir. You're wanted, sir, if you please."
A general recollection that this was the kind of thing the Police said to 
the swell mob, caused Mr Harthouse to ask the waiter in return, with 
bristling indignation, what the Devil he meant by "wanted"?
"Beg your pardon, sir. Young lady outside, sir, wishes to see you. "
"Outside? Where?"
"Outside this door, sir."
Giving the waiter to the personage before-mentioned, as a blockhead duly 
qualified for that consignment, Mr Harthouse hurried into the gallery. A 
young woman whom he had never seen stood there. Plainly dressed, very 
quiet, very pretty. As he conducted her into the room and placed a chair 
for her, he observed, by the light of the candles, that she was even 
prettier than he had at first believed. Her face was innocent and youthful, 
and its expression remarkably pleasant. She was not afraid of him, or in 
any way disconcerted; she seemed to have her mind entirely preoccupied with 
the occasion of her visit, and to have substituted that consideration for 
herself.
"I speak to Mr Harthouse?" she said, when they were alone.
"To Mr Harthouse." He added in his mind, "And you speak to him with the 
most confiding eyes I ever saw, and the most earnest voice (though so 
quiet) I ever heard."
"If I do not understand - and I do not, sir" - said Sissy, "what your 
honour as a gentleman binds you to, in other matters": the blood really 
rose in his face as she began in these words: "I am sure I may rely upon it 
to keep my visit secret, and to keep secret what I am going to say. I will 
rely upon it, if you will tell me I may so far trust -"
"You may, I assure you."
"I am young, as you see; I am alone, as you see. In coming to you, sir, I 
have no advice or encouragement beyond my own hope. "
He thought, "But that is very strong," as he followed the momentary upward 
glance of her eyes. He thought besides, "This is a very odd beginning. I 
don't see where we are going."
"I think," said Sissy, "you have already guessed whom I left just now?"
"I have been in the greatest concern and uneasiness during the last four-
and-twenty hours (which have appeared as many years)," he returned, "on a 
lady's account. The hopes I have been encouraged to form that you come from 
that lady, do not deceive me, I trust."
"I left her within an hour."
"At -?"
"At her father's."
Mr Harthouse's face lengthened in spite of his coolness, and his perplexity 
increased. "Then I certainly," he thought, "do not see where we are going."
"She hurried there last night. She arrived there in great agitation, and 
was insensible all through the night. I live at her father's, and was with 
her. You may be sure, sir, you will never see her again as long as you 
live."
Mr Harthouse drew a long breath; and, if ever man found himself in the 
position of not knowing what to say, made the discovery beyond all question 
that he was so circumstanced. The child-like ingenuousness with which his 
visitor spoke, her modest fearlessness, her truthfulness which put all 
artifice aside, her entire forgetfulness of herself in her earnest quiet 
holding to the object with which she had come; all this, together with her 
reliance on his easily-given promise - which in itself shamed him - 
presented something in which he was so inexperienced, and against which he 
knew any of his usual weapons would fall so powerless; that not a word 
could he rally to his relief.
At last he said:
"So startling an announcement, so confidently made, and by such lips, is 
really disconcerting in the last degree. May I be permitted to inquire, if 
you are charged to convey that information to me in those hopeless words, 
by the lady of whom we speak."
"I have no charge from her."
"The drowning man catches at the straw. With no disrespect for your 
judgement, and with no doubt of your sincerity, excuse my saying that I 
cling to the belief that there is yet hope that I am not condemned to 
perpetual exile from that lady's presence. "
"There is not the least hope. The first object of my coming here, sir, is 
to assure you that you must believe that there is no more hope of your ever 
speaking with her again, than there would be if she had died when she came 
home last night."
"Must believe? But if I can't - or if I should, by infirmity of nature, be 
obstinate - and won't -"
"It is still true. There is no hope."
James Harthouse looked at her with an incredulous smile upon his lips; but 
her mind looked over and beyond him, and the smile was quite thrown away.
He bit his lip, and took a little time for consideration.
"Well! If it should unhappily appear," he said, "after due pains and duty 
on my part, that I am brought to a position so desolate as this banishment, 
I shall not become the lady's persecutor. But you said you had no 
commission from her?"
"I have only the commission of my love for her, and her love for me. I have 
no other trust, than that I have been with her since she came home, and 
that she has given me her confidence. I have no further trust, than that I 
know something of her character and her marriage. O Mr Harthouse, I think 
you had that trust too!"
He was touched in the cavity where his heart should have been - in that 
nest of addled eggs, where the birds of heaven would have lived if they had 
not been whistled away - by the fervour of this reproach.
"I am not a moral sort of fellow," he said, "and I never make any 
pretensions to the character of a moral sort of fellow. I am as immoral as 
need be. At the same time, in bringing any distress upon the lady who is 
the subject of the present conversation, or in unfortunately compromising 
her in any way, or in committing myself by any expression of sentiments 
towards her, not perfectly reconcilable with - in fact with - the domestic 
hearth; or in taking any advantage of her father's being a machine, or of 
her brother's being a whelp, or of her husband's being a bear; I beg to be 
allowed to assure you that I have had no particularly evil intentions, but 
have glided on from one step to another with a smoothness so perfectly 
diabolical, that I had not the slightest idea the catalogue was half so 
long until I began to turn it over. Whereas I find," said Mr James 
Harthouse, in conclusion, "that it is really in several volumes. "
Though he said all this in his frivolous way, the way seemed, for that 
once, a conscious polishing of but an ugly surface. He was silent for a 
moment; and then proceeded with a more self-possessed air, though with 
traces of vexation and disappointment that would not be polished out.
"After what has been just now represented to me, in a manner I find it 
impossible to doubt - I know of hardly any other source from which I could 
have accepted it so readily - I feel bound to say to you, in whom the 
confidence you have mentioned has been reposed, that I cannot refuse to 
contemplate the possibility (however unexpected) of my seeing the lady no 
more. I am solely to blame for the thing having come to this - and - and, I 
cannot say," he added, rather hard up for a general peroration, "that I 
have any sanguine expectation of ever becoming a moral sort of fellow, or 
that I have any belief in any moral sort of fellow whatever."
Sissy's face sufficiently showed that her appeal to him was not finished.
"You spoke," he resumed, as she raised her eyes to him again, "of your 
first object. I may assume that there is a second to be mentioned?"
"Yes. "
"Will you oblige me by confiding it?"
"Mr Harthouse," returned Sissy, with a blending of gentleness and 
steadiness that quite defeated him, and with a simple confidence in his 
being bound to do what she required, that held him at a singular 
disadvantage, "the only reparation that remains with you, is to leave here 
immediately and finally. I am quite sure that you can mitigate in no other 
way the wrong and harm you have done. I am quite sure that it is the only 
compensation you have left it in your power to make. I do not say that it 
is much, or that it is enough; but it is something, and it is necessary. 
Therefore, though without any other authority than I have given you, and 
even without the knowledge of any other person than yourself and myself, I 
ask you to depart from this place tonight, under an obligation never to 
return to it."
If she had asserted any influence over him beyond her plain faith in the 
truth and right of what she said; if she had concealed the least doubt or 
irresolution, or had harboured for the best purpose any reserve or 
pretence; if she had shown, or felt, the lightest trace of any 
sensitiveness to his ridicule or his astonishment, or any remonstrance he 
might offer; he would have carried it against her at this point. But he 
could as easily have changed a clear sky by looking at it in surprise, as 
affect her.
"But do you know," he asked, quite at a loss, "the extent of what you ask? 
You probably are not aware that I am here on a public kind of business, 
preposterous enough in itself, but which I have gone in for, and sworn by, 
and am supposed to be devoted to in quite a desperate manner? You probably 
are not aware of that, but I assure you it's the fact.
"It had no effect on Sissy, fact or no fact.
"Besides which," said Mr Harthouse, taking a turn or two across the room, 
dubiously, "it's so alarmingly absurd. It would make a man so ridiculous, 
after going in for these fellows, to back out in such an incomprehensible 
way."
"I am quite sure," repeated Sissy, "that it is the only reparation in your 
power, sir. I am quite sure, or I would not have come here.
He glanced at her face, and walked about again. "Upon my soul, I don't know 
what to say. So immensely absurd!"
It fell to his lot, now, to stipulate for secrecy.
"If I were to do such a very ridiculous thing," he said, stopping again 
presently, and leaning against the chimney-piece, "it could only be in the 
most inviolable confidence."
"I will trust to you, sir," returned Sissy, "and you will trust to me. "
His leaning against the chimney-piece reminded him of the night with the 
whelp. It was the self-same chimney-piece, and somehow he felt as if he 
were the whelp tonight. He could make no way at all.
"I suppose a man never was placed in a more ridiculous position," he said, 
after looking down, and looking up, and laughing, and frowning, and walking 
off, and walking back again. "But I see no way out of it. What will be, 
will be. This will be, I suppose. I must take off myself, I imagine - in 
short, I engage to do it."
Sissy rose. She was not surprised by the result, but she was happy in it, 
and her face beamed brightly.
"You will permit me to say," continued Mr James Harthouse, "that I doubt if 
any other ambassador, or ambassadress, could have addressed me with the 
same success. I must not only regard myself as being in a very ridiculous 
position, but as being vanquished at all points. Will you allow me the 
privilege of remembering my enemy's name?"
"My name?" said the ambassadress.
"The only name I could possibly care to know, tonight."
"Sissy Jupe."
"Pardon my curiosity at parting. Related to the family?"
"I am only a poor girl," returned Sissy. "I was separated from my father - 
he was only a stroller - and taken pity on by Mr Gradgrind. I have lived in 
the house ever since."
She was gone.
"It wanted this to complete the defeat," said Mr James Harthouse, sinking, 
with a resigned air, on the sofa, after standing transfixed a little while. 
"The defeat may now be considered perfectly accomplished. Only a poor girl -
 only a stroller - only James Harthouse made nothing of - only James 
Harthouse a Great Pyramid of failure."
The Great Pyramid put it into his head to go up the Nile. He took a pen 
upon the instant, and wrote the following note (in appropriate 
hieroglyphics) to his brother:

Dear Jack. All up at Coketown. Bored out of the place, and going in for 
camels. Affectionately, JEM.

He rang the bell.
"Send my fellow here."
"Gone to bed, sir."
"Tell him to get up, and pack up."
He wrote two more notes. One, to Mr Bounderby, announcing his retirement 
from that part of the country, and showing where he would be found for the 
next fortnight. The other, similar in effect, to Mr Gradgrind. Almost as 
soon as the ink was dry upon their superscriptions, he had left the tall 
chimneys of Coketown behind, and was in a railway carriage, tearing and 
glaring over the dark landscape.
The moral sort of fellows might suppose that Mr James Harthouse derived 
some comfortable reflections afterwards, from this prompt retreat, as one 
of his few actions that made any amends for anything, and as a token to 
himself that he had escaped the climax of a very bad business. But it was 
not so, at all. A secret sense of having failed and been ridiculous - a 
dread of what other fellows who went in for similar sorts of things, would 
say at his expense if they knew it - so oppressed him, that what was about 
the very best passage in his life was the one of all others he would not 
have owned to on any account, and the only one that made him ashamed of 
himself.


