ngland.
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 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. What do you mean, boy?"

"I'll explain to you, then," said the gentleman, after another and
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 gent