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Dear Pickwickians,

this week our reading schedule only covers two chapters, which made 13 pages in my Penguin edition, but still a lot of things happen in these two chapters. Chapter 11 is entitled “Lower and Lower��, and we might infer that it refers to Louisa. First of all, though, we learn that Mr. Gradgrind comes down from London when he is told of the death of his wife, and he ”buried her in a business-like manner.�� Afterwards he returns ”with promptitude to the national cinder-heap�� When you come to think of it, it is very sad that a husband should not feel more emotional about the death and the funeral of his wife, and the rather casual way in which the narrator mentions Mr. Gradgind’s reaction to his wife’s death made me pity her lot of having been married to him even more.

In the meantime, Mrs. Sparsit keeps up her relentless watch on Louisa and Mr. Harthouse even though she spends the greater part of the week at the bank. When one day, Mr. Bounderby is called away on business, Mrs. Sparsit suspects that Louisa might in time arrive at the lowest step of her imaginary staircase, and so she sounds Tom as to Mr. Harthouse’s relation to Louisa and as to his whereabouts. Tom finally says that he is expecting Harthouse for the following day, the Saturday. She also asks Tom to tell Louisa that �� contrary to Mr. Bounderby’s expectations, actually �� she will not come down to the Bounderbys�� place for the weekend this time, which Tom in a rather impolite fashion agrees to do. As to Tom, he really seems to hide something or to have a bad conscience, or at least some kind of uneasiness about something as this passage implies:

”He had long been a down-looking young fellow, but this characteristic had so increased of late, that he never raised his eyes to any face for three seconds together.��

The next day, Mrs. Sparsit eagerly waits for the evening and then makes her way to the station, where she witnesses Tom waiting in vain for his friend Harthouse. Mrs. Sparsit concludes that this is a red herring, “’[…] a device to keep him [i.e. Tom, T.S.] out of the way […] Harthouse is with his sister now!�� It is this certainty that gives wings to the jealous woman and makes her go to Bounderby’s country house, where she suspects Louisa and Harthouse to cuckold Mr. Bounderby. Not finding anyone in the house, she creeps into the garden, and the narrator describes it like this:

”She went up to the house, keeping within the shrubbery, and went round it, peeping between the leaves at the lower windows. Most of them were open, as they usually were in such warm weather, but there were no lights yet, and all was silent. She tried the garden with no better effect. She thought of the wood, and stole towards it, heedless of long grass and briers: of worms, snails, and slugs, and all the creeping things that be. With her dark eyes and her hook nose warily in advance of her, Mrs. Sparsit softly crushed her way through the thick undergrowth, so intent upon her object that she probably would have done no less, if the wood had been a wood of adders.
Hark!
The smaller birds might have tumbled out of their nests, fascinated by the glittering of Mrs. Sparsit’s eyes in the gloom, as she stopped and listened.��

It’s marvellous how Dickens uses the idea of “worms, snails, and slugs, and all the creeping things that be�� in order to associate the sneaking eavesdropper with a creeping kind of �� I’d say �� Reptile. Mrs. Sparsit here appears like a snake, which is even able to charm smaller birds into falling out of their nests, and the high grass that is mentioned are redolent of the phrase “snake in the grass��. One can note that in the course of this chapter, Mrs. Sparsit is surprised by heavy rain �� the rain itself probably being a symbol of further disorder �� and that the narrator will again and again dwell on her becoming more and more soaked and dirty and dishevelled, but still she is so full of hatred and glee at the apparent proof of Louisa’s unfaithfulness that she does not seem to mind all that in the least. We readers, however, know that now has come the time when Mrs. Sparsit drops her mask of gentility and high breeding and shows herself in her true colours, which are rather dirty. Maybe the title of the chapter is more ambiguous in that the words “lower and lower�� refer to Mrs. Sparsit, who is ready to stoop very low indeed in order to satisfy her malevolent curiosity.