Chapter 3

Very Decided

The indefatigable Mrs Sparsit, with a violent cold upon her, her voice 
reduced to a whisper, and her stately frame so racked by continual sneezes 
that it seemed in danger of dismemberment, gave chase to her patron until 
she found him in the metropolis; and there, majestically sweeping in upon 
him at his hotel in St James's Street, exploded the combustibles with which 
she was charged, and blew up. Having executed her mission with infinite 
relish, this high-minded woman then fainted away on Mr Bounderby's coat-
collar.
Mr Bounderby's first procedure was to shake Mrs Sparsit off, and leave her 
to progress as she might through various stages of suffering on the floor. 
He next had recourse to the administration of potent restoratives, such as 
screwing the patient's thumbs, smiting her hands, abundantly watering her 
face, and inserting salt in her mouth. When these attentions had recovered 
her (which they speedily did), he hustled her into a fast train without 
offering any other refreshment, and carried her back to Coketown more dead 
than alive.
Regarded as a classical ruin, Mrs Sparsit was an interesting spectacle on 
her arrival at her journey's end; but considered in any other light, the 
amount of damage she had by that time sustained was excessive, and impaired 
her claims to admiration. Utterly heedless of the wear and tear of her 
clothes and constitution, and adamant to her pathetic sneezes, Mr Bounderby 
immediately crammed her into a coach, and bore her off to Stone Lodge.
"Now, Tom Gradgrind," said Bounderby, bursting into his father-in-law's 
room late at night; "here's a lady here - Mrs Sparsit - you know Mrs 
Sparsit - who has something to say to you that will strike you dumb."
"You have missed my letter!" exclaimed Mr Gradgrind, surprised by the 
apparition.
"Missed your letter, sir!" bawled Bounderby. "The present time is no time 
for letters. No man shall talk to Josiah Bounderby of Coketown about 
letters, with his mind in the state it's in now."
"Bounderby," said Mr Gradgrind, in a tone of temperate remonstrance, "I 
speak of a very special letter I have written to you, in reference to 
Louisa."
"Tom Gradgrind," replied Bounderby, knocking the flat of his hand several 
times with great vehemence on the table, "I speak of a very special 
messenger that has come to me, in reference to Louisa. Mrs Sparsit ma'am, 
stand forward!"
That unfortunate lady hereupon essaying to offer testimony, without any 
voice and with painful gestures expressive of an inflamed throat, became so 
aggravating and underwent so many facial contortions, that Mr Bounderby, 
unable to bear it, seized her by the arm and shook her.
"If you can't get it out ma'am," said Bounderby, "leave me to get it out. 
This is not a time for a lady, however highly connected, to be totally 
inaudible, and seemingly swallowing marbles. Tom Gradgrind, Mrs Sparsit 
latterly found herself, by accident, in a situation to overhear a 
conversation out of doors between your daughter and your precious gentleman-
friend, Mr James Harthouse. "
"Indeed?" said Mr Gradgrind.
"Ah! Indeed!" cried Bounderby. "And in that conversation -"
"It is not necessary to repeat its tenor, Bounderby. I know what passed."
"You do? Perhaps," said Bounderby, starting with all his might at his so 
quiet and assuasive father-in-law, "you know where your daughter is at the 
present time?"
"Undoubtedly. She is here."
"Here?"
"My dear Bounderby, let me beg you to restrain these loud outbreaks, on all 
accounts. Louisa is here. The moment she could detach herself from that 
interview with the person of whom you speak, and whom I deeply regret to 
have been the means of introducing to you, Louisa hurried here, for 
protection. I myself had not been at home many hours, when I received her - 
here, in this room. She hurried by the train to town, she ran from town to 
this house through a raging storm, and presented herself before me in a 
state of distraction. Of course, she has remained here ever since. Let me 
entreat you, for your own sake and for hers, to be more quiet."
Mr Bounderby silently gazed about him for some moments, in every direction 
except Mrs Sparsit's direction; and then, abruptly turning upon the niece 
of Lady Scadgers, said to that wretched woman:
"Now, ma'am! We shall be happy to hear any little apology you may think 
proper to offer, for going about the country at express pace, with no other 
luggage than a Cock-and-a-Bull, ma'am!"
"Sir," whispered Mrs Sparsit, "my nerves are at present too much shaken, 
and my health is at present too much impaired, in your service, to admit of 
my doing more than taking refuge in tears."
(Which she did.)
"Well, ma'am," said Bounderby, "without making any observation to you that 
may not be made with propriety to a woman of good family, what I have got 
to add to that, is, that there's something else in which it appears to me 
you may take refuge, namely a coach. And the coach in which we came here, 
being at the door, you'll allow me to hand you down to it, and pack you 
home to the Bank: where the best course for you to pursue, will be to put 
your feet into the hottest water you can bear, and take a glass of scalding 
rum and butter after you get into bed." With these words, Mr Bounderby 
extended his right hand to the weeping lady and escorted her to the 
conveyance in question, shedding many plaintive sneezes by the way. He soon 
returned alone.
"Now, as you showed me in your face, Tom Gradgrind, that you wanted to 
speak to me," he resumed, "here I am. But, I am not in a very agreeable 
state, I tell you plainly; not relishing this business even as it is, and 
not considering that I am at any time as dutifully and submissively treated 
by your daughter, as Josiah Bounderby of Coketown ought to be treated by 
his wife. You have your opinion, I dare say; and I have mine, I know. If 
you mean to say anything to me tonight, that goes against this candid 
remark, you had better let it alone. "
Mr Gradgrind, it will be observed, being much softened, Mr Bounderby took 
particular pains to harden himself at all points. It was his amiable 
nature.
"My dear Bounderby," Mr Gradgrind began in reply.
"Now, you'll excuse me," said Bounderby, "but I don't want to be too dear. 
That, to start with. When I begin to be dear to a man, I generally find 
that his intention is to come over me. I am not speaking to you politely; 
but, as you are aware, I am not polite. If you like politeness, you know 
where to get it. You have your gentleman-friends you know, and they'll 
serve you with as much of the article as you want. I don't keep it myself. 
"
"Bounderby," urged Mr Gradgrind, "we are all liable to mistakes -"
"I thought you couldn't make 'em," interrupted Bounderby.
"Perhaps I thought so. But, I say we are all liable to mistakes; and I 
should feel sensible of your delicacy, and grateful for it, if you would 
spare me these references to Harthouse. I shall not associate him in our 
conversation with your intimacy and encouragement; pray do not persist in 
connecting him with mine. "
"I never mentioned his name!" said Bounderby.
"Well, well!" returned Mr Gradgrind, with a patient, even a submissive, 
air. And he sat for a little while pondering. "Bounderby, I see reason to 
doubt whether we have ever quite understood Louisa."
"Who do you mean by We?"
"Let me say I, then," he returned, in answer to the coarsely blurted 
question; "I doubt whether I have understood Louisa. I doubt whether I have 
been quite right in the manner of her education. "
"There you hit it," returned Bounderby. "There I agree with you. You have 
found it out at last, have you? Education! I'll tell you what education is -
 To be tumbled out of doors, neck and crop, and put upon the shortest 
allowance of everything except blows. That's what I call education."
"I think your good sense will perceive," Mr Gradgrind remonstrated in all 
humility, "that whatever the merits of such a system may be, it would be 
difficult of general application to girls.
"I don't see it at all, sir," returned the obstinate Bounderby. "Well," 
sighed Mr Gradgrind, "we will not enter into the question. I assure you I 
have no desire to be controversial. I seek to repair what is amiss, if I 
possibly can; and I hope you will assist me in a good spirit, Bounderby, 
for I have been very much distressed."
"I don't understand you, yet," said Bounderby, with determined obstinacy, 
"and therefore I won't make any promises."
"In the course of a few hours, my dear Bounderby," Mr Gradgrind proceeded, 
in the same depressed and propitiatory manner, "I appear to myself to have 
become better informed as to Louisa's character, than in previous years. 
The enlightenment has been forced upon me, and the discovery is not mine. I 
think there are - Bounderby, you will be surprised to hear me say this - I 
think there are qualities in Louisa, which - which have been harshly 
neglected, and - and a little perverted. And - and I would suggest to you, 
that - that if you would kindly meet me in a timely endeavour to leave her 
to her better nature for a while - and to encourage it to develop itself by 
tenderness and consideration - it - it would be the better for the 
happiness of all of us. Louisa," said Mr Gradgrind, shading his face with 
his hand, "has always been my favourite child."
The blustrous Bounderby crimsoned and swelled to such an extent on hearing 
these words, that he seemed to be, and probably was, on the brink of a fit. 
With his very ears a bright purple shot with crimson, he pent up his 
indignation, however, and said:
"You'd like to keep her here for a time?"
"I - I had intended to recommend, my dear Bounderby, that you should allow 
Louisa to remain here on a visit, and be attended by Sissy (I mean of 
course Cecilia Jupe), who understands her, and in whom she trusts."
"I gather from all this, Tom Gradgrind," said Bounderby, standing up with 
his hands in his pockets, "that you are of opinion that there's what people 
call some incompatibility between Loo Bounderby and myself."
"I fear there is at present a general incompatibility between Louisa, and - 
and - almost all the relations in which I have placed her," was her 
father's sorrowful reply.
"Now, look you here, Tom Gradgrind," said Bounderby the flushed, 
confronting him with his legs wide apart, his hands deeper in his pockets, 
and his hair like a hayfield wherein his windy anger was boisterous. "You 
have said your say; I am going to say mine. I am a Coketown man. I am 
Josiah Bounderby of Coketown. I know the bricks of this town, and I know 
the works of this town, and I know the chimneys of this town, and I know 
the smoke of this town, and I know the Hands of this town. I know 'em all 
pretty well. They're real. When a man tells me anything about imaginative 
qualities, I always tell that man, whoever he is, that I know what he 
means. He means turtle-soup and venison, with a gold spoon, and that he 
wants to be set up with a coach and six. That's what your daughter wants. 
Since you are of opinion that she ought to have what she wants, I recommend 
you to provide it for her. Because, Tom Gradgrind, she will never have it 
from me. "
"Bounderby," said Mr Gradgrind, "I hoped, after my entreaty, you would have 
taken a different tone."
"Just wait a bit," retorted Bounderby, "you have said your say, I believe. 
I heard you out; hear me out, if you please. Don't make yourself a 
spectacle of unfairness as well as inconsistency, because, although I am 
sorry to see Tom Gradgrind reduced to his present position, I should be 
doubly sorry to see him brought so low as that. Now, there's an 
incompatibility of some sort or another, I am given to understand by you, 
between your daughter and me. I'll give you to understand, in reply to 
that, that there unquestionably is an incompatibility of the first 
magnitude - to be summed up in this - that your daughter don't properly 
know her husband's merits, and is not impressed with such a sense as would 
become her, by George! of the honour of his alliance. That's plain 
speaking, I hope."
"Bounderby," urged Mr Gradgrind, "this is unreasonable."
"Is it?" said Bounderby. "I am glad to hear you say so. Because when Tom 
Gradgrind with his new lights, tells me that what I say is unreasonable, I 
am convinced at once it must be devilish sensible. With your permission I 
am going on. You know my origin; and you know that for a good many years of 
my life I didn't want a shoeing-horn, in consequence of not having a shoe. 
Yet you may believe or not, as you think proper, that there are ladies - 
born ladies - belonging to families - Families! - who next to worship the 
ground I walk on."
He discharged this, like a Rocket, at his father-in-law's head.
"Whereas your daughter," proceeded Bounderby, "is far from being a born 
lady. That you know, yourself. Not that I care a pinch of candle-snuff 
about such things, for you are very well aware I don't; but that such is 
the fact, and you, Tom Gradgrind, can't change it. Why do I say this?"
"Not, I fear," observed Mr Gradgrind, in a low voice, "to spare me."
"Hear me out," said Bounderby, "and refrain from cutting in till your turn 
comes round. I say this, because highly connected females have been 
astonished to see the way in which your daughter has conducted herself, and 
to witness her insensibility. They have wondered how I have suffered it. 
And I wonder myself now, and I won't suffer it."
"Bounderby," returned Mr Gradgrind, rising, "the less we say tonight the 
better, I think."
"On the contrary, Tom Gradgrind, the more we say tonight, the better, I 
think. That is," the consideration checked him, "till I have said all I 
mean to say, and then I don't care how soon we stop. I come to a question 
that may shorten the business. What do you mean by the proposal you made 
just now?"
"What do I mean, Bounderby?"
"By your visiting proposition," said Bounderby, with an inflexible jerk of 
the hayfield.
"I mean that I hope you may be induced to arrange, in a friendly manner, 
for allowing Louisa a period of repose and reflection here, which may tend 
to a gradual alteration for the better in many respects."
"To a softening down of your ideas of the incompatibility?" said Bounderby.
"If you put it in those terms."
"What made you think of this?" said Bounderby.
"I have already said, I fear Louisa has not been understood. Is it asking 
too much, Bounderby, that you, so far her elder, should aid in trying to 
set her right? You have accepted a great charge of her; for better for 
worse, for -"
Mr Bounderby may have been annoyed by the repetition of his own words to 
Stephen Blackpool, but he cut the quotation short with an angry start.
"Come!" said he, "I don't want to be told about that. I know what I took 
her for, as well as you do. Never you mind what I took her for; that's my 
look-out."
"I was merely going on to remark, Bounderby, that we may all be more or 
less in the wrong, not even excepting you; and that some yielding on your 
part, remembering the trust you have accepted, may not only be an act of 
true kindness, but perhaps a debt incurred towards Louisa."
"I think differently," blustered Bounderby. "I am going to finish this 
business according to my own opinions. Now, I don't want to make a quarrel 
of it with you, Tom Gradgrind. To tell you the truth, I don't think it 
would be worthy of my reputation to quarrel on such a subject. As to your 
gentleman-friend, he may take himself off, wherever he likes best. If he 
falls in my way, I shall tell him my mind; if he don't fall in my way, I 
shan't, for it won't be worth my while to do it. As to your daughter, whom 
I made Loo Bounderby, and might have done better by leaving Loo Gradgrind, 
if she don't come home tomorrow by twelve o'clock at noon, I shall 
understand that she prefers to stay away, and I shall send her wearing 
apparel and so forth over here, and you'll take charge of her for the 
future. What I shall say to people in general, of the incompatibility that 
led to my so laying down the law, will be this. I am Josiah Bounderby, and 
I had my bringing-up; she's the daughter of Tom Gradgrind, and she had her 
bringing-up; and the two horses wouldn't pull together. I am pretty well 
known to be rather an uncommon man, I believe; and most people will 
understand fast enough that it must be a woman rather out of the common, 
also, who, in the long run, would come up to my mark."
"Let me seriously entreat you to re-consider this, Bounderby," urged Mr 
Gradgrind, "before you commit yourself to such a decision."
"I always come to a decision," said Bounderby, tossing his hat on: "and 
whatever I do, I do at once. I should be surprised at Tom Gradgrind's 
addressing such a remark to Josiah Bounderby of Coketown, knowing what he 
knows of him, if I could be surprised by anything Tom Gradgrind did, after 
his making himself a party to sentimental humbug. I have given you my 
decision, and I have got no more to say. Good-night!
So Mr Bounderby went home to his town house to bed. At five minutes past 
twelve o'clock next day, he directed Mrs Bounderby's property to be 
carefully packed up and sent to Tom Gradgrind's; advertised his country 
retreat for sale by private contract; and resumed a bachelor life.



