summaryrefslogtreecommitdiff
path: root/19337-h/19337-h.htm
blob: 6aeb0e6203283547b8e31b7fb9fc26acd31da894 (plain) 
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146
147
148
149
150
151
152
153
154
155
156
157
158
159
160
161
162
163
164
165
166
167
168
169
170
171
172
173
174
175
176
177
178
179
180
181
182
183
184
185
186
187
188
189
190
191
192
193
194
195
196
197
198
199
200
201
202
203
204
205
206
207
208
209
210
211
212
213
214
215
216
217
218
219
220
221
222
223
224
225
226
227
228
229
230
231
232
233
234
235
236
237
238
239
240
241
242
243
244
245
246
247
248
249
250
251
252
253
254
255
256
257
258
259
260
261
262
263
264
265
266
267
268
269
270
271
272
273
274
275
276
277
278
279
280
281
282
283
284
285
286
287
288
289
290
291
292
293
294
295
296
297
298
299
300
301
302
303
304
305
306
307
308
309
310
311
312
313
314
315
316
317
318
319
320
321
322
323
324
325
326
327
328
329
330
331
332
333
334
335
336
337
338
339
340
341
342
343
344
345
346
347
348
349
350
351
352
353
354
355
356
357
358
359
360
361
362
363
364
365
366
367
368
369
370
371
372
373
374
375
376
377
378
379
380
381
382
383
384
385
386
387
388
389
390
391
392
393
394
395
396
397
398
399
400
401
402
403
404
405
406
407
408
409
410
411
412
413
414
415
416
417
418
419
420
421
422
423
424
425
426
427
428
429
430
431
432
433
434
435
436
437
438
439
440
441
442
443
444
445
446
447
448
449
450
451
452
453
454
455
456
457
458
459
460
461
462
463
464
465
466
467
468
469
470
471
472
473
474
475
476
477
478
479
480
481
482
483
484
485
486
487
488
489
490
491
492
493
494
495
496
497
498
499
500
501
502
503
504
505
506
507
508
509
510
511
512
513
514
515
516
517
518
519
520
521
522
523
524
525
526
527
528
529
530
531
532
533
534
535
536
537
538
539
540
541
542
543
544
545
546
547
548
549
550
551
552
553
554
555
556
557
558
559
560
561
562
563
564
565
566
567
568
569
570
571
572
573
574
575
576
577
578
579
580
581
582
583
584
585
586
587
588
589
590
591
592
593
594
595
596
597
598
599
600
601
602
603
604
605
606
607
608
609
610
611
612
613
614
615
616
617
618
619
620
621
622
623
624
625
626
627
628
629
630
631
632
633
634
635
636
637
638
639
640
641
642
643
644
645
646
647
648
649
650
651
652
653
654
655
656
657
658
659
660
661
662
663
664
665
666
667
668
669
670
671
672
673
674
675
676
677
678
679
680
681
682
683
684
685
686
687
688
689
690
691
692
693
694
695
696
697
698
699
700
701
702
703
704
705
706
707
708
709
710
711
712
713
714
715
716
717
718
719
720
721
722
723
724
725
726
727
728
729
730
731
732
733
734
735
736
737
738
739
740
741
742
743
744
745
746
747
748
749
750
751
752
753
754
755
756
757
758
759
760
761
762
763
764
765
766
767
768
769
770
771
772
773
774
775
776
777
778
779
780
781
782
783
784
785
786
787
788
789
790
791
792
793
794
795
796
797
798
799
800
801
802
803
804
805
806
807
808
809
810
811
812
813
814
815
816
817
818
819
820
821
822
823
824
825
826
827
828
829
830
831
832
833
834
835
836
837