Apparently, however, Mrs. Sparsit is quite correct in her assumptions about Mr. Harthouse, who is definitely making love to Louisa and tries to coax her into meeting him in private in the absence of her husband. How will Louisa decide? Mrs. Sparsit is quite sure of knowing the answer and when Louisa is seen by her leaving the house a little later, she anticipates that the young woman is going to leave her husband. Mrs. Sparsit follows Louisa to the station but later she eventually loses track of her �� only we readers are treated to imaginative passages like this:

”The seizure of the station with a fit of trembling, gradually deepening to a complaint of the heart, announced the train. Fire and steam, and smoke, and red light; a hiss, a crash, a bell, and a shriek; Louisa put into one carriage, Mrs. Sparsit put into another: the little station a desert speck in the thunderstorm.��

Now all the fire and steam, and smoke, the hissing and crashing do not forebode very well for Louisa and they might even mirror the inner state of her mind; all this is, of course, grist to Mrs. Sparsit’s ghastly mill. At the end, however, that hate-fuelled spinster has to admit with tears of bitterness that she has lost Louisa, and this, too, might apply in more senses than only one.

Chapter 12 might be called „Down�� but it will show us that Louisa has avoided the fall that Mrs. Sparsit has so gleefully anticipated for her. Instead of following the enticements of Harthouse, Louisa fled to her father’s house. I was actually surprised to find him at home, because from what I gathered in the preceding chapter, he buried his wife and then returned to Parliament. But lo! he is in Coketown, ”writing in the room with the deadly statistical clock, proving something no doubt �� probably, in the main, that the Good Samaritan was a Bad Economist.��

Amidst the thunder, the door to his study opens suddenly, and the storm-worn Louisa is standing before him: ”so colourless, so disheveled, so defiant and despairing, that he was afraid of her.�� I found it quite telling that Louisa, for all her plight, is still defiant, which shows what a spirited and proud woman she is. Now, after she has sacrificed her own will in the vain hope of benefitting her brother, she comes back and tells her father that she curses the hour she was born to such a destiny. She reproaches her father with the education she has received through him, an education which stifled all sensibilities within her �� or, at least, which was meant to make her do so. Mr. Gradgrind is apparently sincerely shocked at these revelations, and he says that he did not know that Louisa was unhappy. At the same time, however, he supports his daughter with his arm.

Louisa describes herself as growing up ”‘[w]ith a hunger and thirst upon me, father, which have never been for a moment appeased; with an ardent impulse towards some region where rules, and figures, and definitions were not quite absolute; I have grown up, battling every inch of my way.’�� and then gives an account of what happened when Mr. Harthouse stepped into her life:

”’Father, chance then threw into my way a new acquaintance; a man such as I had had no experience of; used to the world; light, polished, easy; making no pretences; avowing the low estimate of everything, that I was half afraid to form in secret; conveying to me almost immediately, though I don’t know how or by what degrees, that he understood me, and read my thoughts. I could not find that he was worse than I. There seemed to be a near affinity between us. I only wondered it should be worth his while, who cared for nothing else, to care so much for me.��
‘For you, Louisa!��
Her father might instinctively have loosened his hold, but that he felt her strength departing from her, and saw a wild dilating fire in the eyes steadfastly regarding him.
‘I say nothing of his plea for claiming my confidence. It matters very little how he gained it. Father, he did gain it. What you know of the story of my marriage, he soon knew, just as well.��
Her father’s face was ashy white, and he held her in both his arms.
‘I have done no worse, I have not disgraced you. But if you ask me whether I have loved him, or do love him, I tell you plainly, father, that it may be so. I don’t know.’��

Thus it becomes obvious how Louisa’s mirthless upbringing and her utilitarian education contributed to her becoming more susceptible to the machinations of somebody like Harthouse. Mr. Gradgrind seems to realize that very quickly �� surprisingly quickly, if you ask me, considering that he has spent the better part of his life running along the lines of his utilitarian mindset �� and he seems ready to forgive and shelter his daughter while in his fainting daughter he sees �� the pride of his heart and the triumph of his system, lying, an insensible heap, at his feet.��

As I’ve already said, his conversion away from his usual mindset appeared to happen quite easily and quickly �� which is strange considering that not even the death of his wife was able to make him stop and think for a minute.

