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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of A Christmas Carol, by Charles Dickens
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: A Christmas Carol
+
+Author: Charles Dickens
+
+Illustrator: George Alfred Williams
+
+Release Date: September 20, 2006 [EBook #19337]
+Last updated: January 21, 2009
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A CHRISTMAS CAROL ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Jason Isbell and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+A CHRISTMAS CAROL
+
+By CHARLES DICKENS
+
+ILLUSTRATED BY
+GEORGE ALFRED WILLIAMS
+
+New York
+THE PLATT & PECK CO.
+
+_Copyright, 1905, by_ THE BAKER & TAYLOR COMPANY
+
+[Illustration: "He had been Tim's blood horse all the way from church."]
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION
+
+
+The combined qualities of the realist and the idealist which Dickens
+possessed to a remarkable degree, together with his naturally jovial
+attitude toward life in general, seem to have given him a remarkably
+happy feeling toward Christmas, though the privations and hardships of
+his boyhood could have allowed him but little real experience with this
+day of days.
+
+Dickens gave his first formal expression to his Christmas thoughts in
+his series of small books, the first of which was the famous "Christmas
+Carol," the one perfect chrysolite. The success of the book was
+immediate. Thackeray wrote of it: "Who can listen to objections
+regarding such a book as this? It seems to me a national benefit, and to
+every man or woman who reads it, a personal kindness."
+
+This volume was put forth in a very attractive manner, with
+illustrations by John Leech, who was the first artist to make these
+characters live, and his drawings were varied and spirited.
+
+There followed upon this four others: "The Chimes," "The Cricket on the
+Hearth," "The Battle of Life," and "The Haunted Man," with illustrations
+on their first appearance by Doyle, Maclise, and others. The five are
+known to-day as the "Christmas Books." Of them all the "Carol" is the
+best known and loved, and "The Cricket on the Hearth," although third in
+the series, is perhaps next in point of popularity, and is especially
+familiar to Americans through Joseph Jefferson's characterisation of
+Caleb Plummer.
+
+Dickens seems to have put his whole self into these glowing little
+stories. Whoever sees but a clever ghost story in the "Christmas Carol"
+misses its chief charm and lesson, for there is a different meaning in
+the movements of Scrooge and his attendant spirits. A new life is
+brought to Scrooge when he, "running to his window, opened it and put
+out his head. No fog, no mist; clear, bright, jovial, stirring cold;
+cold, piping for the blood to dance to; Golden sun-light; Heavenly sky;
+sweet fresh air; merry bells. Oh, glorious! Glorious!" All this
+brightness has its attendant shadow, and deep from the childish heart
+comes that true note of pathos, the ever memorable toast of Tiny Tim,
+"God bless Us, Every One!" "The Cricket on the Hearth" strikes a
+different note. Charmingly, poetically, the sweet chirping of the little
+cricket is associated with human feelings and actions, and at the crisis
+of the story decides the fate and fortune of the carrier and his wife.
+
+Dickens's greatest gift was characterization, and no English writer,
+save Shakespeare, has drawn so many and so varied characters. It would
+be as absurd to interpret all of these as caricatures as to deny Dickens
+his great and varied powers of creation. Dickens exaggerated many of his
+comic and satirical characters, as was his right, for caricature and
+satire are very closely related, while exaggeration is the very essence
+of comedy. But there remains a host of characters marked by humour and
+pathos. Yet the pictorial presentation of Dickens's characters has ever
+tended toward the grotesque. The interpretations in this volume aim to
+eliminate the grosser phases of the caricature in favour of the more
+human. If the interpretations seem novel, if Scrooge be not as he has
+been pictured, it is because a more human Scrooge was desired--a Scrooge
+not wholly bad, a Scrooge of a better heart, a Scrooge to whom the
+resurrection described in this story was possible. It has been the
+illustrator's whole aim to make these people live in some form more
+fully consistent with their types.
+
+                                   GEORGE ALFRED WILLIAMS.
+_Chatham, N.J._
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+A CHRISTMAS CAROL
+
+STAVE                                                                 PAGE
+
+  I _Marley's Ghost_                                                    11
+ II _The First of the Three Spirits_                                    32
+III _The Second of the Three Spirits_                                   51
+ IV _The Last of the Spirits_                                           76
+  V _The End of it_                                                     93
+
+
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+A CHRISTMAS CAROL
+
+_"He had been Tim's blood horse all the way from church."_    Frontispiece
+
+_"A Merry Christmas, Uncle! God save you!" cried a cheerful voice._     14
+
+_To sit staring at those fixed glazed eyes in silence, for a moment,
+    would play, Scrooge felt, the very deuce with him._                 26
+
+_"You recollect the way?" inquired the spirit. "Remember it!" cried
+    Scrooge, with fervour; "I could walk it blindfold."_                36
+
+_"Why, it's Ali Baba!" Scrooge exclaimed in ecstasy. "It's dear old
+    honest Ali Baba!"_                                                  38
+
+
+
+
+A CHRISTMAS CAROL
+
+In Prose
+
+BEING A GHOST STORY OF CHRISTMAS
+
+
+
+
+STAVE ONE
+
+MARLEY'S GHOST
+
+
+Marley was dead, to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that.
+The register of his burial was signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the
+undertaker, and the chief mourner. Scrooge signed it. And Scrooge's name
+was good upon 'Change for anything he chose to put his hand to. Old
+Marley was as dead as a door-nail.
+
+Mind! I don't mean to say that I know, of my own knowledge, what there
+is particularly dead about a door-nail. I might have been inclined,
+myself, to regard a coffin-nail as the deadest piece of ironmongery in
+the trade. But the wisdom of our ancestors is in the simile; and my
+unhallowed hands shall not disturb it, or the Country's done for. You
+will, therefore, permit me to repeat, emphatically, that Marley was as
+dead as a door-nail.
+
+Scrooge knew he was dead? Of course he did. How could it be otherwise?
+Scrooge and he were partners for I don't know how many years. Scrooge
+was his sole executor, his sole administrator, his sole assign, his
+sole residuary legatee, his sole friend, and sole mourner. And even
+Scrooge was not so dreadfully cut up by the sad event, but that he was
+an excellent man of business on the very day of the funeral, and
+solemnised it with an undoubted bargain.
+
+The mention of Marley's funeral brings me back to the point I started
+from. There is no doubt that Marley was dead. This must be distinctly
+understood, or nothing wonderful can come of the story I am going to
+relate. If we were not perfectly convinced that Hamlet's Father died
+before the play began, there would be nothing more remarkable in his
+taking a stroll at night, in an easterly wind, upon his own ramparts,
+than there would be in any other middle-aged gentleman rashly turning
+out after dark in a breezy spot--say St. Paul's Church-yard, for
+instance--literally to astonish his son's weak mind.
+
+Scrooge never painted out Old Marley's name. There it stood, years
+afterwards, above the warehouse door: Scrooge and Marley. The firm was
+known as Scrooge and Marley. Sometimes people new to the business called
+Scrooge Scrooge, and sometimes Marley, but he answered to both names. It
+was all the same to him.
+
+Oh! but he was a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone, Scrooge! a
+squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old
+sinner! Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out
+generous fire; secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster.
+The cold within him froze his old features, nipped his pointed nose,
+shrivelled his cheek, stiffened his gait; made his eyes red, his thin
+lips blue; and spoke out shrewdly in his grating voice. A frosty rime
+was on his head, and on his eyebrows, and his wiry chin. He carried his
+own low temperature always about with him; he iced his office in the
+dog-days; and didn't thaw it one degree at Christmas.
+
+External heat and cold had little influence on Scrooge. No warmth could
+warm, no wintry weather chill him. No wind that blew was bitterer than
+he, no falling snow was more intent upon its purpose, no pelting rain
+less open to entreaty. Foul weather didn't know where to have him. The
+heaviest rain, and snow, and hail, and sleet could boast of the
+advantage over him in only one respect. They often "came down"
+handsomely and Scrooge never did.
+
+Nobody ever stopped him in the street to say, with gladsome looks, "My
+dear Scrooge, how are you? When will you come to see me?" No beggars
+implored him to bestow a trifle, no children asked him what it was
+o'clock, no man or woman ever once in all his life inquired the way to
+such and such a place, of Scrooge. Even the blind men's dogs appeared to
+know him; and, when they saw him coming on, would tug their owners into
+doorways and up courts; and then would wag their tails as though they
+said, "No eye at all is better than an evil eye, dark master!"
+
+But what did Scrooge care? It was the very thing he liked. To edge his
+way along the crowded paths of life, warning all human sympathy to keep
+its distance, was what the knowing ones call "nuts" to Scrooge.
+
+Once upon a time--of all the good days in the year, on Christmas
+Eve--old Scrooge sat busy in his counting-house. It was cold, bleak,
+biting weather: foggy withal: and he could hear the people in the court
+outside go wheezing up and down, beating their hands upon their breasts,
+and stamping their feet upon the pavement stones to warm them. The City
+clocks had only just gone three, but it was quite dark already--it had
+not been light all day--and candles were flaring in the windows of the
+neighbouring offices, like ruddy smears upon the palpable brown air. The
+fog came pouring in at every chink and keyhole, and was so dense
+without, that, although the court was of the narrowest, the houses
+opposite were mere phantoms. To see the dingy cloud come drooping down,
+obscuring everything, one might have thought that nature lived hard by
+and was brewing on a large scale.
+
+The door of Scrooge's counting-house was open, that he might keep his
+eye upon his clerk, who in a dismal little cell beyond, a sort of tank,
+was copying letters. Scrooge had a very small fire, but the clerk's fire
+was so very much smaller that it looked like one coal. But he couldn't
+replenish it, for Scrooge kept the coal-box in his own room; and so
+surely as the clerk came in with the shovel, the master predicted that
+it would be necessary for them to part. Wherefore the clerk put on his
+white comforter, and tried to warm himself at the candle; in which
+effort, not being a man of strong imagination, he failed.
+
+"A merry Christmas, uncle! God save you!" cried a cheerful voice. It was
+the voice of Scrooge's nephew, who came upon him so quickly that this
+was the first intimation he had of his approach.
+
+"Bah!" said Scrooge. "Humbug!"
+
+He had so heated himself with rapid walking in the fog and frost, this
+nephew of Scrooge's, that he was all in a glow; his face was ruddy and
+handsome; his eyes sparkled, and his breath smoked again.
+
+"Christmas a humbug, uncle!" said Scrooge's nephew. "You don't mean
+that, I am sure?"
+
+"I do," said Scrooge. "Merry Christmas! What right have you to be merry?
+What reason have you to be merry? You're poor enough."
+
+"Come, then," returned the nephew gaily. "What right have you to be
+dismal? What reason have you to be morose? You're rich enough."
+
+Scrooge, having no better answer ready on the spur of the moment, said,
+"Bah!" again; and followed it up with "Humbug!"
+
+"Don't be cross, uncle!" said the nephew.
+
+[Illustration: _"A Merry Christmas, uncle! God save you!" cried a
+cheerful voice._]
+
+"What else can I be," returned the uncle, "when I live in such a world
+of fools as this? Merry Christmas! Out upon merry Christmas! What's
+Christmas-time to you but a time for paying bills without money; a time
+for finding yourself a year older, and not an hour richer; a time for
+balancing your books, and having every item in 'em through a round dozen
+of months presented dead against you? If I could work my will," said
+Scrooge indignantly, "every idiot who goes about with 'Merry Christmas'
+on his lips should be boiled with his own pudding, and buried with a
+stake of holly through his heart. He should!"
+
+"Uncle!" pleaded the nephew.
+
+"Nephew!" returned the uncle sternly, "keep Christmas in your own way,
+and let me keep it in mine."
+
+"Keep it!" repeated Scrooge's nephew. "But you don't keep it."
+
+"Let me leave it alone, then," said Scrooge. "Much good may it do you!
+Much good it has ever done you!"
+
+"There are many things from which I might have derived good, by which I
+have not profited, I dare say," returned the nephew; "Christmas among
+the rest. But I am sure I have always thought of Christmas-time, when it
+has come round--apart from the veneration due to its sacred name and
+origin, if anything belonging to it can be apart from that--as a good
+time; a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time; the only time I know
+of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one
+consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people
+below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and
+not another race of creatures bound on other journeys. And therefore,
+uncle, though it has never put a scrap of gold or silver in my pocket, I
+believe that it _has_ done me good, and _will_ do me good; and I say,
+God bless it!"
+
+The clerk in the tank involuntarily applauded. Becoming immediately
+sensible of the impropriety, he poked the fire, and extinguished the
+last frail spark for ever.
+
+"Let me hear another sound from _you_," said Scrooge, "and you'll keep
+your Christmas by losing your situation! You're quite a powerful
+speaker, sir," he added, turning to his nephew. "I wonder you don't go
+into Parliament."
+
+"Don't be angry, uncle. Come! Dine with us to-morrow."
+
+Scrooge said that he would see him----Yes, indeed he did. He went the
+whole length of the expression, and said that he would see him in that
+extremity first.
+
+"But why?" cried Scrooge's nephew. "Why?"
+
+"Why did you get married?" said Scrooge.
+
+"Because I fell in love."
+
+"Because you fell in love!" growled Scrooge, as if that were the only
+one thing in the world more ridiculous than a merry Christmas. "Good
+afternoon!"
+
+"Nay, uncle, but you never came to see me before that happened. Why give
+it as a reason for not coming now?"
+
+"Good afternoon," said Scrooge.
+
+"I want nothing from you; I ask nothing of you; why cannot we be
+friends?"
+
+"Good afternoon!" said Scrooge.
+
+"I am sorry, with all my heart, to find you so resolute. We have never
+had any quarrel to which I have been a party. But I have made the trial
+in homage to Christmas, and I'll keep my Christmas humour to the last.
+So A Merry Christmas, uncle!"
+
+"Good afternoon," said Scrooge.
+
+"And A Happy New Year!"
+
+"Good afternoon!" said Scrooge.
+
+His nephew left the room without an angry word, notwithstanding. He
+stopped at the outer door to bestow the greetings of the season on the
+clerk, who, cold as he was, was warmer than Scrooge; for he returned
+them cordially.
+
+"There's another fellow," muttered Scrooge, who overheard him: "my
+clerk, with fifteen shillings a week, and a wife and family, talking
+about a merry Christmas. I'll retire to Bedlam."
+
+This lunatic, in letting Scrooge's nephew out, had let two other people
+in. They were portly gentlemen, pleasant to behold, and now stood, with
+their hats off, in Scrooge's office. They had books and papers in their
+hands, and bowed to him.
+
+"Scrooge and Marley's, I believe," said one of the gentlemen, referring
+to his list. "Have I the pleasure of addressing Mr. Scrooge, or Mr.
+Marley?"
+
+"Mr. Marley has been dead these seven years," Scrooge replied. "He died
+seven years ago, this very night."
+
+"We have no doubt his liberality is well represented by his surviving
+partner," said the gentleman, presenting his credentials.
+
+It certainly was; for they had been two kindred spirits. At the ominous
+word "liberality" Scrooge frowned, and shook his head, and handed the
+credentials back.
+
+"At this festive season of the year, Mr. Scrooge," said the gentleman,
+taking up a pen, "it is more than usually desirable that we should make
+some slight provision for the poor and destitute, who suffer greatly at
+the present time. Many thousands are in want of common necessaries;
+hundreds of thousands are in want of common comforts, sir."
+
+"Are there no prisons?" asked Scrooge.
+
+"Plenty of prisons," said the gentleman, laying down the pen again.
+
+"And the Union workhouses?" demanded Scrooge. "Are they still in
+operation?"
+
+"They are. Still," returned the gentleman, "I wish I could say they were
+not."
+
+"The Treadmill and the Poor Law are in full vigour, then?" said Scrooge.
+
+"Both very busy, sir."
+
+"Oh! I was afraid, from what you said at first, that something had
+occurred to stop them in their useful course," said Scrooge. "I am very
+glad to hear it."
+
+"Under the impression that they scarcely furnish Christian cheer of mind
+or body to the multitude," returned the gentleman, "a few of us are
+endeavouring to raise a fund to buy the Poor some meat and drink, and
+means of warmth. We choose this time, because it is a time, of all
+others, when Want is keenly felt, and Abundance rejoices. What shall I
+put you down for?"
+
+"Nothing!" Scrooge replied.
+
+"You wish to be anonymous?"
+
+"I wish to be left alone," said Scrooge. "Since you ask me what I wish,
+gentlemen, that is my answer. I don't make merry myself at Christmas,
+and I can't afford to make idle people merry. I help to support the
+establishments I have mentioned--they cost enough; and those who are
+badly off must go there."
+
+"Many can't go there; and many would rather die."
+
+"If they would rather die," said Scrooge, "they had better do it, and
+decrease the surplus population. Besides--excuse me--I don't know that."
+
+"But you might know it," observed the gentleman.
+
+"It's not my business," Scrooge returned. "It's enough for a man to
+understand his own business, and not to interfere with other people's.
+Mine occupies me constantly. Good afternoon, gentlemen!"
+
+Seeing clearly that it would be useless to pursue their point, the
+gentlemen withdrew. Scrooge resumed his labours with an improved opinion
+of himself, and in a more facetious temper than was usual with him.
+
+Meanwhile the fog and darkness thickened so, that people ran about with
+flaring links, proffering their services to go before horses in
+carriages, and conduct them on their way. The ancient tower of a church,
+whose gruff old bell was always peeping slily down at Scrooge out of a
+Gothic window in the wall, became invisible, and struck the hours and
+quarters in the clouds, with tremulous vibrations afterwards, as if its
+teeth were chattering in its frozen head up there. The cold became
+intense. In the main street, at the corner of the court, some labourers
+were repairing the gas-pipes, and had lighted a great fire in a brazier,
+round which a party of ragged men and boys were gathered: warming their
+hands and winking their eyes before the blaze in rapture. The water-plug
+being left in solitude, its overflowings suddenly congealed, and turned
+to misanthropic ice. The brightness of the shops, where holly sprigs and
+berries crackled in the lamp heat of the windows, made pale faces ruddy
+as they passed. Poulterers' and grocers' trades became a splendid joke:
+a glorious pageant, with which it was next to impossible to believe that
+such dull principles as bargain and sale had anything to do. The Lord
+Mayor, in the stronghold of the mighty Mansion House, gave orders to his
+fifty cooks and butlers to keep Christmas as a Lord Mayor's household
+should; and even the little tailor, whom he had fined five shillings on
+the previous Monday for being drunk and blood-thirsty in the streets,
+stirred up to-morrow's pudding in his garret, while his lean wife and
+the baby sallied out to buy the beef.
+
+Foggier yet, and colder! Piercing, searching, biting cold. If the good
+St. Dunstan had but nipped the Evil Spirit's nose with a touch of such
+weather as that, instead of using his familiar weapons, then indeed he
+would have roared to lusty purpose. The owner of one scant young nose,
+gnawed and mumbled by the hungry cold as bones are gnawed by dogs,
+stooped down at Scrooge's keyhole to regale him with a Christmas carol;
+but, at the first sound of
+
+    "God bless you, merry gentleman,
+    May nothing you dismay!"
