 M'Choakumchild. If he had
only learnt a little less, how infinitely better he might have taught much more!
    He went to work in this preparatory lesson, not unlike Morgiana in the Forty
Thieves: looking into all the vessels ranged before him, one after another, to
see what they contained. Say, good M'Choakumchild. When from thy boiling store,
thou shalt fill each jar brim full by-and-by, dost thou think that thou wilt
always kill outright the robber Fancy lurking within - or sometimes only maim
him and distort him!
 

                                  Chapter III

                                   A Loophole

Mr. Gradgrind walked homeward from the school, in a state of considerable
satisfaction. It was his school, and he intended it to be a model. He intended
every child in it to be a model - just as the young Gradgrinds were all models.
    There were five young Gradgrinds, and they were models every one. They had
been lectured at, from their tenderest years; coursed, like little hares. Almost
as soon as they could run alone, they had been made to run to the lecture-room.
The first object with which they had an association, or of which they had a
remembrance, was a large black board with a dry Ogre chalking ghastly white
figures on it.
    Not that they knew, by name or nature, anything about an Ogre. Fact forbid!
I only use the word to express a monster in a lecturing castle, with Heaven
knows how many heads manipulated into one, taking childhood captive, and
dragging it into gloomy statistical dens by the hair.
    No little Gradgrind had ever seen a face in the moon; it was up in the moon
before it could speak distinctly. No little Gradgrind had ever learnt the silly
jingle, Twinkle, twinkle, little star; how I wonder what you are! No little
Gradgrind had ever known wonder on the subject, each little Gradgrind having at
five years old dissected the Great Bear like a Professor Owen, and driven
Charles's Wain like a locomotive engine-driver. No little Gradgrind had ever
associated a cow in a field with that famous cow with the crumpled horn who
tossed the dog who worried the cat who killed the rat who ate the malt, or with
that yet more famous cow who swallowed Tom Thumb: it had never heard of those
celebrities, and had only been introduced to a cow as a graminivorous ruminating
quadruped with several stomachs.
    To his matter-of-fact home, which was called Stone Lodge, Mr. Gradgrind
directed his steps. He had virtually retired from the wholesale hardware trade
before he