Tristram wrote: "Dear Pickwickians,

this week our reading schedule only covers two chapters, which made 13 pages in my Penguin edition, but still a lot of things happen in these two chapters. Chapter 11 is entitle..."

I really liked your observations concerning Mrs Sparsit and all the garden critters. It is very appropriate to compare her to crawly things. Yes, the rain does seem to come at the appropriate intervals doesn't it?

There is great tension created between Louisa and Harthouse. Will the dam of Louisa's pent up emotions burst? Can the love-making of a charmer, a snake, who is wilfully intent on charming and seducing Louisa, be successful?

Well, it is Dickens,and so Louisa flees from the clutches of Bounderby and goes to her father's home for safety. I imagine the initial 19C century reader would have believed that Louisa wound not have succumbed to Harthouse, but I equally wonder how many of the original readers would not have pondered whether living with Bounderby and being his wife was not an equally repulsive option.

Dickens does link an earlier symbol of Louisa's despair to the events of Ch 12. In this chapter Louisa, striking " herself with both hands" comments "if I had ever been here, it's ashes alone would save me from the void in which my whole world sinks. I did not mean to say this; but, father, you remember the last time we conversed in this room?" That reference is to a comment made by Louisa in Ch 15 of Book One titled "Father and Daughter" where she comments about the Coketown chimneys that "there seems to be nothing there, but languid and monotonous smoke. Yet when the time comes, Fire bursts out, father!"

Louisa, like the city that has been her home, is a place of great power and heat. It takes only the event of making cotton or energizing a heart to bring life, fire, heat and passion to the surface.

Here's the Holman Hunt painting "The Awakinging Conscience." It has frequently been linked to the characters of Little Emily and Stearforth from David Copperfield. The painting depicts the moment when a woman realizes that she is being seduced by a man and begins to flee from his presence.

I read this section while rain beat against the skylight in my family room, and I have to say that I felt much more a part of the scene because of it. Mrs. Sparsit is proving herself to be a nasty piece of work. I don't believe we've discussed her name, have we? It's easy to make the connection to "sparse" - meager, austere, scant. Undoubtedly referring to her financial circumstances, but perhaps her character, as well.

I agree with Tristram's assessment that Gradgrind seemed to yield to Louisa's despair much too easily, without one mention of facts. Perhaps he's bulldozed his wife and children so much that they never confronted him with any real feelings until now. Perhaps Mrs. Gradgrind should have had a few temper tantrums or crying jags rather than retreat into whatever shell she ended up living in, for her own benefit as well as that of her daughter.

Coming at the end of part II, this is a bit of a cliff-hanger. Louisa hasn't stepped off that bottom stair, but that actually creates more questions about what may happen next than if she had actually succumbed to Harthouse, as Mrs. Sparsit peeped through the windows.

Here is Harry French's illustration for this installment:



"Mrs. Sparsit Advanced Closer To Them"

Harry French

Part II, Chapter 11

Commentary:

"In this illustration, we return to the wood and the clearing filled with felled trees where Harthouse and Louisa customarily meet, but this time the informing consciousness is that of the jealous, spiteful Mrs. Sparsit. Watching Harthouse and Louisa as if she were Satan watching that happy couple in Milton's Paradise Lost (or, more pertinently given the modern fairytale quality of Hard Times, a witch or wolf stalking a pair of children lost in the forest), the bank harpy is the focus of Dickens's limited omniscient point of view in this scene. To realize this point of view visually, French has stationed her downstage center and minimized the importance of the young couple by stationing them upstage left. Louisa is now in full mourning (as Victorian custom called for during the year after a parent's death) rather than the white or light colors she has worn up to this point in the narrative-pictorial sequence. Whereas the text supports Mrs. Sparsit's view that Harthouse and Louisa are "savages" because they are about to the transgress the commandment against adultery (if they have not already done so) and that she is the defender of civilized values ("like Robinson Crusoe in his ambuscade"), the plate depicts them as apparently innocent--they are, after all, merely talking. In the text, Harthouse's violation of normal social constraints is suggested by his having avoided calling at the house first, instead making a direct approach on horseback through the fields. French does not indicate that Harthouse has made such an approach, for there is no horse "within a few paces" of the couple, and Harthouse is not wearing either riding habit or top-boots."