+
+Scrooge seized the ruler with such energy of action, that the singer
+fled in terror, leaving the keyhole to the fog, and even more congenial
+frost.
+
+At length the hour of shutting up the counting-house arrived. With an
+ill-will Scrooge dismounted from his stool, and tacitly admitted the
+fact to the expectant clerk in the tank, who instantly snuffed his
+candle out, and put on his hat.
+
+"You'll want all day to-morrow, I suppose?" said Scrooge.
+
+"If quite convenient, sir."
+
+"It's not convenient," said Scrooge, "and it's not fair. If I was to
+stop half-a-crown for it, you'd think yourself ill used, I'll be bound?"
+
+The clerk smiled faintly.
+
+"And yet," said Scrooge, "you don't think _me_ ill used when I pay a
+day's wages for no work."
+
+The clerk observed that it was only once a year.
+
+"A poor excuse for picking a man's pocket every twenty-fifth of
+December!" said Scrooge, buttoning his great-coat to the chin. "But I
+suppose you must have the whole day. Be here all the earlier next
+morning."
+
+The clerk promised that he would; and Scrooge walked out with a growl.
+The office was closed in a twinkling, and the clerk, with the long ends
+of his white comforter dangling below his waist (for he boasted no
+great-coat), went down a slide on Cornhill, at the end of a lane of
+boys, twenty times, in honour of its being Christmas-eve, and then ran
+home to Camden Town as hard as he could pelt, to play at blindman's
+buff.
+
+Scrooge took his melancholy dinner in his usual melancholy tavern; and
+having read all the newspapers, and beguiled the rest of the evening
+with his banker's book, went home to bed. He lived in chambers which had
+once belonged to his deceased partner. They were a gloomy suite of
+rooms, in a lowering pile of building up a yard, where it had so little
+business to be, that one could scarcely help fancying it must have run
+there when it was a young house, playing at hide-and-seek with other
+houses, and have forgotten the way out again. It was old enough now, and
+dreary enough; for nobody lived in it but Scrooge, the other rooms being
+all let out as offices. The yard was so dark that even Scrooge, who
+knew its every stone, was fain to grope with his hands. The fog and
+frost so hung about the black old gateway of the house, that it seemed
+as if the Genius of the Weather sat in mournful meditation on the
+threshold.
+
+Now, it is a fact that there was nothing at all particular about the
+knocker on the door, except that it was very large. It is also a fact
+that Scrooge had seen it, night and morning, during his whole residence
+in that place; also that Scrooge had as little of what is called fancy
+about him as any man in the City of London, even including--which is a
+bold word--the corporation, aldermen, and livery. Let it also be borne
+in mind that Scrooge had not bestowed one thought on Marley since his
+last mention of his seven-years'-dead partner that afternoon. And then
+let any man explain to me, if he can, how it happened that Scrooge,
+having his key in the lock of the door, saw in the knocker, without its
+undergoing any intermediate process of change--not a knocker, but
+Marley's face.
+
+Marley's face. It was not in impenetrable shadow, as the other objects
+in the yard were, but had a dismal light about it, like a bad lobster in
+a dark cellar. It was not angry or ferocious, but looked at Scrooge as
+Marley used to look: with ghostly spectacles turned up on its ghostly
+forehead. The hair was curiously stirred, as if by breath of hot air;
+and, though the eyes were wide open, they were perfectly motionless.
+That, and its livid colour, made it horrible; but its horror seemed to
+be in spite of the face, and beyond its control, rather than a part of
+its own expression.
+
+As Scrooge looked fixedly at this phenomenon, it was a knocker again.
+
+To say that he was not startled, or that his blood was not conscious of
+a terrible sensation to which it had been a stranger from infancy, would
+be untrue. But he put his hand upon the key he had relinquished, turned
+it sturdily, walked in, and lighted his candle.
+
+He _did_ pause, with a moment's irresolution, before he shut the door;
+and he _did_ look cautiously behind it first, as if he half expected to
+be terrified with the sight of Marley's pigtail sticking out into the
+hall. But there was nothing on the back of the door, except the screws
+and nuts that held the knocker on, so he said, "Pooh, pooh!" and closed
+it with a bang.
+
+The sound resounded through the house like thunder. Every room above,
+and every cask in the wine merchant's cellars below, appeared to have a
+separate peal of echoes of its own. Scrooge was not a man to be
+frightened by echoes. He fastened the door, and walked across the hall,
+and up the stairs: slowly, too: trimming his candle as he went.
+
+You may talk vaguely about driving a coach and six up a good old flight
+of stairs, or through a bad young Act of Parliament; but I mean to say
+you might have got a hearse up that staircase, and taken it broadwise,
+with the splinter-bar towards the wall, and the door towards the
+balustrades: and done it easy. There was plenty of width for that, and
+room to spare; which is perhaps the reason why Scrooge thought he saw a
+locomotive hearse going on before him in the gloom. Half-a-dozen
+gas-lamps out of the street wouldn't have lighted the entry too well, so
+you may suppose that it was pretty dark with Scrooge's dip.
+
+Up Scrooge went, not caring a button for that. Darkness is cheap, and
+Scrooge liked it. But, before he shut his heavy door, he walked through
+his rooms to see that all was right. He had just enough recollection of
+the face to desire to do that.
+
+Sitting-room, bedroom, lumber-room. All as they should be. Nobody under
+the table, nobody under the sofa; a small fire in the grate; spoon and
+basin ready; and the little saucepan of gruel (Scrooge had a cold in his
+head) upon the hob. Nobody under the bed; nobody in the closet; nobody
+in his dressing-gown, which was hanging up in a suspicious attitude
+against the wall. Lumber-room as usual. Old fire-guard, old shoes, two
+fish baskets, washing-stand on three legs, and a poker.
+
+Quite satisfied, he closed his door, and locked himself in; double
+locked himself in, which was not his custom. Thus secured against
+surprise, he took off his cravat; put on his dressing-gown and slippers,
+and his nightcap; and sat down before the fire to take his gruel.
+
+It was a very low fire indeed; nothing on such a bitter night. He was
+obliged to sit close to it, and brood over it, before he could extract
+the least sensation of warmth from such a handful of fuel. The
+fire-place was an old one, built by some Dutch merchant long ago, and
+paved all round with quaint Dutch tiles, designed to illustrate the
+Scriptures. There were Cains and Abels, Pharaoh's daughters, Queens of
+Sheba, Angelic messengers descending through the air on clouds like
+feather beds, Abrahams, Belshazzars, Apostles putting off to sea in
+butter-boats, hundreds of figures to attract his thoughts; and yet that
+face of Marley, seven years dead, came like the ancient Prophet's rod,
+and swallowed up the whole. If each smooth tile had been a blank at
+first, with power to shape some picture on its surface from the
+disjointed fragments of his thoughts, there would have been a copy of
+old Marley's head on every one.
+
+"Humbug!" said Scrooge; and walked across the room.
+
+After several turns he sat down again. As he threw his head back in the
+chair, his glance happened to rest upon a bell, a disused bell, that
+hung in the room, and communicated, for some purpose now forgotten, with
+a chamber in the highest story of the building. It was with great
+astonishment, and with a strange, inexplicable dread, that, as he
+looked, he saw this bell begin to swing. It swung so softly in the
+outset that it scarcely made a sound; but soon it rang out loudly, and
+so did every bell in the house.
+
+This might have lasted half a minute, or a minute, but it seemed an
+hour. The bells ceased, as they had begun, together. They were succeeded
+by a clanking noise, deep down below, as if some person were dragging a
+heavy chain over the casks in the wine merchant's cellar. Scrooge then
+remembered to have heard that ghosts in haunted houses were described as
+dragging chains.
+
+The cellar door flew open with a booming sound, and then he heard the
+noise much louder on the floors below; then coming up the stairs; then
+coming straight towards his door.
+
+"It's humbug still!" said Scrooge. "I won't believe it."
+
+His colour changed, though, when, without a pause, it came on through
+the heavy door, and passed into the room before his eyes. Upon its
+coming in, the dying flame leaped up, as though it cried, "I know him!
+Marley's Ghost!" and fell again.
+
+The same face: the very same. Marley in his pigtail, usual waistcoat,
+tights, and boots; the tassels on the latter bristling, like his
+pigtail, and his coat-skirts, and the hair upon his head. The chain he
+drew was clasped about his middle. It was long, and wound about him like
+a tail; and it was made (for Scrooge observed it closely) of cash-boxes,
+keys, padlocks, ledgers, deeds, and heavy purses wrought in steel. His
+body was transparent; so that Scrooge, observing him, and looking
+through his waistcoat, could see the two buttons on his coat behind.
+
+Scrooge had often heard it said that Marley had no bowels, but he had
+never believed it until now.
+
+No, nor did he believe it even now. Though he looked the phantom through
+and through, and saw it standing before him; though he felt the chilling
+influence of its death-cold eyes; and marked the very texture of the
+folded kerchief bound about its head and chin, which wrapper he had not
+observed before; he was still incredulous, and fought against his
+senses.
+
+"How now!" said Scrooge, caustic and cold as ever. "What do you want
+with me?"
+
+"Much!"--Marley's voice, no doubt about it.
+
+"Who are you?"
+
+"Ask me who I _was_."
+
+"Who _were_ you, then?" said Scrooge, raising his voice. "You're
+particular, for a shade." He was going to say "_to_ a shade," but
+substituted this, as more appropriate.
+
+"In life I was your partner, Jacob Marley."
+
+"Can you--can you sit down?" asked Scrooge, looking doubtfully at him.
+
+"I can."
+
+"Do it, then."
+
+Scrooge asked the question, because he didn't know whether a ghost so
+transparent might find himself in a condition to take a chair; and felt
+that, in the event of its being impossible, it might involve the
+necessity of an embarrassing explanation. But the Ghost sat down on the
+opposite side of the fire-place, as if he were quite used to it.
+
+"You don't believe in me," observed the Ghost.
+
+"I don't," said Scrooge.
+
+"What evidence would you have of my reality beyond that of your own
+senses?"
+
+"I don't know," said Scrooge.
+
+"Why do you doubt your senses?"
+
+"Because," said Scrooge, "a little thing affects them. A slight disorder
+of the stomach makes them cheats. You may be an undigested bit of beef,
+a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of an underdone potato.
+There's more of gravy than of grave about you, whatever you are!"
+
+Scrooge was not much in the habit of cracking jokes, nor did he feel in
+his heart by any means waggish then. The truth is, that he tried to be
+smart, as a means of distracting his own attention, and keeping down his
+terror; for the spectre's voice disturbed the very marrow in his bones.
+
+To sit staring at those fixed glazed eyes in silence, for a moment,
+would play, Scrooge felt, the very deuce with him. There was something
+very awful, too, in the spectre's being provided with an infernal
+atmosphere of his own. Scrooge could not feel it himself, but this was
+clearly the case; for though the Ghost sat perfectly motionless, its
+hair, and skirts, and tassels were still agitated as by the hot vapour
+from an oven.
+
+"You see this toothpick?" said Scrooge, returning quickly to the charge,
+for the reason just assigned; and wishing, though it were only for a
+second, to divert the vision's stony gaze from himself.
+
+"I do," replied the Ghost.
+
+"You are not looking at it," said Scrooge.
+
+"But I see it," said the Ghost, "notwithstanding."
+
+"Well!" returned Scrooge, "I have but to swallow this, and be for the
+rest of my days persecuted by a legion of goblins, all of my own
+creation. Humbug, I tell you; humbug!"
+
+At this the spirit raised a frightful cry, and shook its chain with such
+a dismal and appalling noise, that Scrooge held on tight to his chair,
+to save himself from falling in a swoon. But how much greater was his
+horror when the phantom, taking off the bandage round his head, as if it
+were too warm to wear indoors, its lower jaw dropped down upon its
+breast!
+
+Scrooge fell upon his knees, and clasped his hands before his face.
+
+"Mercy!" he said. "Dreadful apparition, why do you trouble me?"
+
+"Man of the worldly mind!" replied the Ghost, "do you believe in me or
+not?"
+
+"I do," said Scrooge. "I must. But why do spirits walk the earth, and
+why do they come to me?"
+
+[Illustration: _To sit staring at those fixed glazed eyes in silence,
+for a moment, would play, Scrooge felt, the very deuce with him._]
+
+"It is required of every man," the Ghost returned, "that the spirit
+within him should walk abroad among his fellow-men, and travel far and
+wide; and, if that spirit goes not forth in life, it is condemned to do
+so after death. It is doomed to wander through the world--oh, woe is
+me!--and witness what it cannot share, but might have shared on earth,
+and turned to happiness!"
+
+Again the spectre raised a cry, and shook its chain and wrung its
+shadowy hands.
+
+"You are fettered," said Scrooge, trembling. "Tell me why?"
+
+"I wear the chain I forged in life," replied the Ghost. "I made it link
+by link, and yard by yard; I girded it on of my own free-will, and of my
+own free-will I wore it. Is its pattern strange to _you_?"
+
+Scrooge trembled more and more.
+
+"Or would you know," pursued the Ghost, "the weight and length of the
+strong coil you bear yourself? It was full as heavy and as long as this,
+seven Christmas-eves ago. You have laboured on it since. It is a
+ponderous chain!"
+
+Scrooge glanced about him on the floor, in the expectation of finding
+himself surrounded by some fifty or sixty fathoms of iron cable, but he
+could see nothing.
+
+"Jacob!" he said imploringly. "Old Jacob Marley, tell me more! Speak
+comfort to me, Jacob!"
+
+"I have none to give," the Ghost replied. "It comes from other regions,
+Ebenezer Scrooge, and is conveyed by other ministers, to other kinds of
+men. Nor can I tell you what I would. A very little more is all
+permitted to me. I cannot rest, I cannot stay, I cannot linger anywhere.
+My spirit never walked beyond our counting-house--mark me;--in life my
+spirit never roved beyond the narrow limits of our money-changing hole;
+and weary journeys lie before me!"
+
+It was a habit with Scrooge, whenever he became thoughtful, to put his
+hands in his breeches pockets. Pondering on what the Ghost had said, he
+did so now, but without lifting up his eyes, or getting off his knees.
+
+"You must have been very slow about it, Jacob," Scrooge observed in a
+business-like manner, though with humility and deference.
+
+"Slow!" the Ghost repeated.
+
+"Seven years dead," mused Scrooge. "And travelling all the time?"
+
+"The whole time," said the Ghost. "No rest, no peace. Incessant torture
+of remorse."
+
+"You travel fast?" said Scrooge.
+
+"On the wings of the wind," replied the Ghost.
+
+"You might have got over a great quantity of ground in seven years,"
+said Scrooge.
+
+The Ghost, on hearing this, set up another cry, and clanked its chain so
+hideously in the dead silence of the night, that the Ward would have
+been justified in indicting it for a nuisance.
+
+"Oh! captive, bound, and double-ironed," cried the phantom, "not to know
+that ages of incessant labour, by immortal creatures, for this earth
+must pass into eternity before the good of which it is susceptible is
+all developed! Not to know that any Christian spirit working kindly in
+its little sphere, whatever it may be, will find its mortal life too
+short for its vast means of usefulness! Not to know that no space of
+regret can make amends for one life's opportunities misused! Yet such
+was I! Oh, such was I!"
+
+"But you were always a good man of business, Jacob," faltered Scrooge,
+who now began to apply this to himself.
+
+"Business!" cried the Ghost, wringing its hands again. "Mankind was my
+business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy,
+forbearance, and benevolence were, all, my business. The dealings of my
+trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my
+business!"
+
+It held up its chain at arm's length, as if that were the cause of all
+its unavailing grief, and flung it heavily upon the ground again.
+
+"At this time of the rolling year," the spectre said, "I suffer most.
+Why did I walk through crowds of fellow-beings with my eyes turned down,
+and never raise them to that blessed Star which led the Wise Men to a
+poor abode? Were there no poor homes to which its light would have
+conducted _me_?"
+
+Scrooge was very much dismayed to hear the spectre going on at this
+rate, and began to quake exceedingly.
+
+"Hear me!" cried the Ghost. "My time is nearly gone."
+
+"I will," said Scrooge. "But don't be hard upon me! Don't be flowery,
+Jacob! Pray!"
+
+"How it is that I appear before you in a shape that you can see, I may
+not tell. I have sat invisible beside you many and many a day."
+
+It was not an agreeable idea. Scrooge shivered, and wiped the
+perspiration from his brow.
+
+"That is no light part of my penance," pursued the Ghost. "I am here
+to-night to warn you that you have yet a chance and hope of escaping my
+fate. A chance and hope of my procuring, Ebenezer."
+
+"You were always a good friend to me," said Scrooge. "Thankee!"
+
+"You will be haunted," resumed the Ghost, "by Three Spirits."
+
+Scrooge's countenance fell almost as low as the Ghost's had done.
+
+"Is that the chance and hope you mentioned, Jacob?" he demanded in a
+faltering voice.
+
+"It is."
+
+"I--I think I'd rather not," said Scrooge.
+
+"Without their visits," said the Ghost, "you cannot hope to shun the
+path I tread. Expect the first to-morrow when the bell tolls One."
+
+"Couldn't I take 'em all at once, and have it over, Jacob?" hinted
+Scrooge.
+
+"Expect the second on the next night at the same hour. The third, upon
+the next night when the last stroke of Twelve has ceased to vibrate.
+Look to see me no more; and look that, for your own sake, you remember
+what has passed between us!"
+
+When it had said these words, the spectre took its wrapper from the
+table, and bound it round its head as before. Scrooge knew this by the
+smart sound its teeth made when the jaws were brought together by the
+bandage. He ventured to raise his eyes again, and found his supernatural
+visitor confronting him in an erect attitude, with its chain wound over
+and about its arm.
+
+The apparition walked backward from him; and, at every step it took, the
+window raised itself a little, so that, when the spectre reached it, it
+was wide open. It beckoned Scrooge to approach, which he did. When they
+were within two paces of each other, Marley's Ghost held up its hand,
+warning him to come no nearer. Scrooge stopped.
+
+Not so much in obedience as in surprise and fear; for, on the raising of
+the hand, he became sensible of confused noises in the air; incoherent
+sounds of lamentation and regret; wailings inexpressibly sorrowful and
+self-accusatory. The spectre, after listening for a moment, joined in
+the mournful dirge; and floated out upon the bleak, dark night.
+
+Scrooge followed to the window: desperate in his curiosity. He looked
+out.
+
+The air was filled with phantoms, wandering hither and thither in
+restless haste, and moaning as they went. Every one of them wore chains
+like Marley's Ghost; some few (they might be guilty governments) were
+linked together; none were free. Many had been personally known to
+Scrooge in their lives. He had been quite familiar with one old ghost in
+a white waistcoat, with a monstrous iron safe attached to its ankle, who
+cried piteously at being unable to assist a wretched woman with an
+infant, whom it saw below upon a doorstep. The misery with them all was,
+clearly, that they sought to interfere, for good, in human matters, and
+had lost the power for ever.
