themselves, expressed their form. His short-cropped hair might have been a mere continuation of the sandy freckles on his forehead and face. His skin was so unwholesomely deficient in the natural tinge, that he looked as though, if he were cut, he would bleed white.

"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.

After he leaves school, Bitzer is employed as light porter and clerk at Mr. Bounderby's Bank. When Mr. Gradgrind's son, after robbing the bank, endeavors to escape, he starts in pursuit, and pounces on him just as he is about to leave his father's house for Liverpool.

"Bitzer," said Mr. Gradgrind, broken down, and miserably submissive to him, "have you a heart?"

"The circulation, sir," returned Bitzer, smiling at the oddity of the question, "could n't be carried on without one. No man, sir, acquainted with the facts established by Harvey relating to the circulation of the blood, can doubt that I have a heart."

"Is it accessible" cried Mr. Gradgrind, "to any compassionate influence?" "It is accessible to reason, sir," returned the excellent young man; "and to nothing else."

(Bk. I, ch. ii, v; Bk. II, ch. i, iv, vi, viii, ix, xi; Bk. III, ch. viiix.)

Soon after her

Blackpool, Mrs. Wife of Stephen Blackpool. marriage, she takes to drinking, and goes on from bad to worse, until she becomes a curse to her husband, to herself, and to all around her. (Bk. I, ch. x-xiii; Bk. III, ch. ix.) Blackpool, Stephen. A simple, honest, power-loom weaver, in Mr. Bounderby's factory. A rather stooping man, with a knitted brow, a pondering expression of face, and a hard-looking head sufficiently capacious on which his iron-gray hair lay long and thin. His lot is a hard one. Tied to a miserable, drunken wife, who has made his home a desolation and a mockery, and for whom he has long ceased to feel either respect or love, he finds himself unable to marry -as he would like to do-a woman (Rachael) who has been a kind and dear friend to him for many years; and he goes to Mr. Bounderby for advice.

"I ha' coom to ask yo, sir, how I am to be ridded o' this woman." Stepten infused a yet deeper gravity into the mixed expression of his attentive face. .. "What do you mean?" said Bounderby, getting up to lean his back against the chimney-piece. "What are you talking about? You took her for better for worse."

"I mun' be ridden o' her. I cannot bear 't nommore. I ha' lived under 't o long, for that I ha' had'n the pity and comforting words o' th' best lass living > dead. Haply, but for her, I should ha' gone hottering mad."

"He wishes to be free to marry the female of whom he speaks, I fear, sir," observed Mrs. Sparsit in an undertone, and much dejected by the immorality of the people.

"I do. The lady says what 's right. I do. I were a-coming to 't. I ha' read i' th' papers that great fok (fair faw 'em a'! I wishes 'em no hurt!) are not bonded together for better, for worse, so fast, but that they can be set free fro' their misfort. net marriages, an' marry ower agen. When they dunnot agree, for that their tem pers is ill-sorted, they has rooms o' one kind an' another in their houses, above a bit, and they can live asunders. We fok ha' only one room, an' we can't. When that won't do, they ha' gowd an' other cash, an' then they say, 'This for yo', an' that for me;' an' they can go their separate ways. We can't. Spite o' all that, they can be set free for smaller wrongs than mine. So I mun' be ridden o' this woman, and I wan' t' know how."

"No how," returned Mr. Bounderby.

"If I do her any hurt, sir, there's a law to punish me?"

"Of course, there is."

"If I flee from her, there's a law to punish me?"

"Of course, there is."

"If I marry t'oother dear lass, there's a law to punish me?"

"Of course, there is."

"If I was to live wi' her, an' not marry her, saying such a thing could be, which it never could or would, an' her so good,

every innocent child belonging to me?"

"Of course, there is."

there's a law to punish me in

"Now, a' God's name," said Stephen Blackpool, "show me the law to help me!" "Hem! There's a sanctity in this relation of life," said Mr. Bounderby, "and -and-it must be kept up."

