THE ONE THING NEEDFUL

NOW, what I want is, Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing butrnFacts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root outrneverything else. You can only form the minds of reasoning animals uponrnFacts: nothing else will ever be of any service to them. This is thernprinciple on which I bring up my own children, and this is the principlernon which I bring up these children. Stick to Facts, sir!’rnrnThe scene was a plain, bare, monotonous vault of a school-room, and thernspeaker’s square forefinger emphasized his observations by underscoringrnevery sentence with a line on the schoolmaster’s sleeve. The emphasisrnwas helped by the speaker’s square wall of a forehead, which had hisrneyebrows for its base, while his eyes found commodious cellarage in tworndark caves, overshadowed by the wall. The emphasis was helped by thernspeaker’s mouth, which was wide, thin, and hard set. The emphasis wasrnhelped by the speaker’s voice, which was inflexible, dry, andrndictatorial. The emphasis was helped by the speaker’s hair, whichrnbristled on the skirts of his bald head, a plantation of firs to keep thernwind from its shining surface, all covered with knobs, like the crust ofrna plum pie, as if the head had scarcely warehouse-room for the hard factsrnstored inside. The speaker’s obstinate carriage, square coat, squarernlegs, square shoulders,—nay, his very neckcloth, trained to take him byrnthe throat with an unaccommodating grasp, like a stubborn fact, as itrnwas,—all helped the emphasis.rnrn‘In this life, we want nothing but Facts, sir; nothing but Facts!’rnrnThe speaker, and the schoolmaster, and the third grown person present,rnall backed a little, and swept with their eyes the inclined plane ofrnlittle vessels then and there arranged in order, ready to have imperialrngallons of facts poured into them until they were full to the brim.