+
+Whether these creatures faded into mist, or mist enshrouded them, he
+could not tell. But they and their spirit voices faded together; and the
+night became as it had been when he walked home.
+
+Scrooge closed the window, and examined the door by which the Ghost had
+entered. It was double locked, as he had locked it with his own hands,
+and the bolts were undisturbed. He tried to say "Humbug!" but stopped at
+the first syllable. And being, from the emotion he had undergone, or the
+fatigues of the day, or his glimpse of the Invisible World, or the dull
+conversation of the Ghost, or the lateness of the hour, much in need of
+repose, went straight to bed without undressing, and fell asleep upon
+the instant.
+
+
+
+
+STAVE TWO
+
+THE FIRST OF THE THREE SPIRITS
+
+
+When Scrooge awoke it was so dark, that, looking out of bed, he could
+scarcely distinguish the transparent window from the opaque walls of his
+chamber. He was endeavouring to pierce the darkness with his ferret
+eyes, when the chimes of a neighbouring church struck the four quarters.
+So he listened for the hour.
+
+To his great astonishment, the heavy bell went on from six to seven, and
+from seven to eight, and regularly up to twelve; then stopped. Twelve!
+It was past two when he went to bed. The clock was wrong. An icicle must
+have got into the works. Twelve!
+
+He touched the spring of his repeater, to correct this most preposterous
+clock. Its rapid little pulse beat twelve, and stopped.
+
+"Why, it isn't possible," said Scrooge, "that I can have slept through a
+whole day and far into another night. It isn't possible that anything
+has happened to the sun, and this is twelve at noon!"
+
+The idea being an alarming one, he scrambled out of bed, and groped his
+way to the window. He was obliged to rub the frost off with the sleeve
+of his dressing-gown before he could see anything; and could see very
+little then. All he could make out was, that it was still very foggy and
+extremely cold, and that there was no noise of people running to and
+fro, and making a great stir, as there unquestionably would have been if
+night had beaten off bright day, and taken possession of the world.
+This was a great relief, because "Three days after sight of this First
+of Exchange pay to Mr. Ebenezer Scrooge or his order," and so forth,
+would have become a mere United States security if there were no days to
+count by.
+
+Scrooge went to bed again, and thought, and thought, and thought it over
+and over, and could make nothing of it. The more he thought, the more
+perplexed he was; and, the more he endeavoured not to think, the more he
+thought.
+
+Marley's Ghost bothered him exceedingly. Every time he resolved within
+himself, after mature inquiry, that it was all a dream, his mind flew
+back again, like a strong spring released, to its first position, and
+presented the same problem to be worked all through, "Was it a dream or
+not?"
+
+Scrooge lay in this state until the chime had gone three quarters more,
+when he remembered, on a sudden, that the Ghost had warned him of a
+visitation when the bell tolled one. He resolved to lie awake until the
+hour was passed; and, considering that he could no more go to sleep than
+go to Heaven, this was, perhaps, the wisest resolution in his power.
+
+The quarter was so long, that he was more than once convinced he must
+have sunk into a doze unconsciously, and missed the clock. At length it
+broke upon his listening ear.
+
+"Ding, dong!"
+
+"A quarter past," said Scrooge, counting.
+
+"Ding, dong!"
+
+"Half past," said Scrooge.
+
+"Ding, dong!"
+
+"A quarter to it," said Scrooge.
+
+"Ding, dong!"
+
+"The hour itself," said Scrooge triumphantly, "and nothing else!"
+
+He spoke before the hour bell sounded, which it now did with a deep,
+dull, hollow, melancholy ONE. Light flashed up in the room upon the
+instant, and the curtains of his bed were drawn.
+
+The curtains of his bed were drawn aside, I tell you, by a hand. Not the
+curtains at his feet, nor the curtains at his back, but those to which
+his face was addressed. The curtains of his bed were drawn aside; and
+Scrooge, starting up into a half-recumbent attitude, found himself face
+to face with the unearthly visitor who drew them: as close to it as I am
+now to you, and I am standing in the spirit at your elbow.
+
+It was a strange figure--like a child: yet not so like a child as like
+an old man, viewed through some supernatural medium, which gave him the
+appearance of having receded from the view, and being diminished to a
+child's proportions. Its hair, which hung about its neck and down its
+back, was white, as if with age; and yet the face had not a wrinkle in
+it, and the tenderest bloom was on the skin. The arms were very long and
+muscular; the hands the same, as if its hold were of uncommon strength.
+Its legs and feet, most delicately formed, were, like those upper
+members, bare. It wore a tunic of the purest white; and round its waist
+was bound a lustrous belt, the sheen of which was beautiful. It held a
+branch of fresh green holly in its hand: and, in singular contradiction
+of that wintry emblem, had its dress trimmed with summer flowers. But
+the strangest thing about it was, that from the crown of its head there
+sprung a bright clear jet of light, by which all this was visible; and
+which was doubtless the occasion of its using, in its duller moments, a
+great extinguisher for a cap, which it now held under its arm.
+
+Even this, though, when Scrooge looked at it with increasing steadiness,
+was _not_ its strangest quality. For, as its belt sparkled and
+glittered, now in one part and now in another, and what was light one
+instant at another time was dark, so the figure itself fluctuated in its
+distinctness: being now a thing with one arm, now with one leg, now with
+twenty legs, now a pair of legs without a head, now a head without a
+body: of which dissolving parts no outline would be visible in the dense
+gloom wherein they melted away. And, in the very wonder of this, it
+would be itself again; distinct and clear as ever.
+
+"Are you the Spirit, sir, whose coming was foretold to me?" asked
+Scrooge.
+
+"I am!"
+
+The voice was soft and gentle. Singularly low, as if, instead of being
+so close beside him, it were at a distance.
+
+"Who and what are you?" Scrooge demanded.
+
+"I am the Ghost of Christmas Past."
+
+"Long Past?" inquired Scrooge; observant of its dwarfish stature.
+
+"No. Your past."
+
+Perhaps Scrooge could not have told anybody why, if anybody could have
+asked him; but he had a special desire to see the Spirit in his cap; and
+begged him to be covered.
+
+"What!" exclaimed the Ghost, "would you so soon put out, with worldly
+hands, the light I give? Is it not enough that you are one of those
+whose passions made this cap, and force me through whole trains of years
+to wear it low upon my brow?"
+
+Scrooge reverently disclaimed all intention to offend or any knowledge
+of having wilfully "bonneted" the Spirit at any period of his life. He
+then made bold to inquire what business brought him there.
+
+"Your welfare!" said the Ghost.
+
+Scrooge expressed himself much obliged, but could not help thinking that
+a night of unbroken rest would have been more conducive to that end. The
+Spirit must have heard him thinking, for it said immediately:
+
+"Your reclamation, then. Take heed!"
+
+It put out its strong hand as it spoke, and clasped him gently by the
+arm.
+
+"Rise! and walk with me!"
+
+It would have been in vain for Scrooge to plead that the weather and the
+hour were not adapted to pedestrian purposes; that bed was warm, and
+the thermometer a long way below freezing; that he was clad but lightly
+in his slippers, dressing-gown, and nightcap; and that he had a cold
+upon him at that time. The grasp, though gentle as a woman's hand, was
+not to be resisted. He rose: but, finding that the Spirit made towards
+the window, clasped its robe in supplication.
+
+"I am a mortal," Scrooge remonstrated, "and liable to fall."
+
+"Bear but a touch of my hand _there_," said the Spirit, laying it upon
+his heart, "and you shall be upheld in more than this!"
+
+As the words were spoken, they passed through the wall, and stood upon
+an open country road, with fields on either hand. The city had entirely
+vanished. Not a vestige of it was to be seen. The darkness and the mist
+had vanished with it, for it was a clear, cold, winter day, with the
+snow upon the ground.
+
+"Good Heaven!" said Scrooge, clasping his hands together as he looked
+about him. "I was bred in this place. I was a boy here!"
+
+The Spirit gazed upon him mildly. Its gentle touch, though it had been
+light and instantaneous, appeared still present to the old man's sense
+of feeling. He was conscious of a thousand odours floating in the air,
+each one connected with a thousand thoughts, and hopes, and joys, and
+cares long, long forgotten!
+
+"Your lip is trembling," said the Ghost. "And what is that upon your
+cheek?"
+
+Scrooge muttered, with an unusual catching in his voice, that it was a
+pimple; and begged the Ghost to lead him where he would.
+
+"You recollect the way?" inquired the Spirit.
+
+"Remember it!" cried Scrooge with fervour; "I could walk it blindfold."
+
+"Strange to have forgotten it for so many years!" observed the Ghost.
+"Let us go on."
+
+[Illustration: _"You recollect the way?" inquired the spirit. "Remember
+it!" cried Scrooge with fervour; "I could walk it blindfold."_]
+
+They walked along the road, Scrooge recognising every gate, and post,
+and tree, until a little market-town appeared in the distance, with its
+bridge, its church, and winding river. Some shaggy ponies now were seen
+trotting towards them with boys upon their backs, who called to other
+boys in country gigs and carts, driven by farmers. All these boys were
+in great spirits, and shouted to each other, until the broad fields were
+so full of merry music, that the crisp air laughed to hear it.
+
+"These are but shadows of the things that have been," said the Ghost.
+"They have no consciousness of us."
+
+The jocund travellers came on; and as they came, Scrooge knew and named
+them every one. Why was he rejoiced beyond all bounds to see them? Why
+did his cold eye glisten, and his heart leap up as they went past? Why
+was he filled with gladness when he heard them give each other Merry
+Christmas, as they parted at cross-roads and by-ways for their several
+homes? What was merry Christmas to Scrooge? Out upon merry Christmas!
+What good had it ever done to him?
+
+"The school is not quite deserted," said the Ghost. "A solitary child,
+neglected by his friends, is left there still."
+
+Scrooge said he knew it. And he sobbed.
+
+They left the high-road by a well-remembered lane, and soon approached a
+mansion of dull red brick, with a little weather-cock surmounted cupola
+on the roof and a bell hanging in it. It was a large house, but one of
+broken fortunes: for the spacious offices were little used, their walls
+were damp and mossy, their windows broken, and their gates decayed.
+Fowls clucked and strutted in the stables; and the coach-houses and
+sheds were overrun with grass. Nor was it more retentive of its ancient
+state within; for, entering the dreary hall, and glancing through the
+open doors of many rooms, they found them poorly furnished, cold, and
+vast. There was an earthly savour in the air, a chilly bareness in the
+place, which associated itself somehow with too much getting up by
+candle-light, and not too much to eat.
+
+They went, the Ghost and Scrooge, across the hall, to a door at the
+back of the house. It opened before them, and disclosed a long, bare,
+melancholy room, made barer still by lines of plain deal forms and
+desks. At one of these a lonely boy was reading near a feeble fire; and
+Scrooge sat down upon a form, and wept to see his poor forgotten self as
+he had used to be.
+
+Not a latent echo in the house, not a squeak and scuffle from the mice
+behind the panelling, not a drip from the half-thawed water-spout in the
+dull yard behind, not a sigh among the leafless boughs of one despondent
+poplar, not the idle swinging of an empty storehouse door, no, not a
+clicking in the fire, but fell upon the heart of Scrooge with softening
+influence, and gave a freer passage to his tears.
+
+The Spirit touched him on the arm, and pointed to his younger self,
+intent upon his reading. Suddenly a man in foreign garments: wonderfully
+real and distinct to look at: stood outside the window, with an axe
+stuck in his belt, and leading by the bridle an ass laden with wood.
+
+"Why, it's Ali Baba!" Scrooge exclaimed in ecstasy. "It's dear old
+honest Ali Baba! Yes, yes, I know. One Christmas-time when yonder
+solitary child was left here all alone, he _did_ come, for the first
+time, just like that. Poor boy! And Valentine," said Scrooge, "and his
+wild brother, Orson; there they go! And what's his name, who was put
+down in his drawers, asleep, at the gate of Damascus; don't you see him?
+And the Sultan's Groom turned upside down by the Genii: there he is upon
+his head! Serve him right! I'm glad of it. What business had _he_ to be
+married to the Princess?"
+
+To hear Scrooge expending all the earnestness of his nature on such
+subjects, in a most extraordinary voice between laughing and crying; and
+to see his heightened and excited face; would have been a surprise to
+his business friends in the City, indeed.
+
+[Illustration: _"Why, it's Ali Baba!" Scrooge exclaimed in ecstasy.
+"It's dear old honest Ali Baba."_]
+
+"There's the Parrot!" cried Scrooge. "Green body and yellow tail, with
+a thing like a lettuce growing out of the top of his head; there he is!
+Poor Robin Crusoe he called him, when he came home again after sailing
+round the island. 'Poor Robin Crusoe, where have you been, Robin
+Crusoe?' The man thought he was dreaming, but he wasn't. It was the
+Parrot, you know. There goes Friday, running for his life to the little
+creek! Halloa! Hoop! Halloo!"
+
+Then, with a rapidity of transition very foreign to his usual character,
+he said, in pity for his former self, "Poor boy!" and cried again.
+
+"I wish," Scrooge muttered, putting his hand in his pocket, and looking
+about him, after drying his eyes with his cuff: "but it's too late now."
+
+"What is the matter?" asked the Spirit.
+
+"Nothing," said Scrooge. "Nothing. There was a boy singing a Christmas
+Carol at my door last night. I should like to have given him something:
+that's all."
+
+The Ghost smiled thoughtfully, and waved its hand: saying, as it did so,
+"Let us see another Christmas!"
+
+Scrooge's former self grew larger at the words, and the room became a
+little darker and more dirty. The panels shrunk, the windows cracked;
+fragments of plaster fell out of the ceiling, and the naked laths were
+shown instead; but how all this was brought about Scrooge knew no more
+than you do. He only knew that it was quite correct: that everything had
+happened so; that there he was, alone again, when all the other boys had
+gone home for the jolly holidays.
+
+He was not reading now, but walking up and down despairingly. Scrooge
+looked at the Ghost, and, with a mournful shaking of his head, glanced
+anxiously towards the door.
+
+It opened; and a little girl, much younger than the boy, came darting
+in, and, putting her arms about his neck, and often kissing him,
+addressed him as her "dear, dear brother."
+
+"I have come to bring you home, dear brother!" said the child, clapping
+her tiny hands, and bending down to laugh. "To bring you home, home,
+home!"
+
+"Home, little Fan?" returned the boy.
+
+"Yes!" said the child, brimful of glee. "Home for good and all. Home for
+ever and ever. Father is so much kinder than he used to be, that home's
+like Heaven! He spoke so gently to me one dear night when I was going to
+bed, that I was not afraid to ask him once more if you might come home;
+and he said Yes, you should; and sent me in a coach to bring you. And
+you're to be a man!" said the child, opening her eyes; "and are never to
+come back here; but first we're to be together all the Christmas long,
+and have the merriest time in all the world."
+
+"You are quite a woman, little Fan!" exclaimed the boy.
+
+She clapped her hands and laughed, and tried to touch his head; but,
+being too little, laughed again, and stood on tiptoe to embrace him.
+Then she began to drag him, in her childish eagerness, towards the door;
+and he, nothing loath to go, accompanied her.
+
+A terrible voice in the hall cried, "Bring down Master Scrooge's box,
+there!" and in the hall appeared the schoolmaster himself, who glared on
+Master Scrooge with a ferocious condescension, and threw him into a
+dreadful state of mind by shaking hands with him. He then conveyed him
+and his sister into the veriest old well of a shivering best parlour
+that ever was seen, where the maps upon the wall, and the celestial and
+terrestrial globes in the windows, were waxy with cold. Here he produced
+a decanter of curiously light wine, and a block of curiously heavy cake,
+and administered instalments of those dainties to the young people: at
+the same time sending out a meagre servant to offer a glass of
+"something" to the postboy who answered that he thanked the gentleman,
+but, if it was the same tap as he had tasted before, he had rather not.
+Master Scrooge's trunk being by this time tied on to the top of the
+chaise, the children bade the schoolmaster good-bye right willingly;
+and, getting into it, drove gaily down the garden sweep; the quick
+wheels dashing the hoar frost and snow from off the dark leaves of the
+evergreens like spray.
+
+"Always a delicate creature, whom a breath might have withered," said
+the Ghost. "But she had a large heart!"
+
+"So she had," cried Scrooge. "You're right. I will not gainsay it,
+Spirit. God forbid!"
+
+"She died a woman," said the Ghost, "and had, as I think, children."
+
+"One child," Scrooge returned.
+
+"True," said the Ghost. "Your nephew!"
+
+Scrooge seemed uneasy in his mind; and answered briefly, "Yes."
+
+Although they had but that moment left the school behind them, they were
+now in the busy thoroughfares of a city, where shadowy passengers passed
+and repassed; where shadowy carts and coaches battled for the way, and
+all the strife and tumult of a real city were. It was made plain enough,
+by the dressing of the shops, that here, too, it was Christmas-time
+again; but it was evening, and the streets were lighted up.
+
+The Ghost stopped at a certain warehouse door, and asked Scrooge if he
+knew it.
+
+"Know it!" said Scrooge. "Was I apprenticed here?"
+
+They went in. At sight of an old gentleman in a Welsh wig, sitting
+behind such a high desk, that if he had been two inches taller, he must
+have knocked his head against the ceiling, Scrooge cried in great
+excitement:
+
+"Why, it's old Fezziwig! Bless his heart, it's Fezziwig alive again!"
+
+Old Fezziwig laid down his pen, and looked up at the clock, which
+pointed to the hour of seven. He rubbed his hands; adjusted his
+capacious waistcoat; laughed all over himself, from his shoes to his
+organ of benevolence; and called out, in a comfortable, oily, rich, fat,
+jovial voice:
+
+"Yo ho, there! Ebenezer! Dick!"
+
+Scrooge's former self, now grown a young man, came briskly in,
+accompanied by his fellow-'prentice.
+
+"Dick Wilkins, to be sure!" said Scrooge to the Ghost. "Bless me, yes.
+There he is. He was very much attached to me, was Dick. Poor Dick! Dear,
+dear!"
+
+"Yo ho, my boys!" said Fezziwig. "No more work to-night. Christmas-eve,
+Dick. Christmas, Ebenezer! Let's have the shutters up," cried old
+Fezziwig with a sharp clap of his hands, "before a man can say Jack
+Robinson!"
+
+You wouldn't believe how those two fellows went at it! They charged into
+the street with the shutters--one, two, three--had 'em up in their
+places--four, five, six--barred 'em and pinned 'em--seven, eight,
+nine--and came back before you could have got to twelve, panting like
+race-horses.
+
+"Hilli-ho!" cried old Fezziwig, skipping down from the high desk with
+wonderful agility. "Clear away, my lads, and let's have lots of room
+here! Hilli-ho, Dick! Chirrup, Ebenezer!"
+
+Clear away! There was nothing they wouldn't have cleared away, or
+couldn't have cleared away, with old Fezziwig looking on. It was done in
+a minute. Every movable was packed off, as if it were dismissed from
+public life for evermore; the floor was swept and watered, the lamps
+were trimmed, fuel was heaped upon the fire; and the warehouse was as
+snug, and warm, and dry, and bright a ball-room as you would desire to
+see upon a winter's night.
