There is literary noise hereunder; and the cause of that artistic din may be that the mind of a literary pigmy (in conversation with a Gargantua or a Pantagruel) tends to reel from the booming echo of the stentorian tones of the giant(s).

I wrote this in the summer of '95.

Those were Dickensian "Hard Times" indeed, when philosopher par excellence, Thomas Gradgrind, with an invaluable head laden with precious "facts, facts, facts', asserted with marketable solemnity that everything associated with human activity that did not contribute to enlightened self-interest and almighty profit was egregiously malign - nothing more so than leisurely amusement and the leech that evolved into the human pauper.
Since then, generations of impractical sentimentalists have never ceased to be impressed by Dickens' ability to represent so accurately, incisively, and eloquently how the poor were smitten with the germ of "thpeech" impediment in those "Hard Times" - as they, perhaps, would be in future ones as well.
How shocking it must have been when Dickens' Mr. Sleary, on behalf of every poor man in England, enigmatically lisped to Mr. Gradgrind, the man of consummate refinement and sagacity, "-- make the betht of uth; not the wurtht". A statement that has nonplussed well-fed scholars and politicians ever since.
We may declare thlurringly and incomprehenthimbly to all wethtern peopleth: "Oh how bleak theemth the morrow for thoth poor in thpeech and other thothial refinementh".
Since this chronicler has , by an inexplicable miracle of vocal whimsy, acquired a temporary and unfamiliar lucidity of expression (an Aarony of fate!), let him hasten to clothe with reality his babble of ghostly sighs - in London's Hyde Park , of course, where his spectral audience is in evidence! - before the customary inhibition of speech overwhelms him once more.
Let the purists fleer and the bland smile at the gall of a man of such patently inferior aptitude, like the author of this romance, to dare divine what Dickens' observations, with regard to the western world, would have been like today. Few things are more daunting and uninviting - sometimes embarrassingly fatuous - than attempting to parallel the richness, vividness and variety of imagery, the immense verbal artistry, and the keenness as well as accuracy of observation that jointly were the hallmark of Dickens' genius. However, the world is not without its fair share of eccentricity - in this vein, this author's musings may be interpreted.

The lighting in the Phantasmagoria Cafe, where the following dialogue occurred, was subdued to the point of invisibility. Dickens was sitting opposite this writer separated from him by a round table of considerable circumferential dimensions. Directly behind Dickens, depending from a low ceiling (which ceiling exhibited a curvature so constructed as to tease the eye into imagining its extension into the vastness beyond) was a wasp-shaped tubular contraption that intermittently belched out brownish, grainy emissions which the waitress enigmatically referred to as "horary dust". Oscillating from Dickens' waist, out of its fob, was a watch which seemed to advance, with singular tardiness, only a minute for every five registered by that of this writer.

Dickens: (fixing upon this writer a gaze of avuncular obligingness). Your remark (that the ideological spirit informing Canadian policy makers, in particular Ontarians and Albertans, and an increasingly greater part of the informed - or misinformed, as the case may be - populace, is indistinguishable from that of your southerly neighbours and that of my good old Blighty) is accurate. I am also pleasantly flattered by and in wholehearted agreement with your conjecture that it happens to be the uncharitable social guideline which I have satirized with uncharacteristic humourlessness in my book, "Hard Times".

This Writer: And very well done it was, with such pungency and an incisiveness that is prickly to the touch.

Dickens: (Distracted by a portrait - designated 'MT'- of a formidable Amazon, looks at it with a quizzical smile for a few seconds, then starts off in a poetical vein)

This Writer: (thunderstruck) In other words, you mean that in such a context, greed is elevated to the realm of inviolate sanctity and men like Bounderby have a field-day because statistics have freed their acquisitive instincts from moral blame.

Dickens: Bulls-eye! My friend, such mathematical facts, when carefully manipulated, are of equal rank with heavenly benediction in potency of ablution of sins. The deficit is a fact; whom to benefit or injure because of it betrays ones ideological preference.

This Writer: You must mean then that the truth about who materially benefits the most from the budgetary deficit and the nostrum of monetary policy, which occasions that enormous benefit, are rarely ever made the flashpoint of public debate. You must then be in agreement with contemporary social scholars who hold that positive facts - social facts, that is - are not that easily separated from pet (or petty) human intentions; I mean, er, normative or ideological intentions?