Charles S. Reinhart saw the same scene this way:



"Mrs. Sparsit Saw with Delight That His Arm Embraced Her"

Part II, Chapter 11

Charles Reinhart

This plate illustrates Book Two, Chapter Eleven, "Lower and Lower," in Charles Dickens's Hard Times, which appeared in American Household Edition, 1870.

Commentary:

"Claw-like hand gripping the tree-trunk as she peers around it to spy on James Hartohouse's assignation with Louisa Bounderby, Mrs. Sparsit seems to repeat the witches of fairytales such as "Hansel and Gretel." Indeed, the accompanying text is narrated in the limited omniscient, from Mrs. Sparsit's perspective, so that we experience her joy and self-congratulation while Dickens ironically terms her "the amiable woman in ambuscade". But in her moment of triumph (as proclaimed by the running head), rain begins to fall, preparing us for a thoroughly rain-soaked witch stripped of her powers over Bounderby.

Since the moment illustrated occurs just under the illustration, the reader encounters the plate, then waits with anticipation to encounter Mrs. Sparsit's "delight" at having caught the pair as lovers. As in the text, she has crept forward through the gloom of the woods, like Robinson Crusoe spying upon the savages, and drawn herself up behind a tree, but whereas the couple are "by the felled tree" with Harthouse's mount is "tied to the meadow side of the fence, within a few paces", Reinhart suggests the horse only by Harthouse's riding habit and the open meadow by the light behind the couple, seated on a convenient bench of the illustrator's own invention. The "savage" here, ironically, would seem to be the witch-like Mrs. Sparsit rather the fashionably acoutered lovers, but Dickens's so designating Harthouse and Louisa may be a comment upon their discarding social convention (Louisa's being married) and giving in to their sexual instincts. Reinhart's blocking the composition as he has done compels us to regard the lovers from Mrs. Sparsit's perspective, as in the text, and to reflect upon what use she intends to make of her knowledge of the affair, as yet in its incipient stages and not consummated."

Thanks for these illustrations Kim. I particularly enjoyed the accompanying commentaries. They both contained insight and illumination to both the illustrations and the singular event that is unfolding in the woods.

Well, I'm pulling for Louisa to stay honorable, but I also think if she succumbed it would make for a more interesting story. So ...

Thanks from me, too, Kim, for the illustations and the comments. I found the reference to Robinson Crusoe in connection with representing the powers of civilization quite interesting because when I read the chapter, I wondered whether the reference was not a bit out of place - but the comment cleared it all up for me.

In my opinion, Mrs. Sparsit is more like the lady pictured by Harry French - lean, austere and of a genteel sombreness. I think that Reinhart has presented her as much too witchlike; she resembles Good Mrs. Brown from Dombey and Son here, and I think that this interpretation makes too much of a picture book scoundrel of her, whereas in reality she is driven by one of the most prosaic and everyday vices - jealousy, or envy. And maybe mean spite. Making a witch out of her is doing her too much honour, I'd say.

In French's illustration, I also like that Harthouse is standing whereas Louisa is sitting. This mirrors the influence Harthouse is trying to exert on Louisa but it also excludes the closeness that would imply Harthouse's success.

Peter wrote: "Here's the Holman Hunt painting "The Awakinging Conscience." It has frequently been linked to the characters of Little Emily and Stearforth from David Copperfield. The painting depicts the moment w..."