+
+In came a fiddler with a music-book, and went up to the lofty desk, and
+made an orchestra of it, and tuned like fifty stomachaches. In came Mrs.
+Fezziwig, one vast substantial smile. In came the three Miss Fezziwigs,
+beaming and lovable. In came the six young followers whose hearts they
+broke. In came all the young men and women employed in the business. In
+came the housemaid, with her cousin the baker. In came the cook, with
+her brother's particular friend the milkman. In came the boy from over
+the way, who was suspected of not having board enough from his master;
+trying to hide himself behind the girl from next door but one, who was
+proved to have had her ears pulled by her mistress. In they all came,
+one after another; some shyly, some boldly, some gracefully, some
+awkwardly, some pushing, some pulling; in they all came, any how and
+every how. Away they all went, twenty couple at once; hands half round
+and back again the other way; down the middle and up again; round and
+round in various stages of affectionate grouping; old top couple always
+turning up in the wrong place; new top couple starting off again as soon
+as they got there; all top couples at last, and not a bottom one to help
+them! When this result was brought about, old Fezziwig, clapping his
+hands to stop the dance, cried out, "Well done!" and the fiddler plunged
+his hot face into a pot of porter, especially provided for that purpose.
+But, scorning rest upon his reappearance, he instantly began again,
+though there were no dancers yet, as if the other fiddler had been
+carried home, exhausted, on a shutter, and he were a bran-new man
+resolved to beat him out of sight, or perish.
+
+There were more dances, and there were forfeits, and more dances, and
+there was cake, and there was negus, and there was a great piece of Cold
+Roast, and there was a great piece of Cold Boiled, and there were
+mince-pies, and plenty of beer. But the great effect of the evening came
+after the Roast and Boiled, when the fiddler (an artful dog, mind! The
+sort of man who knew his business better than you or I could have told
+it him!) struck up "Sir Roger de Coverley." Then old Fezziwig stood out
+to dance with Mrs. Fezziwig. Top couple, too; with a good stiff piece of
+work cut out for them; three or four and twenty pair of partners; people
+who were not to be trifled with; people who _would_ dance, and had no
+notion of walking.
+
+But if they had been twice as many--ah! four times--old Fezziwig would
+have been a match for them, and so would Mrs. Fezziwig. As to _her_, she
+was worthy to be his partner in every sense of the term. If that's not
+high praise, tell me higher, and I'll use it. A positive light appeared
+to issue from Fezziwig's calves. They shone in every part of the dance
+like moons. You couldn't have predicted, at any given time, what would
+become of them next. And when old Fezziwig and Mrs. Fezziwig had gone
+all through the dance; advance and retire, both hands to your partner,
+bow and curtsy, cork-screw, thread-the-needle, and back again to your
+place; Fezziwig "cut"--cut so deftly, that he appeared to wink with his
+legs, and came upon his feet again without a stagger.
+
+When the clock struck eleven, this domestic ball broke up. Mr. and Mrs.
+Fezziwig took their stations, one on either side the door, and, shaking
+hands with every person individually as he or she went out, wished him
+or her a Merry Christmas. When everybody had retired but the two
+'prentices, they did the same to them; and thus the cheerful voices died
+away, and the lads were left to their beds; which were under a counter
+in the back-shop.
+
+During the whole of this time Scrooge had acted like a man out of his
+wits. His heart and soul were in the scene, and with his former self. He
+corroborated everything, remembered everything, enjoyed everything, and
+underwent the strangest agitation. It was not until now, when the bright
+faces of his former self and Dick were turned from them, that he
+remembered the Ghost, and became conscious that it was looking full upon
+him, while the light upon its head burnt very clear.
+
+"A small matter," said the Ghost, "to make these silly folks so full of
+gratitude."
+
+"Small!" echoed Scrooge.
+
+The Spirit signed to him to listen to the two apprentices, who were
+pouring out their hearts in praise of Fezziwig; and, when he had done
+so, said:
+
+"Why! Is it not? He has spent but a few pounds of your mortal money:
+three or four, perhaps. Is that so much that he deserves this praise?"
+
+"It isn't that," said Scrooge, heated by the remark, and speaking
+unconsciously like his former, not his latter self. "It isn't that,
+Spirit. He has the power to render us happy or unhappy; to make our
+service light or burdensome; a pleasure or a toil. Say that his power
+lies in words and looks; in things so slight and insignificant that it
+is impossible to add and count 'em up: what then? The happiness he gives
+is quite as great as if it cost a fortune."
+
+He felt the Spirit's glance, and stopped.
+
+"What is the matter?" asked the Ghost.
+
+"Nothing particular," said Scrooge.
+
+"Something, I think?" the Ghost insisted.
+
+"No," said Scrooge, "no. I should like to be able to say a word or two
+to my clerk just now. That's all."
+
+His former self turned down the lamps as he gave utterance to the wish;
+and Scrooge and the Ghost again stood side by side in the open air.
+
+"My time grows short," observed the Spirit. "Quick!"
+
+This was not addressed to Scrooge, or to any one whom he could see, but
+it produced an immediate effect. For again Scrooge saw himself. He was
+older now; a man in the prime of life. His face had not the harsh and
+rigid lines of later years; but it had begun to wear the signs of care
+and avarice. There was an eager, greedy, restless motion in the eye,
+which showed the passion that had taken root, and where the shadow of
+the growing tree would fall.
+
+He was not alone, but sat by the side of a fair young girl in a mourning
+dress: in whose eyes there were tears, which sparkled in the light that
+shone out of the Ghost of Christmas Past.
+
+"It matters little," she said softly. "To you, very little. Another idol
+has displaced me; and, if it can cheer and comfort you in time to come
+as I would have tried to do, I have no just cause to grieve."
+
+"What Idol has displaced you?" he rejoined.
+
+"A golden one."
+
+"This is the even-handed dealing of the world!" he said. "There is
+nothing on which it is so hard as poverty; and there is nothing it
+professes to condemn with such severity as the pursuit of wealth!"
+
+"You fear the world too much," she answered gently. "All your other
+hopes have merged into the hope of being beyond the chance of its sordid
+reproach. I have seen your nobler aspirations fall off one by one, until
+the master passion, Gain, engrosses you. Have I not?"
+
+"What then?" he retorted. "Even if I have grown so much wiser, what
+then? I am not changed towards you."
+
+She shook her head.
+
+"Am I?"
+
+"Our contract is an old one. It was made when we were both poor, and
+content to be so, until, in good season, we could improve our worldly
+fortune by our patient industry. You _are_ changed. When it was made you
+were another man."
+
+"I was a boy," he said impatiently.
+
+"Your own feeling tells you that you were not what you are," she
+returned. "I am. That which promised happiness when we were one in heart
+is fraught with misery now that we are two. How often and how keenly I
+have thought of this I will not say. It is enough that I _have_ thought
+of it, and can release you."
+
+"Have I ever sought release?"
+
+"In words. No. Never."
+
+"In what, then?"
+
+"In a changed nature; in an altered spirit; in another atmosphere of
+life; another Hope as its great end. In everything that made my love of
+any worth or value in your sight. If this had never been between us,"
+said the girl, looking mildly, but with steadiness, upon him, "tell me,
+would you seek me out and try to win me now? Ah, no!"
+
+He seemed to yield to the justice of this supposition in spite of
+himself. But he said, with a struggle, "You think not."
+
+"I would gladly think otherwise if I could," she answered. "Heaven
+knows! When _I_ have learned a Truth like this, I know how strong and
+irresistible it must be. But if you were free to-day, to-morrow,
+yesterday, can even I believe that you would choose a dowerless
+girl--you who, in your very confidence with her, weigh everything by
+Gain: or, choosing her, if for a moment you were false enough to your
+one guiding principle to do so, do I not know that your repentance and
+regret would surely follow? I do; and I release you. With a full heart,
+for the love of him you once were."
+
+He was about to speak; but, with her head turned from him, she resumed.
+
+"You may--the memory of what is past half makes me hope you will--have
+pain in this. A very, very brief time, and you will dismiss the
+recollection of it gladly, as an unprofitable dream, from which it
+happened well that you awoke. May you be happy in the life you have
+chosen!"
+
+She left him, and they parted.
+
+"Spirit!" said Scrooge, "show me no more! Conduct me home. Why do you
+delight to torture me?"
+
+"One shadow more!" exclaimed the Ghost.
+
+"No more!" cried Scrooge. "No more! I don't wish to see it. Show me no
+more!"
+
+But the relentless Ghost pinioned him in both his arms, and forced him
+to observe what happened next.
+
+They were in another scene and place; a room, not very large or
+handsome, but full of comfort. Near to the winter fire sat a beautiful
+young girl, so like that last that Scrooge believed it was the same,
+until he saw _her_, now a comely matron, sitting opposite her daughter.
+The noise in this room was perfectly tumultuous, for there were more
+children there than Scrooge in his agitated state of mind could count;
+and, unlike the celebrated herd in the poem, they were not forty
+children conducting themselves like one, but every child was conducting
+itself like forty. The consequences were uproarious beyond belief; but
+no one seemed to care; on the contrary, the mother and daughter laughed
+heartily, and enjoyed it very much; and the latter, soon beginning to
+mingle in the sports, got pillaged by the young brigands most
+ruthlessly. What would I not have given to be one of them! Though I
+never could have been so rude, no, no! I wouldn't for the wealth of all
+the world have crushed that braided hair, and torn it down; and, for the
+precious little shoe, I wouldn't have plucked it off, God bless my soul!
+to save my life. As to measuring her waist in sport, as they did, bold
+young brood, I couldn't have done it; I should have expected my arm to
+have grown round it for a punishment, and never come straight again. And
+yet I should have dearly liked, I own, to have touched her lips; to have
+questioned her, that she might have opened them; to have looked upon the
+lashes of her downcast eyes, and never raised a blush; to have let loose
+waves of hair, an inch of which would be a keepsake beyond price: in
+short, I should have liked, I do confess, to have had the lightest
+licence of a child, and yet to have been man enough to know its value.
+
+But now a knocking at the door was heard, and such a rush immediately
+ensued that she, with laughing face and plundered dress, was borne
+towards it in the centre of a flushed and boisterous group, just in time
+to greet the father, who came home attended by a man laden with
+Christmas toys and presents. Then the shouting and the struggling, and
+the onslaught that was made on the defenceless porter! The scaling him,
+with chairs for ladders, to dive into his pockets, despoil him of
+brown-paper parcels, hold on tight by his cravat, hug him round the
+neck, pummel his back, and kick his legs in irrepressible affection! The
+shouts of wonder and delight with which the development of every package
+was received! The terrible announcement that the baby had been taken in
+the act of putting a doll's frying-pan into his mouth, and was more than
+suspected of having swallowed a fictitious turkey, glued on a wooden
+platter! The immense relief of finding this a false alarm! The joy, and
+gratitude, and ecstasy! They are all indescribable alike. It is enough
+that by degrees, the children and their emotions got out of the parlour,
+and, by one stair at a time, up to the top of the house, where they went
+to bed, and so subsided.
+
+And now Scrooge looked on more attentively than ever, when the master of
+the house, having his daughter leaning fondly on him, sat down with her
+and her mother at his own fireside; and when he thought that such
+another creature, quite as graceful and as full of promise, might have
+called him father, and been a spring-time in the haggard winter of his
+life, his sight grew very dim indeed.
+
+"Belle," said the husband, turning to his wife with a smile, "I saw an
+old friend of yours this afternoon."
+
+"Who was it?"
+
+"Guess!"
+
+"How can I? Tut, don't I know?" she added in the same breath, laughing
+as he laughed. "Mr. Scrooge."
+
+"Mr. Scrooge it was. I passed his office window; and as it was not shut
+up, and he had a candle inside, I could scarcely help seeing him. His
+partner lies upon the point of death, I hear; and there he sat alone.
+Quite alone in the world, I do believe."
+
+"Spirit!" said Scrooge in a broken voice, "remove me from this place."
+
+"I told you these were shadows of the things that have been," said the
+Ghost. "That they are what they are, do not blame me!"
+
+"Remove me!" Scrooge exclaimed. "I cannot bear it!"
+
+He turned upon the Ghost, and seeing that it looked upon him with a face
+in which in some strange way there were fragments of all the faces it
+had shown him, wrestled with it.
+
+"Leave me! Take me back! Haunt me no longer!"
+
+In the struggle--if that can be called a struggle in which the Ghost,
+with no visible resistance on its own part, was undisturbed by any
+effort of its adversary--Scrooge observed that its light was burning
+high and bright; and dimly connecting that with its influence over him,
+he seized the extinguisher cap, and by a sudden action pressed it down
+upon its head.
+
+The Spirit dropped beneath it, so that the extinguisher covered its
+whole form; but, though Scrooge pressed it down with all his force, he
+could not hide the light, which streamed from under it in an unbroken
+flood upon the ground.
+
+He was conscious of being exhausted, and overcome by an irresistible
+drowsiness; and, further, of being in his own bedroom. He gave the cap a
+parting squeeze, in which his hand relaxed; and had barely time to reel
+to bed before he sank into a heavy sleep.
+
+
+
+
+STAVE THREE
+
+THE SECOND OF THE THREE SPIRITS
+
+
+Awaking in the middle of a prodigiously tough snore, and sitting up in
+bed to get his thoughts together, Scrooge had no occasion to be told
+that the bell was again upon the stroke of One. He felt that he was
+restored to consciousness in the right nick of time, for the especial
+purpose of holding a conference with the second messenger dispatched to
+him through Jacob Marley's intervention. But, finding that he turned
+uncomfortably cold when he began to wonder which of his curtains this
+new spectre would draw back, he put them every one aside with his own
+hands, and, lying down again, established a sharp look-out all round the
+bed. For he wished to challenge the Spirit on the moment of its
+appearance, and did not wish to be taken by surprise and made nervous.
+
+Gentlemen of the free-and-easy sort, who plume themselves on being
+acquainted with a move or two, and being usually equal to the time of
+day, express the wide range of their capacity for adventure by observing
+that they are good for anything from pitch-and-toss to manslaughter;
+between which opposite extremes, no doubt, there lies a tolerably wide
+and comprehensive range of subjects. Without venturing for Scrooge quite
+as hardily as this, I don't mind calling on you to believe that he was
+ready for a good broad field of strange appearances, and that nothing
+between a baby and a rhinoceros would have astonished him very much.
+
+Now, being prepared for almost anything, he was not by any means
+prepared for nothing; and consequently, when the bell struck One, and
+no shape appeared, he was taken with a violent fit of trembling. Five
+minutes, ten minutes, a quarter of an hour went by, yet nothing came.
+All this time he lay upon his bed, the very core and centre of a blaze
+of ruddy light, which streamed upon it when the clock proclaimed the
+hour; and which, being only light, was more alarming than a dozen
+ghosts, as he was powerless to make out what it meant, or would be at;
+and was sometimes apprehensive that he might be at that very moment an
+interesting case of spontaneous combustion, without having the
+consolation of knowing it. At last, however, he began to think--as you
+or I would have thought at first; for it is always the person not in the
+predicament who knows what ought to have been done in it, and would
+unquestionably have done it too--at last, I say, he began to think that
+the source and secret of this ghostly light might be in the adjoining
+room, from whence, on further tracing it, it seemed to shine. This idea
+taking full possession of his mind, he got up softly, and shuffled in
+his slippers to the door.
+
+The moment Scrooge's hand was on the lock, a strange voice called him by
+his name, and bade him enter. He obeyed.
+
+It was his own room. There was no doubt about that. But it had undergone
+a surprising transformation. The walls and ceiling were so hung with
+living green, that it looked a perfect grove; from every part of which
+bright gleaming berries glistened. The crisp leaves of holly, mistletoe,
+and ivy reflected back the light, as if so many little mirrors had been
+scattered there; and such a mighty blaze went roaring up the chimney as
+that dull petrifaction of a hearth had never known in Scrooge's time, or
+Marley's, or for many and many a winter season gone. Heaped up on the
+floor, to form a kind of throne, were turkeys, geese, game, poultry,
+brawn, great joints of meat, sucking-pigs, long wreaths of sausages,
+mince-pies, plum-puddings, barrels of oysters, red-hot chestnuts,
+cherry-cheeked apples, juicy oranges, luscious pears, immense
+twelfth-cakes, and seething bowls of punch, that made the chamber dim
+with their delicious steam. In easy state upon this couch there sat a
+jolly Giant, glorious to see; who bore a glowing torch, in shape not
+unlike Plenty's horn, and held it up, high up, to shed its light on
+Scrooge as he came peeping round the door.
+
+"Come in!" exclaimed the Ghost. "Come in! and know me better, man!"
+
+Scrooge entered timidly, and hung his head before this Spirit. He was
+not the dogged Scrooge he had been; and, though the Spirit's eyes were
+clear and kind, he did not like to meet them.
+
+"I am the Ghost of Christmas Present," said the Spirit. "Look upon me!"
+
+Scrooge reverently did so. It was clothed in one simple deep green robe,
+or mantle, bordered with white fur. This garment hung so loosely on the
+figure, that its capacious breast was bare, as if disdaining to be
+warded or concealed by any artifice. Its feet, observable beneath the
+ample folds of the garment, were also bare; and on its head it wore no
+other covering than a holly wreath, set here and there with shining
+icicles. Its dark brown curls were long and free; free as its genial
+face, its sparkling eye, its open hand, its cheery voice, its
+unconstrained demeanour, and its joyful air. Girded round its middle was
+an antique scabbard; but no sword was in it, and the ancient sheath was
+eaten up with rust.
+
+"You have never seen the like of me before!" exclaimed the Spirit.
+
+"Never," Scrooge made answer to it.
+
+"Have never walked forth with the younger members of my family; meaning
+(for I am very young) my elder brothers born in these later years?"
+pursued the Phantom.
+
+"I don't think I have," said Scrooge. "I am afraid I have not. Have you
+had many brothers, Spirit?"
+
+"More than eighteen hundred," said the Ghost.
+
+"A tremendous family to provide for," muttered Scrooge.
+
+The Ghost of Christmas Present rose.
+
+"Spirit," said Scrooge submissively, "conduct me where you will. I went
+forth last night on compulsion, and I learnt a lesson which is working
+now. To-night, if you have aught to teach me, let me profit by it."
+
+"Touch my robe!"
+
+Scrooge did as he was told, and held it fast.
+
+Holly, mistletoe, red berries, ivy, turkeys, geese, game, poultry,
+brawn, meat, pigs, sausages, oysters, pies, puddings, fruit, and punch,
+all vanished instantly. So did the room, the fire, the ruddy glow, the
+hour of night, and they stood in the city streets on Christmas morning,
+where (for the weather was severe) the people made a rough, but brisk
+and not unpleasant kind of music, in scraping the snow from the pavement
+in front of their dwellings, and from the tops of their houses, whence
+it was mad delight to the boys to see it come plumping down into the
+road below, and splitting into artificial little snow-storms.
