"Very well," said this gentleman briskly, smiling and 25 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 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.
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.
"So you would carpet your room with representations of flowers, would you?" said the gentleman. "Why?"
"If you please, sir, I am very fond of flowers," returned the girl.
"And is that why you would put tables and chairs upon them and have people walking over them with heavy boots?" 5
"It wouldn't hurt them, sir. They wouldn't crush and, wither, if you please, sir. They would be the pictures of what was very pretty and pleasant, and I fancy--"