838
839
840
841
842
843
844
845
846
847
848
849
850
851
852
853
854
855
856
857
858
859
860
861
862
863
864
865
866
867
868
869
870
871
872
873
874
875
876
877
878
879
880
881
882
883
884
885
886
887
888
889
890
891
892
893
894
895
896
897
898
899
900
901
902
903
904
905
906
907
908
909
910
911
912
913
914
915
916
917
918
919
920
921
922
923
924
925
926
927
928
929
930
931
932
933
934
935
936
937
938
939
940
941
942
943
944
945
946
947
948
949
950
951
952
953
954
955
956
957
958
959
960
961
962
963
964
965
966
967
968
969
970
971
972
973
974
975
976
977
978
979
980
981
982
983
984
985
986
987
988
989
990
991
992
993
994
995
996
997
998
999
1000
1001
1002
1003
1004
1005
1006
1007
1008
1009
1010
1011
1012
1013
1014
1015
1016
1017
1018
1019
1020
1021
1022
1023
1024
1025
1026
1027
1028
1029
1030
1031
1032
1033
1034
1035
1036
1037
1038
1039
1040
1041
1042
1043
1044
1045
1046
1047
1048
1049
1050
1051
1052
1053
1054
1055
1056
1057
1058
1059
1060
1061
1062
1063
1064
1065
1066
1067
1068
1069
1070
1071
1072
1073
1074
1075
1076
1077
1078
1079
1080
1081
1082
1083
1084
1085
1086
1087
1088
1089
1090
1091
1092
1093
1094
1095
1096
1097
1098
1099
1100
1101
1102
1103
1104
1105
1106
1107
1108
1109
1110
1111
1112
1113
1114
1115
1116
1117
1118
1119
1120
1121
1122
1123
1124
1125
1126
1127
1128
1129
1130
1131
1132
1133
1134
1135
1136
1137
1138
1139
1140
1141
1142
1143
1144
1145
1146
1147
1148
1149
1150
1151
1152
1153
1154
1155
1156
1157
1158
1159
1160
1161
1162
1163
1164
1165
1166
1167
1168
1169
1170
1171
1172
1173
1174
1175
1176
1177
1178
1179
1180
1181
1182
1183
1184
1185
1186
1187
1188
1189
1190
1191
1192
1193
1194
1195
1196
1197
1198
1199
1200
1201
1202
1203
1204
1205
1206
1207
1208
1209
1210
1211
1212
1213
1214
1215
1216
1217
1218
1219
1220
1221
1222
1223
1224
1225
1226
1227
1228
1229
1230
1231
1232
1233
1234
1235
1236
1237
1238
1239
1240
1241
1242
1243
1244
1245
1246
1247
1248
1249
1250
1251
1252
1253
1254
1255
1256
1257
1258
1259
1260
1261
1262
1263
1264
1265
1266
1267
1268
1269
1270
1271
1272
1273
1274
1275
1276
1277
1278
1279
1280
1281
1282
1283
1284
1285
1286
1287
1288
1289
1290
1291
1292
1293
1294
1295
1296
1297
1298
1299
1300
1301
1302
1303
1304
1305
1306
1307
1308
1309
1310
1311
1312
1313
1314
1315
1316
1317
1318
1319
1320
1321
1322
1323
1324
1325
1326
1327
1328
1329
1330
1331
1332
1333
1334
1335
1336
1337
1338
1339
1340
1341
1342
1343
1344
1345
1346
1347
1348
1349
1350
1351
1352
1353
1354
1355
1356
1357
1358
1359
1360
1361
1362
1363
1364
1365
1366
1367
1368
1369
1370
1371
1372
1373
1374
1375
1376
1377
1378
1379
1380
1381
1382
1383
1384
1385
1386
1387
1388
1389
1390
1391
1392
1393
1394
1395
1396
1397
1398
1399
1400
1401
1402
1403
1404
1405
1406
1407
1408
1409
1410
1411
1412
1413
1414
1415
1416
1417
1418
1419
1420
1421
1422
1423
1424
1425
1426
1427
1428
1429
1430
1431
1432
1433
1434
1435
1436
1437
1438
1439
1440
1441
1442
1443
1444
1445
1446
1447
1448
1449
1450
1451
1452
1453
1454
1455
1456
1457