+
+The house-fronts looked black enough, and the windows blacker,
+contrasting with the smooth white sheet of snow upon the roofs, and with
+the dirtier snow upon the ground; which last deposit had been ploughed
+up in deep furrows by the heavy wheels of carts and waggons; furrows
+that crossed and recrossed each other hundreds of times where the great
+streets branched off; and made intricate channels, hard to trace, in the
+thick yellow mud and icy water. The sky was gloomy, and the shortest
+streets were choked up with a dingy mist, half thawed, half frozen,
+whose heavier particles descended in a shower of sooty atoms, as if all
+the chimneys in Great Britain had, by one consent, caught fire, and were
+blazing away to their dear hearts' content. There was nothing very
+cheerful in the climate or the town, and yet was there an air of
+cheerfulness abroad that the clearest summer air and brightest summer
+sun might have endeavoured to diffuse in vain.
+
+For, the people who were shovelling away on the housetops were jovial
+and full of glee; calling out to one another from the parapets, and now
+and then exchanging a facetious snowball--better-natured missile far
+than many a wordy jest--laughing heartily if it went right, and not less
+heartily if it went wrong. The poulterers' shops were still half open,
+and the fruiterers' were radiant in their glory. There were great,
+round, pot-bellied baskets of chestnuts, shaped like the waistcoats of
+jolly old gentlemen, lolling at the doors, and tumbling out into the
+street in their apoplectic opulence. There were ruddy, brown-faced,
+broad-girthed Spanish onions, shining in the fatness of their growth
+like Spanish Friars, and winking from their shelves in wanton slyness at
+the girls as they went by, and glanced demurely at the hung-up
+mistletoe. There were pears and apples clustered high in blooming
+pyramids; there were bunches of grapes, made, in the shopkeepers'
+benevolence, to dangle from conspicuous hooks that people's mouths might
+water gratis as they passed; there were piles of filberts, mossy and
+brown, recalling, in their fragrance, ancient walks among the woods, and
+pleasant shufflings ankle deep through withered leaves; there were
+Norfolk Biffins, squab and swarthy, setting off the yellow of the
+oranges and lemons, and, in the great compactness of their juicy
+persons, urgently entreating and beseeching to be carried home in paper
+bags, and eaten after dinner. The very gold and silver fish, set forth
+among these choice fruits in a bowl, though members of a dull and
+stagnant-blooded race, appeared to know that there was something going
+on; and, to a fish, went gasping round and round their little world in
+slow and passionless excitement.
+
+The Grocers'! oh, the Grocers'! nearly closed, with perhaps two shutters
+down, or one; but through those gaps such glimpses! It was not alone
+that the scales descending on the counter made a merry sound, or that
+the twine and roller parted company so briskly, or that the canisters
+were rattled up and down like juggling tricks, or even that the blended
+scents of tea and coffee were so grateful to the nose, or even that the
+raisins were so plentiful and rare, the almonds so extremely white, the
+sticks of cinnamon so long and straight, the other spices so delicious,
+the candied fruits so caked and spotted with molten sugar as to make the
+coldest lookers-on feel faint, and subsequently bilious. Nor was it that
+the figs were moist and pulpy, or that the French plums blushed in
+modest tartness from their highly-decorated boxes, or that everything
+was good to eat and in its Christmas dress; but the customers were all
+so hurried and so eager in the hopeful promise of the day, that they
+tumbled up against each other at the door, crashing their wicker baskets
+wildly, and left their purchases upon the counter, and came running back
+to fetch them, and committed hundreds of the like mistakes, in the best
+humour possible; while the Grocer and his people were so frank and
+fresh, that the polished hearts with which they fastened their aprons
+behind might have been their own, worn outside for general inspection,
+and for Christmas daws to peck at if they chose.
+
+But soon the steeples called good people all to church and chapel, and
+away they came, flocking through the streets in their best clothes, and
+with their gayest faces. And at the same time there emerged, from scores
+of by-streets, lanes, and nameless turnings, innumerable people,
+carrying their dinners to the bakers' shops. The sight of these poor
+revellers appeared to interest the Spirit very much, for he stood with
+Scrooge beside him in a baker's doorway, and, taking off the covers as
+their bearers passed, sprinkled incense on their dinners from his torch.
+And it was a very uncommon kind of torch, for once or twice, when there
+were angry words between some dinner-carriers who had jostled each
+other, he shed a few drops of water on them from it, and their
+good-humour was restored directly. For they said, it was a shame to
+quarrel upon Christmas-day. And so it was! God love it, so it was!
+
+In time the bells ceased, and the bakers were shut up; and yet there was
+a genial shadowing forth of all these dinners, and the progress of their
+cooking, in the thawed blotch of wet above each baker's oven; where the
+pavement smoked as if its stones were cooking too.
+
+"Is there a peculiar flavour in what you sprinkle from your torch?"
+asked Scrooge.
+
+"There is. My own."
+
+"Would it apply to any kind of dinner on this day?" asked Scrooge.
+
+"To any kindly given. To a poor one most."
+
+"Why to a poor one most?" asked Scrooge.
+
+"Because it needs it most."
+
+"Spirit!" said Scrooge after a moment's thought. "I wonder you, of all
+the beings in the many worlds about us, should desire to cramp these
+people's opportunities of innocent enjoyment."
+
+"I!" cried the Spirit.
+
+"You would deprive them of their means of dining every seventh day,
+often the only day on which they can be said to dine at all," said
+Scrooge; "wouldn't you?"
+
+"I!" cried the Spirit.
+
+"You seek to close these places on the Seventh Day," said Scrooge. "And
+it comes to the same thing."
+
+"_I_ seek!" exclaimed the Spirit.
+
+"Forgive me if I am wrong. It has been done in your name, or at least in
+that of your family," said Scrooge.
+
+"There are some upon this earth of yours," returned the Spirit, "who lay
+claim to know us, and who do their deeds of passion, pride, ill-will,
+hatred, envy, bigotry, and selfishness in our name, who are as strange
+to us, and all our kith and kin, as if they had never lived. Remember
+that, and charge their doings on themselves, not us."
+
+Scrooge promised that he would; and they went on, invisible, as they
+had been before, into the suburbs of the town. It was a remarkable
+quality of the Ghost (which Scrooge had observed at the baker's), that,
+notwithstanding his gigantic size, he could accommodate himself to any
+place with ease; and that he stood beneath a low roof quite as
+gracefully and like a supernatural creature as it was possible he could
+have done in any lofty hall.
+
+And perhaps it was the pleasure the good Spirit had in showing off this
+power of his, or else it was his own kind, generous, hearty nature, and
+his sympathy with all poor men, that led him straight to Scrooge's
+clerk's; for there he went, and took Scrooge with him, holding to his
+robe; and, on the threshold of the door, the Spirit smiled, and stopped
+to bless Bob Cratchit's dwelling with the sprinklings of his torch.
+Think of that! Bob had but fifteen "Bob" a week himself; he pocketed on
+Saturdays but fifteen copies of his Christian name; and yet the Ghost of
+Christmas Present blessed his four-roomed house!
+
+Then up rose Mrs. Cratchit, Cratchit's wife, dressed out but poorly in a
+twice-turned gown, but brave in ribbons, which are cheap, and make a
+goodly show for sixpence; and she laid the cloth, assisted by Belinda
+Cratchit, second of her daughters, also brave in ribbons; while Master
+Peter Cratchit plunged a fork into the saucepan of potatoes, and,
+getting the corners of his monstrous shirt collar (Bob's private
+property, conferred upon his son and heir in honour of the day) into his
+mouth, rejoiced to find himself so gallantly attired, and yearned to
+show his linen in the fashionable Parks. And now two smaller Cratchits,
+boy and girl, came tearing in, screaming that outside the baker's they
+had smelt the goose, and known it for their own; and, basking in
+luxurious thoughts of sage and onion, these young Cratchits danced about
+the table, and exalted Master Peter Cratchit to the skies, while he (not
+proud, although his collars nearly choked him) blew the fire, until the
+slow potatoes, bubbling up, knocked loudly at the saucepan lid to be let
+out and peeled.
+
+"What has ever got your precious father, then?" said Mrs. Cratchit. "And
+your brother, Tiny Tim? And Martha warn't as late last Christmas-day by
+half an hour!"
+
+"Here's Martha, mother!" said a girl, appearing as she spoke.
+
+"Here's Martha, mother!" cried the two young Cratchits. "Hurrah! There's
+_such_ a goose, Martha!"
+
+"Why, bless your heart alive, my dear, how late you are!" said Mrs.
+Cratchit, kissing her a dozen times, and taking off her shawl and bonnet
+for her with officious zeal.
+
+"We'd a deal of work to finish up last night," replied the girl, "and
+had to clear away this morning, mother!"
+
+"Well! never mind so long as you are come," said Mrs. Cratchit. "Sit ye
+down before the fire, my dear, and have a warm, Lord bless ye!"
+
+"No, no! There's father coming," cried the two young Cratchits, who were
+everywhere at once. "Hide, Martha, hide!"
+
+So Martha hid herself, and in came little Bob, the father, with at least
+three feet of comforter, exclusive of the fringe, hanging down before
+him; and his threadbare clothes darned up and brushed to look
+seasonable; and Tiny Tim upon his shoulder. Alas for Tiny Tim, he bore a
+little crutch, and had his limbs supported by an iron frame!
+
+"Why, where's our Martha?" cried Bob Cratchit, looking round.
+
+"Not coming," said Mrs. Cratchit.
+
+"Not coming!" said Bob with a sudden declension in his high spirits; for
+he had been Tim's blood horse all the way from church, and had come home
+rampant. "Not coming upon Christmas-day!"
+
+Martha didn't like to see him disappointed, if it were only in joke; so
+she came out prematurely from behind the closet door, and ran into his
+arms, while the two young Cratchits hustled Tiny Tim, and bore him off
+into the wash-house, that he might hear the pudding singing in the
+copper.
+
+"And how did little Tim behave?" asked Mrs. Cratchit when she had
+rallied Bob on his credulity, and Bob had hugged his daughter to his
+heart's content.
+
+"As good as gold," said Bob, "and better. Somehow, he gets thoughtful,
+sitting by himself so much, and thinks the strangest things you ever
+heard. He told me, coming home, that he hoped the people saw him in the
+church, because he was a cripple, and it might be pleasant to them to
+remember upon Christmas-day who made lame beggars walk and blind men
+see."
+
+Bob's voice was tremulous when he told them this, and trembled more when
+he said that Tiny Tim was growing strong and hearty.
+
+His active little crutch was heard upon the floor, and back came Tiny
+Tim before another word was spoken, escorted by his brother and sister
+to his stool beside the fire; and while Bob, turning up his cuffs--as
+if, poor fellow, they were capable of being made more shabby--compounded
+some hot mixture in a jug with gin and lemons, and stirred it round and
+round, and put it on the hob to simmer, Master Peter and the two
+ubiquitous young Cratchits went to fetch the goose, with which they soon
+returned in high procession.
+
+Such a bustle ensued that you might have thought a goose the rarest of
+all birds; a feathered phenomenon, to which a black swan was a matter of
+course--and, in truth, it was something very like it in that house. Mrs.
+Cratchit made the gravy (ready beforehand in a little saucepan) hissing
+hot; Master Peter mashed the potatoes with incredible vigour; Miss
+Belinda sweetened up the apple sauce; Martha dusted the hot plates; Bob
+took Tiny Tim beside him in a tiny corner at the table; the two young
+Cratchits set chairs for everybody, not forgetting themselves, and,
+mounting guard upon their posts, crammed spoons into their mouths, lest
+they should shriek for goose before their turn came to be helped. At
+last the dishes were set on, and grace was said. It was succeeded by a
+breathless pause, as Mrs. Cratchit, looking slowly all along the
+carving-knife, prepared to plunge it in the breast; but when she did,
+and when the long-expected gush of stuffing issued forth, one murmur of
+delight arose all round the board, and even Tiny Tim, excited by the two
+young Cratchits, beat on the table with the handle of his knife, and
+feebly cried Hurrah!
+
+There never was such a goose. Bob said he didn't believe there ever was
+such a goose cooked. Its tenderness and flavour, size and cheapness,
+were the themes of universal admiration. Eked out by apple sauce and
+mashed potatoes, it was a sufficient dinner for the whole family;
+indeed, as Mrs. Cratchit said with great delight (surveying one small
+atom of a bone upon the dish), they hadn't ate it all at last! Yet every
+one had had enough, and the youngest Cratchits, in particular, were
+steeped in sage and onion to the eyebrows! But now, the plates being
+changed by Miss Belinda, Mrs. Cratchit left the room alone--too nervous
+to bear witnesses--to take the pudding up, and bring it in.
+
+Suppose it should not be done enough! Suppose it should break in turning
+out! Suppose somebody should have got over the wall of the back-yard and
+stolen it, while they were merry with the goose--a supposition at which
+the two young Cratchits became livid! All sorts of horrors were
+supposed.
+
+Hallo! A great deal of steam! The pudding was out of the copper. A smell
+like a washing-day! That was the cloth. A smell like an eating-house and
+a pastrycook's next door to each other, with a laundress's next door to
+that! That was the pudding! In half a minute Mrs. Cratchit
+entered--flushed, but smiling proudly--with the pudding, like a speckled
+cannon-ball, so hard and firm, blazing in half of half-a-quartern of
+ignited brandy, and bedight with Christmas holly stuck into the top.
+
+Oh, a wonderful pudding! Bob Cratchit said, and calmly too, that he
+regarded it as the greatest success achieved by Mrs. Cratchit since
+their marriage. Mrs. Cratchit said that, now the weight was off her
+mind, she would confess she had her doubts about the quantity of flour.
+Everybody had something to say about it, but nobody said or thought it
+was at all a small pudding for a large family. It would have been flat
+heresy to do so. Any Cratchit would have blushed to hint at such a
+thing.
+
+At last the dinner was all done, the cloth was cleared, the hearth
+swept, and the fire made up. The compound in the jug being tasted, and
+considered perfect, apples and oranges were put upon the table, and a
+shovel full of chestnuts on the fire. Then all the Cratchit family drew
+round the hearth in what Bob Cratchit called a circle, meaning half a
+one; and at Bob Cratchit's elbow stood the family display of glass. Two
+tumblers and a custard cup without a handle.
+
+These held the hot stuff from the jug, however, as well as golden
+goblets would have done; and Bob served it out with beaming looks, while
+the chestnuts on the fire sputtered and cracked noisily. Then Bob
+proposed:
+
+"A merry Christmas to us all, my dears. God bless us!"
+
+Which all the family re-echoed.
+
+"God bless us every one!" said Tiny Tim, the last of all.
+
+He sat very close to his father's side, upon his little stool. Bob held
+his withered little hand in his, as if he loved the child, and wished to
+keep him by his side, and dreaded that he might be taken from him.
+
+"Spirit," said Scrooge with an interest he had never felt before, "tell
+me if Tiny Tim will live."
+
+"I see a vacant seat," replied the Ghost, "in the poor chimney-corner,
+and a crutch without an owner, carefully preserved. If these shadows
+remain unaltered by the Future, the child will die."
+
+"No, no," said Scrooge. "Oh, no, kind Spirit! say he will be spared."
+
+"If these shadows remain unaltered by the Future, none other of my
+race," returned the Ghost, "will find him here. What then? If he be like
+to die, he had better do it, and decrease the surplus population."
+
+Scrooge hung his head to hear his own words quoted by the Spirit, and
+was overcome with penitence and grief.
+
+"Man," said the Ghost, "if man you be in heart, not adamant, forbear
+that wicked cant until you have discovered What the surplus is, and
+Where it is. Will you decide what men shall live, what men shall die? It
+may be that, in the sight of Heaven, you are more worthless and less fit
+to live than millions like this poor man's child. Oh God! to hear the
+Insect on the leaf pronouncing on the too much life among his hungry
+brothers in the dust!"
+
+Scrooge bent before the Ghost's rebuke, and, trembling, cast his eyes
+upon the ground. But he raised them speedily on hearing his own name.
+
+"Mr. Scrooge!" said Bob. "I'll give you Mr. Scrooge, the Founder of the
+Feast!"
+
+"The Founder of the Feast, indeed!" cried Mrs. Cratchit, reddening. "I
+wish I had him here. I'd give him a piece of my mind to feast upon, and
+I hope he'd have a good appetite for it."
+
+"My dear," said Bob, "the children! Christmas-day."
+
+"It should be Christmas-day, I am sure," said she, "on which one drinks
+the health of such an odious, stingy, hard, unfeeling man as Mr.
+Scrooge. You know he is, Robert! Nobody knows it better than you do,
+poor fellow!"
+
+"My dear!" was Bob's mild answer. "Christmas-day."
+
+"I'll drink his health for your sake and the Day's," said Mrs. Cratchit,
+"not for his. Long life to him! A merry Christmas and a happy New Year!
+He'll be very merry and very happy, I have no doubt!"
+
+The children drank the toast after her. It was the first of their
+proceedings which had no heartiness in it. Tiny Tim drank it last of
+all, but he didn't care twopence for it. Scrooge was the Ogre of the
+family. The mention of his name cast a dark shadow on the party, which
+was not dispelled for full five minutes.
+
+After it had passed away they were ten times merrier than before, from
+the mere relief of Scrooge the Baleful being done with. Bob Cratchit
+told them how he had a situation in his eye for Master Peter, which
+would bring in, if obtained, full five-and-sixpence weekly. The two
+young Cratchits laughed tremendously at the idea of Peter's being a man
+of business; and Peter himself looked thoughtfully at the fire from
+between his collars, as if he were deliberating what particular
+investments he should favour when he came into the receipt of that
+bewildering income. Martha, who was a poor apprentice at a milliner's,
+then told them what kind of work she had to do, and how many hours she
+worked at a stretch, and how she meant to lie abed to-morrow morning for
+a good long rest; to-morrow being a holiday she passed at home. Also how
+she had seen a countess and a lord some days before, and how the lord
+"was much about as tall as Peter"; at which Peter pulled up his collars
+so high, that you couldn't have seen his head if you had been there. All
+this time the chestnuts and the jug went round and round; and by-and-by
+they had a song, about a lost child travelling in the snow, from Tiny
+Tim, who had a plaintive little voice, and sang it very well indeed.
+
+There was nothing of high mark in this. They were not a handsome family;
+they were not well dressed; their shoes were far from being waterproof;
+their clothes were scanty; and Peter might have known, and very likely
+did, the inside of a pawn-broker's. But they were happy, grateful,
+pleased with one another, and contented with the time; and when they
+faded, and looked happier yet in the bright sprinklings of the Spirit's
+torch at parting, Scrooge had his eye upon them, and especially on Tiny
+Tim, until the last.
+
+By this time it was getting dark, and snowing pretty heavily; and as
+Scrooge and the Spirit went along the streets, the brightness of the
+roaring fires in kitchens, parlours, and all sorts of rooms was
+wonderful. Here, the flickering of the blaze showed preparations for a
+cosy dinner, with hot plates baking through and through before the fire,
+and deep red curtains, ready to be drawn to shut out cold and darkness.