Chapter 4

Lost

The robbery at the Bank had not languished before, and did not cease to 
occupy a front place in the attention of the principal of that 
establishment now. In boastful proof of his promptitude and activity, as a 
remarkable man, and a self-made man, and a commercial wonder more admirable 
than Venus, who had risen out of the mud instead of the sea, he liked to 
show how little his domestic affairs abated his business ardour. 
Consequently, in the first few weeks of his resumed bachelorhood, he even 
advanced upon his usual display of bustle, and every day made such a rout 
in renewing his investigations into the robbery, that the officers who had 
it in hand almost wished it had never been committed.
They were at fault too, and off the scent. Although they had been so quiet 
since the first outbreak of the matter, that most people really did suppose 
it to have been abandoned as hopeless, nothing new occurred. No implicated 
man or woman took untimely courage, or made a self-betraying step. More 
remarkable yet, Stephen Blackpool could not be heard of, and the mysterious 
old woman remained a mystery.
Things having come to this pass, and showing no latent signs of stirring 
beyond it, the upshot of Mr Bounderby's investigations was, that he 
resolved to hazard a bold burst. He drew up a placard, offering Twenty 
Pounds reward for the apprehension of Stephen Blackpool, suspected of 
complicity in the robbery of the Coketown Bank on such a night; he 
described the said Stephen Blackpool by dress, complexion, estimated 
height, and manner, as minutely as he could; he recited how he had left the 
town, and in what direction he had been last seen going; he had the whole 
printed in great black letters on a staring broadsheet; and he caused the 
walls to be posted with it in the dead of night, so that it should strike 
upon the sight of the whole population at one blow.
The factory-bells had need to ring their loudest that morning to disperse 
the groups of workers who stood in the tardy daybreak, collected round the 
placards, devouring them with eager eyes. Not the least eager of the eyes 
assembled, were the eyes of those who could not read. These people, as they 
listened to the friendly voice that read aloud - there was always some such 
ready to help them - stared at the characters which meant so much with a 
vague awe and respect that would have been half ludicrous, if any aspect of 
public ignorance could ever be otherwise than threatening and full of evil. 
Many ears and eyes were busy with a vision of the matter of these placards, 
among turning spindles, rattling looms, and whirring wheels, for hours 
afterwards; and when the Hands cleared out again into the streets, there 
were still as many readers as before.
Slackbridge, the delegate, had to address his audience too that night; and 
Slackbridge had obtained a clean bill from the printer, and had brought it 
in his pocket. O my friends and fellow countrymen, the down-trodden 
operatives of Coketown, oh, my fellow brothers and fellow workmen and 
fellow citizens and fellow men, what a to-do was there, when Slackbridge 
unfolded what he called "that damning document," and held it up to the 
gaze, and for the execration, of the workingman community! "Oh my fellow 
men, behold what a traitor in the camp of those great spirits who are 
enrolled upon the holy scroll of Justice and of Union, is appropriately 
capable! Oh my prostrate friends, with the galling yoke of tyrants on your 
necks and the iron foot of despotism treading down your fallen forms into 
the dust of the earth, upon which right glad would your oppressors be to 
see you creeping on your bellies all the days of your lives, like the 
serpent in the garden - oh my brothers, and shall I as a man not add, my 
sisters too, what do you say, now, of Stephen Blackpool, with a slight 
stoop in his shoulders, and about five foot seven in height, as set forth 
in this degrading and disgusting document, this blighting bill, this 
pernicious placard, this abominable advertisement; and with what majesty of 
denouncement will you crush the viper, who would bring this stain and shame 
upon the God-like race that happily has cast him out for ever! Yes, my 
compatriots, happily cast him out and send him forth! For you remember how 
he stood here before you on this platform; you remember how, face to face 
and foot to foot, I pursued him through all his intricate windings; you 
remember how he sneaked and slunk, and sidled, and splitted of straws, 
until, with not an inch of ground to which to cling, I hurled him out from 
amongst us: an object for the undying finger of scorn to point at, and for 
the avenging fire of every free and thinking mind to scorch and sear! And 
now my friends - my labouring friends, for I rejoice and triumph in that 
stigma - my friends whose hard but honest beds are made in toil, and whose 
scanty but independent pots are boiled in hardship; and, now I say, my 
friends, what appellation has that dastard craven taken to himself, when, 
with the mask torn from his features he stands before us in all his native 
deformity, a What? A thief! A plunderer! A proscribed fugitive, with a 
price upon his head; a fester and a wound upon the noble character of the 
Coketown operative! Therefore, my band of brothers in a sacred bond, to 
which your children and your children's children yet unborn have set their 
infant hands and seals, I propose to you on the part of the United 
Aggregate Tribunal, ever watchful for your welfare, ever zealous for your 
benefit, that this meeting does Resolve; That Stephen Blackpool, weaver, 
referred to in this placard, having been already solemnly disowned by the 
community of Coketown Hands, the same are free from the shame of his 
misdeeds, and cannot as a class be reproached with his dishonest actions!"
Thus Slackbridge; gnashing and perspiring after a prodigious sort. A few 
stern voices called out "No!" and a score or two hailed, with assenting 
cries of "Hear, hear!" the caution from one man, "Slackbridge, y'or over 
hetter int; y'or a goen too fast!" But these were pigmies against an army; 
the general assemblage subscribed to the gospel according to Slackbridge, 
and gave three cheers for him, as he sat demonstratively panting at them.
These men and women were yet in the streets, passing quietly to their 
homes, when Sissy, who had been called away from Louisa some minutes 
before, returned.
"Who is it?" asked Louisa.
"It is Mr Bounderby," said Sissy, timid of the name, "and your brother Mr 
Tom, and a young woman who says her name is Rachael, and that you know 
her."
"What do they want, Sissy dear?"
"They want to see you. Rachael has been crying, and seems angry."
"Father," said Louisa, for he was present, "I cannot refuse to see them, 
for a reason that will explain itself. Shall they come in here?"
As he answered in the affirmative, Sissy went away to bring them. She 
reappeared with them directly. Tom was last; and remained standing in the 
obscurest part of the room, near the door.
"Mrs Bounderby," said her husband, entering with a cool nod, "I don't 
disturb you, I hope. This is an unseasonable hour, but here is a young 
woman who has been making statements which render my visit necessary. Tom 
Gradgrind, as your son, young Tom, refuses for some obstinate reason or 
other to say anything at all about those statements, good or bad, I am 
obliged to confront her with your daughter."
"You have seen me once before, young lady," said Rachael, standing in front 
of Louisa.
Tom coughed.
"You have seen me, young lady," repeated Rachael, as she did not answer, 
"once before."
Tom coughed again.
"I have."
Rachael cast her eyes proudly towards Mr Bounderby, and said, "Will you 
make it known, young lady, where, and who was there?"
"I went to the house where Stephen Blackpool lodged, on the night of his 
discharge from his work, and I saw you there. He was there too: and an old 
woman who did not speak, and whom I could scarcely see, stood in a dark 
corner. My brother was with me."

"Why couldn't you say so, young Tom?" demanded Bounderby.
"I promised my sister I wouldn't." Which Louisa hastily confirmed. "And 
besides," said the whelp bitterly, "she tells her own story so precious 
well - and so full - that what business had I to take it out of her mouth!"
"Say, young lady, if you please," pursued Rachael, "why in an evil hour, 
you ever came to Stephen's that night.
"I felt compassion for him," said Louisa, her colour deepening, "and I 
wished to know what he was going to do, and wished to offer him 
assistance."
"Thank you, ma'am," said Mr Bounderby. "Much flattered and obliged."
"Did you offer him," asked Rachael, "a banknote?"
"Yes; but he refused it, and would only take two pounds in gold."
Rachael cast her eyes towards Mr Bounderby again.
"Oh certainly!" said Bounderby. "If you put the question whether your 
ridiculous and improbable account was true or not, I am bound to say it's 
confirmed."
"Young lady," said Rachael, "Stephen Blackpool is now named as a thief in 
public print all over this town, and where else! There have been a meeting 
tonight where he have been spoken of in the same shameful way. Stephen! The 
honestest lad, the truest lad, the best!" Her indignation failed her, and 
she broke off, sobbing.
"I am very, very sorry," said Louisa.
"O young lady, young lady," returned Rachael, "I hope you may be, but I 
don't know! I can't say what you may ha' done! The like of you don't know 
us, don't care for us, don't belong to us. I am not sure why you may ha' 
come that night. I can't tell but what you may ha' come wi' some aim of 
your own, not mindin' to what trouble you brought such as the poor lad. I 
said then, Bless you for coming, and I said it of my heart, you seemed to 
take so pitifully to him; but I don't know now, I don't know!"
Louisa could not reproach her for her unjust suspicions; she was so 
faithful to her idea of the man, and so afflicted.
"And when I think," said Rachael through her sobs, "that the poor lad was 
so grateful, thinkin you so good to him - when I mind that he put his hand 
over his hard-worken face to hide the tears that you brought up there - O, 
I hope you may be sorry, and ha' no bad cause to be it; but I don't know, I 
don't know!"
"You're a pretty article," growled the whelp, moving uneasily in his dark 
corner, "to come here with these precious imputations! You ought to be 
bundled out for not knowing how to behave yourself, and you would be by 
rights."
She said nothing in reply; and her low weeping was the only sound that was 
heard, until Mr Bounderby spoke.
"Come!" said he, "you know what you have engaged to do. You had better give 
your mind to that; not this."
"'Deed, I am loath," returned Rachael, drying her eyes, "that any here 
should see me like this; but I won't be seen so again. Young lady, when I 
had read what's put in print of Stephen - and what has just as much truth 
in it as if it had been put in print of you - I went straight to the Bank 
to say I knew where Stephen was, and to give a sure and certain promise 
that he should be here in two days. I couldn't meet wi' Mr Bounderby then, 
and your brother sent me away, and I tried to find you, but you was not to 
be found, and I went back to work. Soon as I come out of the Mill tonight, 
I hastened to hear what was said of Stephen - for I know wi' pride he will 
come back to shame it! - and then I went again to seek Mr Bounderby, and I 
found him, and I told him every word I knew; and he believed no word I 
said, and brought me here."
"So far, that's true enough," assented Mr Bounderby, with his hands in his 
pockets and his hat on. "But I have known you people before today, you'll 
observe, and I know you never die for want of talking. Now, I recommend you 
not so much to mind talking just now, as doing. You have undertaken to do 
something; all I remark upon that at present is, do it!"
"I have written to Stephen by the post that went out this afternoon, as I 
have written to him once before sin' he went away," said Rachael; "and he 
will be here, at furthest, in two days."
"Then, I'll tell you something. You are not aware perhaps," retorted Mr 
Bounderby, "that you yourself have been looked after now and then, not 
being considered quite free from suspicion in this business, on account of 
most people being judged according to the company they keep. The post-
office hasn't been forgotten either. What I'll tell you is, that no letter 
to Stephen Blackpool has ever got into it. Therefore, what has become of 
yours, I leave you to guess. Perhaps you're mistaken, and never wrote any."
"He hadn't been gone from here, young lady," said Rachael, turning 
appealingly to Louisa, "as much as a week, when he sent me the only letter 
I have had from him, saying that he was forced to seek work in another 
name."
"Oh, by George!" cried Bounderby, shaking his head, with a whistle, "he 
changes his name, does he! That's rather unlucky, too, for such an 
immaculate chap. It's considered a little suspicious in Courts of Justice, 
I believe, when an Innocent happens to have many names."
"What," said Rachael, with tears in her eyes again, "what young lady, in 
the name of Mercy, was left the poor lad to do! The masters against him on 
one hand, the men against him on the other, he only wantin' to work hard in 
peace, and do what he felt right. Can a man have no soul of his own, no 
mind of his own? Must he go wrong all through wi' this side, or must he go 
wrong all through wi' that, or else be hunted like a hare?"
"Indeed, indeed, I pity him from my heart," returned Louisa; "and I hope 
that he will clear himself."
"You need have no fear of that, young lady. He is sure!"
"All the surer, I suppose," said Mr Bounderby, "for your refusing to tell 
where he is? Eh?"
"He shall not, through any act of mine, come back wi' the unmerited 
reproach of being brought back. He shall come back of his own accord to 
clear himself, and put all those that have injured his good character, and 
he not here for its defence, to shame. I have told him what has been done 
against him," said Rachael, throwing off all distrust as a rock throws off 
the sea, "and he will be here, at furthest, in two days."
"Notwithstanding which," added Mr Bounderby, "if he can be laid hold of any 
sooner, he shall have an earlier opportunity of clearing himself. As to 
you, I have nothing against you; what you came and told me turns out to be 
true, and I have given you the means of proving it to be true, and there's 
an end of it. I wish you good-night all! I must be off to look a little 
further into this."
Tom came out of his corner when Mr Bounderby moved, moved with him, kept 
close to him, and went away with him. The only parting salutation of which 
he delivered himself was a sulky "Good-night, father!" With a brief speech, 
and a scowl at his sister, he left the house.
Since his sheet anchor had come home, Mr Gradgrind had been sparing of 
speech. He still sat silent, when Louisa mildly said:
"Rachael, you will not distrust me one day, when you know me better."
"It goes against me," Rachael answered in a gentler manner, "to mistrust 
any one; but when I am so mistrusted - when we all are - I cannot keep such 
things quite out of my mind. I ask your pardon for having done you an 
injury. I don't think what I said, now. Yet I might come to think it again, 
wi' the poor lad so wronged."
"Did you tell him in your letter," inquired Sissy, "that suspicion seemed 
to have fallen upon him, because he had been seen about the bank at night? 
He would then know what he would have to explain on coming back, and would 
be ready."
"Yes, dear," she returned; "but I can't guess what can have ever taken him 
there. He never used to go there. It was never in his way. His way was the 
same as mine, and not near it."
Sissy had already been at her side asking her where she lived, and whether 
she might come tomorrow night to inquire if there were news of him.
"I doubt," said Rachael, "if he can be here till next day."
"Then I will come next night too," said Sissy.
When Rachael, assenting to this, was gone, Mr Gradgrind lifted up his head, 
and said to his daughter:
"Louisa, my dear, I have never that I know of seen this man. Do you believe 
him to be implicated?"
"I think I have believed it, father, though with great difficulty. I do not 
believe it now."
"That is to say, you once persuaded yourself to believe it, from knowing 
him to be suspected. His appearance and manner; are they so honest?"
"Very honest."
"And her confidence not to be shaken! I ask myself," said Mr Gradgrind, 
musing, "does the real culprit know of these accusations? Where is he? Who 
is he?"
His hair had latterly began to change colour. As he leaned upon his hand 
again, looking grey and old, Louisa, with a face of fear and pity, 
hurriedly went over to him, and sat close at his side. Her eyes by accident 
met Sissy's at the moment. Sissy flushed and started, and Louisa put her 
finger on her lip.
Next night, when Sissy returned home and told Louisa that Stephen was not 
come, she told it in a whisper. Next night again, when she came home with 
the same account, and added that he had not been heard of, she spoke in the 
same low frightened tone. From the moment of that interchange of looks, 
they never uttered his name, or any reference to him, aloud; nor ever 
pursued the subject of the robbery, when Mr Gradgrind spoke of it.
The two appointed days ran out, three days and nights ran out, and Stephen 
Blackpool was not come, and remained unheard of. On the fourth day, 
Rachael, with unabated confidence, but considering her despatch to have 
miscarried, went up to the Bank, and showed her letter from him with his 
address, at a working colony, one of many, not upon the main road, sixty 
miles away. Messengers were sent to that place, and the whole town looked 
for Stephen to be brought in next day.
During this whole time the whelp, moved about with Mr Bounderby like his 
shadow, assisting in all the proceedings. He was greatly excited, horribly 
fevered, bit his nails down to the quick, spoke in a hard rattling voice, 
and with lips that were black and burnt up. At the hour when the suspected 
man was looked for, the whelp was at the station; offering to wager that he 
had made off before the arrival of those who were sent in quest of him, and 
that he would not appear.
The whelp was right. The messengers returned alone. Rachael's letter had 
gone, Rachael's letter had been delivered, Stephen Blackpool had decamped 
in that same hour; and no soul knew more of him. The only doubt in Coketown 
was, whether Rachael had written in good faith, believing that he really 
would come back, or warning him to fly. On this point opinion was divided.
Six days, seven days, far on into another week. The wretched whelp plucked 
up a ghastly courage, and began to grow defiant. "Was the suspected fellow 
the thief? A pretty question! If not, where was the man, and why did he not 
come back?"
Where was the man, and why did he not come back? In the dead of night the 
echoes of his own words, which had rolled Heaven knows how far away in the 
daytime, came back instead, and abided by him until morning.


