📔 Hard Times: For These Times

It is said that every life has its roses and thorns; there seemed, however, to have been a misadventure or mistake in Stephen's case, whereby somebody else had become possessed of his roses, and he had become possessed of the same somebody else's thorns in addition to his own.

I ha’ never had no fratch afore, sin ever I were born, wi’ any o’ my like; Gonnows I ha’ none now that’s o’ my makin’.

‘I don’t mean that he thould go in the comic livery,’ said Sleary. ‘Thay the word, and I’ll make a Jothkin of him, out of the wardrobe, in five minutes.’ / ‘I don’t understand,’ said Mr. Gradgrind. / ‘A Jothkin—a Carter. Make up your mind quick, Thquire. There’ll be beer to feth. I’ve never met with nothing but beer ath’ll ever clean a comic blackamoor.’

"Bitzer," said Thomas Gradgrind. "Your definition of a horse." / "Quadruped. Graminivorous. Forty teeth; namely, twenty-four grinders, four eye-teeth, and twelve incisive. Sheds coat in the spring; in marshy countries, sheds hoofs, too. Hoofs hard, but requiring to be shod with iron. Age known by marks in mouth." Thus (and much more) Bitzer.

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.

[…] Could it be, that the whole earthly course of one so gentle, good, and self-denying, was subjugate to such a wretch as that!