Thanks for that link, Peter. I've seen that picture before somewhere, probably in connectin with David Copperfield, as you mentioned. The woman's hands seem to betray some kind of uneasiness but her facial expression still remains ambivalent to me, and her posture in my eyes does not show any intention of running away. Maybe I'm too insensitive to see the signs of virtue ;-)

Everyman wrote: "Well, I'm pulling for Louisa to stay honorable, but I also think if she succumbed it would make for a more interesting story. So ..."

I quite like Louisa because she still shows defiance and pride in her worst hour and has more power than the usual Dickens heroine - and therefore I was quite happy to find that she resisted Harthouse's seduction scheme. There is not a lot of plot in the novel, anyway, and so I will readily sacrifice the minimum of plot Louisa's entanglement with Harthouse could have provided for the sake of one of my favourite Dickens characters.

Tristram wrote: "and I think that this interpretation makes too much of a picture book scoundrel of her, whereas in reality she is driven by one of the most prosaic and everyday vices - jealousy, or envy."

What in the world is she so jealous of? Did she want to be the only woman in Bounderby's life? Something I can't quite imagine, and since she's shaking her fist at his picture I wouldn't think she adored him. I can't imagine being jealous of the position Louisa is now in, especially when she still seems to hold her own position in his eyes anyway.

I enjoyed the contrasts in these chapters, especially Chap 11. Mrs. Sparsit peeping in the lower windows of the country house took me back to Louisa & Tom peeping at the circus. But while theirs is an innocent childish curiosity, the widow stoops ever lower to disgrace Louisa. As others (and the illustration commentary) have suggested, there's an intriguing inversion of social evil in the woods, raising the question of just who is the savage in this scene. (Nice finishing touch of the "halo of confusion" around Sparsit's viewpoint.) The storm's downpour also presents an interesting contrast to Coketown's monotonous smoke, and while the rain dirties Sparsit, it allows Louisa to at last come clean with her father.

Mary Lou wrote: "I agree with Tristram's assessment that Gradgrind seemed to yield to Louisa's despair much too easily, without one mention of facts. Perhaps he's bulldozed his wife and children so much that they never confronted him with any real feelings until now ..."

I'm hoping that Gradgrind is also influenced, belatedly, by his wife's death, and perhaps also has a little inkling of the missing word that his wife was searching for on her deathbed. Maybe he even feels some guilt for not being there until the burial. Considering that people can die from catching a cold in this era, Louisa appearing out of a storm would have additional impact, even on someone as obtuse as Gradgrind (one can hope :).

Kim wrote: "Charles S. Reinhart saw the same scene this way:

"But in her moment of triumph (as proclaimed by the running head), rain begins to fall, preparing us for a thoroughly rain-soaked witch stripped of her powers over Bounderby.."

Thanks for these illustrations, Kim. I was already forming a witch picture from Dickens' details of Sparsit's green stockings, etc, but this description turned her into the wicked witch of Oz.

Tristram wrote: "I was actually surprised to find him at home, because from what I gathered in the preceding chapter, he buried his wife and then returned to Parliament. But lo! he is in Coketown.."

He's home for the 'vacation'. Which makes it even worse that he couldn't come for his wife's last days. Priorities...

Kim wrote: "Tristram wrote: "and I think that this interpretation makes too much of a picture book scoundrel of her, whereas in reality she is driven by one of the most prosaic and everyday vices - jealousy, o..."

She is probably indeed jealous of Louisa's intruding into the household. If it had not been for Louisa, who knows but what Mr. Bounderby might have been led to propose to Mrs. Sparsit one day? And even if he had not, she would have reigned supreme in his household. Now, with Louisa there, her role was a different one, and she eagerly grasped the opportunity of being head honcho at the bank.

Mrs. Sparsit's wrath and disdain against Mr. Bounderby are, to my mind, the natural results of the slight she has received from him.

Vanessa wrote: "He's home for the 'vacation'. Which makes it even worse that he couldn't come for his wife's last days. Priorities..."

