A little
hard-headed, Ripstone pippin-faced man, was conversing with a fat old gentleman in one corner; and two or three more old gentlemen, and two or three more old ladies, sat bolt upright and motionless on their chairs, staring very hard at Mr.
Tell Josiah Bounderby of Coketown, of your district schools and your model schools, and your training schools, and your whole kettle-of-fish of schools; and Josiah Bounderby of Coketown, tells you plainly, all right, all correct - he hadn't such advantages - but let us have
hard-headed, solid-fisted people - the education that made him won't do for everybody, he knows well - such and such his education was, however, and you may force him to swallow boiling fat, but you shall never force him to suppress the facts of his life.'
A willing, working, soft hearted, not
hard-headed fellow, Plornish took his fortune as smoothly as could be expected; but it was a rough one.
I have cross-examined these men, one of them a
hard-headed countryman, one a farrier, and one a moorland farmer, who all tell the same story of this dreadful apparition, exactly corresponding to the hell-hound of the legend.
He was a
hard-headed, practical man, and farthest from him was any intention of ever reading the books.
He was much older than the Maypole man, being to all appearance five-and- forty; but was one of those self-possessed,
hard-headed, imperturbable fellows, who, if they are ever beaten at fisticuffs, or other kind of warfare, never know it, and go on coolly till they win.
He had inherited his father's sordid love of money, without inheriting his father's
hard-headed capacity for seeing the uses to which money can be put.
"Yes," I said, "I do remember you now; and you are as
hard-headed as you were thirteen years ago in that ship, else you wouldn't have punished me so.
A
hard-headed, square-shouldered, pertinaciously self-willed man--it was plainly useless to contend with him.
"Why, in sooth, Little John," said he, "thou hast a blundering
hard-headed way that seemeth to bring thee right side uppermost in all thy troubles; but let us see who cometh out best this day." So saying, he clapped his palm to Little John's and each departed upon his way, the trees quickly shutting the one from the other's sight.
What evenings, when the candles came, and I was expected to employ myself, but, not daring to read an entertaining book, pored over some
hard-headed, harder-hearted treatise on arithmetic; when the tables of weights and measures set themselves to tunes, as 'Rule Britannia', or 'Away with Melancholy'; when they wouldn't stand still to be learnt, but would go threading my grandmother's needle through my unfortunate head, in at one ear and out at the other!
This
hard-headed old Overreach approved of the sentimental song, as the suitable garnish for girls, and also as fundamentally fine, sentiment being the right thing for a song.