Hard Times

The Project Gutenberg eBook, Hard Times, by Charles Dickens This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org Title: Hard Times Author: Charles Dickens Release Date: March 17, 2013 [eBook #786] [This file was first posted on January 20, 1997] Language: English Character set encoding: UTF-8 ***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HARD TIMES*** Transcribed from the 1905 Chapman and Hall edition by David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org HARD TIMES AND REPRINTED PIECES {0} * * * * * By CHARLES DICKENS * * * * * _With illustrations by Marcus Stone_, _Maurice_ _Greiffenhagen_, _and F. Walker_ * * * * * LONDON: CHAPMAN & HALL, LD. NEW YORK: CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS 1905 CONTENTS _BOOK THE FIRST_. _SOWING_ PAGE CHAPTER I _The One Thing Needful_ 3 CHAPTER II _Murdering the Innocents_ 4 CHAPTER III _A Loophole_ 8 CHAPTER IV _Mr. Bounderby_ 12 CHAPTER V _The Keynote_ 18 CHAPTER VI _Sleary’s Horsemanship_ 23 CHAPTER VII _Mrs. Sparsit_ 33 CHAPTER VIII _Never Wonder_ 38 CHAPTER IX _Sissy’s Progress_ 43 CHAPTER X _Stephen Blackpool_ 49 CHAPTER XI _No Way Out_ 53 CHAPTER XII _The Old Woman_ 59 CHAPTER XIII _Rachael_ 63 CHAPTER XIV _The Great Manufacturer_ 69 CHAPTER XV _Father and Daughter_ 73 CHAPTER XVI _Husband and Wife_ 79 _BOOK THE SECOND_. _REAPING_ CHAPTER I _Effects in the Bank_ 84 CHAPTER II _Mr. James Harthouse_ 94 CHAPTER III _The Whelp_ 101 CHAPTER IV _Men and Brothers_ 111 CHAPTER V _Men and Masters_ 105 CHAPTER VI _Fading Away_ 116 CHAPTER VII _Gunpowder_ 126 CHAPTER VIII _Explosion_ 136 CHAPTER IX _Hearing the Last of it_ 146 CHAPTER X _Mrs. Sparsit’s Staircase_ 152 CHAPTER XI _Lower and Lower_ 156 CHAPTER XII _Down_ 163 _BOOK THE THIRD_. _GARNERING_ CHAPTER I _Another Thing Needful_ 167 CHAPTER II _Very Ridiculous_ 172 CHAPTER III _Very Decided_ 179 CHAPTER IV _Lost_ 186 CHAPTER V _Found_ 193 CHAPTER VI _The Starlight_ 200 CHAPTER VII _Whelp-Hunting_ 208 CHAPTER VIII _Philosophical_ 216 CHAPTER IX _Final_ 222 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE _Stephen and Rachael in the Sick-room_ 64 _Mr. Harthouse Dining at the Bounderbys’_ 100 _Mr. Harthouse and Tom Gradgrind in the Garden_ 132 _Stephen Blackpool recovered from the Old Hell Shaft_ 206 BOOK THE FIRST _SOWING_ CHAPTER I 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 school-room, and the speaker’s square forefinger emphasized 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 II MURDERING THE INNOCENTS THOMAS GRADGRIND, sir. A man of realities. A man of facts 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 supposititious, 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 galvanizing 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?’