Dickens: (nodding) Correlative to what you've just said, remember how Bounderby so elaborately and boastfully fabricated a frightfully taxing and grim formative stage which preceded his climb up the ladder of success? All that was intended to buttress the then, although you could say current, abiding social doctrine of laissez faire. His is a typically instructive instance of fact being in the service of conscious, normative preference. The same thing can happen subconsciously too. The important thing to realize is that, even though his facts were shamelessly and deliberately tainted, he chose them.

This Writer: A rather confusing place our social world is Mr Dickens!

Dickens: Perhaps, my young friend, you're an agnostic, blissfully mindless of the popular, secular religion of Mammonism - with its high priesthood, its lesser priesthood, its laity, its pagans and its leprous excommunicants. Perhaps the social geometers of well sculped fact, like your nimble-minded economists, have educated you into being eminently unqualified, as they decidedly are, to imagine your social environment in this way. On the other hand, sociologists, like Veblen and Weber for instance, who have penetrated the true meaning of status and prestige, betray a cast of mind not alien to such an instructive and imaginatively fertile view of the obtaining social arrangement. Needless to say that the pagan and the excommunicate have no role , except that of unwanted nuisance, to play in such a society - not so the priesthood and the enchanted laity. You may have plausibly guessed that in such an environment of blissful material faith, a prophetic, clarion call to the faithful to participate in a spiritual common seance revelation would yield results in devotional keeping with the main chance, hypothetically (as opposed to commonsensically) understood as the abstract noun "selfishness".

This Writer: What you mean then, Mr. Dickens, about Mammonism, could be summed up in Veblen's words: "When we say that a man is 'worth' so many dollars, the expression does not convey the idea that moral or other personal excellence is to be measured in terms of money, but it does very distinctly convey the idea that the fact of his possessing many dollars is very much to his credit --- Economic success is in our day the most widely as well as the most readily ascertainable measure of esteem. All this will hold with still greater force for a generation which is born into a world already encrusted with this habit of mind."

Dickens: Amen!

This Writer: How far-seeing Veblen was! It has been 75 years since he said that.

Dickens: Only fifteen years it has been, young man.

This Writer: But -

Dickens: (motioning with his hand) Young man, we have very little time!

This Writer: Oh, alright. It is all so rather disconcerting, Mr. Dickens. It would appear, from what you're saying, that the search for the holy grail of complete economic freedom is further enriching those already making wheelbarrowfuls of money from the much ballyhooed deficit - and it is officially purposed to grant them even more freedom in future! It is also well known that the higher irresponsibility of fabulously rich speculators, who led the charge of leveraged buyouts of corporations on both sides of the 49th parallel, a little while ago, contributed significantly to the current economic ills. Yet when just a few people abuse our welfare system for nickels and dimes, a furor reaching up to high heaven results. Furthermore, a policy which favours unemployment as a hedge against inflation ends up savaging its very victims. You know that there has been a retrenchment of welfare rates to the tune of 22% over here I suppose? What does this then suggest about our electorate, which returns such respectable leaders to the corridors of power on the strength of a platform which seems to do violence to reality? Have our voters become politically constipated and no longer able to ideologically excrete? Has the stodge of minute-long propagandistic commercials become the political nutriment contributing to this costiveness?

Dickens: Your language is rather intemperate even as the relevance of your comments is without blemish. Inasmuch as the response of a greater part of your electorate is concerned, I suggest that you revert to the metaphor I colourfully employed a little while ago with regard to the secular religious community. I should, however, like to speak to the issue of the pagans and excommunicants in your system - which class of people belongs to the much maligned and quarantined world of pauperdom. You know that I have expended no end of literary energy on this theme, I suppose?

This Writer: Only a crusader for invincible ignorance would dispute that Mr. Dickens.

Dickens: Idle paupers in my dimension at least enjoy the redeeming and serviceable feature of keeping the wage rates low. I am not sure that in your zone, with its frenzied drive towards automation, they are needed to play such an economically salutary role. Perhaps the paupers' remaining claim to a semblance of serviceability lies in the curious agency they provide as an electoral rallying theme. In such a context, gifted artists portray the pauper as a pestilential bugaboo with a long, pointy, callous protuberance on both extremities of the forehead and an enormous wart on both convex contours of the nostrils. As for the rest of the details, describing the remainder of the anatomy, I leave that to your imagination.

