CHAPTER I

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 school-room, and the

speaker’s square forefinger emphasized 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.

‘In this life, we want nothing but Facts, sir; nothing but Facts!’

The speaker, and the schoolmaster, and the third grown person present,

all backed a little, and swept with their eyes the inclined plane of

little vessels then and there arranged in order, ready to have imperial

gallons of facts poured into them until they were full to the brim.