Chapter 5

Found

Day and night again, day and night again. No Stephen Blackpool. Where was 
the man, and why did he not come back?
Every night, Sissy went to Rachael's lodging, and sat with her in her small 
neat room. All day, Rachael toiled as such people must toil, whatever their 
anxieties. The smoke-serpents were indifferent who was lost or found, who 
turned out bad or good; the melancholy mad elephants, like the Hard Fact 
men, abated nothing of their set routine, whatever happened. Day and night 
again, day and night again. The monotony was unbroken. Even Stephen 
Blackpool's disappearance was falling into the general way, and becoming as 
monotonous a wonder as any piece of machinery in Coketown.
"I misdoubt," said Rachael, "if there is as many as twenty left in all this 
place, who have any trust in the poor dear lad now."
She said it to Sissy, as they sat in her lodging, lighted only by the lamp 
at the street-corner. Sissy had come there when it was already dark, to 
await her return from work; and they had since sat at the window where 
Rachael had found her, wanting no brighter light to shine on their 
sorrowful talk.
"If it hadn't been mercifully brought about, that I was to have you to 
speak to," pursued Rachael, "times are, when I think my mind would not have 
kept right. But I get hope and strength through you; and you believe that 
though appearances may rise against him, he will be proved clear?"
"I do believe so," returned Sissy, "with my whole heart. I feel so certain, 
Rachael, that the confidence you hold in yours against all discouragement, 
is not like to be wrong, that I have no more doubt of him than if I had 
known him through as many years of trial as you have."
"And I, my dear," said Rachael, with a tremble in her voice, "have known 
him through them all, to be, according to his quiet ways, so faithful to 
everything honest and good, that if he was never to be heard of more, and I 
was to live to be a hundred years old, I could say with my last breath, God 
knows my heart. I have never once left trusting Stephen Blackpool!"
"We all believe, up at the Lodge, Rachael, that he will be freed from 
suspicion, sooner or later."
"The better I know it to be so believed there, my dear," said Rachael, "and 
the kinder I feel it that you come away from there, purposely to comfort 
me, and keep me company, and be seen wi' me when I am not yet free from all 
suspicion myself, the more grieved I am that I should ever have spoken 
those mistrusting words to the young lady. And yet - "
"You don't mistrust her now, Rachael?"
"Now that you have brought us more together, no. But I can't at all times 
keep out of my mind - "
Her voice so sunk into a low and slow communing with herself, that Sissy, 
sitting by her side, was obliged to listen with attention.
"I can't at all times keep out of my mind, mistrustings of some one. I 
can't think who 'tis, I can't think how or why it may be done, but I 
mistrust that some one has put Stephen out of the way. I mistrust that by 
his coming back of his own accord, and showing himself innocent before them 
all, some one would be confounded, who - to prevent that - has stopped him, 
and put him out of the way."
"That is a dreadful thought," said Sissy, turning pale.
"It is a dreadful thought to think he may be murdered."
Sissy shuddered and turned paler yet.
"When it makes its way into my mind, dear," said Rachael, "and it will come 
sometimes, though I do all I can to keep it out, wi' counting on to high 
numbers as I work, and saying over and over again pieces that I knew when I 
were a child - I fall into such a wild, hot hurry, that, however tired I 
am, I want to walk fast, miles and miles. I must get the better of this 
before bedtime. I'll walk home wi' you."
"He might fall ill upon the journey back," said Sissy, faintly offering a 
worn-out scrap of hope; "and in such a case, there are many places on the 
road where he might stop."
"But he is in none of them. He has been sought for in all, and he's not 
there."
"True," was Sissy's reluctant admission.
"He'd walk the journey in two days. If he was footsore and couldn't walk, I 
sent him in the letter he got, the money to ride, lest he should have none 
of his own to spare."
"Let us hope that tomorrow will bring something better, Rachael. Come into 
the air!"
Her gentle hand adjusted Rachael's shawl upon her shining black hair in the 
usual manner of her wearing it, and they went out. The night being fine, 
little knots of Hands were here and there lingering at street-corners; but 
it was supper time with the greater part of them, and there were but few 
people in the streets.
"You are not so hurried now, Rachael, and your hand is cooler."
"I get better, dear, if I can only walk, and breathe a little fresh. 'Times 
when I can't, I turn weak and confused."
"But you must not begin to fail, Rachael, for you may be wanted at any time 
to stand by Stephen. To-morrow is Saturday. If no news comes tomorrow, let 
us walk in the country on Sunday morning, and strengthen you for another 
week. Will you go?"
"Yes, dear."
They were by this time in the street where Mr Bounderby's house stood. The 
way to Sissy's destination led them past the door, and they were going 
straight towards it. Some train had newly arrived in Coketown, which had 
put a number of vehicles in motion, and scattered a considerable bustle 
about the town. Several coaches were rattling before them and behind them 
as they approached Mr Bounderby's, and one of the latter drew up with such 
briskness as they were in the act of passing the house, that they looked 
round involuntarily. The bright gaslight over Mr Bounderby's steps showed 
them Mrs Sparsit in the coach, in an ecstasy of excitement, struggling to 
open the door; Mrs Sparsit seeing them at the same moment, called to them 
to stop.
"It's a coincidence," exclaimed Mrs Sparsit, as she was released by the 
coachman. "It's a Providence! Come out, ma'am!" then said Mrs Sparsit, to 
some one inside, "Come out, or we'll have you dragged out!"
Hereupon, no other than the mysterious old woman descended. Whom Mrs 
Sparsit incontinently collared.
"Leave her alone, everybody!" cried Mrs Sparsit, with great energy. "Let 
nobody touch her. She belongs to me. Come in, ma'am!" then said Mrs 
Sparsit, reversing her former word of command. "Come in, ma'am, or we'll 
have you dragged in!"
The spectacle of a matron of classical deportment, seizing an ancient woman 
by the throat, and hauling her into a dwelling-house, would have been, 
under any circumstances, sufficient temptation to all true English 
stragglers so blest as to witness it, to force a way into that dwelling-
house and see the matter out. But when the phenomenon was enhanced by the 
notoriety and mystery by this time associated all over the town, with the 
Bank robbery, it would have lured the stragglers in, with an irresistible 
attraction, though the roof had been expected to fall upon their heads. 
Accordingly, the chance witnesses on the ground, consisting of the busiest 
of the neighbours to the number of some five-and-twenty, closed in after 
Sissy and Rachael, as they closed it after Mrs Sparsit and her prize; and 
the whole body made a disorderly irruption into Mr Bounderby's dining-room, 
where the people behind lost not a moment's time in mounting on the chairs, 
to get the better of the people in front.
"Fetch Mr Bounderby down!" cried Mrs Sparsit. "Rachael, young woman; you 
know who this is?"
"It's Mrs Pegler," said Rachael.
"I should think it is!" cried Mrs Sparsit, exulting. "Fetch Mr Bounderby. 
Stand away, everybody!" Here old Mrs Pegler, muffing herself up, and 
shrinking from observation, whispered a word of entreaty. "Don't tell me," 
said Mrs Sparsit, aloud, "I have told you twenty times, coming along, that 
I will not leave you till I have handed you over to him myself."
Mr Bounderby now appeared, accompanied by Mr Gradgrind and the whelp, with 
whom he had been holding conference upstairs. Mr Bounderby looked more 
astonished than hospitable, at the sight of this uninvited party in his 
dining-room.
"Why, what's the matter now?" said he. "Mrs Sparsit, ma'am?"
"Sir," explained that worthy woman. "I trust it is my good fortune to 
produce a person you have much desired to find. Stimulated by my wish to 
relieve your mind, sir, and connecting together such imperfect clues to the 
part of the country in which that person might be supposed to reside, as 
have been afforded by the young woman Rachael, fortunately now present to 
identify, I have had the happiness to succeed, and to bring that person 
with me - I need not say most unwillingly on her part. It has not been, 
sir, without some trouble that I have effected this; but trouble in your 
service is to me a pleasure, and hunger, thirst, and cold a real 
gratification."
Here Mrs Sparsit ceased; for Mr Bounderby's visage exhibited an 
extraordinary combination of all possible colours and expressions of 
discomfiture, as old Mrs Pegler was disclosed to his view.
"Why, what do you mean by this?" was his highly unexpected demand, in great 
warmth. "I ask you, what do you mean by this, Mrs Sparsit, ma'am?"
"Sir!" exclaimed Mrs Sparsit, faintly.
"Why don't you mind your own business, ma'am?" roared Bounderby. "How dare 
you go and poke your officious nose into my family affairs?"
This allusion to her favourite feature overpowered Mrs Sparsit. She sat 
down stiffly in a chair, as if she were frozen; and, with a fixed stare at 
Mr Bounderby, slowly grated her mittens against one another, as if they 
were frozen too.
"My dear Josiah!" cried Mrs Pegler, trembling. "My darling boy! I am not to 
blame. It's not my fault, Josiah. I told this lady over and over again, 
that I knew she was doing what would not be agreeable to you, but she would 
do it."
"What did you let her bring you for? Couldn't you knock her cap off, or her 
tooth out, or scratch her, or do something or other to her?" asked 
Bounderby.
"My own boy! She threatened me that if I resisted her, I should be brought 
by constables, and it was better to come quietly than make that stir in 
such a -" Mrs Pegler glanced timidly but proudly round the walls - "such a 
fine house as this. Indeed, indeed, it is not my fault! My dear, noble, 
stately boy! I have always lived quiet and secret, Josiah, my dear. I have 
never broken the condition once. I have never said I was your mother. I 
have admired you at a distance; and if I have come to town sometimes, with 
long times between, to take a proud peep at you, I have done it unbeknown, 
my love, and gone away again."
Mr Bounderby, with his hands in his pockets, walked in impatient 
mortification up and down at the side of the long dining-table, while the 
spectators greedily took in every syllable of Mrs Pegler's appeal, and each 
succeeding syllable became more and more round-eyed. Mr Bounderby still 
walking up and down, when Mrs Pegler had done, Mr Gradgrind addressed that 
maligned old lady:
"I am surprised, madam," he observed with severity, "that in your old age 
you have the face to claim Mr Bounderby for your son, after your unnatural 
and inhuman treatment of him."
"Me unnatural!" cried poor old Mrs Pegler. "Me inhuman! To my dear boy?"
"Dear!" repeated Mr Gradgrind. "Yes; dear in his self-made prosperity, 
madam, I dare say. Not very dear, however, when you deserted him in his 
infancy, and left him to the brutality of a drunken grandmother."
"I deserted my Josiah!" cried Mrs Pegler, clasping her hands. "Now, Lord 
forgive you, sir, for your wicked imaginations, and for your scandal 
against the memory of my poor mother, who died in my arms before Josiah was 
born. May you repent of it, sir, and live to know better!"
She was so very earnest and injured, that Mr Gradgrind, shocked by the 
possibility which dawned upon him, said in a gentler tone:
"Do you deny, then, madam, that you left your son to - to be brought up in 
the gutter?"
"Josiah in the gutter!" exclaimed Mrs Pegler. "No such a thing, sir. Never! 
For shame on you! My dear boy knows, and will give you to know, that though 
he come of humble parents, he come of parents that loved him as dear as the 
best could, and never thought it hardship on themselves to pinch a bit that 
he might write and cipher beautiful, and I've his books at home to show it! 
Aye, have I!" said Mrs Pegler, with indignant pride. "And my dear boy 
knows, and will give you to know, sir, that after his beloved father died 
when he was eight year old, his mother, too, could pinch a bit, as it was 
her duty and her pleasure and her pride to do it, to help him out in life, 
and put him 'prentice. And a steady lad he was, and a kind master he had to 
lend him a hand, and well he worked his own way forward to be rich and 
thriving. And I'll give you to know, sir - for this my dear boy won't - 
that though his mother kept but a little village shop, he never forgot her, 
but pensioned me on thirty pound a-year - more than I want, for I put by 
out of it - only making the condition that I was to keep down in my own 
part, and make no boasts about him, and not trouble him. And I never have, 
except with looking at him once a year, when he has never knowed it. And 
it's right," said poor old Mrs Pegler, in affectionate championship, "that 
I should keep down in my own part, and I have no doubts that if I was here 
I should do a many unbefitting things, and I am well contented, and I can 
keep my pride in my Josiah to myself, and I can love for love's own sake! 
And I am ashamed of you, sir," said Mrs Pegler, lastly, "for your slanders 
and suspicions. And I never stood here before, nor never wanted to stand 
here when my dear son said no. And I shouldn't be here now, if it hadn't 
been for being brought here. And for shame upon you, O for shame, to accuse 
me of being a bad mother to my son, with my son standing here to tell you 
so different!"
The bystanders, on and off the dining-room chairs, raised a murmur of 
sympathy with Mrs Pegler, and Mr Gradgrind felt himself innocently placed 
in a very distressing predicament, when Mr Bounderby, who had never ceased 
walking up and down, and had every moment swelled larger and larger, and 
grown redder and redder, stopped short.
"I don't exactly know," said Mr Bounderby, "how I come to be favoured with 
the attendance of the present company, but I don't inquire. When they're 
quite satisfied, perhaps they'll be so good as to disperse; whether they're 
satisfied or not, perhaps they'll be so good as to disperse. I'm not bound 
to deliver a lecture on my family affairs, I have not undertaken to do it, 
and I'm not a going to do it. Therefore those who expect any explanation 
whatever upon that branch of the subject, will be disappointed - 
particularly Tom Gradgrind, and he can't know it too soon. In reference to 
the Bank robbery, there has been a mistake made, concerning my mother. If 
there hadn't been over-officiousness, it wouldn't have been made, and I 
hate over-officiousness at all times, whether or no. Good evening!"
Although Mr Bounderby carried it off in these terms, holding the door open 
for the company to depart, there was a blustering sheepishness upon him, at 
once extremely crestfallen and superlatively absurd. Detected as the Bully 
of humility, who had built his windy reputation upon lies, and in his 
boastfulness had put the honest truth as far away from him as if he had 
advanced the mean claim (there is no meaner) to tack himself on to a 
pedigree, he cut a most ridiculous figure. With the people filing off at 
the door he held, who he knew would carry what had passed to the whole 
town, to be given to the four winds, he could not have looked a Bully more 
shorn and forlorn, if he had had his ears cropped. Even that unlucky 
female, Mrs Sparsit, fallen from her pinnacle of exultation into the Slough 
of Despond, was not in so bad a plight as that remarkable man and self-made 
Humbug, Josiah Bounderby of Coketown.
Rachael and Sissy, leaving Mrs Pegler to occupy a bed at her son's for that 
night, walked together to the gate of Stone Lodge and there parted. Mr 
Gradgrind joined them before they had gone very far, and spoke with much 
interest of Stephen Blackpool; for whom he thought this signal failure of 
the suspicions against Mrs Pegler was likely to work well.
As to the whelp; throughout this scene as on all other late occasions, he 
had stuck close to Bounderby. He seemed to feel that as long as Bounderby 
could make no discovery without his knowledge, he was so far safe. He never 
visited his sister, and had only seen her once since she went home: that is 
to say, on the night when he still stuck close to Bounderby, as already 
related.
There was one dim unformed fear lingering about his sister's mind, to which 
she never gave utterance, which surrounded the graceless and ungrateful boy 
with a dreadful mystery. The same dark possibility had presented itself in 
the same shapeless guise, this very day, to Sissy, when Rachael spoke of 
some one who would be confounded by Stephen's return, having put him out of 
the way. Louisa had never spoken of harbouring any suspicion of her brother 
in connection with the robbery, she and Sissy had held no confidence on the 
subject, save in that one interchange of looks when the unconscious father 
rested his grey head on his hand; but it was understood between them, and 
they both knew it. This other fear was so awful, that it hovered about each 
of them like a ghostly shadow; neither daring to think of its being near 
herself, far less of its being near the other.
And still the forced spirit which the whelp had plucked up, throve with 
him. If Stephen Blackpool was not the thief, let him show himself. Why 
didn't he?
Another night. Another day and night. No Stephen Blackpool. Where was the 
man, and why did he not come back?