This Writer: Good Lord, Mr. Dickens! Those are strong words indeed!

Dickens: I am only making reference to what your generation gladly accepts as responsible statesmanship. If you do not like it, you are free to refuse citizenship in the republic of letters. I believe that's how Gloomy Dean Swift, or Erasmus, or Voltaire, or Rabelais, or Lucian would have responded to your situation.
Now, in reference to the doleful cuts you just mentioned, I believe, my friend, that you're not altogether unaware of etymology: the study of the origin and meaning of words, and are cognizant of the etymological mutability of the terms we use over long periods of time. Now, over here in my dimension, the word 'cruel' signifies being insensitive to the condition or suffering of others; being brutal, if you will. This meaning of it you may call its romantic variety.
Perhaps in your zone this term has been deprived of this signification and adorned with one that is statistically clean-cut and emotively jejune. This strain of it you may call the tough-minded, commonsensical one. I own that I am employing the romantic meaning of the term when I make reference to the heavy-handed treatment of paupers that is becoming fashionable in your zone ( in my dimension here, it's an article of faith). It is cruel, and your leaders have been popularly mandated to be morally insensitive - an instructive instance of the Divine Right of Executive Irresponsibility; of statutory misfeasance electorally fortified.
This is another illustrative example of the morality of carefully selected statistical facts which I have previously adverted to.

This Writer: But Mr. Dickens; at least you have to accept that our leaders are men of principle; that they are sticking to what they promised in their election platform.

Dickens: I have only got three quotes from certain people, whose names I shall not reveal, in answer to that statement. Quote number one: "Lack of imagination is not to be confused with lack of principle. On the contrary, an unimaginative man is often a man of the highest principles. The trouble is that his principles conform to Conford's famous definition: 'A principle is a rule of inaction giving valid general reasons for not doing in a specific instance what to unprincipled instinct would seem right.'
Quote number two: "They have replaced the responsible interpretation of events with the disguise of events by a maze of public relations; respect for public debate with unshrewd notions of psychological warfare; intellectual ability with the agility of the sound, mediocre judgement; The capacity to elaborate alternatives and gauge their consequences with the executive stance."
Last Quote: "The atrocities of the fourth epoch are committed by men as functions of a rational social machinery - men possessed by an abstracted view of the humanity of their victims, and as well, their own humanity --- These actions are not necessarily sadistic; they are merely businesslike; they are not emotional at all; they are efficient, rational, technically clean-cut. They are inhuman acts because they are impersonal."

This Writer: I believe I grasp the meaning of your words. I think they are in keeping with a comment you made about why you wrote "Hard Times" in a letter to one of the wizards of this statistical morality; namely Charles Knight. I quote: "My satire is against those who see figures and averages, and nothing else - the representatives of the wickedest and most enormous vice of this time --- the addled heads who would take the average of cold in the Crimea during twelve months as a reason for clothing a soldier in nankeens on a night when he would be frozen to death in fur, and who would comfort the labourer in travelling twelve miles a day to and from his work by telling him that the average distance of one inhabited place from another in the whole area of England, is not more than four miles." It would appear Mr. Dickens that you were listening to our current leaders magisterially declaiming their social policy when you wrote that comment. They seem to have carefully calculated for the pauper an average mean attitude and emolument, and for the blest, a maximum variance from meanness.