That indeed makes his businesslike performance of his wife's funeral even more horrifying. At the same time, it also makes it harder to believe that he should melt away so quickly at his daughter's disburdening her heart before him and asking him for help and protaction.

Vanessa wrote: "I enjoyed the contrasts in these chapters, especially Chap 11. Mrs. Sparsit peeping in the lower windows of the country house took me back to Louisa & Tom peeping at the circus. ."

Nice connection. Though her reason is quite different from theirs, isn't it? Shows up the difference in characters between Louisa and Mrs. Sparsit nicely. Good point.

Vanessa wrote: "I enjoyed the contrasts in these chapters, especially Chap 11. Mrs. Sparsit peeping in the lower windows of the country house took me back to Louisa & Tom peeping at the circus. But while theirs is..."

I echo Everyman. The peeking contrast between Tom and Louisa under the circus tent and the Sparsit episode I missed. All three characters were peering in at worlds they could not attain. One childish and focussed on a world of imagination and one a bitter lonely woman who would never find love, illicit or not.

Thanks, Everyman and Peter. Yes, the peeping shows very different aspects

[hit the wrong key] ... Of the different characters. Also interesting that Louisa & Tom were caught and reprimanded. We'll see what's in store for Mrs. Sparsit...

Hello, I just wanted to let you know that I'm still here. I got bogged down when the chapters jumped from one to five, I think? I felt like I was in the remedial class. I hasten to add that I have nothing but admiration for children
or adults who struggle with English, Maths or other subject.

Many moons ago I Iobserved/helped my mother after she retired. She taught a remedial class and I never saw such hard workers. There were some very poor children and my mother would sneak in bags of clothes for the very poorly dressed. There was one little girl of about eight: grubby little face, runny nose and the thinnest sweater you can imagine, with no coat and little plastic sandals. There was snow on the ground. My mother broke her heart over her. She wore the same little sweater made of thread-like yarn, once white but now more of a greyish hue, every single day...

Sorry for getting sidetracked. I wonder how Mr Gradgrind would have dealt with her. Maybe, just maybe, he'd have had some compassion for her. His fault line appeared to be ignorance and we know that that can be a dangerous thing

Anyhow, I hope that I can pick up pace and work my way out of the remedial class or whatever it's called today. I confess, though, that I sort of like it here ...

Hilary wrote: "Hello, I just wanted to let you know that I'm still here. I got bogged down when the chapters jumped from one to five, I think? I felt like I was in the remedial class. I hasten to add that I have ..."

Glad to have you back, Hilary. I, too, got a rude awakening when the number of chapters increased. Thank God for audiobooks!

Ah thanks, Mary Lou. I never remember where to get audio books or where to access them. I know that I've clicked on links that people have been kind enough to let me know, but I have trouble finding them by myself! Ah well, thanks so much for the lovely welcome back!

Hilary wrote: "Ah thanks, Mary Lou. I never remember where to get audio books or where to access them. I know that I've clicked on links that people have been kind enough to let me know, but I have trouble findin..."

I don't know about where you are, but my library has an excellent collection of audio books, both on cd (I listen in the car) and Playaway, which requires a battery and ear buds. Can't beat the price. :-)

Mary Lou wrote: "I don't know about where you are, but my library has an excellent collection of audio books, both on cd (I listen in the car) and Playaway, which requires a battery and ear buds. Can't beat the price. :-) ."

And in addition to those, our library subscribes to Overdrive, which has thousands of ebooks and audiobooks to download for lending periods. Again, all free (well, all paid for by our way too high taxes! But one of the few really good uses of them. )

Hilary wrote: "Hello, I just wanted to let you know that I'm still here. I got bogged down when the chapters jumped from one to five, I think? I felt like I was in the remedial class. I hasten to add that I have ..."

Welcome back, Hilary! Actually I found it harder to deal with just two chapters a week because once I got immersed into the book - if immersed in Hard Times you can get, it seeming such a piecemeal way of telling a story -, the two chapters were finished and I had to wait before reading on.