Chapter 6

The Starlight

The Sunday was a bright Sunday in autumn, clear and cool, when early in the 
morning Sissy and Rachael met, to walk in the country.
As Coketown cast ashes not only on its own head but on the neighbourhood's 
too - after the manner of those pious persons who do penance for their own 
sins by putting other people into sackcloth - it was customary for those 
who now and then thirsted for a draught of pure air, which is not 
absolutely the most wicked among the vanities of life, to get a few miles 
away by the railroad, and then begin their walk, or their lounge in the 
fields. Sissy and Rachael helped themselves out of the smoke by the usual 
means, and were put down at a station about midway between the town and Mr 
Bounderby's retreat.
Though the green landscape was blotted here and there with heaps of coal, 
it was green elsewhere, and there were trees to see, and there were larks 
singing (though it was Sunday), and there were pleasant scents in the air, 
and all was overarched by a bright blue sky. In the distance one way, 
Coketown showed as a black mist; in another distance, hills began to rise; 
in a third, there was a faint change in the light of the horizon, where it 
shone upon the far-off sea. Under their feet, the grass was fresh; 
beautiful shadows of branches flickered upon it, and speckled it; hedgerows 
were luxuriant; everything was at peace. Engines at pits' mouths, and lean 
old horses that had worn the circle of their daily labour into the ground, 
were alike quiet; wheels had ceased for a short space to turn; and the 
great wheel of earth seemed to revolve without the shocks and noises of 
another time.
They walked on across the fields and down the shady lanes, sometimes 
getting over a fragment of a fence so rotten that it dropped at a touch of 
the foot, sometimes passing near a wreck of bricks and beams overgrown with 
grass, marking the site of deserted works. They followed paths and tracks, 
however slight. Mounds where the grass was rank and high, and where 
brambles, dock-weed, and such-like vegetation, were confusedly heaped 
together, they always avoided; for dismal stories were told in that country 
of the old pits hidden beneath such indications.
The sun was high when they sat down to rest. They had seen no one, near or 
distant, for a long time; and the solitude remained unbroken. "It is so 
still here, Rachael, and the way is so untrodden, that I think we must be 
the first who have been here all the summer."
As Sissy said it her eyes were attracted by another of those rotten 
fragments of fence upon the ground. She got up to look at it. "And yet I 
don't know. This has not been broken very long. The wood is quite fresh 
where it gave way. Here are footsteps too. - O Rachael!"
She ran back and caught her round the neck. Rachael had already started up.
"What is the matter?"
"I don't know. There is a hat lying in the grass."
They went forward together. Rachael took it up, shaking from head to foot. 
She broke into a passion of tears and lamentations: Stephen Blackpool was 
written in his own hand on the inside.
"O the poor lad, the poor lad! He had been made away with. He is lying 
murdered here!"
"Is there - has the hat any blood upon it?" Sissy faltered.
They were afraid to look; but they did examine it, and found no mark of 
violence, inside or out. It had been lying there for some days, for rain 
and dew had stained it, and the mark of its shape was on the grass where it 
had fallen. They looked fearfully about them, without moving, but could see 
nothing more. "Rachael," Sissy whispered, "I will go on a little by 
myself."
She had unclasped her hand, and was in the act of stepping forward, when 
Rachael caught her in both arms with a scream that resounded over the wide 
landscape. Before them, at their very feet, was the brink of a black ragged 
chasm hidden by the thick grass. They sprang back, and fell upon their 
knees, each hiding her face upon the other's neck.
"O, my good Lord! He's down there! Down there!" At first this, and her 
terrific screams, were all that could be got from Rachael, by any tears, by 
any prayers, by any representations, by any means. It was impossible to 
hush her; and it was deadly necessary to hold her, or she would have flung 
herself down the shaft.
"Rachael, dear Rachael, good Rachael, for the love of Heaven not these 
dreadful cries! Think of Stephen, think of Stephen, think of Stephen!"
By an earnest repetition of this entreaty, poured out in all the agony of 
such a moment, Sissy at last brought her to be silent, and to look at her 
with a tearless face of stone.
"Rachael, Stephen may be living. You wouldn't leave him lying maimed at the 
bottom of this dreadful place, a moment, if you could bring help to him!"
"No, no, no!"
"Don't stir from here, for his sake! Let me go and listen."
She shuddered to approach the pit; but she crept towards it on her hands 
and knees, and called to him as loud as she could call. She listened, but 
no sound replied. She called again and listened; still no answering sound. 
She did this, twenty, thirty times. She took a little clod of earth from 
the broken ground where he had stumbled and threw it in. She could not hear 
it fall.
The wide prospect, so beautiful in its stillness but a few minutes ago, 
almost carried despair to her brave heart, as she rose and looked all round 
her, seeing no help. "Rachael, we must lose not a moment. We must go in 
different directions, seeking aid. You shall go by the way we have come, 
and I will go forward by the path. Tell any one you see, and every one what 
has happened. Think of Stephen, think of Stephen!"
She knew by Rachael's face that she might trust her now. And after standing 
for a moment to see her running, wringing her hands as she ran, she turned 
and went upon her own search; she stopped at the hedge to tie her shawl 
there as a guide to the place, then threw her bonnet aside, and ran as she 
had never run before.
Run, Sissy, run, in Heaven's name! Don't stop for breath. Run, run! 
Quickening herself by carrying such entreaties in her thoughts, she ran 
from field to field, and lane to lane, and place to place, as she had never 
run before; until she came to a shed by an engine-house, where two men lay 
in the shade, asleep on straw.
First to wake them, and next to tell them, all so wild and breathless as 
she was, what had brought her there, were difficulties; but they no sooner 
understood her than their spirits were on fire like hers. One of the men 
was in a drunken slumber, but on his comrade's shouting to him that a man 
had fallen down the Old Hell Shaft, he started out to a pool of dirty 
water, put his head in it, and came back sober.
With these two men she ran to another half-a-mile further, and with that 
one to another, while they ran elsewhere. Then a horse was found; and she 
got another man to ride for life or death to the railroad, and send a 
message to Louisa, which she wrote and gave him. By this time a whole 
village was up; and windlasses, poles, candles, lanterns, all things 
necessary, were fast collecting and being brought into one place, to be 
carried to the Old Hell Shaft.
It seemed now hours and hours since she had left the lost man lying in the 
grave where he had been buried alive. She could not bear to remain away 
from it any longer - it was like deserting him - and she hurried swiftly 
back, accompanied by half-a-dozen labourers, including the drunken man whom 
the news had sobered, and who was the best man of all. When they came to 
the Old Hell Shaft, they found it as lonely as she had left it. The men 
called and listened as she had done, and examined the edge of the chasm, 
and settled how it had happened, and then sat down to wait until the 
implements they wanted should come up.
Every sound of insects in the air, every stirring of the leaves, every 
whisper among these men, made Sissy tremble, for she thought it was a cry 
at the bottom of the pit. But the wind blew idly over it, and no sound 
arose to the surface, and they sat upon the grass, waiting and waiting. 
After they had waited some time, straggling people who had heard of the 
accident began to come up; then the real help of implements began to 
arrive. In the midst of this, Rachael returned; and with her party there 
was a surgeon, who brought some wine and medicines. But, the expectation 
among the people that the man would be found alive, was very slight indeed.
There being now people enough present to impede the work, the sobered man 
put himself at the head of the rest, or was put there by the general 
consent, and made a large ring round the Old Hell Shaft, and appointed men 
to keep it. Besides such volunteers as were accepted to work, only Sissy 
and Rachael were at first permitted within this ring; but, later in the 
day, when the message brought an express from Coketown, Mr Gradgrind and 
Louisa, and Mr Bounderby and the whelp, were also there.
The sun was four hours lower than when Sissy and Rachael had first sat down 
upon the grass, before a means of enabling two men to descend securely was 
rigged with poles and ropes. Difficulties had arisen in the construction of 
this machine, simple as it was; requisites had been found wanting, and 
messages had had to go and return. It was five o'clock in the afternoon of 
the bright autumnal Sunday, before a candle was sent down to try the air, 
while three or four rough faces stood crowded close together, attentively 
watching it: the men at the windlass lowering as they were told. The candle 
was brought up again, feebly burning, and then some water was cast in. Then 
the bucket was hooked on; and the sobered man and another got in with 
lights, giving the word "Lower away!"
As the rope went out, tight and strained, and the windlass creaked, there 
was not a breath among the one or two hundred men and women looking on, 
that came as it was wont to come. The signal was given and the windlass 
stopped, with abundant rope to spare. Apparently so long an interval ensued 
with the men at the windlass standing idle, that some women shrieked that 
another accident had happened! But the surgeon who held the watch, declared 
five minutes not to have elapsed yet, and sternly admonished them to keep 
silence. He had not well done speaking, when the windlass was reversed and 
worked again. Practised eyes knew that it did not go as heavily as it would 
if both workmen had been coming up, and that only one was returning.
The rope came in tight and strained; and ring after ring was coiled upon 
the barrel of the windlass, and all eyes were fastened on the pit. The 
sobered man was brought up and leaped out briskly on the grass. There was 
an universal cry of "Alive or dead?" and then a deep, profound hush.
When he said "Alive!" a great shout arose and many eyes had tears in them.
"But he's hurt very bad," be added, as soon as he could make himself heard 
again. "Where's doctor? He's hurt so very bad, sir, that we donno how to 
get him up."
They all consulted together, and looked anxiously at the surgeon, as he 
asked some questions, and shook his head on receiving the replies. The sun 
was setting now and the red light in the evening sky touched every face 
there, and caused it to be distinctly seen in all its wrapped suspense.
The consultation ended in the men returning to the windlass, and the pitman 
going down again, carrying the wine and some other small matters with him. 
Then the other man came up. In the meantime under the surgeon's directions, 
some men brought a hurdle on which others made a thick bed of spare clothes 
covered with loose straw, while he himself contrived some bandages and 
slings from shawls and handkerchiefs. As these were made, they were hung 
upon an arm of the pitman who had last come up, with instructions how to 
use them: and as he stood, shown by the light he carried, leaning his 
powerful loose hand upon one of the poles, and sometimes glancing down the 
pit, and sometimes glancing round upon the people, he was not the least 
conspicuous figure in the scene. It was dark now, and torches were kindled.
It appeared from the little this man said to those about him, which was 
quickly repeated all over the circle, that the lost man had fallen upon a 
mass of crumbled rubbish with which the pit was half choked up, and that 
his fall had been further broken by some jagged earth at the side. He lay 
upon his back with one arm doubled under him, and according to his own 
belief had hardly stirred since he fell, except that he had moved his free 
hand to a side pocket, in which he remembered to have some bread and meat 
(of which he had swallowed crumbs), and had likewise scooped up a little 
water in it now and then. He had come straight away from his work, on being 
written to, and had walked the whole journey; and was on his way to Mr 
Bounderby's country-house after dark, when he fell. He was crossing that 
dangerous country at such a dangerous time, because he was innocent of what 
was laid to his charge, and couldn't rest from coming the nearest way to 
deliver himself up. The Old Hell Shaft, the pitman said, with a curse upon 
it, was worthy of its bad name to the last; for though Stephen could speak 
now, he believed it would soon be found to have mangled the life out of 
him.
When all was ready, this man, still taking his last hurried charges from 
his comrades and the surgeon after the windlass had begun to lower him, 
disappeared into the pit. The rope went out as before, the signal was made 
as before, and the windlass stopped. No man removed his hand from it now. 
Every one waited with his grasp set, and his body bent down to the work, 
ready to reverse and wind in. At length the signal was given, and all the 
ring leaned forward.
For, now, the rope came in, tightened and strained to its utmost as it 
appeared, and the men turned heavily, and the windlass complained. It was 
scarcely endurable to look at the rope, and think of its giving way. But, 
ring after ring was coiled upon the barrel of the windlass safely, and the 
connecting chains appeared, and finally the bucket with the two men holding 
on at the sides - a sight to make the head swim, and oppress the head - and 
tenderly supporting between them, slung and tied within, the figure of a 
poor, crushed, human creature.
A low murmur of pity went round the throng, and the women wept aloud, as 
this form, almost without form, was moved very slowly from its iron 
deliverance, and laid upon the bed of straw. At first, none but the surgeon 
went close to it. He did what he could in its adjustment on the couch, but 
the best he could do was to cover it. That gently done, he called to him 
Rachael and Sissy. And at that time the pale, worn, patient face was seen 
looking up at the sky, with the broken right hand lying bare on the outside 
of the covering garments, as if waiting to be taken by another hand.
They gave him drink, moistened his face with water, and administered some 
drops of cordial and wine. Though he lay quite motionless looking up at the 
sky, he smiled and said, "Rachael."
She stooped down on the grass at his side, and bent over him until her eyes 
were between his and the sky, for he could not so much as turn them to look 
at her.
"Rachael, my dear."
She took hand. He smiled again and said, "Don't let 't go."
"Thou'rt in great pain, my own dear Stephen?"
"I ha' been, but not now. I ha' been - dreadful, and dree, and long, my 
dear - but 'tis ower now. Ah, Rachael, aw a muddle! Fro' first to last, a 
muddle!"
The spectre of his old look seemed to pass as he said the word.
"I ha' fell into th' pit, my dear, as have cost wi'in the knowledge o' old 
fok now livin, hundreds and hundreds o' men's lives - fathers, sons, 
brothers, dear to thousands an thousands, an keepin' 'em fro' want and 
hunger. I ha' fell into a pit that ha' been wi' th' Fire-damp crueller than 
battle. I ha' read on 't in the public petition, as onny one may read, fro' 
the men that works in pits, on which they ha' pray'n an pray'n the 
lawmakers for Christ's sake not to let their work be murder to 'em, but to 
spare 'em for th' wives and children that they loves as well as gentlefok 
loves theirs. When it were in work, it killed wi'out need; when 'tis let 
alone, it kills wi'out need. See how we die an no need, one way an another -
 in a muddle - every day!"
He faintly said it, without any anger against any one. Merely as the truth.
"Thy little sister, Rachael, thou hast not forgot her. Thou'rt not like to 
forget her now, and me so nigh her. Thou know'st - poor, patient, suff'rin, 
dear - how thou didst work for her, seet'n all day long in her little chair 
at thy winder, and how she died, young and misshapen, awlung o' sickly air 
as had'n no need to be, an awlung o' working people's miserable homes. A 
muddle! Aw a muddle!"
Louisa approached him; but he could not see her, lying with his face turned 
up to the night sky.
"If aw th' things that tooches us, my dear, was not so muddled, I should'n 
ha' had'n need to coom heer. If we was not in a muddle among ourseln, I 
should'n ha' been, by my own fellow weavers and workin' brothers, so 
mistook. If Mr Bounderby had ever know'd me right - if he'd ever know'd me 
at aw - he would'n ha' took'n offence wi' me. He wouldn't ha' suspect'n me. 
But look up yonder, Rachael! Look aboove!" following his eyes, she saw that 
he was gazing at a star.
"It ha' shined upon me," he said reverently, "in my pain and trouble down 
below. It ha' shined into my mind. I ha' look'n at't an thowt o' thee, 
Rachael, till the muddle in my mind have cleared awa, above a bit, I hope. 
If soom ha' been wantin' in unnerstan'in me better, I, too, ha' been 
wantin' in unnerstan'in them better. When I got thy letter, I easily 
believen that what the yoong ledy sen and done to me, an what her brother 
sen and done to me, was one, and that there were a wicket plot betwixt 'em. 
When I fell, I were in anger wi' her, and hurryin on t' be as unjust t' her 
as oothers was t' me. But in our judgments, like as in our doins, we mun 
bear and forbear. In my pain and trouble, lookin' up yonder, - wi' it 
shinin' on me - I ha seen more clear, and ha' made it my dyin' prayer that 
aw th' world may on'y coom toogether more and get a better unnerstan'in' o' 
one another, than when I were in't my own weak seln."
Louisa hearing what he said, bent over him on the opposite side to Rachael, 
so that he could see her.
"You ha' heard?" he said after a few moments' silence. "I ha' not forgot 
you, ledy."
"Yes, Stephen, I have heard you. And your prayer is mine."
"You ha' a father. Will yo tak' a message to him?"
"He is here," said Louisa, with dread. "Shall I bring him to you?"
"If you please."
Louisa returned with her father. Standing hand-in-hand, they both looked 
down upon the solemn countenance.
"Sir, yo will clear me and mak my name good wi' aw men. This I leave to 
yo."
Mr Gradgrind was troubled and asked how?
"Sir," was the reply: "yor son will tell yo how. Ask him. I make no 
charges: I leave none ahint me: not a single word. I ha' seen and spok'n 
wi' yor son, one night. I ask no more o' yo than that yo clear me - an I 
trust to yo to do't."
The bearers being now ready to carry him away, and the surgeon being 
anxious for his removal, those who had torches or lanterns prepared to go 
in front of the litter. Before it was raised, and while they were arranging 
how to go, he said to Rachael, looking upward at the star:
"Often as I coom to myseln, and found it shinin' on me down there in my 
trouble, I thowt it were the star as guided to Our Saviour's home. I awmust 
think it be the very star!"
They lifted him up and he was overjoyed to find that they were about to 
take him in the direction whither the star seemed to him to lead.
"Rachael, beloved lass! Don't let go my hand. We may walk toogether 
t'night, my dear!"
"I will hold thy hand, and keep beside thee, Stephen, all the way."
"Bless thee! Will soombody be pleased to coover my face!"
They carried him very gently along the fields, and down the lanes, and over 
the wide landscape; Rachael always holding the hand in hers. Very few 
whispers broke the mournful silence. It was soon a funeral procession. The 
star had shown him where to find the God of the poor; and through humility, 
and sorrow, and forgiveness, he had gone to his Redeemer's rest.


