After a pause, one half the children cried in a chorus,
"Yes, sir!" Upon which the other half, seeing in the 30
gentleman's face that "yes" was wrong, cried out in a
chorus, "No, sir!"—as the custom is in these examinations.
"Of course not. Why wouldn't you?"
A pause. One corpulent slow boy, with a wheezy manner
of breathing, ventured to answer, "Because I wouldn't
paper a room at all; I'd paint it."
"You must paper it," said the gentleman rather warmly. 5
"Yes, 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 a
dismal pause, "why you wouldn't paper a room with representations 10
of horses. Do you ever see horses walking
up and down the sides of a room in reality—in fact?
Do you?"
"Yes, sir!" from one half. "No, sir!" from the other.
"Of course not," said the gentleman, with an indignant 15
look at the wrong half. "Why, then, you are not to see
anywhere what you don't see in fact; you are not to have
anywhere what you don't have in fact. What is called
taste is only another name for fact. This is a new principle,
a discovery, a great discovery," said the gentleman. "Now 20
I'll try you again. Suppose you were going to carpet a
room, would you use a carpet having a representation of
flowers upon it?"
There being a general conviction by this time that "No,
sir!" was always the right answer to this gentleman, the 25
chorus of "No," was very strong. Only a few feeble
stragglers said, "Yes"; among them Sissy Jupe.
"Girl number twenty," said the gentleman, smiling in
the calm strength of knowledge.