+There, all the children of the house were running out into the snow to
+meet their married sisters, brothers, cousins, uncles, aunts, and be the
+first to greet them. Here, again, were shadows on the window blinds of
+guests assembling; and there a group of handsome girls, all hooded and
+fur-booted, and all chattering at once, tripped lightly off to some near
+neighbour's house; where, woe upon the single man who saw them
+enter--artful witches, well they knew it--in a glow!
+
+But, if you had judged from the numbers of people on their way to
+friendly gatherings, you might have thought that no one was at home to
+give them welcome when they got there, instead of every house expecting
+company, and piling up its fires half-chimney high. Blessings on it, how
+the Ghost exulted! How it bared its breadth of breast, and opened its
+capacious palm, and floated on, outpouring, with a generous hand, its
+bright and harmless mirth on everything within its reach! The very
+lamp-lighter, who ran on before, dotting the dusky street with specks of
+light, and who was dressed to spend the evening somewhere, laughed out
+loudly as the Spirit passed, though little kenned the lamp-lighter that
+he had any company but Christmas.
+
+And now, without a word of warning from the Ghost, they stood upon a
+bleak and desert moor, where monstrous masses of rude stone were cast
+about, as though it were the burial-place or giants; and water spread
+itself wheresoever it listed; or would have done so, but for the frost
+that held it prisoner; and nothing grew but moss and furze, and coarse,
+rank grass. Down in the west the setting sun had left a streak of fiery
+red, which glared upon the desolation for an instant, like a sullen eye,
+and, frowning lower, lower, lower yet, was lost in the thick gloom of
+darkest night.
+
+"What place is this?" asked Scrooge.
+
+"A place where Miners live, who labour in the bowels of the earth,"
+returned the Spirit. "But they know me. See!"
+
+A light shone from the window of a hut, and swiftly they advanced
+towards it. Passing through the wall of mud and stone, they found a
+cheerful company assembled round a glowing fire. An old, old man and
+woman, with their children and their children's children, and another
+generation beyond that, all decked out gaily in their holiday attire.
+The old man, in a voice that seldom rose above the howling of the wind
+upon the barren waste, was singing them a Christmas song; it had been a
+very old song when he was a boy; and from time to time they all joined
+in the chorus. So surely as they raised their voices, the old man got
+quite blithe and loud; and, so surely as they stopped, his vigour sank
+again.
+
+The Spirit did not tarry here, but bade Scrooge hold his robe, and,
+passing on above the moor, sped whither? Not to sea? To sea. To
+Scrooge's horror, looking back, he saw the last of the land, a frightful
+range of rocks, behind them; and his ears were deafened by the
+thundering of water, as it rolled and roared, and raged among the
+dreadful caverns it had worn, and fiercely tried to undermine the earth.
+
+Built upon a dismal reef of sunken rocks, some league or so from shore,
+on which the waters chafed and dashed, the wild year through, there
+stood a solitary lighthouse. Great heaps of seaweed clung to its base,
+and storm-birds--born of the wind, one might suppose, as seaweed of the
+water--rose and fell about it, like the waves they skimmed.
+
+But, even here, two men who watched the light had made a fire that
+through the loophole in the thick stone wall shed out a ray of
+brightness on the awful sea. Joining their horny hands over the rough
+table at which they sat, they wished each other Merry Christmas in their
+can of grog; and one of them, the elder too, with his face all damaged
+and scarred with hard weather, as the figure-head of an old ship might
+be, struck up a sturdy song that was like a gale in itself.
+
+Again the Ghost sped on, above the black and heaving sea--on, on--until,
+being far away, as he told Scrooge, from any shore, they lighted on a
+ship. They stood beside the helmsman at the wheel, the look-out in the
+bow, the officers who had the watch; dark, ghostly figures in their
+several stations; but every man among them hummed a Christmas tune, or
+had a Christmas thought, or spoke below his breath to his companion of
+some bygone Christmas-day, with homeward hopes belonging to it. And
+every man on board, waking or sleeping, good or bad, had had a kinder
+word for one another on that day than on any day in the year; and had
+shared to some extent in its festivities; and had remembered those he
+cared for at a distance, and had known that they delighted to remember
+him.
+
+It was a great surprise to Scrooge, while listening to the moaning of
+the wind, and thinking what a solemn thing it was to move on through the
+lonely darkness over an unknown abyss, whose depths were secrets as
+profound as death: it was a great surprise to Scrooge, while thus
+engaged, to hear a hearty laugh. It was a much greater surprise to
+Scrooge to recognise it as his own nephew's, and to find himself in a
+bright, dry, gleaming room, with the Spirit standing smiling by his
+side, and looking at that same nephew with approving affability!
+
+"Ha, ha!" laughed Scrooge's nephew. "Ha, ha, ha!"
+
+If you should happen, by any unlikely chance, to know a man more blessed
+in a laugh than Scrooge's nephew, all I can say is, I should like to
+know him too. Introduce him to me, and I'll cultivate his acquaintance.
+
+It is a fair, even-handed, noble adjustment of things, that, while there
+is infection in disease and sorrow, there is nothing in the world so
+irresistibly contagious as laughter and good-humour. When Scrooge's
+nephew laughed in this way, holding his sides, rolling his head, and
+twisting his face into the most extravagant contortions, Scrooge's
+niece, by marriage, laughed as heartily as he. And their assembled
+friends, being not a bit behindhand, roared out lustily.
+
+"Ha, ha! Ha, ha, ha, ha!"
+
+"He said that Christmas was a humbug, as I live!" cried Scrooge's
+nephew. "He believed it, too!"
+
+"More shame for him, Fred!" said Scrooge's niece indignantly. Bless
+those women! they never do anything by halves. They are always in
+earnest.
+
+She was very pretty; exceedingly pretty. With a dimpled,
+surprised-looking, capital face; a ripe little mouth, that seemed made
+to be kissed--as no doubt it was; all kinds of good little dots about
+her chin, that melted into one another when she laughed; and the
+sunniest pair of eyes you ever saw in any little creature's head.
+Altogether she was what you would have called provoking, you know; but
+satisfactory, too. Oh, perfectly satisfactory!
+
+"He's a comical old fellow," said Scrooge's nephew, "that's the truth;
+and not so pleasant as he might be. However, his offences carry their
+own punishment, and I have nothing to say against him."
+
+"I'm sure he is very rich, Fred," hinted Scrooge's niece. "At least, you
+always tell _me_ so."
+
+"What of that, my dear?" said Scrooge's nephew. "His wealth is of no use
+to him. He don't do any good with it. He don't make himself comfortable
+with it. He hasn't the satisfaction of thinking--ha, ha, ha!--that he is
+ever going to benefit Us with it."
+
+"I have no patience with him," observed Scrooge's niece. Scrooge's
+niece's sisters, and all the other ladies, expressed the same opinion.
+
+"Oh, I have!" said Scrooge's nephew. "I am sorry for him; I couldn't be
+angry with him if I tried. Who suffers by his ill whims? Himself always.
+Here he takes it into his head to dislike us, and he won't come and dine
+with us. What's the consequence? He don't lose much of a dinner."
+
+"Indeed, I think he loses a very good dinner," interrupted Scrooge's
+niece. Everybody else said the same, and they must be allowed to have
+been competent judges, because they had just had dinner; and, with the
+dessert upon the table, were clustered round the fire, by lamp-light.
+
+"Well! I am very glad to hear it," said Scrooge's nephew, "because I
+haven't any great faith in these young housekeepers. What do _you_ say,
+Topper?"
+
+Topper had clearly got his eye upon one of Scrooge's niece's sisters,
+for he answered that a bachelor was a wretched outcast, who had no right
+to express an opinion on the subject. Whereat Scrooge's niece's
+sister--the plump one with the lace tucker, not the one with the
+roses--blushed.
+
+"Do go on, Fred," said Scrooge's niece, clapping her hands. "He never
+finishes what he begins to say! He is such a ridiculous fellow!"
+
+Scrooge's nephew revelled in another laugh, and, as it was impossible to
+keep the infection off, though the plump sister tried hard to do it with
+aromatic vinegar, his example was unanimously followed.
+
+"I was only going to say," said Scrooge's nephew, "that the consequence
+of his taking a dislike to us, and not making merry with us, is, as I
+think, that he loses some pleasant moments, which could do him no harm.
+I am sure he loses pleasanter companions than he can find in his own
+thoughts, either in his mouldy old office or his dusty chambers. I mean
+to give him the same chance every year, whether he likes it or not, for
+I pity him. He may rail at Christmas till he dies, but he can't help
+thinking better of it--I defy him--if he finds me going there in good
+temper, year after year, and saying, 'Uncle Scrooge, how are you?' If it
+only puts him in the vein to leave his poor clerk fifty pounds, _that's_
+something; and I think I shook him yesterday."
+
+It was their turn to laugh, now, at the notion of his shaking Scrooge.
+But, being thoroughly good-natured, and not much caring what they
+laughed at, so that they laughed at any rate, he encouraged them in
+their merriment, and passed the bottle, joyously.
+
+After tea they had some music. For they were a musical family, and knew
+what they were about when they sung a Glee or Catch, I can assure you:
+especially Topper, who could growl away in the bass like a good one, and
+never swell the large veins in his forehead, or get red in the face over
+it. Scrooge's niece played well upon the harp; and played, among other
+tunes, a simple little air (a mere nothing: you might learn to whistle
+it in two minutes), which had been familiar to the child who fetched
+Scrooge from the boarding-school, as he had been reminded by the Ghost
+of Christmas Past. When this strain of music sounded, all the things
+that Ghost had shown him came upon his mind; he softened more and more;
+and thought that if he could have listened to it often, years ago, he
+might have cultivated the kindnesses of life for his own happiness with
+his own hands, without resorting to the sexton's spade that buried Jacob
+Marley.
+
+But they didn't devote the whole evening to music. After awhile they
+played at forfeits; for it is good to be children sometimes, and never
+better than at Christmas, when its mighty Founder was a child himself.
+Stop! There was first a game at blindman's buff. Of course there was.
+And I no more believe Topper was really blind than I believe he had eyes
+in his boots. My opinion is, that it was a done thing between him and
+Scrooge's nephew; and that the Ghost of Christmas Present knew it. The
+way he went after that plump sister in the lace tucker was an outrage on
+the credulity of human nature. Knocking down the fire-irons, tumbling
+over the chairs, bumping up against the piano, smothering himself
+amongst the curtains, wherever she went, there went he! He always knew
+where the plump sister was. He wouldn't catch anybody else. If you had
+fallen up against him (as some of them did) on purpose, he would have
+made a feint of endeavouring to seize you, which would have been an
+affront to your understanding, and would instantly have sidled off in
+the direction of the plump sister. She often cried out that it wasn't
+fair; and it really was not. But when, at last, he caught her; when, in
+spite of all her silken rustlings, and her rapid flutterings past him,
+he got her into a corner whence there was no escape, then his conduct
+was the most execrable. For his pretending not to know her; his
+pretending that it was necessary to touch her head-dress, and further to
+assure himself of her identity by pressing a certain ring upon her
+finger, and a certain chain about her neck, was vile, monstrous! No
+doubt she told him her opinion of it when, another blind man being in
+office, they were so very confidential together behind the curtains.
+
+Scrooge's niece was not one of the blindman's buff party, but was made
+comfortable with a large chair and a footstool, in a snug corner where
+the Ghost and Scrooge were close behind her. But she joined in the
+forfeits, and loved her love to admiration with all the letters of the
+alphabet. Likewise at the game of How, When, and Where, she was very
+great, and, to the secret joy of Scrooge's nephew, beat her sisters
+hollow: though they were sharp girls too, as Topper could have told you.
+There might have been twenty people there, young and old, but they all
+played, and so did Scrooge; for, wholly forgetting, in the interest he
+had in what was going on, that his voice made no sound in their ears, he
+sometimes came out with his guess quite loud, and very often guessed
+right, too, for the sharpest needle, best Whitechapel, warranted not to
+cut in the eye, was not sharper than Scrooge; blunt as he took it in his
+head to be.
+
+The Ghost was greatly pleased to find him in this mood, and looked upon
+him with such favour, that he begged like a boy to be allowed to stay
+until the guests departed. But this the Spirit said could not be done.
+
+"Here is a new game," said Scrooge. "One half-hour, Spirit, only one!"
+
+It was a game called Yes and No, where Scrooge's nephew had to think of
+something, and the rest must find out what; he only answering to their
+questions yes or no, as the case was. The brisk fire of questioning to
+which he was exposed elicited from him that he was thinking of an
+animal, a live animal, rather a disagreeable animal, a savage animal, an
+animal that growled and grunted sometimes, and talked sometimes, and
+lived in London, and walked about the streets, and wasn't made a show
+of, and wasn't led by anybody, and didn't live in a menagerie, and was
+never killed in a market, and was not a horse, or an ass, or a cow, or a
+bull, or a tiger, or a dog, or a pig, or a cat, or a bear. At every
+fresh question that was put to him, this nephew burst into a fresh roar
+of laughter; and was so inexpressibly tickled, that he was obliged to
+get up off the sofa, and stamp. At last the plump sister, falling into a
+similar state, cried out:
+
+"I have found it out! I know what it is, Fred! I know what it is!"
+
+"What is it?" cried Fred.
+
+"It's your uncle Scro-o-o-o-oge!"
+
+Which it certainly was. Admiration was the universal sentiment, though
+some objected that the reply to "Is it a bear?" ought to have been
+"Yes": inasmuch as an answer in the negative was sufficient to have
+diverted their thoughts from Mr. Scrooge, supposing they had ever had
+any tendency that way.
+
+"He has given us plenty of merriment, I am sure," said Fred, "and it
+would be ungrateful not to drink his health. Here is a glass of mulled
+wine ready to our hand at the moment; and I say, 'Uncle Scrooge!'"
+
+"Well! Uncle Scrooge!" they cried.
+
+"A merry Christmas and a happy New Year to the old man, whatever he is!"
+said Scrooge's nephew. "He wouldn't take it from me, but may he have it
+nevertheless. Uncle Scrooge!"
+
+Uncle Scrooge had imperceptibly become so gay and light of heart, that
+he would have pledged the unconscious company in return, and thanked
+them in an inaudible speech, if the Ghost had given him time. But the
+whole scene passed off in the breath of the last word spoken by his
+nephew; and he and the Spirit were again upon their travels.
+
+Much they saw, and far they went, and many homes they visited, but
+always with a happy end. The Spirit stood beside sick-beds, and they
+were cheerful; on foreign lands, and they were close at home; by
+struggling men, and they were patient in their greater hope; by poverty,
+and it was rich. In almshouse, hospital, and gaol, in misery's every
+refuge, where vain man in his little brief authority had not made fast
+the door, and barred the Spirit out, he left his blessing, and taught
+Scrooge his precepts.
+
+It was a long night, if it were only a night; but Scrooge had his doubts
+of this, because the Christmas holidays appeared to be condensed into
+the space of time they passed together. It was strange, too, that, while
+Scrooge remained unaltered in his outward form, the Ghost grew older,
+clearly older. Scrooge had observed this change, but never spoke of it,
+until they left a children's Twelfth-Night party, when, looking at the
+Spirit as they stood together in an open place, he noticed that its hair
+was grey.
+
+"Are spirits' lives so short?" asked Scrooge.
+
+"My life upon this globe is very brief," replied the Ghost. "It ends
+to-night."
+
+"To-night!" cried Scrooge.
+
+"To-night at midnight. Hark! The time is drawing near."
+
+The chimes were ringing the three-quarters past eleven at that moment.
+
+"Forgive me if I am not justified in what I ask," said Scrooge, looking
+intently at the Spirit's robe, "but I see something strange, and not
+belonging to yourself, protruding from your skirts. Is it a foot or a
+claw?"
+
+"It might be a claw, for the flesh there is upon it," was the Spirit's
+sorrowful reply. "Look here."
+
+From the foldings of its robe it brought two children; wretched, abject,
+frightful, hideous, miserable. They knelt down at its feet, and clung
+upon the outside of its garment.
+
+"Oh, Man! look here! Look, look, down here!" exclaimed the Ghost.
+
+They were a boy and girl. Yellow, meagre, ragged, scowling, wolfish; but
+prostrate, too, in their humility. Where graceful youth should have
+filled their features out, and touched them with its freshest tints, a
+stale and shrivelled hand, like that of age, had pinched, and twisted
+them, and pulled them into shreds. Where angels might have sat
+enthroned, devils lurked, and glared out menacing. No change, no
+degradation, no perversion of humanity, in any grade, through all the
+mysteries of wonderful creation, has monsters half so horrible and
+dread.
+
+Scrooge started back, appalled. Having them shown to him in this way, he
+tried to say they were fine children, but the words choked themselves,
+rather than be parties to a lie of such enormous magnitude.
+
+"Spirit! are they yours?" Scrooge could say no more.
+
+"They are Man's," said the Spirit, looking down upon them. "And they
+cling to me, appealing from their fathers. This boy is Ignorance. This
+girl is Want. Beware of them both, and all of their degree, but most of
+all beware this boy, for on his brow I see that written which is Doom,
+unless the writing be erased. Deny it!" cried the Spirit, stretching out
+its hand towards the city. "Slander those who tell it ye! Admit it for
+your factious purposes, and make it worse! And bide the end!"
+
+"Have they no refuge or resource?" cried Scrooge.
+
+"Are there no prisons?" said the Spirit, turning on him for the last
+time with his own words. "Are there no workhouses?"
+
+The bell struck Twelve.
+
+Scrooge looked about him for the Ghost, and saw it not. As the last
+stroke ceased to vibrate, he remembered the prediction of old Jacob
+Marley, and, lifting up his eyes, beheld a solemn Phantom, draped and
+hooded, coming like a mist along the ground towards him.
+
+
+
+
+STAVE FOUR
+
+THE LAST OF THE SPIRITS
+
+
+The Phantom slowly, gravely, silently approached. When it came near him,
+Scrooge bent down upon his knee; for in the very air through which this
+Spirit moved it seemed to scatter gloom and mystery.
+
+It was shrouded in a deep black garment, which concealed its head, its
+face, its form, and left nothing of it visible, save one outstretched
+hand. But for this, it would have been difficult to detach its figure
+from the night, and separate it from the darkness by which it was
+surrounded.
+
+He felt that it was tall and stately when it came beside him, and that
+its mysterious presence filled him with a solemn dread. He knew no more,
+for the Spirit neither spoke nor moved.
+
+"I am in the presence of the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come?" said
+Scrooge.
+
+The Spirit answered not, but pointed onward with its hand.
+
+"You are about to show me shadows of the things that have not happened,
+but will happen in the time before us," Scrooge pursued. "Is that so,
+Spirit?"
+
+The upper portion of the garment was contracted for an instant in its
+folds, as if the Spirit had inclined its head. That was the only answer
+he received.
+
+Although well used to ghostly company by this time, Scrooge feared the
+silent shape so much that his legs trembled beneath him, and he found
+that he could hardly stand when he prepared to follow it. The Spirit
+paused a moment, as observing his condition, and giving him time to
+recover.
