The Birmingham age-herald., 1911-01-22

yet, struggling through the dissatisfaction of her face, there was light with noth- ing to burn, a strange imagination with nothing to feed upon, keeping itself alive somehow, which frightened her expres-
 sion. Not with the brightness natural to youth, but with uncertain, doubtful eager flashes which had something pain full in them analogous to the changes
 in a blind face groping it's way. she was
 child of 16 now, but at no distant day
 would become a woman all at once, her father thought, as he looked at her. She
 was pretty and would have been self willed but for her bringing up. T am
 amazed!" said Mr. Gradgrind. Father, I
 was tired" replied Louisa q have been tired for long time. I do not know of
 what-everything I think.
 Say not another word,' cried MT. Grad grind, and the apostle of the multiplica- tion table took the two children home re- beating every now and then to himself
 self, What would Bounderby say? What would Boundeby say?"
 When Mr. Gradgrind reached Stone
 Lodge he found MT. Bounderby already there. MT. Bounderby was big man, with a stare and a metallic laugh a man with a great puffed head and forehead, and swelled veins in his temple; man | with pervading apearance of being in- | Hated with balloon and ready to start; | a man who could never sufficiently vaunt himself as a self-made man; a man with a brassy speaking trumpet of voice; a
 man the bully of humility. He was talk in fo ATrc ind in shawls on a sofa near the fire. For
 Mrs. Gradgrind had been crushed, by the | accumulated weight of the facts which had fallen upon her, into state of chronic invalidism.
 1T hadn't a shoe to my foot" Mir. Bounderby was saying, "and as for stock ipgs didn't know such thing even by 1 name. I, passed the day in a ditch and the night in a pigsty; that's the way I spent my tenth birthday Not that a ditch was new to me; I was born in q ditch. My mother deserted me, ma am
 and left ff1e to my grandmother And to
 the best of my remembrance my grand
 mother was the wickedest and worst old woman that ever lived. AS soon as I was big enough I ran away and became a reg
 ular young vagabond, so ragged and dirty that you would not have touched me with
 a pair of tongs How I pulled through I
 don't know. But did, and now, ma'am I am Josiah Bounderby of Coketown. You may force him to swallow boiled fat hut you shall never force him to repress the facts of his life"
 Mrs. Gradgrind-who had, indeed, heard
 the story before. as everybody else had who would listen to it-faintly expressed
 the hope that the ditch he used to lie in was not wet, for a wet ditch might give
 child his death O cold. But she was
 assured by MT. Bounderby that it was an
 uncommonly wet ditch. Just then in came MT. Gradgrind.' "Well,'' clustered MT.
 Eounderby, whats the matter? Young Thomas in the dumps?" "We were peep ing at circus" said Louisa haughtily,
 land father caught us" Said MT. Grad grind in stern and lofty manner, T should as soon have expected to find my children reading poetry!" Dear me-" sighed Mrs. Gradgrind, "Thomas and Louisa, how can you? With all those ologies of yours to amuse yourselves, tool Oh, dear, I am sure I shall never hear the last of it.'
 That was Mrs Gradgrnd's chief horror in life-that she would "never hear the last of it." And, indeed from the manner in which her husband could course, run
 down, seize upon and worry the lifecout of the most ordinary fact, her fears were not groundless, The children having been sent away in disgrace, MT Gradgrind pro- ceeded to relate to MT, Bounderby the shocking story of Sissy Jupe It was re- solved that Sissy must be removed from the school. A person associated with an institution as far removed from facts as a circus was not, mathematically consid-
 cred, fitting companion for children who were being reared on the multiplication table and it's attending facts.
 I've will," said MT. Gradgrind, i've will go, MT. Bounderby, and inform the father
 of this young person that she is no longer to attend the school" The two men en-
 countered Sissy on the street. who inform ed them that she had been after bottle of the celebrated Nine Oils, a preparation with which, she said, her father used to annoint himself after he had received an unusually severe fall in the circus ring. Sissy led them to the tavern in that part of the town known as Pod S End-it was not fashionable part. "So this is Pods End!" remarked both men in a breath, as they entered the squalid precincts. Neither of these rich owners of larger part of Pods End had ever visited it before. Why should they? Such visits would only encourage the hands to demand to be fed upon turtle soup and venison with good spoon. It was a mean little public house Sissy led item to. haggard and shabby as if, for want of custom, it had itself taken to drinking and had gone the way of all drunkards and was very near the end of It. It's only crossing the bar" sir. and up stairs, if you wouldn't mind waiting for moment till get a candle" said sissy, "and if you should shear a dog bark. sir. it's only Merrylegs, and he only barlss." 'Merrylegs and Nine Oils!'' ex- claimed MT. Bounderby with his metallic laugh. Pretty we'll this for self-made man." 48r
 They followed the girl up some steep stairs and stopped in the dark while she went for candle. sThey expected every
 minute to hear the bark of the highly trained trick dog Merrylegs. but did not hear it, and finally the girl and the candle arpeared together. Father is not in our room, sir" she said with a face of great surprise. If you would not mind waiting I'll find him. But she could not a., 1,t,,, T,,pa had dacamned taking