Read the following passage from the beginning of Charles Dickens's 1854 novel
Hard Times. In the passage, Mr. Gradgrind, a successful businessman and leader of
Coketown, tells the headmaster of Coketown's school what kind of education he
wants the school to provide:
"Now, 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...."
The scene was a plain, bare, monotonous vault of a school-room,
and the speaker's square forefinger emphasized 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
CLOSE