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.
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