“You are to be in all things regulated and governed,” said the gentleman, “by fact. We hope to have, before long, a board of fact, composed of commissioners of fact, who will force the people to be a people of fact, and of nothing but fact. You must discard the word Fancy altogether. You have nothing to do with it. You are not to have, in any object of use or ornament, what would be a contradiction in fact. You don’t walk upon flowers in fact; you cannot be allowed to walk upon flowers in carpets. You don’t find that foreign birds and butterflies come and perch upon your crockery; you cannot be permitted to paint foreign birds and butterflies upon your crockery. You never meet with quadrupeds going up and down walls; you must not have quadrupeds represented upon walls. You must use,” said the gentleman, “for all these purposes, combinations and modifications (in primary colors) of mathematical figures which are susceptible of proof and demonstration. This is the new discovery. This is fact. This is taste.” The girl courtesied, and sat down. She was very young, and she looked as if she were frightened by the matter-of-fact prospect the world afforded. THE CHILD OF THE MARSHALSEA XI THE CHILD OF THE MARSHALSEA WHEN Dickens wrote _Little Dorrit_, he must often have thought of the times when as a boy he went to see his father in the debtors’ prison. As a shy little boy he had to do all sorts of errands which took him over the prison and through the narrow streets that were near it. Amy Dorrit, or little Dorrit, as she was called, was born in the great rambling prison called the Marshalsea. It was the only home she knew. Her father had got into debt and was sent to prison until the debt was paid. Of course he couldn’t pay it so long as he was locked up and not given a chance to earn anything. So there he stayed year after year till he had become the oldest inhabitant, and rather enjoyed the honor. But it was hard on little Dorrit. She had one good friend, the officer who was called the turnkey, because he had the keys of the prison and was the one who locked the prisoners in. When she began to walk and talk, he bought her a little armchair, and gave her toys. She became very fond of the turnkey, and was delighted when he dressed and undressed her dolls. After a while, little Dorrit began to wonder what the world outside the prison walls was like. She saw the turnkey turn his great key in the door and thought, how wonderful it would be to go out through it! She sat by the barred window, looking out. “Thinking of the fields?” the turnkey said, one day. “Where are they?” she asked. “Why, they are over there, my dear,” said the turnkey with a flourish of the keys. “Just about there.” “Does anybody open them, or shut them? Are they locked?” “Well,” he said, “not in general.” “Are they pretty, Bob?” She called him Bob because he asked her to.