"Father calls me Sissy, sir," returned the young girl in a trembling voice, and with another courtesy.

6. "Then he has no business to do it," said Mr. Gradgrind. "Tell him he mustn't. Cecelia Jupe. Let me see. What is your father?"

"He belongs to the horse-riding, if you please, sir.” Mr. Gradgrind frowned, and waved off the objectionable calling with his hand.

"We don't want to know any thing about that, here. You mustn't tell us about that, here.

breaks horses, don't he?"

Your father

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

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

"O yes, sir!"

"Very well, then.

He is a veterinary surgeon, a farrier, and horse-breaker. Give me your definition of a horse." Sissy Jupe was thrown into the greatest alarm by this demand.

8. "Girl number twenty unable to define a horse!" said Mr. Gradgrind. "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 irradiated Sissy.

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

9. "Quadruped. Graminiverous. 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 the mouth."

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

She courtesied again, and would have blushed deeper, if she could have blushed deeper than she had blushed all this time.

A

10. The third gentleman now stepped forth. mighty man at cutting and drying, he was; a government officer; always in training, always with a system to force down the general throat, always to be heard of at the bar of his little public office.

"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?"

11. 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 a chorus, "No, sir!"-as the custom is in these examinations. "Of course not. Why wouldn't you?"

A pause. One corpulent, slow boy, with a wheezy manner of breathing, ventured to answer, "Because I wouldn't paper a room at all, I'd paint it."

12. "You must paper it," said the gentleman, rather warmly.

"Yes, 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 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. 13. "Of course not," 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. 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?"

14. 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 gentleman, smiling,. in the calm strength of knowledge.

Sissy blushed, and stood up.

"So you would carpet your room 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.

15. "And is that why you would put tables and chairs upon them, and have people walking over them with heavy boots?"

They wouldn't crush
They would be the

"It wouldn't hurt them, sir. and wither, if you please, sir. 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, Cecelia Jupe," Thomas Gradgrind solemnly repeated, "to do any thing of that kind."

16. "You are to be in all things regulated and governed," said the gentleman, "by Fact. You must discard the word 'fancy' altogether. You have nothing to do with it. You don't walk upon flowers in fact: you can not be allowed to walk upon flowers in carpets. You never meet with quadrupeds going up and down the 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.".

LANGUAGE STUDY.

I. Write the analysis of: reality (res); proceed (cedere); exactly (agere); describe (scribere); definition (finis); corpulent (corpus.)

II. "Don't he" (6): Can "don't" properly be used with "he"? (It may with "I," because an abbreviation of do not I.)

Analyze this sentence: "She courtesied again, and would have blushed deeper if she could have blushed deeper than she had blushed all this time."

III. What droll metaphor in paragraph 2? paragraph 3. "He seemed a kind of cannon of speech? (See Definition 3.)

Supply the ellipses in what is the figure

(4)

What is your

"Tell him he mustn't, Cecelia Jupe. Let me see. father?" notice the curt, explosive kind of short sentences which Dickens employs as characteristic of Gradgrind. Point out other examples.

This clever sketch is by Francis Bret Harte (1837— ———), a native of Albany, N.Y. Mr. Harte has won fame by his boldly-outlined tales of life on the Pacific coast, - stories abounding in humor, satire, and pathos. He has also written dialect poems of a wide popularity.

(1) Punch: i.e., London Punch, the famous humorous and satirical weekly. (8) Au revoir (French, pron. O rě-vwär): literally, till we see each other again; equivalent to our Good-by.

1. There is a habit peculiar to many walkers, which "Punch," some years ago, touched upon satirically, but which seems to have survived the jester's ridicule. It is that custom of stopping friends in the street, to