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contrast with something paler than themselves, expressed their
form. His short-cropped hair might have been a mere continuation
of the sandy freckles on his forehead and face. His skin was so
unwholesomely deficient in the natural tinge, that he looked as
though, if he were cut, he would bleed white.

'Bitzer,' said Thomas Gradgrind. 'Your definition of a horse.'

'Quadruped. Graminivorous. Forty teeth, namely twenty-four
grinders, four eye-teeth, and twelve incisive. Sheds coat in the
spring; in marshy countries, sheds hoofs, too. Hoofs hard, but
requiring to be shod with iron. Age known by marks in mouth.'
Thus (and much more) Bitzer.

'Now girl number twenty,' said Mr. Gradgrind. 'You know what a
horse is.'

She curtseyed again, and would have blushed deeper, if she could
have blushed deeper than she had blushed all this time. Bitzer,
after rapidly blinking at Thomas Gradgrind with both eyes at once,
and so catching the light upon his quivering ends of lashes that
they looked like the antennae of busy insects, put his knuckles to
his freckled forehead, and sat down again.

The third gentleman now stepped forth. A mighty man at cutting and
drying, he was; a government officer; in his way (and in most other
people's too), a professed pugilist; always in training, always
with a system to force down the general throat like a bolus, always
to be heard of at the bar of his little Public-office, ready to
fight all England. To continue in fistic phraseology, he had a
genius for coming up to the scratch, wherever and whatever it was,
and proving himself an ugly customer. He would go in and damage
any subject whatever with his right, follow up with his left, stop,
exchange, counter, bore his opponent (he always fought All England)
to the ropes, and fall upon him neatly. He was certain to knock
the wind out of common sense, and render that unlucky adversary
deaf to the call of time. And he had it in charge from high
authority to bring about the great public-office Millennium, when
Commissioners should reign upon earth.

'Very well,' said this gentleman, briskly smiling, and folding his
arms. 'That's a horse. Now, let me ask you girls and boys, Would
you paper a room with representations of horses?'

After a pause, one half of the children cried in chorus, 'Yes,
sir!' Upon which the other half, seeing in the gentleman's face
that Yes was wrong, cried out in chorus, 'No, sir!' - as the custom
is, in these examinations.

'Of course, No. Why wouldn't you?'

A pause. One corpulent slow boy, with a wheezy manner of
breathing, ventured the answer, Because he wouldn't paper a room at
all, but would paint it.

'You must paper it,' said the gentleman, rather warmly.

'You must paper it,' said Thomas Gradgrind, 'whether you like it or
not. Don't tell us you wouldn't paper it. What do you mean, boy?'

'I'll explain to you, then,' said the gentleman, after another and
a dismal pause, 'why you wouldn't paper a room with representations

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