Chapter 1
The One Thing Needful
Now, what I want is, Facts. Teach these boys and girls
nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life.
Plant nothing else, and root out everything else.
You can only form the minds of reasoning animals upon Facts:
nothing else will ever be of any service to them. This is the
principle on which I bring up my own children, and this is the
principle on which I bring up these children. Stick to Facts, sir!”
The scene was a plain, bare, monotonous vault of a schoolroom,
and the speaker’s square forefinger emphasised his observations
by underscoring every sentence with a line on the schoolmaster’s
sleeve. The emphasis was helped by the speaker’s square wall of a
forehead, which had his eyebrows for its base, while his eyes
found commodious cellarage in two dark caves, overshadowed by
the wall. The emphasis was helped by the speaker’s mouth, which
was wide, thin, and hard set. The emphasis was helped by the
speaker’s voice, which was inflexible, dry, and dictatorial. The
emphasis was helped by the speaker’s hair, which bristled on the
skirts of his bald head, a plantation of firs to keep the wind from
its shining surface, all covered with knobs, like the crust of a plum
pie, as if the head had scarcely warehouse-room for the hard facts
stored inside. The speaker’s obstinate carriage, square coat,
square legs, square shoulders—nay, his very neckcloth, trained to
take him by the throat with an unaccommodating grasp, like a
stubborn fact, as it was—all helped the emphasis.