Hard Times(艰难时世)

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HARD

TIMES

Charles Dickens

ELECBOOK CLASSICS

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ebc0006. Charles Dickens: Hard Times

HARD TIMES

Charles Dickens

Hard Times
Charles Dickens                                                                                                      ElecBook Classics
4
Contents
Click on number to go to page
Book the First: Sowing .........................................................................6
Chapter 1. The One Thing Needful .....................................................7
Chapter 2. Murdering The Innocents .................................................9
Chapter 3. A Loophole.........................................................................17
Chapter 4. Mr Bounderby...................................................................24
Chapter 5. The Key-Note ....................................................................33
Chapter 6. Sleary’s Horsemanship....................................................41
Chapter 7. Mrs Sparsit.........................................................................58
Chapter 8. Never Wonder ...................................................................67
Chapter 9. Sissy’s Progress.................................................................75
Chapter 10. Stephen Blackpool..........................................................85
Chapter 11. No Way Out......................................................................92
Chapter 12. The Old Woman ............................................................102
Chapter 13. Rachael...........................................................................109
Chapter 14. The Great Manufacturer..............................................119
Chapter 15. Father And Daughter...................................................126
Chapter 16. Husband And Wife........................................................136
Book the Second: Reaping................................................................143
Chapter 1. Effects In The Bank........................................................144
Chapter 2. Mr James Harthouse......................................................161

Hard Times
Charles Dickens                                                                                                      ElecBook Classics
5
Chapter 3. The Whelp........................................................................171
Chapter 4. Men And Brothers ..........................................................178
Chapter 5. Men And Masters............................................................188
Chapter 6. Fading Away....................................................................197
Chapter 7. Gunpowder ......................................................................213
Chapter 8. Explosion..........................................................................229
Chapter 9. Hearing The Last Of It...................................................245
Chapter 10. Mrs Sparsit’s Staircase ................................................256
Chapter 11. Lower And Lower.........................................................262
Chapter 12. Down...............................................................................273
Book the Third: Garnering...............................................................279
Chapter 1. Another Thing Needful..................................................280
Chapter 2. Very Ridiculous...............................................................288
Chapter 3. Very Decided ...................................................................300
Chapter 4. Lost....................................................................................311
Chapter 5. Found................................................................................323
Chapter 6. The Starlight....................................................................334
Chapter 7. Whelp-Hunting................................................................347
Chapter 8. Philosophical ...................................................................361
Chapter 9. Final..................................................................................370

Hard Times

Charles Dickens ElecBook Classics

Book the First:

Sowing

Hard Times

Charles Dickens ElecBook Classics

Chapter 1

The One Thing Needful

ow, what I want is, Facts. Teach these boys and girls

nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life.

Plant nothing else, and root out everything else.

You can only form the minds of reasoning animals upon Facts:

nothing else will ever be of any service to them. This is the

principle on which I bring up my own children, and this is the

principle on which I bring up these children. Stick to Facts, sir!”

The scene was a plain, bare, monotonous vault of a schoolroom,

and the speaker’s square forefinger emphasised his observations

by underscoring every sentence with a line on the schoolmaster’s

sleeve. The emphasis was helped by the speaker’s square wall of a

forehead, which had his eyebrows for its base, while his eyes

found commodious cellarage in two dark caves, overshadowed by

the wall. The emphasis was helped by the speaker’s mouth, which

was wide, thin, and hard set. The emphasis was helped by the

speaker’s voice, which was inflexible, dry, and dictatorial. The

emphasis was helped by the speaker’s hair, which bristled on the

skirts of his bald head, a plantation of firs to keep the wind from

its shining surface, all covered with knobs, like the crust of a plum

pie, as if the head had scarcely warehouse-room for the hard facts

stored inside. The speaker’s obstinate carriage, square coat,

square legs, square shoulders—nay, his very neckcloth, trained to

take him by the throat with an unaccommodating grasp, like a

stubborn fact, as it was—all helped the emphasis.

“N

Hard Times

Charles Dickens ElecBook Classics

“In this life, we want nothing but Facts, sir; nothing but Facts!”

The speaker, and the schoolmaster, and the third grown person

present, all backed a little, and swept with their eyes the inclined

plane of little vessels then and there arranged in order, ready to

have imperial gallons of facts poured into them until they were full

to the brim.

Hard Times

Charles Dickens ElecBook Classics

Chapter 2

Murdering The Innocents

homas Gradgrind, sir. A man of realities. A man of fact and

calculations. A man who proceeds upon the principle that

two and two are four, and nothing over, and who is not to

be talked into allowing for anything over. Thomas Gradgrind, sir—

peremptorily Thomas—Thomas Gradgrind. With a rule and a pair

of scales, and the multiplication table always in his pocket, sir,

ready to weigh and measure any parcel of human nature, and tell

you exactly what it comes to. It is a mere question of figures, a case

of simple arithmetic. You might hope to get some other

nonsensical belief into the head of George Gradgrind, or Augustus

Gradgrind, or John Gradgrind, or Joseph Gradgrind (all

suppositious, non-existent persons), but into the head of Thomas

Gradgrind—no, sir!

In such terms Mr Gradgrind always mentally introduced

himself, whether to his private circle of acquaintance, or to the

public in general. In such terms, no doubt, substituting the words

“boys and girls”, for “sir”, Thomas Gradgrind now presented

Thomas Gradgrind to the little pitchers before him, who were to

be filled so full of facts.

Indeed, as he eagerly sparkled at them from the cellarage

before mentioned, he seemed a kind of cannon loaded to the

muzzle with facts, and prepared to blow them clean out of the

regions of childhood at one discharge. He seemed a galvanising

apparatus, too, charged with a grim mechanical substitute for the

Hard Times

Charles Dickens ElecBook Classics

tender young imaginations that were to be stormed away.

“Girl number twenty,” said Mr Gradgrind, squarely pointing

with his square forefinger, “I don’t know that girl. Who is that

girl?”

“Sissy Jupe, sir,” explained number twenty, blushing, standing

up, and curtseying.

“Sissy is not a name,” said Mr Gradgrind. “Don’t call yourself

Sissy. Call yourself Cecilia.”

“It’s father as calls me Sissy, sir,” returned the young girl in a

trembling voice, and with another curtsey.

“Then he has no business to do it,” said Mr Gradgrind. “Tell

him he mustn’t. Cecilia 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 anything about 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 horse-breaker. He doctors sick horses, I

dare say?”

“Oh yes, sir.”

“Very well, then. He is a veterinary surgeon, a farrier and

horse-breaker. 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

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