"No, no, dunnot say that, sir! "T an't kep' up that way,- not that way, -'T is kep' down that way. I'm a weaver, I were in a fact'ry when a chilt; but I ha' gotten een to see wi', and eern to year wi'. I read in th' papers every 'Sizes, every Sessions - and you read too: I know it!-with dismay, how th' supposed unpossibility o' ever getting unchained from one another, at any price, on any terms, brings blood upon this land, and brings many common married fok to battle, murder, and sudden death. Let us ha' this right understood. Mine's a grievous case, an' I want - if yo' will be so good-t' know the law that helps me."

"Now, I tell you what!" said Mr. Bounderby, putting his hands in his pockets. "There is such a law."

Stephen, subsiding into his quiet manner, and never wandering in his attention, gave a nod.

"But it's not for you at all. It costs money. It costs a mint of money." "How much might that be?" Stephen calmly asked.

"Why, you'd have to go to Doctors' Commons with a suit, and you 'd have to go to a court of Common Law with a suit, and you 'd have to go to the House of Lords with a suit, and you 'd have to get an Act of Parliament to enable you to marry again; and it would cost you (if it was a case of very plain sailing), I sup pose, from a thousand to fifteen hundred pound," said Mr. Bounderby,-"perhape wice the money."

"There's no other law?"

Certainly not."

...

"Why, then, sir," said Stephen, ❝t is a muddle," said Stephen, shaking his head as he moved to the door,—“It is a' a muddle!"

When the Coketown operatives enter into a combination against their employers, and establish certain "regulations," Stepben refuses to join them, and they all renounce and shun him. And when Mr. Bounderby questions him about the association (styled the "United Aggregate Tribunal "), calling the members "a set of rascals and rebels," he earnestly protests that they are acting from a sense of duty, and is angrily told to finish what he 's at, and then look elsewhere for work. Leaving Coketown in search of employment, he falls into an abandoned coal-shaft (" Old Hell Shaft ") hidden by thick grass, where he remains for some days, when he is accidentally discovered, and is rescued, alive, but dreadfully bruised, and so injured, that he dies soon after being brought to the surface. (Bk. I, ch. x-xiii; Bk. II, ch. iv-vi, ix; Bk. III, ch. iv-vi.) See GRADGRIND, Tом. Bounderby, Josiah. A wealthy Coketown manufacturer, who marries the daughter of Mr. Gradgrind. (Bk. I, ch. iii-ix, xi, xivxvi; Bk. II, ch. i-xii; Bk. III, ch. ii-ix.) See GRADGRIND, LOUISA.

Mr. Bounderby was as near being Mr. Gradgrind's bosom-friend as a man perfectly devoid of sentiment can approach that spiritual relationship towards another man perfectly devoid of sentiment. So near was Mr. Bounderby, or, if the reader should prefer it, so far off.

He was a rich man, - banker, merchant, manufacturer, and what not; a big, loud man, with a stare, and a metallic laugh; a man made out of a coarse material, which seemed to have been stretched to make so much of him; a man with a great puffed head and forehead, swelled veins in his temples, and such a strained skin to his face, that it seemed to hold his eyes open, and lift his eyebrows up; a man with a pervading appearance on him of being inflated like a balloon, and ready to start; a man who could never sufficiently vaunt himself a self-made man; a man who was always proclaiming, through that brassy speaking-trumpet of a voice of his, his old ignorance and his old poverty; a nan who was the Bully of humility.

A year or two younger than his eminently practical friend, Mr. Bounderly looked older; his seven or eight and forty might have had the seven or eight added to it again, without surprising anybody. He had not much hair. One might have fancied he had talked it off; and that what was left, all standing up in disorder, was in that condition from being constantly blown about by his windy boastfulness.

Bounderby, Mrs. Louisa. See GRADGRIND, LOUISA.

Childers, Mr. E. W. B. A young man, who is a member of Sleary's Circus Troupe, and is celebrated for his daring vaulting act as the Wild Huntsman of the North American Prairies. (Bk. I, ch. vi; Bk. III, ch. vii, viii.)