Chapter 7

Whelp-Hunting

Before the ring formed round the Old Hell Shaft was broken, one figure had 
disappeared from within it. Mr Bounderby and his shadow had not stood near 
Louisa, who held her father's arm, but in a retired place by themselves. 
When Mr Gradgrind was summoned to the couch, Sissy, attentive to all that 
happened, slipped behind that wicked shadow - a sight in the horror of his 
face, if there had been eyes there for any sight but one - and whispered in 
his ear. Without turning his head, he conferred with her a few moments, and 
vanished. Thus the whelp had gone out of the circle before the people 
moved.
When the father reached home, he sent a message to Mr Bounderby's, desiring 
his son to come to him directly. The reply was, that Mr Bounderby having 
missed him in the crowd, and seeing nothing of him since, had supposed him 
to be at Stone Lodge.
"I believe, father," said Louisa, "he will not come back to town tonight." 
Mr Gradgrind turned away and said no more.
In the morning he went down to the Bank himself as soon as it was opened, 
and seeing his son's place empty (he had not the courage to look in at 
first), went back along the street to meet Mr Bounderby on his way there. 
To whom he said that, for reasons he would soon explain, but entreated not 
then to be asked for, he had found it necessary to employ his son at a 
distance for a little while. Also, that he was charged with the duty of 
vindicating Stephen Blackpool's memory, and declaring the thief. Mr 
Bounderby quite confounded, stood stock-still in the street after his 
father-in-law had left him, swelling like an immense soap-bubble, without 
its beauty.
Mr Gradgrind went home, locked himself in his room, and kept it all that 
day. When Sissy and Louisa tapped at his door, he said, without opening it, 
"Not now, my dears; in the evening." On their return in the evening, he 
said, "I am not able yet - tomorrow." He ate nothing all day, and had no 
candle after dark: and they heard him walking to and fro late at night.
But in the morning he appeared at breakfast at the usual hour, and took his 
usual place at the table. Aged and bent he looked, and quite bowed down; 
and yet he looked a wiser man, and a better man, than in the days when in 
this life he wanted nothing but Facts. Before he left the room, he 
appointed a time for them to come to him; and so with his grey head 
drooping went away.
"Dear father," said Louisa, when they kept their appointment, "you have 
three young children left. They will be different, I will be different yet, 
with Heaven's help."
She gave her hand to Sissy, as if she meant with her help too.
"Your wretched brother," said Mr Gradgrind. "Do you think he had planned 
this robbery, when he went with you to the lodgings?"
"I fear so, father. I know he had wanted money very much, and had spent a 
great deal."
"The poor man being about to leave the town, it came into his evil brain to 
cast suspicion on him?"
"I think it must have flashed upon him while he sat there, father. For I 
asked him to go there with me. The visit did not originate with him."
"He had some conversation with the poor man. Did he take him aside?"
"He took him out of the room. I asked him afterwards, why he done so, and 
he made a plausible excuse; but since last night, father, and when I 
remember the circumstances by its light, I am afraid I can imagine too 
truly what passed between them."
"Let me know," said her father, "if your thoughts present your guilty 
brother in the same dark view as mine."
"I fear, father," hesitated Louisa, "that he must have made some 
representation to Stephen Blackpool - perhaps in my name, perhaps in his 
own - which induced him to do in good faith and honesty, what he had never 
done before, and to wait about the Bank those two or three nights before he 
left the town."
"Too plain!" returned the father. "Too plain!"
He shaded his face, and remained silent for some moments. Recovering 
himself, he said:
"And now, how is he to be found? How is he to be saved from justice? In the 
few hours that I can possibly allow to elapse before I publish the truth, 
how is he to be found by us, and only by us? Ten thousand pounds could not 
effect it."
"Sissy has effected it, father."
He raised his eyes to where she stood, like a good fairy in his house, and 
said in a tone of softened gratitude and grateful kindness, "It is always 
you, my child!"
"We had our fears." Sissy explained, glancing at Louisa, "before yesterday; 
and when I saw you brought to the side of the litter last night, and heard 
what passed (being close to Rachael all the time), I went to him when no 
one saw, and said to him, 'Don't look at me. See where your father is. 
Escape at once, for his sake and your own!' He was in a tremble before I 
whispered to him, and he started and trembled more then, and said, 'Where 
can I go? I have very little money, and I don't know who will hide me!" I 
thought of father's old circus. I have not forgotten where Mr Sleary goes 
at this time of year, and I read of him in a paper only the other day. I 
told him to hurry there, and tell his name, and ask Mr Sleary to hide him 
till I came. 'I'll get to him before the morning,' he said. And I saw him 
shrink away among the people."
"Thank Heaven!" exclaimed his father. "He may be got abroad yet."
It was the more hopeful as the town to which Sissy had directed him was 
within three hours' journey of Liverpool, whence he could be swiftly 
dispatched to any part of the world. But, caution being necessary in 
communicating with him - for there was a greater danger every moment of his 
being suspected now, and nobody could be sure at heart, but that Mr 
Bounderby himself, in a bullying vein of public zeal, might play a Roman 
part - it was consented that Sissy and Louisa should repair to the place in 
question, by a circuitous course alone; and that the unhappy father, 
setting forth in an opposite direction, should get round to the same bourne 
by another and wider route. It was further agreed that he should not 
present himself to Mr Sleary, lest his intentions should be mistrusted, or 
the intelligence of his arrival should cause his son to take flight anew; 
but, that the communication should be left to Sissy and Louisa to open; and 
that they should inform the cause of so much misery and disgrace, of his 
father's being at hand and of the purpose for which they had come. When 
these arrangements had been well considered and were fully understood by 
all three, it was time to begin to carry them into execution. Early in the 
afternoon, Mr Gradgrind walked direct from his own house into the country, 
to be taken up on the line by which he was to travel; and at night the 
remaining two set forth upon their different course, encouraged by not 
seeing any face they knew.
The two travelled all night, except when they were left, for odd numbers of 
minutes, at branch-places up illimitable flights of steps, or down wells - 
which was the only variety of those branches - and, early in the morning, 
were turned out on a swamp, a mile or two from the town they sought. From 
this dismal spot they were rescued by a savage old postilion, who happened 
to be up early, kicking a horse in a fly; and so were smuggled into the 
town by all the back lanes where the pigs lived: which, although not a 
magnificent or even savoury approach, was, as is usual in such cases, the 
legitimate highway.
The first thing they saw on entering the town was the skeleton of Sleary's 
Circus. The company had departed for another town more than twenty miles 
off, and had opened there last night. The connection between the two places 
was by a hilly turnpike-road, and the travelling on that road was very 
slow. Though they took but a hasty breakfast, and no rest (which it would 
have been in vain to seek under such circumstances), it was noon before 
they began to find the bills of Sleary's Horse-riding on barns and walls, 
and one o'clock when they stopped in the market-place.
A Grand Morning Performance by the Riders, commencing at that very hour, 
was in course of announcement by the bellman as they set their feet upon 
the stones of the street. Sissy recommended that, to avoid making inquiries 
and attracting attention in the town, they should present themselves to pay 
at the door. If Mr Sleary were taking the money, he would be sure to know 
her, and would proceed with discretion. If he were not, he would be sure to 
see them inside; and, knowing what he had done with the fugitive, would 
proceed with discretion still.
Therefore, they repaired, with fluttering hearts, to the well remembered 
booth. The flag with the inscription SLEARY'S HORSE-RIDING, was there; and 
the Gothic niche was there; but Mr Sleary was not there. Master 
Kidderminster, grown too maturely turfy to be received by the wildest 
credulity as Cupid any more, had yielded to the invincible force of 
circumstances (and his beard), and, in the capacity of a man who made 
himself generally useful, presided on this occasion over the exchequer - 
having also a drum in reserve, on which to expend his leisure moments and 
superfluous forces. In the extreme sharpness of his look out for base coin, 
Mr Kidderminster, as at present situated, never saw anything but money; so 
Sissy passed him unrecognised, and they went in.
The Emperor of Japan, on a steady old white horse stencilled with black 
spots, was twirling five wash-hand basins at once, as it is the favourite 
recreation of that monarch to do. Sissy, though well acquainted with his 
Royal line, had no personal knowledge of the present Emperor, and his reign 
was peaceful. Miss Josephine Sleary, in her celebrated graceful Equestrian 
Tyrolean Flower-Act was then announced by a new clown (who humorously said 
Cauliflower Act), and Mr Sleary appeared, leading her in.
Mr Sleary had only made one cut at the Clown with his long whip-lash, and 
the Clown had only said, "If you do it again, I'll throw the horse at you!" 
when Sissy was recognised both by father and daughter. But they got through 
the Act with great self-possession; and Mr Sleary, saving for the first 
instant, conveyed no more expression into his locomotive eye than into his 
fixed one. The performance seemed a little long to Sissy and Louisa, 
particularly when it stopped to afford the Clown an opportunity of telling 
Mr Sleary (who said "Indeed, sir!" to all his observations in the calmest 
way, and with his eye on the house), about two legs sitting on three legs 
looking at one leg, when in came four legs, and laid hold of one leg, and 
up got two legs, caught hold of three legs, and threw 'em at four legs, who 
ran away with one leg. For, although an ingenious Allegory relating to a 
butcher, a three-legged stool, a dog, and a leg of mutton, this narrative 
consumed time; and they were in great suspense. At last, however, little 
fair-haired Josephine made her curtsey amid great applause; and the Clown, 
left alone in the ring, had just warmed himself, and said, "Now I'll have a 
turn!" when Sissy was touched on the shoulder, and beckoned out.
She took Louisa with her; and they were received by Mr Sleary in a very 
little private apartment, with canvas sides, a grass floor, and a wooden 
ceiling all aslant, on which the box company stamped their approbation, as 
if they were coming through. "Thethilia," said Mr Sleary, who had brandy 
and water at hand, "it doth me good to thee you. You wath alwayth a 
favourite with uth, and you've have done uth credit thinth the old timeth 
I'm thure. You mutht thee our people, my dear, afore we thpeak of bithnith, 
or they'll break their hearts - ethpethially the women. Here'th Jothphine 
hath been and got married to E. W. B. Childerth, and thee hath got a boy, 
and though he'th only three yearth old, he thtickth on to any pony you can 
bring againth him. He'th named The Little Wonder Of Thcolathic Equitation; 
and if you don't hear of that boy at Athley'th, you'll hear of him at 
Parith. And you recollect Kidderminthter, that wath thought to be rather 
thweet upon yourthelf. Well. He'th married too. Married a widder. Old 
enough to be hith mother. Thee wath Tightrope, thee wath, and now thee'th 
nothing - on accounth of fat. They've got two children, tho we're thtrong 
in the Fairy bithnith and the Nurthery dodge. If you wath to thee our 
Children in the Wood, with their father and mother both a dyin' on a horthe 
- their uncle a rethieving of 'em ath hith wardth, upon a horthe - 
themthelvth both a goin' a blackberryin' on a horthe - and the Robinth a 
coming in to cover 'em with leavth, upon a horthe - you'd thay it wath the 
completetht thing ath ever you that your eyeth on! And you remember Emma 
Gordon, my dear, ath wath a'motht a mother to you? Of courthe you do; I 
needn't athk. Well! Emma, thee lotht her huthband. He wath throw'd a heavy 
back-fall off a Elephant in a thort of a Pagoda thing ath the Thultan of 
the Indieth, and he never got the better of it; and thee married a thecond 
time - married a Cheethe-monger ath fell in love with her from the front - 
and he'th a Overtheer and makin' a fortun."
These various changes, Mr Sleary, very short of breath now, related with 
heartiness, and with a wonderful kind of innocence, considering what a 
bleary and brandy-and-watery old veteran he was. Afterwards he brought in 
Josephine, and E. W. B. Childers (rather deeply-lined in the jaws by 
daylight), and The Little Wonder of Scholastic Equitation, and in a word, 
all the company. Amazing creatures they were in Louisa's eyes, so white and 
pink of complexion, so scant of dress, and so demonstrative of leg; but it 
was very agreeable to see them crowding about Sissy, and very natural in 
Sissy to be unable to refrain from tears.
"There! Now Thethilia hath kithd all the children, and hugged all the 
women, and thaken handth all round with all the men, clear, every one of 
you, and ring in the band for the thecond part!"
As soon as they were gone, he continued in a low tone. "Now, Thethilia, I 
don't athk to know any thecret, but I thuppothe I may conthider thith to be 
Mith Thquire."
"This is his sister. Yes."
"And t'other on 'th daughter. That'h what I mean. Hope I thee you well, 
mith. And I hope the Thquire'th well?"
"My father will be here soon," said Louisa, anxious to bring him to the 
point. "Is my brother safe?"
"Thafe and thound!" he replied. "I want you jutht to take a peep at the 
Ring, mith, through there. Thethilia, you know the dodgeth; find a thpy-
hole for yourthelf."
They each looked through a chinck in the boards.
"That'h Jack the Giant Killer - piethe of comic infant bithnith," said 
Sleary. "There'th a property-houthe, you thee, for Jack to hide in; 
there'th my Clown with a thauthpanlid and a thpit, for Jack'th thervant; 
there'th little Jack himthelf in a thplendid thoot of armour; there'th two 
comic black thervants twithe ath big ath the houthe, to thtand by it and to 
bring it in and clear it; and the Giant (a very ecthpenthive bathket one), 
he an't on yet. Now, do you know thee 'em all?"
"Yes," they both said.
"Look at 'em again," said Sleary, "look at 'em well. You thee 'em all? Very 
good. Now, mith;" he put a form for them to sit on; "I have my opinionth, 
and the Thquire your father hath hith. I don't want to know what your 
brother'th been up to; ith better for me not to know. All I thay ith, the 
Thquire hath thtood by Thethilia, and I'll thtand by the Thquire. Your 
brother ith one o' them black thervanth."
Louisa uttered an exclamation, partly of distress, partly of satisfaction.
"Ith a fact," said Sleary, "and even knowin' it, you couldn't put your 
finger on him. Let the Thquire come. I thall keep your brother here after 
the performanth. I thant undreth him, nor yet wath hith paint off. Let the 
Thquire come here after the performanth, or come here yourthelf after the 
performanth, and you thall find your brother, and have the whole plathe to 
talk to him in. Never mind the lookth of him, ath long ath he'th well hid."
Louisa, with many thanks and with a lightened load, detained Mr Sleary no 
longer then. She left her love for her brother, with her eyes full of 
tears; and she and Sissy went away until later in the afternoon.
Mr Gradgrind arrived within an hour afterwards. He too had encountered no 
one whom he knew; and was now sanguine with Sleary's assistance, of getting 
his disgraced son to Liverpool in the night. As neither of the three could 
be his companion without almost identifying him under any disguise, he 
prepared a letter to a correspondent whom he could trust, beseeching him to 
ship the bearer off at any cost, to North or South America, or any distant 
part of the world to which he could be the most speedily and privately 
dispatched.
This done, they walked about, waiting for the Circus to be quite vacated; 
not only by the audience, but by the company and by the horses. After 
watching it a long time, they saw Mr Sleary bring out a chair and sit down 
by the side-door smoking; as if that were the signal that they might 
approach.
"Your thervant, Thquire," was his cautious salutation as they passed in. 
"If you want me you'll find me here. You mustn't mind your thon having a 
comic livery on."
They all three went in; and Mr Gradgrind sat down forlorn, on the Clown's 
performing chair in the middle of the ring. On one of the back benches, 
remote in the subdued light and the strangeness of the place, sat the 
villainous whelp, sulky to the last, whom he had the misery to call his 
son.
In a preposterous coat, like a beadle's, with cuffs and flaps exaggerated 
to an unspeakable extent; in an immense waistcoat, knee-breeches, buckled 
shoes, and a mad cocked hat; with nothing fitting him, and everything of 
coarse material, moth-eaten, and full of holes; with seams in his black 
face, where fear and heat had started through the greasy composition daubed 
all over it; anything so grimly, detestably, ridiculously shameful as the 
whelp in his comic livery, Mr Gradgrind never could by any other means have 
believed in, weighable and measurable fact though it was. And one of his 
model children had come to this!
At first the whelp would not draw any nearer, but persisted in remaining up 
there by himself. Yielding at length, if any concession so sullenly made 
can be called yielding, to the entreaties of Sissy - for Louisa he disowned 
altogether - he came down, bench by bench, until he stood in the sawdust, 
on the verge of the circle, as far as possible, within its limits, from 
where his father sat.
"How was this done?" asked the father.
"How was what done?" moodily answered the son.
"This robbery," said the father, raising his voice upon the word.
"I forced the safe myself over night, and shut it up ajar before I went 
away. I had had the key that was found, made long before. I dropped it that 
morning, that it might be supposed to have been used. I didn't take the 
money all at once. I pretended to put my balance away every night, but I 
didn't. Now you know all about it."
"If a thunderbolt had fallen on me," said the father, "it would have 
shocked me less than this!"
"I don't see why," grumbled the son. "So many people are employed in 
situations of trust; so many people, out of so many, will be dishonest. I 
have heard you talk, a hundred times, of its being a law. How can I help 
laws? You have comforted others with such things, father. Comfort 
yourself!"
The father buried his face in his hands, and the son stood in his 
disgraceful grotesqueness; biting straw: his hands, with the black party 
worn away inside, looking like the hands of a monkey. The evening was fast 
closing in; and from time to time, he turned the whites of his eyes 
restlessly and impatiently towards his father. They were the only parts of 
his face that showed any life or expression, the pigment upon it was so 
thick.
"You must be got to Liverpool, and sent abroad."
"I suppose I must. I can't be more miserable anywhere," whimpered the 
whelp, "than I have been here, ever since I can remember. That's one 
thing."
Mr Gradgrind went to the door, and returned with Sleary, to whom he 
submitted the question, How to get this deplorable object away?
"Why, I've been thinking of it, Thquire. There'th not muth time to loathe, 
tho you muth thay yeth or no. Ith over twenty mileth to the rail. Thereth a 
coath in half an hour, that goeth to the rail, 'purpothe to cath the mail 
train. That train will take him right to Liverpool."
"But look at him," groaned Mr Gradgrind. "Will any coach - "
"I don't mean that he thould go in the comic livery," said Sleary. "Thay 
the word, and I'll make a Jothkin of him, out of the wardrobe, in five 
minutes."
"I don't understand," said Mr Gradgrind.
"A Jothkin - a Carter. Make up your mind quick, Thquire, There'll be beer 
to feth. I've never met with nothing but beer ath'll ever clean a comic 
blackamoor."
Mr Gradgrind rapidly assented; Mr Sleary rapidly turned out from a box, a 
smock frock, a felt hat, and other essentials; the whelp rapidly changed 
clothes behind a screen of baize; Mr Sleary rapidly brought beer, and 
washed him white again.
"Now," said Sleary, "come along to the coath, and jump up behind; I'll go 
with you there, and they'll thuppothe you one of my people. Thay farewell 
to your family, and tharp'th the word." With which he delicately retired.
"Here is your letter," said Mr Gradgrind. "All necessary means will be 
provided for you. Atone, by repentance and better conduct, for the shocking 
action you have committed, and the dreadful consequences to which it has 
led. Give me your hand, my poor boy, and may God forgive you as I do!"
The culprit was moved to a few abject tears by these words and their 
pathetic tone. But, when Louisa opened her arms, he repulsed her afresh.
"Not you. I don't want to have anything to say to you!"
"O Tom, Tom, do we end so, after all my love!"
"After all your love!" he returned, obdurately. "Pretty love! Leaving old 
Bounderby to himself, and packing my best friend Mr Harthouse off, and 
going home just when I was in the greatest danger. Pretty love that! Coming 
out with every word about our having gone to that place, when you saw the 
net was gathering round me. Pretty love that! You have regularly given me 
up. You never cared for me."
"Tharp'th the word!" said Sleary at the door.
They all confusedly went out: Louisa crying to him that she forgave him, 
and loved him still, and that he would one day be sorry to have left her 
so, and glad to think of these her last words, far away: when some one ran 
against them. Mr Gradgrind and Sissy, who were both before him while his 
sister yet clung to his shoulder, stopped and recoiled.
For, there was Bitzer, out of breath, his thin lips parted, his thin 
nostrils distended, his white eyelashes quivering, his colourless face more 
colourless than ever, as if he ran himself into a white heat, when other 
people ran themselves into a glow. There he stood, panting and heaving, as 
if he had never stopped since the night, now long ago, when he had run them 
down before.
"I'm sorry to interfere with your plans," said Bitzer, shaking his head, 
"but I can't allow myself to be done by horse-riders. I must have young Mr 
Tom; he mustn't be got away by horse-riders; here he is in a smock frock, 
and I must have him!"
By the collar, too, it seemed. For, so he took possession of him.


