No one who can read, ever looks at a book, even unopened on a shelf, like one who cannot.

Fledgeby's mother offended her family by marrying Fledgeby's father. It is one of the easiest achievements in life to offend your family when your family want to get rid of you. Fledgeby's mother's family had been very much offended with her for being poor, and broke with her for becoming comparatively rich.

Det er blitt skrevet om menn som har gjennomgått et grusomt fangenskap, eller gjennomlevd forferdelige prøvelser, eller i selvforsvar har drept et forsvarsløst medmenneske, at sporene av det aldri falmet fra ansiktet deres til den dagen de døde. Var det noe slikt spor her?

Hr. Podsnaps verden var, moralsk sett, ingen stor verden, og heller ikke geografisk sett; skjønt hans forretninger bygget på handel med andre land, betraktet han andre land, med dette ene viktige unntak, som feiltagelser, blåste av deres manerer og skikker med den autoritative observasjon: «U-engelsk!» og sim salabim, med et armvift og en blodtilstrømming til ansiktet var de feid bort. For øvrig sto verden opp klokken åtte, glattbarberte seg kvart over, spiste frokost ni, reiste inntil City ti, kom hjem halv seks og spiste middag klokken syv. Hr. Podsnaps forestilling om de skjønne kunsters vesen kunne sammenfattes slik. Litteratur: store bokstaver som med stor respekt beskrev hvordan man sto opp klokken åtte, glattbarberte seg kvart over, spiste frokost ni, reiste inntil City ti, kom hjem halv seks og spiste middag klokken syv. Maleri og skulptur: statuer og portretter som skildrer professorer som opp klokken åtte, glattbarberte seg kvart over, spiste frokost ni, reiste inntil City ti, kom hjem halv seks og spiste middag klokken syv. Musikk: en respektabel konsert (uten variasjoner) på strenge- og blåseinstrumenter, som på en sedat måte ga uttrykk for hvordan man sto opp klokken åtte, glattbarberte seg kvart over, spiste frokost ni, reiste inntil City ti, kom hjem halv seks og spiste middag klokken syv. Intet annet var tillatt disse vagabonder, kunstene, under trussel om bannlysning. Intet annet var tillatt - noen!

Bradley Headstone, in his decent black coat and waistcoat, and decent white shirt, and decent formal black tie, and decent pantaloons of pepper and salt, with his decent silver watch in his pocket and its decent hair-guard round his neck, looked a thoroughly decent young man of six-and-twenty. He was never seen in any other dress, and yet there was a certain stiffness in his manner of wearing this, as if there were a want of adaptation between him and it, recalling some mechanics in their holiday clothes. He had acquired mechanically a great store of teacher's knowledge. He could do mental arithmetic mechanically, sing at sight mechanically, blow various wind instruments mechanically, even play the great church organ mechanically. From his early childhood up, his mind had been a place of mechanical stowage. The arrangement of his wholesale warehouse, so that it might be always ready to meet the demands of retail dealers history here, geography there, astronomy to the right, political economy to the left—natural history, the physical sciences, figures, music, the lower mathematics, and what not, all in their several places—this care had imparted to his countenance a look of care; while the habit of questioning and being questioned had given him a suspicious manner, or a manner that would be better described as one of lying in wait. There was a kind of settled trouble in the face. It was the face belonging to a naturally slow or inattentive intellect that had toiled hard to get what it had won, and that had to hold it now that it was gotten. He always seemed to be uneasy lest anything should be missing from his mental warehouse, and taking stock to assure himself.

The schools -for they were twofold, as the sexes - were down in that district of the flat country tending to the Thames, where Kent and Surrey meet, and where the railways still bestride the market- gardens that will soon die under them. The schools were newly built, and there were so many like them all over the country, that one might have thought the whole were but one restless edifice with the locomotive gift of Aladdin's palace. They were in a neighbourhood which looked like a toy neighbourhood taken in blocks out of a box by a child of particularly incoherent mind, and set up anyhow; here, one side of a new street; there, a large solitary public-house facing nowhere; here, another unfinished street already in ruins; there, a church; here, an immense new warehouse; there, a dilapidated old country villa; then, a medley of black ditch, sparkling cucumber-frame, rank field, richly cultivated kitchen-garden, brick viaduct, arch-spanned canal, and disorder of frowziness and fog. As if the child had given the table a kick, and gone to sleep.

But, even among school-buildings, school-teachers, and school- pupils, all according to pattern and all engendered in the light of the latest Gospel according to Monotony, the older pattern into which so many fortunes have been shaped for good and evil, comes out. It came out in Miss Peecher the schoolmistress, watering her flowers, as Mr Bradley Headstone walked forth. It came out in Miss Peecher the schoolmistress, watering the flowers in the little dusty bit of garden attached to her small official residence, with little windows like the eyes in needles, and little doors like the covers of school-books.

Small, shining, neat, methodical, and buxom was Miss Peecher; cherry-cheeked and tuneful of voice. A little pincushion, a little housewife, a little book, a little workbox, a little set of tables and weights and measures, and a little woman, all in one. She could write a little essay on any subject, exactly a slate long, beginning at the left-hand top of one side and ending at the right-hand bottom of the other, and the essay should be strictly according to rule. If Mr Bradley Headstone had addressed a written proposal of marriage to her, she would probably have replied in a complete little essay on the theme exactly a slate long, but would certainly have replied Yes. For she loved him. The decent hair-guard that went round his neck and took care of his decent silver watch was an object of envy to her. So would Miss Peecher have gone round his neck and taken care of him. Of him, insensible. Because he did not love Miss Peecher.

Fledgeby deserved Mr Alfred Lammle's eulogium. He was the meanest cur existing, with a single pair of legs. And instinct (a word we all clearly understand) going largely on four legs, and reason always on two, meanness on four legs never attains the perfection of meanness on two.

'But I am more than a lad,' said Bradley, with his clutching hand, 'and I WILL be heard, sir.'
'As a schoolmaster,' said Eugene, 'you are always being heard. That ought to content you.'