As to Gradgrind, I am quite sure he would have taken pity on the little girl you mentioned. After all, he took pity on Sissy and kept her at his school despite Mr. Bounderby's vociferous bounderings. Strictly speaking, had Mr. Gradgrind not shown the capacity of human feeling in that situation, he would never have admitted the angel, as he later called her, into his home and things might have taken a quite different course.

Tristram wrote: "Welcome back, Hilary! Actually I found it harder to deal with just two chapters a week.. ."

It's good for you. Gives you an ability to experience empathy with Dickens's original readers.

Yes, Everyman, but it was also hard. The usual three chapters we read every week are normally longer, too, and so I quickly got used to that diet of three chapters or around 50 pages. It was enough to give you the impression that the story was moving on, but not too much as to prevent you from reading carefully and noticing interesting details, parallels etc. So I was quite happy to go back to our usual way of reading although I would also be willing to repeat the experiment with any other novel that appeared in weekly instalments, like Great Expectations provided that we limit the weekly method to one part of the book.

Saying that, of course, I will go with any decision the participating majority will vote for.

Although I'm old -- no, I'm not old, I'm ancient -- I cherish reading at the slow pace which Dickens's original readers experienced. Dickens wrote for readers who were only able to read a few chapters and then would have to wait a week or a month for more. I'm willing to trust his way of presenting his work.

Everyman wrote: "Although I'm old -- no, I'm not old, I'm ancient -- I cherish reading at the slow pace which Dickens's original readers experienced. Dickens wrote for readers who were only able to read a few chapt..."

True. The ancient part that is.

Kim wrote: "True. The ancient part that is. "

Yep. Me and the Pyramids.

Everyman wrote: "Although I'm old -- no, I'm not old, I'm ancient -- I cherish reading at the slow pace which Dickens's original readers experienced. Dickens wrote for readers who were only able to read a few chapt..."

Me, too, Everyman. Most of Dickens' readers didn't have the luxury of all the free time we have these days.* I'm sure they savored their time with his stories and were glad to have them doled out in manageable portions.

*Another book I'm reading refers to the Porters Union labor dispute in the 1930s, in which they finally agreed to reduce the work month from 400 to 240 hours. Can you imagine?? We forget just how good we have it these days.

Mary Lou wrote: "We forget just how good we have it these days. "

I fully agree. When I think back to how I hammered away texts on typewriters, having to be careful not to make any mistakes and trying to have the margin not too ragged, I am happy about modern text procession. Or just think how difficult it was to do literature research in the uni days before one could actually get started reading ... in this respect, however, I feel we were more challenged than those modern students who just google things and are of the opinion that the answer to everything is out there in the www. Our procedure was more stimulating to independent thinking and it also granted us the pleasure of chance discoveries in many a library shelf. But that's neither here nor there.

Tristram wrote: "Our procedure was more stimulating to independent thinking and it also granted us the pleasure of chance discoveries in many a library shelf. But that's neither here nor there. "

Oh, I think it's here. :-) Not all improvements to our lives come without a flip side, and I agree that, while the the internet is an amazing tool, it does seem to have resulted in a more homogenized (and yet, in many ways, also more polarized) society with less independent thinking. But despite the drawbacks that often come with progress, I think most of us would agree that in terms of health, hygiene, travel, life balance, tolerance of other cultures, and access to knowledge (which doesn't necessarily include formal education), we are far better off than ever before.

Certainly better off than people like Stephen or Rachael, for whom leisure time, electricity, and probably even literacy would have made reading Dickens' books a real challenge, even in installments.

Thanks for all your encouragement! Mary Lou I live in Ireland, the North. I've never checked out our library. Perhaps. I'll see if someone could check it out by proxy. I managed to listen to a chapter of an audiobook on GR by following a link. That was great.

Oh and, Everyman, I've known more ancient 4 year olds than you! ;-)

Hilary wrote: "Oh and, Everyman, I've known more ancient 4 year olds than you!"

I haven't.

Bwah ha ha, Kim! :-)