Chapter 8

Philosophical

They went back into the booth, Sleary shutting the door to keep intruders 
out. Bitzer, still holding the paralysed culprit by the collar, stood in 
the Ring, blinking at his old patron through the darkness of the twilight.
"Bitzer," said Mr Gradgrind, broken down, and miserably submissive to him, 
"have you a heart?"
"The circulation sir," returned Bitzer, smiling at the oddity of the 
question, "couldn't be carried on without one. No man, sir, acquainted with 
the facts established by Harvey relating to the circulation of the blood, 
can doubt that I have a heart."
"Is it accessible," cried Mr Gradgrind, "to any compassionate influence?"
"It is accessible to Reason, sir," returned the excellent young man. "And 
to nothing else."
They stood looking at each other; Mr Gradgrind's face as white as the 
pursuer's.
"What motive - even what motive in reason - can you have for preventing the 
escape of this wretched youth," said Mr Gradgrind, "and crushing his 
miserable father? See his sister here. Pity us!"
"Sir," returned Bitzer, in a very business-like and logical manner, "since 
you ask me what motive I have in reason, for taking young Mr Tom back to 
Coketown, it is only reasonable to let you know. I have suspected young Mr 
Tom of this bank robbery from the first. I had had my eye upon him before 
that time, for I knew his ways. I have kept my observations to myself, but 
I have made them; and I have got ample proofs against him now, besides his 
running away, and besides his own confessions, which I was just in time to 
overhear. I had the pleasure of watching your house yesterday morning, and 
following you here. I am going to take young Mr Tom back to Coketown, in 
order to deliver him over to Mr Bounderby. Sir, I have no doubt whatever 
that Mr Bounderby will then promote me to young Mr Tom's situation. And I 
wish to have his situation, sir, for it will be a rise to me, and will do 
me good."
"If this is solely a question of self-interest with you -" Mr Gradgrind 
began.
"I beg your pardon for interrupting you, sir," returned Bitzer; "but I am 
sure you know that the whole social system is a question of self-interest. 
What you must always appeal to, is a person's self-interest. It's your only 
hold. We are so constituted. I was brought up in that catechism when I was 
very young, sir, as you are aware."
"What sum of money," said Mr Gradgrind, "will you set against your expected 
promotion?"
"Thank you, sir," returned Bitzer, "for hinting at the proposal; but I will 
not set any sum against it. Knowing that your clear head would propose that 
alternative, I have gone over the calculations in my mind, and I find that 
to compound a felony, even on very high terms indeed, would not be as safe 
and good for me as my improved prospects in the Bank."
"Bitzer," said Mr Gradgrind, stretching out his hands as though he would 
have said, See how miserable I am!
"Bitzer, I have but one chance left to soften you. You were many years at 
my school. If, in remembrance of the pains bestowed upon you there, you can 
persuade yourself in any degree to disregard your present interest and 
release my son, I entreat and pray you to give him the benefit of that 
remembrance."
"I really wonder, sir," rejoined the old pupil in an argumentative manner, 
"to find you taking a position so untenable. My schooling was paid for; it 
was a bargain; and when I came away, the bargain ended."
It was a fundamental principle of the Gradgrind philosophy, that everything 
was to be paid for. Nobody was ever on any account to give anybody 
anything, or render anybody help without purchase. Gratitude was to be 
abolished, and the virtues springing from it were not to be. Every inch of 
the existence of mankind, from birth to death, was to be a bargain across a 
counter. And if we didn't get to Heaven that way, it was not a politico-
economical place, and we had no business there.
"I don't deny," added Bitzer, "that my schooling was cheap. But that comes 
right, sir. I was made in the cheapest market, and have to dispose of 
myself in the dearest."
He was a little troubled here, by Louisa and Sissy crying.
"Pray don't do that," said he, "it's of no use doing that: it only worries. 
You seem to think that I have some animosity against young Mr Tom; whereas 
I have none at all. I am only going, on the reasonable grounds I have 
mentioned, to take him back to Coketown. If he was to resist, I should set 
up the cry of Stop Thief! But, he won't resist, you may depend upon it."
Mr Sleary, who, with his mouth open and his rolling eye as immovably jammed 
in his head as his fixed one, had listened to these doctrines with profound 
attention, here stepped forward.
"Thquire, you know perfectly well, and your daughter knowth perfectly well 
(better than you, becauthe I thed it to her), that I didn't know what your 
thon had done, and that I didn't want to know - I thed it wath better not, 
though I only thought then, it wath thome thkylarking. However, thith young 
man having made it known to be a robbery of a bank, why, that'h a theriouth 
thing; muth too theriouth a thing for me to compound, ath thith young man 
hath very properly called it. Conthequently, Thquire, you muthn't quarrel 
with me if I take thith young man'th thide, and thay he'th right and 
there'th no help for it. But I tell you what I'll do, Thquire; I'll drive 
your thon and thith young man over to the rail, and prevent expothure here. 
I can't conthent to do more, but I'll do that."
Fresh lamentations from Louisa, and deeper affliction on Mr Gradgrind's 
part, followed this desertion of them by their last friend. But, Sissy 
glanced to him with great attention; nor did she in her own breast 
misunderstand him. As they were all going out again, he favoured her with 
one slight roll of his movable eye, desiring her to linger behind. As he 
locked the door, he said excitedly:
"The Thquire thtood by you, Thethilia, and I'll thtand by the Thquire. More 
than that: thith ith a prethiouth rathcal and belongth to that bluthtering 
Cove that my people nearly pitht out o' winder. It'll be a dark night; I've 
got a horthe that'll do anything but thpeak; I've got a pony that'll go 
fifteen mile an hour with Childerth driving of him; I've got a dog that'll 
keep a man to one plathe four-and-twenty hourth. Get a word with the young 
Thquire. Tell him, when he theeth our horthe begin to danthe, not to be 
afraid of being thpilt, but to look out for a pony-gig coming up. Tell him, 
when he theeth that gig clothe by, to jump down, and it'll take him off at 
a rattling pathe. If my dog leth thith young man thtir a peg on foot, I 
give him leave to go. And if my horthe ever thtirth from that thpot where 
he beginth a danthing, till the morning - I don't know him? - Tharp'th the 
word!"
The word was so sharp, that in ten minutes Mr Childers, sauntering about 
the market-place in a pair of slippers, had his cue, and Mr Sleary's 
equipage was ready. It was a fine sight to behold the learned dog barking 
round it, and Mr Sleary instructing him, with his one practical eye, that 
Bitzer was the object of his particular attentions. Soon after dark they 
all three got in and started; the learned dog (a formidable creature) 
already pinning Bitzer with his eye, and sticking close to the wheel on his 
side, that he might be ready for him in the event of his showing the 
slightest disposition to alight.
The other three sat up at the inn all night in great suspense. At eight 
o'clock in the morning Mr Sleary and the dog reappeared: both in high 
spirits.
"All right, Thquire!" said Mr Sleary, "your thon may be aboard-a-thip by 
thith time. Childerth took him off, an hour and a half after we left here 
lathe night. The horth danthed the polka till he was dead beat (he would 
have walthed, if he hadn't been in harneth), and then I gave him the word 
and he went to thleep comfortable. Then that prethiouth young Rathcal thed 
he'd go for'ard afoot, the dog hung on to hith neck-handkercher with all 
four legth in the air and pulled him down and rolled him over. Tho he come 
back into the drag, and there he that, 'till I turned the horthe'th head, 
at half-path thixth thith morning."
Mr Gradgrind overwhelmed him with thanks, of course; and hinted as 
delicately as he could, at a handsome remuneration in money.
"I don't wan't money mythelf, Thquire; but Childerth ith a family man, and 
if you wath to like to offer him a five-pound note, it mightn't be 
unactheptable. Likewithe if you wath to thand a collar for the dog, or a 
thet of belth for the horthe, I thould be very glad to take 'em. Brandy and 
water I alwayth take." He had already called for a glass, and now called 
for another. "If you wouldn't think it going too far, Thquire, to make a 
little thpread for the company at about three and thixth ahead; not 
reckoning Luth, it would make 'em happy."
All these little tokens of his gratitude, Mr Gradgrind very willingly 
undertook to render. Though he thought them far too slight, he said, for 
such a service.
"Very well, Thquire; then, if you'll only give a Horthe-riding, a bethpeak, 
whenever you can, you'll more than balanthe the account. Now, Thquire, if 
your daughter will excuthe me, I thoud like one parting word with you."
Louisa and Sissy withdrew into an adjoining room; Mr Sleary, stirring and 
drinking his brandy and water as he stood, went on:
"Thquire, you don't need to be told that dogth is wonderful animalth."
"Their instinct," said Mr Gradgrind, "is surprising."
"Whatever you call it - and I'm bletht if I know what to call it," - said 
Sleary, "it ith athonithing. The way in with a dog'll find you - the 
dithtanthe he'll come!"
"His scent," said Mr Gradgrind, "being so fine."
"I'm bleth if I know what to call it," repeated Sleary, shaking his head, 
"but I have had dogth find me, Thquire, in a way that made me think whether 
that dog hadn't gone to another dog, and thed, 'You don't happen to know a 
perthon of the name of Thleary, do you? Perthon of the name of Thleary, in 
the Horthe-Riding way - thout man - game eye?' And whether that dog 
mightn't have thed, 'Well, I can't thay I know him mythelf, but I know a 
dog that I think would be likely to be acquainted with him.' And whether 
that dog mightn't have thought it over, and thed, 'Thleary, Thleary! O 
yeth, to be thure! A friend of mine menthioned him to me at one time. I can 
get you hith addreth directly.' In conthequenth of my being afore the 
public, and going about tho muth, you thee, there muth be a number of dogth 
acquainted with me, Thquire, that I don't know!"
Mr Gradgrind seemed to be quite confounded by this speculation.
"Any way," said Sleary, after putting his lips to his brandy and water, 
"ith fourteen month ago, Thquire, thinthe we wath at Chethter. We wath 
getting up our Children in the Wood one morning, when there cometh into our 
Ring, by the thtage door, a dog. He had travelled a long way, he wath in 
very bad condithon, he wath lame, and pretty well blind. He went round to 
our children, one after another, as if he wath a theeking for a child he 
know'd; and then he come to me, and throwed hithelf up behind, and thood on 
hith two fore-legth, weak ath he wath, and then he wagged hith tail and 
died. Thquire, that dog wath Merrylegth."
"Sissy's father's dog!"
"Thethilia'th father'th old dog. Now, Thquire, I can take my oath, from my 
knowledge of that dog, that that man wath dead - and buried - afore that 
dog come back to me. Joth'phine and Childerth and me talked it over a long 
time, whether I thoud write or not. But we agreed, 'No. There'th nothing 
comfortable to tell: why unthettle her mind, and make her unhappy?' Tho, 
whether her father bathely detherted her; or whether he broke his own heart 
alone, rather than pull her down along with him; never will be known, now, 
Thquire, till - no, not till we know how the dog findth uth out!"
"She keeps the bottle that he sent her for, to this hour; and she will 
believe in his affection to the last moment of her life," said Mr 
Gradgrind.
"It theemth to prethent two thingth to a perthon, don't it, Thquire?" said 
Mr Sleary, musing as he looked down into the depths of his brandy and 
water: "one, that there ith a love in the world, not all Thelf-intereth 
after all, but thomething very different; t'other, that it hath a way of 
ith own of calculating or not calculating, whith thomehow or another ith at 
leatht ath hard to give a name to, ath the wayth of the dogth ith!"
Mr Gradgrind looked out of window, and made no reply. Mr Sleary emptied his 
glass and recalled the ladies.
"Thethilia my dear, kith me and good-bye! Mith Thquire, to thee you 
treating of her like a thithter, and a thithter that you trutht, and honour 
with all your heart and more, ith a very pretty thight to me. I hope your 
brother may live to be better detherving of you, and a greater comfort to 
you. Thquire, thake handth, firtht and latht! Don't be croth with uth poor 
vagabondth. People mutht be amuthed. They can't be alwayth a learning, nor 
yet they can't be alwayth a working, they an't made for it. You mutht have 
uth, Thquire. Do the withe thing and the kind thing too, and make the beth 
uth: not the wurth!
"And I never thought before," said Mr Sleary, putting his head in at the 
door again to say it, "that I wath tho muth of a Cackler!"


