that, here. You mustn't tell us about that,
here. Your father breaks horses, don't he?"

"If you please, sir, when they can get any
to break, they do break horses in the ring, sir."

"You mustn't tell us about the ring, here.
Very well, then. Describe your father as a
horsebreaker. He doctors sick horses, I
dare say?"

"Oh yes, sir."

"Very well, then. He is a veterinary
surgeon, a farrier and horsebreaker. Give
me your definition of a horse."

(Sissy Jupe thrown into the greatest alarm
by this demand.)

"Girl number twenty unable to define a
horse!" said Mr. Gradgrind, for the general
behoof of all the little pitchers. "Girl number
twenty possessed of no facts, in reference to
one of the commonest of animals! Some
boy's definition of a horse. Bitzer, yours."

The square finger, moving here and there,
lighted suddenly on Bitzer, perhaps because
he chanced to sit in the same ray of sunlight
which, darting in at one of the bare windows
of the intensely whitewashed room, irradiated
Sissy. For, the boys and girls sat on the face
of the inclined plane in two compact bodies,
divided up the centre by a narrow interval;
and Sissy, being at the corner of a row on the
sunny side, came in for the beginning of a
sunbeam, of which Bitzer, being at the
corner of a row on the other side, a few rows
in advance, caught the end. But, whereas the
girl was so dark-eyed and dark-haired, that
she seemed to receive a deeper and more
lustrous color from the sun when it shone
upon her, the boy was so light-eyed and light-
haired that the self-same rays appeared to
draw out of him what little color he ever
possessed. His cold eyes would hardly have
been eyes, but for the short ends of lashes
which, by bringing them into immediate
contrast with something paler than themselves,
expressed their form. His short-cropped
hair might have been a mere continuation of
the sandy freckles on his forehead and face.
His skin was so unwholesomely deficient in
the natural tinge, that he looked as though,
if he were cut, he would bleed white.

"Bitzer," said Thomas Gradgrind. "Your
definition of a horse."

"Quadruped. Graminivorous. Forty teeth,
namely twenty-four grinders, four eye-teeth,
and twelve incisive. Sheds coat in the
spring; in marshy countries, sheds hoofs, too.
Hoofs hard, but requiring to be shod with
iron. Age known by marks in mouth." Thus
(and much more) Bitzer.

"Now girl number twenty," said Mr.
Gradgrind. "You know what a horse is."

She curtseyed again, and would have blushed
deeper, if she could have blushed deeper than
she had blushed all this time. Bitzer, after
rapidly blinking at Thomas Gradgrind with
both eyes at once, and so catching the light
upon his quivering ends of lashes that they
looked like the antennae of busy insects, put
his knuckles to his freckled forehead, and sat
down again.

The third gentleman now stepped forth.
A mighty man at cutting and drying, he was;
a government officer; in his way (and in most
other  people's too), a professed pugilist; always
in training, always with a system to force
down the general throat like a bolus, always
to be heard of at the bar of his little Public-
office, ready to fight all England. 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 a 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