+
+But Scrooge was all the worse for this. It thrilled him with a vague
+uncertain horror to know that, behind the dusky shroud, there were
+ghostly eyes intently fixed upon him, while he, though he stretched his
+own to the utmost, could see nothing but a spectral hand and one great
+heap of black.
+
+"Ghost of the Future!" he exclaimed, "I fear you more than any spectre I
+have seen. But, as I know your purpose is to do me good, and as I hope
+to live to be another man from what I was, I am prepared to bear you
+company, and do it with a thankful heart. Will you not speak to me?"
+
+It gave him no reply. The hand was pointed straight before them.
+
+"Lead on!" said Scrooge. "Lead on! The night is waning fast, and it is
+precious time to me, I know. Lead on, Spirit!"
+
+The phantom moved away as it had come towards him. Scrooge followed in
+the shadow of its dress, which bore him up, he thought, and carried him
+along.
+
+They scarcely seemed to enter the City; for the City rather seemed to
+spring up about them, and encompass them of its own act. But there they
+were in the heart of it; on 'Change, amongst the merchants; who hurried
+up and down, and chinked the money in their pockets, and conversed in
+groups, and looked at their watches, and trifled thoughtfully with their
+great gold seals; and so forth, as Scrooge had seen them often.
+
+The Spirit stopped beside one little knot of business men. Observing
+that the hand was pointed to them, Scrooge advanced to listen to their
+talk.
+
+"No," said a great fat man with a monstrous chin, "I don't know much
+about it either way. I only know he's dead."
+
+"When did he die?" inquired another.
+
+"Last night, I believe."
+
+"Why, what was the matter with him?" asked a third, taking a vast
+quantity of snuff out of a very large snuff-box. "I thought he'd never
+die."
+
+"God knows," said the first with a yawn.
+
+"What has he done with his money?" asked a red-faced gentleman with a
+pendulous excrescence on the end of his nose, that shook like the gills
+of a turkey-cock.
+
+"I haven't heard," said the man with the large chin, yawning again.
+"Left it to his company, perhaps. He hasn't left it to _me_. That's all
+I know."
+
+This pleasantry was received with a general laugh.
+
+"It's likely to be a very cheap funeral," said the same speaker; "for,
+upon my life, I don't know of anybody to go to it. Suppose we make up a
+party, and volunteer?"
+
+"I don't mind going if a lunch is provided," observed the gentleman with
+the excrescence on his nose. "But I must be fed if I make one."
+
+Another laugh.
+
+"Well, I am the most disinterested among you, after all," said the first
+speaker, "for I never wear black gloves, and I never eat lunch. But I'll
+offer to go if anybody else will. When I come to think of it, I'm not at
+all sure that I wasn't his most particular friend; for we used to stop
+and speak whenever we met. Bye, bye!"
+
+Speakers and listeners strolled away, and mixed with other groups.
+Scrooge knew the men, and looked towards the Spirit for an explanation.
+
+The Phantom glided on into a street. Its finger pointed to two persons
+meeting. Scrooge listened again, thinking that the explanation might lie
+here.
+
+He knew these men, also, perfectly. They were men of business: very
+wealthy, and of great importance. He had made a point always of standing
+well in their esteem: in a business point of view, that is; strictly in
+a business point of view.
+
+"How are you?" said one.
+
+"How are you?" returned the other.
+
+"Well!" said the first. "Old Scratch has got his own at last, hey?"
+
+"So I am told," returned the second. "Cold, isn't it?"
+
+"Seasonable for Christmas-time. You are not a skater, I suppose?"
+
+"No. No. Something else to think of. Good morning!"
+
+Not another word. That was their meeting, their conversation, and their
+parting.
+
+Scrooge was at first inclined to be surprised that the Spirit should
+attach importance to conversations apparently so trivial; but, feeling
+assured that they must have some hidden purpose, he set himself to
+consider what it was likely to be. They could scarcely be supposed to
+have any bearing on the death of Jacob, his old partner, for that was
+Past, and this Ghost's province was the Future. Nor could he think of
+any one immediately connected with himself, to whom he could apply them.
+But nothing doubting that, to whomsoever they applied, they had some
+latent moral for his own improvement, he resolved to treasure up every
+word he heard, and everything he saw; and especially to observe the
+shadow of himself when it appeared. For he had an expectation that the
+conduct of his future self would give him the clue he missed, and would
+render the solution of these riddles easy.
+
+He looked about in that very place for his own image, but another man
+stood in his accustomed corner, and, though the clock pointed to his
+usual time of day for being there, he saw no likeness of himself among
+the multitudes that poured in through the Porch. It gave him little
+surprise, however; for he had been revolving in his mind a change of
+life, and thought and hoped he saw his new-born resolutions carried out
+in this.
+
+Quiet and dark, beside him stood the Phantom, with its outstretched
+hand. When he roused himself from his thoughtful quest, he fancied, from
+the turn of the hand, and its situation in reference to himself, that
+the Unseen Eyes were looking at him keenly. It made him shudder, and
+feel very cold.
+
+They left the busy scene, and went into an obscure part of the town,
+where Scrooge had never penetrated before, although he recognised its
+situation and its bad repute. The ways were foul and narrow; the shops
+and houses wretched; the people half naked, drunken, slipshod, ugly.
+Alleys and archways, like so many cesspools, disgorged their offences of
+smell, and dirt, and life upon the straggling streets; and the whole
+quarter reeked with crime, with filth and misery.
+
+Far in this den of infamous resort, there was a low-browed, beetling
+shop, below a pent-house roof, where iron, old rags, bottles, bones, and
+greasy offal were bought. Upon the floor within were piled up heaps of
+rusty keys, nails, chains, hinges, files, scales, weights, and refuse
+iron of all kinds. Secrets that few would like to scrutinise were bred
+and hidden in mountains of unseemly rags, masses of corrupted fat, and
+sepulchres of bones. Sitting in among the wares he dealt in, by a
+charcoal stove made of old bricks, was a grey-haired rascal, nearly
+seventy years of age, who had screened himself from the cold air without
+by a frouzy curtaining of miscellaneous tatters hung upon a line, and
+smoked his pipe in all the luxury of calm retirement.
+
+Scrooge and the Phantom came into the presence of this man, just as a
+woman with a heavy bundle slunk into the shop. But she had scarcely
+entered, when another woman, similarly laden, came in too, and she was
+closely followed by a man in faded black, who was no less startled by
+the sight of them than they had been upon the recognition of each other.
+After a short period of blank astonishment, in which the old man with
+the pipe had joined them, they all three burst into a laugh.
+
+"Let the charwoman alone to be the first!" cried she who had entered
+first. "Let the laundress alone to be the second; and let the
+undertaker's man alone to be the third. Look here, old Joe, here's a
+chance! If we haven't all three met here without meaning it!"
+
+"You couldn't have met in a better place," said old Joe, removing his
+pipe from his mouth. "Come into the parlour. You were made free of it
+long ago, you know; and the other two an't strangers. Stop till I shut
+the door of the shop. Ah! How it skreeks! There an't such a rusty bit of
+metal in the place as its own hinges, I believe; and I'm sure there's no
+such old bones here as mine. Ha! ha! We're all suitable to our calling,
+we're well matched. Come into the parlour. Come into the parlour."
+
+The parlour was the space behind the screen of rags. The old man raked
+the fire together with an old stair-rod, and, having trimmed his smoky
+lamp (for it was night) with the stem of his pipe, put it into his mouth
+again.
+
+While he did this, the woman who had already spoken threw her bundle on
+the floor, and sat down in a flaunting manner on a stool; crossing her
+elbows on her knees, and looking with a bold defiance at the other two.
+
+"What odds, then? What odds, Mrs. Dilber?" said the woman. "Every person
+has a right to take care of themselves. _He_ always did!"
+
+"That's true, indeed!" said the laundress. "No man more so."
+
+"Why, then, don't stand staring as if you was afraid, woman! Who's the
+wiser? We're not going to pick holes in each other's coats, I suppose?"
+
+"No, indeed!" said Mrs. Dilber and the man together. "We should hope
+not."
+
+"Very well, then!" cried the woman. "That's enough. Who's the worse for
+the loss of a few things like these? Not a dead man, I suppose?"
+
+"No, indeed," said Mrs. Dilber, laughing.
+
+"If he wanted to keep 'em after he was dead, a wicked old screw,"
+pursued the woman, "why wasn't he natural in his lifetime? If he had
+been, he'd have had somebody to look after him when he was struck with
+Death, instead of lying gasping out his last there, alone by himself."
+
+"It's the truest word that ever was spoke," said Mrs. Dilber, "It's a
+judgment on him."
+
+"I wish it was a little heavier judgment," replied the woman; "and it
+should have been, you may depend upon it, if I could have laid my hands
+on anything else. Open that bundle, old Joe, and let me know the value
+of it. Speak out plain. I'm not afraid to be the first, nor afraid for
+them to see it. We knew pretty well that we were helping ourselves
+before we met here, I believe. It's no sin. Open the bundle, Joe."
+
+But the gallantry of her friends would not allow of this; and the man in
+faded black, mounting the breach first, produced _his_ plunder. It was
+not extensive. A seal or two, a pencil-case, a pair of sleeve-buttons,
+and a brooch of no great value, were all. They were severally examined
+and appraised by old Joe, who chalked the sums he was disposed to give
+for each upon the wall, and added them up into a total when he found
+that there was nothing more to come.
+
+"That's your account," said Joe, "and I wouldn't give another sixpence,
+if I was to be boiled for not doing it. Who's next?"
+
+Mrs. Dilber was next. Sheets and towels, a little wearing apparel, two
+old-fashioned silver tea-spoons, a pair of sugar-tongs, and a few boots.
+Her account was stated on the wall in the same manner.
+
+"I always give too much to ladies. It's a weakness of mine, and that's
+the way I ruin myself," said old Joe. "That's your account. If you asked
+me for another penny, and made it an open question, I'd repent of being
+so liberal, and knock off half-a-crown."
+
+"And now undo _my_ bundle, Joe," said the first woman.
+
+Joe went down on his knees for the greater convenience of opening it,
+and, having unfastened a great many knots, dragged out a large heavy
+roll of some dark stuff.
+
+"What do you call this?" said Joe. "Bed-curtains?"
+
+"Ah!" returned the woman, laughing and leaning forward on her crossed
+arms. "Bed-curtains!"
+
+"You don't mean to say you took 'em down, rings and all, with him lying
+there?" said Joe.
+
+"Yes, I do," replied the woman. "Why not?"
+
+"You were born to make your fortune," said Joe, "and you'll certainly do
+it."
+
+"I certainly shan't hold my hand, when I can get anything in it by
+reaching it out, for the sake of such a man as He was, I promise you,
+Joe," returned the woman coolly. "Don't drop that oil upon the blankets,
+now."
+
+"His blankets?" asked Joe.
+
+"Whose else's do you think?" replied the woman. "He isn't likely to take
+cold without 'em, I dare say."
+
+"I hope he didn't die of anything catching? Eh?" said old Joe, stopping
+in his work, and looking up.
+
+"Don't you be afraid of that," returned the woman. "I an't so fond of
+his company that I'd loiter about him for such things, if he did. Ah!
+You may look through that shirt till your eyes ache; but you won't find
+a hole in it, nor a threadbare place. It's the best he had, and a fine
+one too. They'd have wasted it, if it hadn't been for me."
+
+"What do you call wasting of it?" asked old Joe.
+
+"Putting it on him to be buried in, to be sure," replied the woman with
+a laugh. "Somebody was fool enough to do it, but I took it off again. If
+calico an't good enough for such a purpose, it isn't good enough for
+anything. It's quite as becoming to the body. He can't look uglier than
+he did in that one."
+
+Scrooge listened to this dialogue in horror. As they sat grouped about
+their spoil, in the scanty light afforded by the old man's lamp, he
+viewed them with a detestation and disgust which could hardly have been
+greater, though they had been obscene demons, marketing the corpse
+itself.
+
+"Ha, ha!" laughed the same woman when old Joe, producing a flannel bag
+with money in it, told out their several gains upon the ground. "This is
+the end of it, you see! He frightened every one away from him when he
+was alive, to profit us when he was dead! Ha, ha, ha!"
+
+"Spirit!" said Scrooge, shuddering from head to foot. "I see, I see. The
+case of this unhappy man might be my own. My life tends that way now.
+Merciful Heaven, what is this?"
+
+He recoiled in terror, for the scene had changed, and now he almost
+touched a bed: a bare, uncurtained bed: on which, beneath a ragged
+sheet, there lay a something covered up, which, though it was dumb,
+announced itself in awful language.
+
+The room was very dark, too dark to be observed with any accuracy,
+though Scrooge glanced round it in obedience to a secret impulse,
+anxious to know what kind of room it was. A pale light, rising in the
+outer air, fell straight upon the bed: and on it, plundered and bereft,
+unwatched, unwept, uncared for, was the body of this man.
+
+Scrooge glanced towards the Phantom. Its steady hand was pointed to the
+head. The cover was so carelessly adjusted that the slightest raising of
+it, the motion of a finger upon Scrooge's part, would have disclosed the
+face. He thought of it, felt how easy it would be to do, and longed to
+do it; but had no more power to withdraw the veil than to dismiss the
+spectre at his side.
+
+Oh, cold, cold, rigid, dreadful Death, set up thine altar here, and
+dress it with such terrors as thou hast at thy command: for this is thy
+dominion! But of the loved, revered, and honoured head thou canst not
+turn one hair to thy dread purposes, or make one feature odious. It is
+not that the hand is heavy, and will fall down when released; it is not
+that the heart and pulse are still; but that the hand WAS open,
+generous, and true; the heart brave, warm, and tender; and the pulse a
+man's. Strike, Shadow, strike! And see his good deeds springing from the
+wound, to sow the world with life immortal!
+
+No voice pronounced these words in Scrooge's ears, and yet he heard them
+when he looked upon the bed. He thought, if this man could be raised up
+now, what would be his foremost thoughts? Avarice, hard dealing, griping
+cares? They have brought him to a rich end, truly!
+
+He lay, in the dark, empty house, with not a man, a woman, or a child to
+say he was kind to me in this or that, and for the memory of one kind
+word I will be kind to him. A cat was tearing at the door, and there was
+a sound of gnawing rats beneath the hearth-stone. What _they_ wanted in
+the room of death, and why they were so restless and disturbed, Scrooge
+did not dare to think.
+
+"Spirit!" he said, "this is a fearful place. In leaving it, I shall not
+leave its lesson, trust me. Let us go!"
+
+Still the Ghost pointed with an unmoved finger to the head.
+
+"I understand you," Scrooge returned, "and I would do it if I could. But
+I have not the power, Spirit. I have not the power."
+
+Again it seemed to look upon him.
+
+"If there is any person in the town who feels emotion caused by this
+man's death," said Scrooge, quite agonised, "show that person to me,
+Spirit! I beseech you."
+
+The Phantom spread its dark robe before him for a moment, like a wing;
+and, withdrawing it, revealed a room by daylight, where a mother and her
+children were.
+
+She was expecting some one, and with anxious eagerness; for she walked
+up and down the room; started at every sound; looked out from the
+window; glanced at the clock; tried, but in vain, to work with her
+needle; and could hardly bear the voices of her children in their play.
+
+At length the long-expected knock was heard. She hurried to the door,
+and met her husband; a man whose face was careworn and depressed, though
+he was young. There was a remarkable expression in it now; a kind of
+serious delight of which he felt ashamed, and which he struggled to
+repress.
+
+He sat down to the dinner that had been hoarding for him by the fire,
+and, when she asked him faintly what news (which was not until after a
+long silence), he appeared embarrassed how to answer.
+
+"Is it good," she said, "or bad?" to help him.
+
+"Bad," he answered.
+
+"We are quite ruined?"
+
+"No. There is hope yet, Caroline."
+
+"If _he_ relents," she said, amazed, "there is! Nothing is past hope, if
+such a miracle has happened."
+
+"He is past relenting," said her husband. "He is dead."
+
+She was a mild and patient creature, if her face spoke truth; but she
+was thankful in her soul to hear it, and she said so with clasped hands.
+She prayed forgiveness the next moment, and was sorry; but the first was
+the emotion of her heart.
+
+"What the half-drunken woman, whom I told you of last night, said to me
+when I tried to see him and obtain a week's delay, and what I thought
+was a mere excuse to avoid me, turns out to have been quite true. He was
+not only very ill, but dying, then."
+
+"To whom will our debt be transferred?"
+
+"I don't know. But, before that time, we shall be ready with the money;
+and, even though we were not, it would be bad fortune indeed to find so
+merciless a creditor in his successor. We may sleep to-night with light
+hearts, Caroline!"
+
+Yes. Soften it as they would, their hearts were lighter. The children's
+faces, hushed and clustered round to hear what they so little
+understood, were brighter; and it was a happier house for this man's
+death! The only emotion that the Ghost could show him, caused by the
+event, was one of pleasure.
+
+"Let me see some tenderness connected with a death," said Scrooge; "or
+that dark chamber, Spirit, which we left just now, will be for ever
+present to me."
+
+The Ghost conducted him through several streets familiar to his feet;
+and, as they went along, Scrooge looked here and there to find himself,
+but nowhere was he to be seen. They entered poor Bob Cratchit's
+house,--the dwelling he had visited before,--and found the mother and
+the children seated round the fire.
+
+Quiet. Very quiet. The noisy little Cratchits were as still as statues
+in one corner, and sat looking up at Peter, who had a book before him.
+The mother and her daughters were engaged in sewing. But surely they
+were very quiet!
+
+"'And he took a child, and set him in the midst of them.'"
+
+Where had Scrooge heard those words? He had not dreamed them. The boy
+must have read them out, as he and the Spirit crossed the threshold. Why
+did he not go on?
+
+The mother laid her work upon the table, and put her hand up to her
+face.
+
+"The colour hurts my eyes," she said.
+
+The colour? Ah, poor Tiny Tim!
+
+"They're better now again," said Cratchit's wife. "It makes them weak by
+candle-light; and I wouldn't show weak eyes to your father, when he
+comes home, for the world. It must be near his time."
+
+"Past it rather," Peter answered, shutting up his book. "But I think he
+has walked a little slower than he used, these few last evenings,
+mother."
+
+They were very quiet again. At last she said, and in a steady, cheerful
+voice, that only faltered once:
+
+"I have known him walk with--I have known him walk with Tiny Tim upon
+his shoulder very fast indeed."
+
+"And so have I," cried Peter. "Often."
+
+"And so have I," exclaimed another. So had all.
+
+"But he was very light to carry," she resumed, intent upon her work,
+"and his father loved him so, that it was no trouble: no trouble. And
+there is your father at the door!"
+
+She hurried out to meet him; and little Bob in his comforter--he had
+need of it, poor fellow--came in. His tea was ready for him on the hob,
+and they all tried who should help him to it most. Then the two young
+Cratchits got upon his knees, and laid, each child, a little cheek
+against his face, as if they said, "Don't mind it, father. Don't be
+grieved!"
