Hard Times by Charles Dickens (ebooks that read to you txt) 📕

was to be done? M’Choakumchild reported that she had a very dense head for figures; that, once possessed with a general idea of the globe, she took the smallest conceivable interest in its exact measurements; that she was extremely slow in the acquisition of dates, unless some pitiful incident happened to be connected therewith; that she would burst into tears on being required (by the mental process) immediately to name the cost of two hundred and forty-seven muslin caps at fourteen-pence halfpenny; that she was as low down, in the school, as low could be; that after eight weeks of induction into the elements of Political Economy, she had only yesterday been set right by a prattler three feet high, for returning to the question, “What is the first principle of this science?” the absurd answer, “To do unto others as I would that they should do unto me.”

Mr. Gradgrind observed, shaking his head, that all this was very bad; that it showed the necessity of infinite grinding at the mill of knowledge, as per system, schedule, blue book, report, and tabular statements A to Z; and that Jupe “must be kept to it.” So Jupe was kept to it, and became low-spirited, but no wiser.

“It would be a fine thing to be you, Miss Louisa!” she said, one night, when Louisa had endeavoured to make her perplexities for next day something clearer to her.

“Do you think so?”

“I should know so much, Miss Louisa. All that is difficult to me now, would be so easy then.”

“You might not be the better for it, Sissy.”

Sissy submitted, after a little hesitation, “I should not be the worse, Miss Louisa.” To which Miss Louisa answered, “I don’t know that.”

There had been so little communication between these two⁠—both because life at Stone Lodge went monotonously round like a piece of machinery which discouraged human interference, and because of the prohibition relative to Sissy’s past career⁠—that they were still almost strangers. Sissy, with her dark eyes wonderingly directed to Louisa’s face, was uncertain whether to say more or to remain silent.

“You are more useful to my mother, and more pleasant with her than I can ever be,” Louisa resumed. “You are pleasanter to yourself, than I am to myself.”

“But, if you please, Miss Louisa,” Sissy pleaded, “I am⁠—O so stupid!”

Louisa, with a brighter laugh than usual, told her she would be wiser by-and-by.

“You don’t know,” said Sissy, half crying, “what a stupid girl I am. All through school hours I make mistakes. Mr. and Mrs. M’Choakumchild call me up, over and over again, regularly to make mistakes. I can’t help them. They seem to come natural to me.”

“Mr. and Mrs. M’Choakumchild never make any mistakes themselves, I suppose, Sissy?”

“O no!” she eagerly returned. “They know everything.”

“Tell me some of your mistakes.”

“I am almost ashamed,” said Sissy, with reluctance. “But today, for instance, Mr. M’Choakumchild was explaining to us about Natural Prosperity.”

“National, I think it must have been,” observed Louisa.

“Yes, it was.⁠—But isn’t it the same?” she timidly asked.

“You had better say, National, as he said so,” returned Louisa, with her dry reserve.

“National Prosperity. And he said, Now, this schoolroom is a Nation. And in this nation, there are fifty millions of money. Isn’t this a prosperous nation? Girl number twenty, isn’t this a prosperous nation, and a’n’t you in a thriving state?”

“What did you say?” asked Louisa.

“Miss Louisa, I said I didn’t know. I thought I couldn’t know whether it was a prosperous nation or not, and whether I was in a thriving state or not, unless I knew who had got the money, and whether any of it was mine. But that had nothing to do with it. It was not in the figures at all,” said Sissy, wiping her eyes.

“That was a great mistake of yours,” observed Louisa.

“Yes, Miss Louisa, I know it was, now. Then Mr. M’Choakumchild said he would try me again. And he said, This schoolroom is an immense town, and in it there are a million of inhabitants, and only five-and-twenty are starved to death in the streets, in the course of a year. What is your remark on that proportion? And my remark was⁠—for I couldn’t think of a better one⁠—that I thought it must be just as hard upon those who were starved, whether the others were a million, or a million million. And that was wrong, too.”

“Of course it was.”

“Then Mr. M’Choakumchild said he would try me once more. And he said, Here are the stutterings⁠—”

“Statistics,” said Louisa.

“Yes, Miss Louisa⁠—they always remind me of stutterings, and that’s another of my mistakes⁠—of accidents upon the sea. And I find (Mr. M’Choakumchild said) that in a given time a hundred thousand persons went to sea on long voyages, and only five hundred of them were drowned or burnt to death. What is the percentage? And I said, Miss;” here Sissy fairly sobbed as confessing with extreme contrition to her greatest error; “I said it was nothing.”

“Nothing, Sissy?”

“Nothing, Miss⁠—to the relations and friends of the people who were killed. I shall never learn,” said Sissy. “And the worst of all is, that although my poor father wished me so much to learn, and although I am so anxious to learn, because he wished me to, I am afraid I don’t like it.”

Louisa stood looking at the pretty modest head, as it drooped abashed before her, until it was raised again to glance at her face. Then she asked:

“Did your father know so much himself, that he wished you to be well taught too, Sissy?”

Sissy hesitated before replying, and so plainly showed her sense that they were entering on forbidden ground, that Louisa added, “No one hears us; and if anyone did, I am sure no harm could be found in such an innocent question.”

“No, Miss Louisa,” answered Sissy, upon this encouragement, shaking her head; “father knows very little indeed. It’s as much as he can do to write; and it’s more than people in general can do to read his writing. Though it’s plain to me.”

“Your mother?”

“Father says