Dickens: (animated) It is an amazing strain of sympathy, this econometric morality, which reflects the vast depths of mysterious spirituality reposing in its upholders. Imagine! Your great leaders attend dinners or balls where their affluent friends, or even they themselves, offer gratuities, in appreciation of service, of greater pecuniary amount than what a person on the dole receives monthly for his upkeep - yet they diminish that paltry handout by such a generous percentage!! That your leaders are tough and grim businessmen no one can controvert; it can only be hoped, however, that someday they will be political statesmen as well.
Where do you think these leaders will spend their post-political careers? Will it not be with, or as part of, the high priesthood of that community of faith we discussed previously? As corporate men? Therein lies the reason for their cavalier treatment of pauperism, which is not their constituency anyway - in the context of both political and social aspiration or profit-minded statesmanship. You obviously know that in the current context of the popular social sneer, their disdain for the poor man is not even masked.
Of course, bloodying the nose of the pauper is an exercise exhibited with remarkable ease. It suspiciously puts one in mind of the behaviour of a bully, and indeed one would be hard put to it to distinguish it from such browbeating behaviour. It is the pet behaviour of the "porochial Beadle" in my book, "Oliver Twist", where it is pointed out that such behaviour does not necessarily mirror the courage of those who evince it. As you very well know, the refined philosophy of the "porochial beadle" was one of "out-of-door relief": "out-of-door relief, properly managed; properly managed ma'am: is the porochial safeguard. The great principle of out-of-door relief is to give the paupers what they do not want; and then they stop coming".
Well, your leaders are capable of a better turn of phrase but the identity of attitude is incontrovertible. Indeed, some of your learned spokesmen seem to echo a sentiment similar to your leaders - which goes something like: " Why does this beggarly lot din our ears with cries of injustice? Why do they not just starve quietly and let us dine in peace?"

This Writer: (taken aback) Your point is well taken Mr. Dickens. Many of us feel, however, that we have made giant strides, in both a technical and moral sense, from the Victorian way of life. We feel that the problems that you have just adverted to amount to no more than a farcical intermezzo in the eery gothic drama of human history. Surely those venial misdeeds you mentioned pale in comparison to Hitlerite blood and thunder, for instance.

Dickens: My friend, someday the gatekeepers of the halls of learning and culture will grace your head with a well merited, olive-leafed chaplet. I suggest that since you're in desperate want right now, like hungry David, you should go and help yourself to a few thousands at the nearest large bank. Surely they are going to wink at such a petty misdeed. As I said, you show merit and are at least cognizant of the complexities of moral debate. The solution, for many in your technologically prayerful society, to such moral problems, is to hack the sentences , in which they are phrased, into their constituent words, and these into component morphemes and phonemes, then throw these into a pentium logic chopper for processing. The outcome of this whole process is usually, from a moral standpoint, what people in the computer programming environment refer to as-- er-- Oh, what's that ghastly if relevant expression? I believe it's one of those popular banalities referred to as a buzzword.

This Writer: Oh, Mr. Dickens your sting makes it feel like a funny buzziness. I believe the expression is, "Garbage in, garbage out."

Dickens: Touché! Let everyone carry a pentium in one's heart! It makes moralizing and thinking much easier and less mentally fatiguing. What a dissolvent of personal responsibility! In this way, would the world's intellectual and moral pollution be rapidly processed. In this manner too would the retrieval of and flirtation with the popular hobby of social atavism be effected without awareness of its ancestry.

This Writer: You lost me, Mr. Dickens, with your last sentence.

Dickens: I mean regression to an earlier social type. I regret that I am not referring to mathematical regression which appeals to nimble and logical minds. By the way, that reminds me; I must get a wordprocessor. I have several more books in mind. They will require a lot of space and time.

Suddenly, there occurred, seriatim, a press of events - with a rapidity that mocks the dynamics of the human motor responses and the imagination to grasp, define and relate them. All one can do, in such circumstances, is to retail imprecisely, and very imperfectly at that, how the events transpired, then hope that the truth hovers elusively somewhere in the train of reconstruction.

Dickens had just finished jotting down something on a pad in front of him. He was in the process of opening his mouth (presumably, to say something) when a potent beam shot out of the wasp-shaped tube, totally encompassing him with a cloud of "horary dust". With extraordinary difficulty, this writer saw Dickens (his mouth still opening, but at a glacially retarded rate - millimetre by stadial millimetre) contract in the direction of the tube - as though his whole height, from the soles of his feet to his hairline, had been squeezed into the very hairs atop his head. In a flash, he vanished somewhere along the curvature of the ceiling that merged with the expansive beyond.

This writer, on picking up the pad (which, miraculously, had been spared this vanishing act), read: " Pauperth mutht be amuthed; they cannot alwayth be deprethed"

Ith anybody lithening?