Chapter 9

Final

It is a dangerous thing to see anything in the sphere of a vain blusterer, 
before the vain blusterer sees it himself. Mr Bounderby felt that Mrs 
Sparsit had audaciously anticipated him, and presumed to be wiser than he. 
Inappeasably indignant with her for her triumphant discovery of Mrs Pegler, 
he turned his presumption, on the part of a woman in her dependent 
position, over and over in his mind, until it accumulated with turning like 
a great snowball. At last he made the discovery that to discharge this 
highly connected female - to have it in his power to say, "She was a woman 
of family, and wanted to stick to me, but I wouldn't have it, and got rid 
of her" - would be to get the utmost possible amount of crowning glory out 
of the connection, and at the same time to punish Mrs Sparsit according to 
her deserts.
Filled fuller than ever, with this great idea, Mr Bounderby came into 
lunch, and sat himself down in the dining-room of former days, where his 
portrait was. Mrs Sparsit sat by the fire, with her foot in her cotton 
stirrup, little thinking whither she was posting.
Since the Pegler affair, this gentlewoman had covered her pity for Mr 
Bounderby with a veil of quiet melancholy and contrition. In virtue 
thereof, it had become her habit to assume a woeful look; which woeful look 
she now bestowed upon her patron.
"What's the matter now, ma'am?" said Mr Bounderby, in a very short, rough 
way.
"Pray, sir," returned Mrs Sparsit, "do not bite my nose off."
"Bite your nose off, ma'am!" repeated Mr Bounderby. "Your nose!" meaning, 
as Mrs Sparsit conceived, that it was too developed a nose for the purpose. 
After which offensive implication, he cut himself a crust of bread, and 
threw the knife down with a noise.
Mrs Sparsit took her foot out of her stirrup, and said, "Mr Bounderby, 
sir!"
"Well, ma'am?" retorted Mr Bounderby. "What are you staring at?"
"May I ask, sir," said Mrs Sparsit, "have you been ruffled this morning?"
"Yes, ma'am."
"May I inquire, sir," pursued the injured woman, "whether I am the 
unfortunate cause of your having lost temper?"
"Now, I'll tell you what, ma'am," said Bounderby, "I am not come here to be 
bullied. A female may be highly connected, but she can't be permitted to 
bother and badger a man in my position, and I am not going to put up with 
it." (Mr Bounderby felt it necessary to get on; foreseeing that if he 
allowed of details, he would be beaten.)
Mrs Sparsit first elevated, then knitted, her Coriolanian eyebrows; 
gathered up her work into its proper basket; and rose.
"Sir," said she, majestically. "It is apparent to me that I am in your way 
at present. I will retire to my own apartment."
"Allow me to open the door, ma'am."
"Thank you, sir; I can do it for myself."
"You had better allow me, ma'am," said Bounderby, passing her, and getting 
his hand upon the lock; "because I can take the opportunity of saying a 
word to you, before you go. Mrs Sparsit, ma'am, I rather think you are 
cramped here, do you know? It appears to me, that, under my humble roof, 
there's hardly opening enough for a lady of your genius in other people's 
affairs."
Mrs Sparsit gave him a look of the darkest scorn, and said with great 
politeness, "Really, sir?"
"I have been thinking it over, you see, since the late affairs have 
happened, ma'am," said Bounderby; "and it appears to my poor judgment - "
"Oh! Pray, sir," Mrs Sparsit interposed, with sprightly cheerfulness, 
"don't disparage your judgment. Everybody knows how unerring Mr Bounderby's 
judgment is. Everybody has had proofs of it. It must be the theme of 
general conversation. Disparage anything in yourself but your judgment, 
sir," said Mrs Sparsit, laughing.
Mr Bounderby, very red and uncomfortable, resumed:
"It appears to me, ma'am, I say, that a different sort of establishment 
altogether, would bring out a lady of your powers. Such an establishment as 
your relation, Lady Scadgers's now. Don't you think you might find some 
affairs there, ma'am, to interfere with?"
"It never occurred to me before, sir," returned Mrs Sparsit; "but now you 
mention it, I should think it highly probable."
"Then suppose you try, ma'am," said Bounderby laying an envelope with a 
cheque in it, in her little basket. "You can take your own time for going, 
ma'am; but perhaps in the meanwhile, it will be more agreeable to a lady of 
your powers of mind, to eat her meals by herself, and not to be intruded 
upon. I really ought to apologise to you - being only Josiah Bounderby of 
Coketown - for having stood in your light so long."
"Pray don't name it, sir," returned Mrs Sparsit. "If that portrait could 
speak, sir, - but it has the advantage over the original of not possessing 
the power of committing itself and disgusting others, - it would testify, 
that a long period has elapsed since I first habitually addressed it as the 
picture of a Noodle. Nothing that a Noodle does, can awaken surprise or 
indignation; the proceedings of a Noodle can only inspire contempt."
Thus saying, Mrs Sparsit, with her Roman features like a medal struck to 
commemorate her scorn of Mr Bounderby, surveyed him fixedly from head to 
foot, swept disdainfully past him, and ascended the staircase. Mr Bounderby 
closed the door, and stood before the fire; projecting himself after his 
old explosive manner into his portrait - and into futurity.

Into how much of futurity? He saw Mrs Sparsit fighting out a daily fight, 
at the points of all the weapons in the female armoury, with the grudging, 
smarting, peevish, tormenting Lady Scadgers, still laid up in bed with her 
mysterious leg, and gobbling her insufficient income down by about the 
middle of every quarter, in a mean little airless lodging, a mere closet 
for one, a mere crib for two; but did he see more? Did he catch any glimpse 
of himself making a show of Bitzer to strangers, as the rising young man, 
so devoted to his master's great merits, who had won young Tom's place, and 
had almost captured young Tom himself, in the times when by various rascals 
he was spirited away? Did he see any faint reflection of his own image 
making a vain-glorious will, whereby five-and-twenty Humbugs, past five and 
fifty years of age, each taking upon himself the name, Josiah Bounderby of 
Coketown, should for ever dine in Bounderby Hall, for ever lodge in 
Bounderby Buildings, for ever attend a Bounderby chapel, for ever go to 
sleep under a Bounderby chaplain, for ever be supported out of a Bounderby 
estate, and for ever nauseate all healthy stomachs, with a vast amount of 
Bounderby balderdash and bluster? Had he any prescience of the day, five 
years to come, when Josiah Bounderby of Coketown was to die of a fit in the 
Coketown street and this same precious will was to begin its long career of 
quibble, plunder, false pretences, vile example, little service and much 
law? Probably not. Yet the portrait was to see it all out.
Here was Mr Gradgrind on the same day, and in the same hour, sitting 
thoughtful in his own room. How much of futurity did he see? Did he see 
himself, a white-haired decrepit man, bending his hitherto inflexible 
theories to appointed circumstances; making his facts and figures 
subservient to Faith, Hope, and Charity; and no longer trying to grind that 
Heavenly trio in his dusty little mills? Did he catch sight of himself, 
therefore much despised by his late political associates? Did he see them, 
in the era of its being quite settled that the national dustmen have only 
to do with one another, and owe no duty to an abstraction called a People, 
"taunting the honourable gentleman" with this and with that and with what 
not, five nights a-week, until the small hours of the morning? Probably he 
had that much fore-knowledge, knowing his men.

Here was Louisa on the night of the same day, watching the fire as in days 
of yore, though with a gentler and a humbler face. How much of the future 
might arise before her vision? Broadsides in the streets, signed with her 
father's name, exonerating the late Stephen Blackpool, weaver, from 
misplaced suspicion, and publishing the guilt of his own son, with such 
extenuation as his years and temptation (he could not bring himself to add, 
his education) might beseech; were of the Present. So, Stephen Blackpool's 
tombstone, with her father's record of his death, was almost of the 
Present, for she knew it was to be. These things she could plainly see. 
But, how much of the Future?
A working woman, christened Rachael, after a long illness once again 
appearing at the ringing of the Factory bell, and passing to and fro at the 
set hours, among the Coketown Hands; a woman of a pensive beauty, always 
dressed in black, but sweet-tempered and serene, and even cheerful; who, of 
all the people in the place, alone appeared to have compassion on a 
degraded, drunken wretch of her own sex, who was sometimes seen in the town 
secretly begging of her, and crying to her; a woman working, ever working, 
but content to do it, and preferring to do it as her natural lot, until she 
should be too old to labour any more? Did Louisa see this? Such a thing was 
to be.
A lonely brother, many thousands of miles away, writing, on paper blotted 
with tears, that her words had too soon come true, and that all the 
treasures in the world would be cheaply bartered for a sight of her dear 
face? At length this brother coming nearer home, with hope of seeing her, 
and being delayed by illness; and then a letter, in a strange hand, saying 
"he died in hospital, of fever, such a day, and died in penitence and love 
of you: his last word being your name?" Did Louisa see these things? Such 
things were to be.
Herself again a wife - a mother - lovingly watchful of her children, ever 
careful that they should have a childhood of the mind no less than a 
childhood of the body, as knowing it to be even a more beautiful thing, and 
a possession, any hoarded scrap of which, is a blessing and happiness to 
the wisest? Did Louisa see this? Such a thing was never to be.
But, happy Sissy's happy children loving her; all children loving her; she, 
grown learned in childish love; thinking no innocent and pretty fancy ever 
to be despised; trying hard to know her humbler fellow creatures, and 
beautify their lives of machinery and reality with those imaginative graces 
and delights, without which the heart of infancy will wither up, the 
sturdiest physical manhood will be morally stark death, and the plainest 
national prosperity figures can show, will be the Writing on the Wall - she 
holding this course as part of no fantastic vow, or bond, or brotherhood, 
or sisterhood, or pledge, or covenant, or fancy dress, or fancy fair; but 
simply as a duty to be done, - Did Louisa see these things of herself? 
These things were to be.
Dear reader! It rests with you and me, whether, in our two fields of 
action, similar things shall be or not. Let them be! We shall sit with 
lighter bosoms on the hearth, to see the ashes of our fires turn grey and 
cold.