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Dickens, Charles

"Hard Times"

He was certain to knock
the wind out of common sense, 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 the gentleman, rather warmly.
'You must paper it,' said Thomas Gradgrind, 'whether you like it or
not. Don't tell us you wouldn't paper it.


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