leman, 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 cannot be permitted to paint
foreign birds and butterflies 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 colors) of
mathematical figures, which are susceptible of proof and demonstration.
This is the new discovery. This is fact. This is taste."

The girl courtesied, 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 hund