+
+Bob was very cheerful with them, and spoke pleasantly to all the family.
+He looked at the work upon the table, and praised the industry and speed
+of Mrs. Cratchit and the girls. They would be done long before Sunday,
+he said.
+
+"Sunday! You went to-day, then, Robert?" said his wife.
+
+"Yes, my dear," returned Bob. "I wish you could have gone. It would have
+done you good to see how green a place it is. But you'll see it often. I
+promised him that I would walk there on a Sunday. My little, little
+child!" cried Bob. "My little child!"
+
+He broke down all at once. He couldn't help it. If he could have helped
+it, he and his child would have been farther apart, perhaps, than they
+were.
+
+He left the room, and went up-stairs into the room above, which was
+lighted cheerfully, and hung with Christmas. There was a chair set close
+beside the child, and there were signs of some one having been there
+lately. Poor Bob sat down in it, and, when he had thought a little and
+composed himself, he kissed the little face. He was reconciled to what
+had happened, and went down again quite happy.
+
+They drew about the fire, and talked; the girls and mother working
+still. Bob told them of the extraordinary kindness of Mr. Scrooge's
+nephew, whom he had scarcely seen but once, and who, meeting him in the
+street that day, and seeing that he looked a little--"just a little
+down, you know," said Bob, inquired what had happened to distress him.
+"On which," said Bob, "for he is the pleasantest-spoken gentleman you
+ever heard, I told him. 'I am heartily sorry for it, Mr. Cratchit,' he
+said, 'and heartily sorry for your good wife.' By-the-bye, how he ever
+knew _that_ I don't know."
+
+"Knew what, my dear?"
+
+"Why, that you were a good wife," replied Bob.
+
+"Everybody knows that," said Peter.
+
+"Very well observed, my boy!" cried Bob. "I hope they do. 'Heartily
+sorry,' he said, 'for your good wife. If I can be of service to you in
+any way,' he said, giving me his card, 'that's where I live. Pray come
+to me.' Now, it wasn't," cried Bob, "for the sake of anything he might
+be able to do for us, so much as for his kind way, that this was quite
+delightful. It really seemed as if he had known our Tiny Tim, and felt
+with us."
+
+"I'm sure he's a good soul!" said Mrs. Cratchit.
+
+"You would be sure of it, my dear," returned Bob, "if you saw and spoke
+to him. I shouldn't be at all surprised--mark what I say!--if he got
+Peter a better situation."
+
+"Only hear that, Peter," said Mrs. Cratchit.
+
+"And then," cried one of the girls, "Peter will be keeping company with
+some one, and setting up for himself."
+
+"Get along with you!" retorted Peter, grinning.
+
+"It's just as likely as not," said Bob, "one of these days; though
+there's plenty of time for that, my dear. But, however and whenever we
+part from one another, I am sure we shall none of us forget poor Tiny
+Tim--shall we--or this first parting that there was among us?"
+
+"Never, father!" cried they all.
+
+"And I know," said Bob, "I know, my dears, that when we recollect how
+patient and how mild he was, although he was a little, little child, we
+shall not quarrel easily among ourselves, and forget poor Tiny Tim in
+doing it."
+
+"No, never, father!" they all cried again.
+
+"I am very happy," said little Bob, "I am very happy!"
+
+Mrs. Cratchit kissed him, his daughters kissed him, the two young
+Cratchits kissed him, and Peter and himself shook hands. Spirit of Tiny
+Tim, thy childish essence was from God!
+
+"Spectre," said Scrooge, "something informs me that our parting moment
+is at hand. I know it, but I know not how. Tell me what man that was
+whom we saw lying dead?"
+
+The Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come conveyed him, as before--though at a
+different time, he thought: indeed, there seemed no order in these
+latter visions, save that they were in the Future--into the resorts of
+business men, but showed him not himself. Indeed, the Spirit did not
+stay for anything, but went straight on, as to the end just now desired,
+until besought by Scrooge to tarry for a moment.
+
+"This court," said Scrooge, "through which we hurry now, is where my
+place of occupation is, and has been for a length of time. I see the
+house. Let me behold what I shall be in days to come."
+
+The Spirit stopped; the hand was pointed elsewhere.
+
+"The house is yonder," Scrooge exclaimed. "Why do you point away?"
+
+The inexorable finger underwent no change.
+
+Scrooge hastened to the window of his office, and looked in. It was an
+office still, but not his. The furniture was not the same, and the
+figure in the chair was not himself. The Phantom pointed as before.
+
+He joined it once again, and, wondering why and whither he had gone,
+accompanied it until they reached an iron gate. He paused to look round
+before entering.
+
+A churchyard. Here, then, the wretched man, whose name he had now to
+learn, lay underneath the ground. It was a worthy place. Walled in by
+houses; overrun by grass and weeds, the growth of vegetation's death,
+not life; choked up with too much burying; fat with repleted appetite. A
+worthy place!
+
+The Spirit stood among the graves, and pointed down to One. He advanced
+towards it trembling. The Phantom was exactly as it had been, but he
+dreaded that he saw new meaning in its solemn shape.
+
+"Before I draw nearer to that stone to which you point," said Scrooge,
+"answer me one question. Are these the shadows of the things that Will
+be, or are they shadows of the things that May be only?"
+
+Still the Ghost pointed downward to the grave by which it stood.
+
+"Men's courses will foreshadow certain ends, to which, if persevered in,
+they must lead," said Scrooge. "But if the courses be departed from, the
+ends will change. Say it is thus with what you show me!"
+
+The Spirit was immovable as ever.
+
+Scrooge crept towards it, trembling as he went; and, following the
+finger, read upon the stone of the neglected grave his own name,
+EBENEZER SCROOGE.
+
+"Am _I_ that man who lay upon the bed?" he cried upon his knees.
+
+The finger pointed from the grave to him, and back again.
+
+"No, Spirit! Oh no, no!"
+
+The finger still was there.
+
+"Spirit!" he cried, tight clutching at its robe, "hear me! I am not the
+man I was. I will not be the man I must have been but for this
+intercourse. Why show me this, if I am past all hope?"
+
+For the first time the hand appeared to shake.
+
+"Good Spirit," he pursued, as down upon the ground he fell before it:
+"your nature intercedes for me, and pities me. Assure me that I yet may
+change these shadows you have shown me by an altered life?"
+
+The kind hand trembled.
+
+"I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year. I
+will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future. The Spirits of all
+Three shall strive within me. I will not shut out the lessons that they
+teach. Oh, tell me I may sponge away the writing on this stone!"
+
+In his agony, he caught the spectral hand. It sought to free itself, but
+he was strong in his entreaty, and detained it. The Spirit, stronger
+yet, repulsed him.
+
+Holding up his hands in a last prayer to have his fate reversed, he saw
+an alteration in the Phantom's hood and dress. It shrunk, collapsed, and
+dwindled down into a bedpost.
+
+
+
+
+STAVE FIVE
+
+THE END OF IT
+
+
+Yes! and the bedpost was his own. The bed was his own, the room was his
+own. Best and happiest of all, the Time before him was his own, to make
+amends in!
+
+"I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future!" Scrooge repeated
+as he scrambled out of bed. "The Spirits of all Three shall strive
+within me. Oh, Jacob Marley! Heaven and the Christmas Time be praised
+for this! I say it on my knees, old Jacob; on my knees!"
+
+He was so fluttered and so glowing with his good intentions, that his
+broken voice would scarcely answer to his call. He had been sobbing
+violently in his conflict with the Spirit, and his face was wet with
+tears.
+
+"They are not torn down," cried Scrooge, folding one of his bed-curtains
+in his arms, "they are not torn down, rings and all. They are here--I am
+here--the shadows of the things that would have been may be dispelled.
+They will be. I know they will!"
+
+His hands were busy with his garments all this time; turning them inside
+out, putting them on upside down, tearing them, mislaying them, making
+them parties to every kind of extravagance.
+
+"I don't know what to do!" cried Scrooge, laughing and crying in the
+same breath; and making a perfect Laocooen of himself with his stockings.
+"I am as light as a feather, I am as happy as an angel, I am as merry as
+a school-boy. I am as giddy as a drunken man. A merry Christmas to
+everybody! A happy New Year to all the world! Hallo here! Whoop!
+Hallo!"
+
+He had frisked into the sitting-room, and was now standing there:
+perfectly winded.
+
+"There's the saucepan that the gruel was in!" cried Scrooge, starting
+off again, and going round the fire-place. "There's the door by which
+the Ghost of Jacob Marley entered! There's the corner where the Ghost of
+Christmas Present sat! There's the window where I saw the wandering
+Spirits! It's all right, it's all true, it all happened. Ha, ha, ha!"
+
+Really, for a man who had been out of practice for so many years, it was
+a splendid laugh, a most illustrious laugh. The father of a long, long
+line of brilliant laughs!
+
+"I don't know what day of the month it is," said Scrooge. "I don't know
+how long I have been among the Spirits. I don't know anything. I'm quite
+a baby. Never mind. I don't care. I'd rather be a baby. Hallo! Whoop!
+Hallo here!"
+
+He was checked in his transports by the churches ringing out the
+lustiest peals he had ever heard. Clash, clash, hammer; ding, dong,
+bell! Bell, dong, ding; hammer, clang, clash! Oh, glorious, glorious!
+
+Running to the window, he opened it, and put out his head. No fog, no
+mist; clear, bright, jovial, stirring, cold; cold, piping for the blood
+to dance to; Golden sun-light; Heavenly sky; sweet fresh air; merry
+bells. Oh, glorious! Glorious!
+
+"What's to-day?" cried Scrooge, calling downward to a boy in Sunday
+clothes, who perhaps had loitered in to look about him.
+
+"EH?" returned the boy with all his might of wonder.
+
+"What's to-day, my fine fellow?" said Scrooge.
+
+"To-day!" replied the boy. "Why, CHRISTMAS DAY."
+
+"It's Christmas Day!" said Scrooge to himself. "I haven't missed it. The
+Spirits have done it all in one night. They can do anything they like.
+Of course they can. Of course they can. Hallo, my fine fellow!"
+
+"Hallo!" returned the boy.
+
+"Do you know the Poulterer's in the next street but one, at the corner?"
+Scrooge inquired.
+
+"I should hope I did," replied the lad.
+
+"An intelligent boy!" said Scrooge. "A remarkable boy! Do you know
+whether they've sold the prize Turkey that was hanging up there?--Not
+the little prize Turkey: the big one?"
+
+"What! the one as big as me?" returned the boy.
+
+"What a delightful boy!" said Scrooge. "It's a pleasure to talk to him.
+Yes, my buck!"
+
+"It's hanging there now," replied the boy.
+
+"Is it?" said Scrooge. "Go and buy it."
+
+"Walk-ER!" exclaimed the boy.
+
+"No, no," said Scrooge, "I am in earnest. Go and buy it, and tell 'em to
+bring it here, that I may give them the directions where to take it.
+Come back with the man, and I'll give you a shilling. Come back with him
+in less than five minutes, and I'll give you half-a-crown!"
+
+The boy was off like a shot. He must have had a steady hand at a trigger
+who could have got a shot off half so fast.
+
+"I'll send it to Bob Cratchit's," whispered Scrooge, rubbing his hands,
+and splitting with a laugh. "He shan't know who sends it. It's twice the
+size of Tiny Tim. Joe Miller never made such a joke as sending it to
+Bob's will be!"
+
+The hand in which he wrote the address was not a steady one; but write
+it he did, somehow, and went down-stairs to open the street-door, ready
+for the coming of the poulterer's man. As he stood there, waiting his
+arrival, the knocker caught his eye.
+
+"I shall love it as long as I live!" cried Scrooge, patting it with his
+hand. "I scarcely ever looked at it before. What an honest expression it
+has in its face! It's a wonderful knocker!--Here's the Turkey. Hallo!
+Whoop! How are you? Merry Christmas!"
+
+It _was_ a Turkey! He never could have stood upon his legs, that bird.
+He would have snapped 'em short off in a minute, like sticks of
+sealing-wax.
+
+"Why, it's impossible to carry that to Camden Town," said Scrooge. "You
+must have a cab."
+
+The chuckle with which he said this, and the chuckle with which he paid
+for the Turkey, and the chuckle with which he paid for the cab, and the
+chuckle with which he recompensed the boy, were only to be exceeded by
+the chuckle with which he sat down breathless in his chair again, and
+chuckled till he cried.
+
+Shaving was not an easy task, for his hand continued to shake very much;
+and shaving requires attention, even when you don't dance while you are
+at it. But, if he had cut the end of his nose off, he would have put a
+piece of sticking-plaster over it, and been quite satisfied.
+
+He dressed himself "all in his best," and at last got out into the
+streets. The people were by this time pouring forth, as he had seen them
+with the Ghost of Christmas Present; and, walking with his hands behind
+him, Scrooge regarded every one with a delighted smile. He looked so
+irresistibly pleasant, in a word, that three or four good-humoured
+fellows said, "Good morning, sir! A merry Christmas to you!" And Scrooge
+said often afterwards that, of all the blithe sounds he had ever heard,
+those were the blithest in his ears.
+
+He had not gone far when, coming on towards him, he beheld the portly
+gentleman who had walked into his counting-house the day before, and
+said, "Scrooge and Marley's, I believe?" It sent a pang across his heart
+to think how this old gentleman would look upon him when they met; but
+he knew what path lay straight before him, and he took it.
+
+"My dear sir," said Scrooge, quickening his pace, and taking the old
+gentleman by both his hands, "how do you do? I hope you succeeded
+yesterday. It was very kind of you. A merry Christmas to you, sir!"
+
+"Mr. Scrooge?"
+
+"Yes," said Scrooge. "That is my name, and I fear it may not be pleasant
+to you. Allow me to ask your pardon. And will you have the goodness----"
+Here Scrooge whispered in his ear.
+
+"Lord bless me!" cried the gentleman, as if his breath were taken away.
+"My dear Mr. Scrooge, are you serious?"
+
+"If you please," said Scrooge. "Not a farthing less. A great many
+back-payments are included in it, I assure you. Will you do me that
+favour?"
+
+"My dear sir," said the other, shaking hands with him, "I don't know
+what to say to such munifi----"
+
+"Don't say anything, please," retorted Scrooge. "Come and see me. Will
+you come and see me?"
+
+"I will!" cried the old gentleman. And it was clear he meant to do it.
+
+"Thankee," said Scrooge. "I am much obliged to you. I thank you fifty
+times. Bless you!"
+
+He went to church, and walked about the streets, and watched the people
+hurrying to and fro, and patted the children on the head, and questioned
+beggars, and looked down into the kitchens of houses, and up to the
+windows; and found that everything could yield him pleasure. He had
+never dreamed that any walk--that anything--could give him so much
+happiness. In the afternoon he turned his steps towards his nephew's
+house.
+
+He passed the door a dozen times before he had the courage to go up and
+knock. But he made a dash, and did it.
+
+"Is your master at home, my dear?" said Scrooge to the girl. Nice girl!
+Very.
+
+"Yes sir."
+
+"Where is he, my love?" said Scrooge.
+
+"He's in the dining-room, sir, along with mistress. I'll show you
+up-stairs, if you please."
+
+"Thankee. He knows me," said Scrooge, with his hand already on the
+dining-room lock. "I'll go in here, my dear."
+
+He turned it gently, and sidled his face in round the door. They were
+looking at the table (which was spread out in great array); for these
+young housekeepers are always nervous on such points, and like to see
+that everything is right.
+
+"Fred!" said Scrooge.
+
+Dear heart alive, how his niece by marriage started! Scrooge had
+forgotten, for the moment, about her sitting in the corner with the
+footstool, or he wouldn't have done it on any account.
+
+"Why, bless my soul!" cried Fred, "who's that?"
+
+"It's I. Your uncle Scrooge. I have come to dinner. Will you let me in,
+Fred?"
+
+Let him in! It is a mercy he didn't shake his arm off. He was at home in
+five minutes. Nothing could be heartier. His niece looked just the same.
+So did Topper when _he_ came. So did the plump sister when _she_ came.
+So did every one when _they_ came. Wonderful party, wonderful games,
+wonderful unanimity, won-der-ful happiness!
+
+But he was early at the office next morning. Oh, he was early there! If
+he could only be there first, and catch Bob Cratchit coming late! That
+was the thing he had set his heart upon.
+
+And he did it; yes, he did! The clock struck nine. No Bob. A quarter
+past. No Bob. He was full eighteen minutes and a half behind his time.
+Scrooge sat with his door wide open, that he might see him come into the
+tank.
+
+His hat was off before he opened the door; his comforter too. He was on
+his stool in a jiffy; driving away with his pen, as if he were trying to
+overtake nine o'clock.
+
+"Hallo!" growled Scrooge in his accustomed voice as near as he could
+feign it. "What do you mean by coming here at this time of day?"
+
+"I am very sorry, sir," said Bob. "I _am_ behind my time."
+
+"You are!" repeated Scrooge. "Yes. I think you are. Step this way, sir,
+if you please."
+
+"It's only once a year, sir," pleaded Bob, appearing from the tank. "It
+shall not be repeated. I was making rather merry yesterday, sir."
+
+"Now, I'll tell you what, my friend," said Scrooge. "I am not going to
+stand this sort of thing any longer. And therefore," he continued,
+leaping from his stool, and giving Bob such a dig in the waistcoat that
+he staggered back into the tank again: "and therefore I am about to
+raise your salary!"
+
+Bob trembled, and got a little nearer to the ruler. He had a momentary
+idea of knocking Scrooge down with it, holding him, and calling to the
+people in the court for help and a strait-waistcoat.
+
+"A merry Christmas, Bob!" said Scrooge with an earnestness that could
+not be mistaken, as he clapped him on the back. "A merrier Christmas,
+Bob, my good fellow, than I have given you for many a year! I'll raise
+your salary, and endeavour to assist your struggling family, and we will
+discuss your affairs this very afternoon, over a Christmas bowl of
+smoking bishop, Bob! Make up the fires and buy another coal-scuttle
+before you dot another i, Bob Cratchit!"
+
+        *     *     *     *     *
+
+Scrooge was better than his word. He did it all, and infinitely more;
+and to Tiny Tim, who did NOT die, he was a second father. He became as
+good a friend, as good a master, and as good a man as the good old City
+knew, or any other good old city, town, or borough in the good old
+world. Some people laughed to see the alteration in him, but he let them
+laugh, and little heeded them; for he was wise enough to know that
+nothing ever happened on this globe, for good, at which some people did
+not have their fill of laughter in the outset; and, knowing that such as
+these would be blind anyway, he thought it quite as well that they
+should wrinkle up their eyes in grins as have the malady in less
+attractive forms. His own heart laughed: and that was quite enough for
+him.
+
+He had no further intercourse with Spirits, but lived upon the
+Total-Abstinence Principle ever afterwards; and it was always said of
+him that he knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possessed
+the knowledge. May that be truly said of us, and all of us! And so, as
+Tiny Tim observed, God bless Us, Every One!
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of A Christmas Carol, by Charles Dickens
+
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