-lights were waning in the strengthening day; by the railway's
crazy neighbourhood, half pulled down and half built up; by scattered red brick
villas, where the besmoked evergreens were sprinkled with a dirty powder, like
untidy snuff-takers; by coal-dust paths and many varieties of ugliness; Stephen
got to the top of the hill, and looked back.
    Day was shining radiantly upon the town then, and the bells were going for
the morning work. Domestic fires were not yet lighted, and the high chimneys had
the sky to themselves. Puffing out their poisonous volumes, they would not be
long in hiding it; but, for half an hour, some of the many windows were golden,
which showed the Coketown people a sun eternally in eclipse, through a medium of
smoked glass.
    So strange to turn from the chimneys to the birds. So strange to have the
road-dust on his feet instead of the coal-grit. So strange to have lived to his
time of life, and yet to be beginning like a boy this summer morning! With these
musings in his mind, and his bundle under his arm, Stephen took his attentive
face along the high road. And the trees arched over him, whispering that he left
a true and loving heart behind.
 

                                  Chapter VII

                                   Gunpowder

Mr. James Harthouse, going in for his adopted party, soon began to score. With
the aid of a little more coaching for the political sages, a little more genteel
listlessness for the general society, and a tolerable management of the assumed
honesty in dishonesty, most effective and most patronized of the polite deadly
sins, he speedily came to be considered of much promise. The not being troubled
with earnestness was a grand point in his favour, enabling him to take to the
hard Fact fellows with as good a grace as if he had been born one of the tribe,
and to throw all other tribes overboard, as conscious hypocrites.
    »Whom none of us believe, my dear Mrs. Bounderby, and who do not believe
themselves. The only difference between us and the professors of virtue or
benevolence, or philanthropy - never mind the name - is, that we know it is all
meaningless, and say so; while they know it equally and will never say so.«
    Why should she be shocked or warned by this reiteration? It was not so
unlike her father's principles, and her early training, that it need startle
her. Where was the great difference between the two schools, when each chained
her down to material realities, and inspired her with no