1458
1459
1460
1461
1462
1463
1464
1465
1466
1467
1468
1469
1470
1471
1472
1473
1474
1475
1476
1477
1478
1479
1480
1481
1482
1483
1484
1485
1486
1487
1488
1489
1490
1491
1492
1493
1494
1495
1496
1497
1498
1499
1500
1501
1502
1503
1504
1505
1506
1507
1508
1509
1510
1511
1512
1513
1514
1515
1516
1517
1518
1519
1520
1521
1522
1523
1524
1525
1526
1527
1528
1529
1530
1531
1532
1533
1534
1535
1536
1537
1538
1539
1540
1541
1542
1543
1544
1545
1546
1547
1548
1549
1550
1551
1552
1553
1554
1555
1556
1557
1558
1559
1560
1561
1562
1563
1564
1565
1566
1567
1568
1569
1570
1571
1572
1573
1574
1575
1576
1577
1578
1579
1580
1581
1582
1583
1584
1585
1586
1587
1588
1589
1590
1591
1592
1593
1594
1595
1596
1597
1598
1599
1600
1601
1602
1603
1604
1605
1606
1607
1608
1609
1610
1611
1612
1613
1614
1615
1616
1617
1618
1619
1620
1621
1622
1623
1624
1625
1626
1627
1628
1629
1630
1631
1632
1633
1634
1635
1636
1637
1638
1639
1640
1641
1642
1643
1644
1645
1646
1647
1648
1649
1650
1651
1652
1653
1654
1655
1656
1657
1658
1659
1660
1661
1662
1663
1664
1665
1666
1667
1668
1669
1670
1671
1672
1673
1674
1675
1676
1677
1678
1679
1680
1681
1682
1683
1684
1685
1686
1687
1688
1689
1690
1691
1692
1693
1694
1695
1696
1697
1698
1699
1700
1701
1702
1703
1704
1705
1706
1707
1708
1709
1710
1711
1712
1713
1714
1715
1716
1717
1718
1719
1720
1721
1722
1723
1724
1725
1726
1727
1728
1729
1730
1731
1732
1733
1734
1735
1736
1737
1738
1739
1740
1741
1742
1743
1744
1745
1746
1747
1748
1749
1750
1751
1752
1753
1754
1755
1756
1757
1758
1759
1760
1761
1762
1763
1764
1765
1766
1767
1768
1769
1770
1771
1772
1773
1774
1775
1776
1777
1778
1779
1780
1781
1782
1783
1784
1785
1786
1787
1788
1789
1790
1791
1792
1793
1794
1795
1796
1797
1798
1799
1800
1801
1802
1803
1804
1805
1806
1807
1808
1809
1810
1811
1812
1813
1814
1815
1816
1817
1818
1819
1820
1821
1822
1823
1824
1825
1826
1827
1828
1829
1830
1831
1832
1833
1834
1835
1836
1837
1838
1839
1840
1841
1842
1843
1844
1845
1846
1847
1848
1849
1850
1851
1852
1853
1854
1855
1856
1857
1858
1859
1860
1861
1862
1863
1864
1865
1866
1867
1868
1869
1870
1871
1872
1873
1874
1875
1876
1877
1878
1879
1880
1881
1882
1883
1884
1885
1886
1887
1888
1889
1890
1891
1892
1893
1894
1895
1896
1897
1898
1899
1900
1901
1902
1903
1904
1905
1906
1907
1908
1909
1910
1911
1912
1913
1914
1915
1916
1917
1918
1919
1920
1921
1922
1923
1924
1925
1926
1927
1928
1929
1930
1931
1932
1933
1934
1935
1936
1937
1938
1939
1940
1941
1942
1943
1944
1945
1946
1947
1948
1949
1950
1951
1952
1953
1954
1955
1956
1957
1958
1959
1960
1961
1962
1963
1964
1965
1966
1967
1968
1969
1970
1971
1972
1973
1974
1975
1976
1977
1978
1979
1980
1981
1982
1983
1984
1985
1986
1987
1988
1989
1990
1991
1992
1993
1994
1995
1996
1997
1998
1999
2000
2001
2002
2003
2004
2005
2006
2007
2008
2009
2010
2011
2012
2013
2014
2015
2016
2017
2018
2019
2020
2021
2022
2023
2024
2025
2026
2027
2028
2029
2030
2031
2032
2033
2034
2035
2036
2037
2038
2039
2040
2041
2042
2043
2044
2045
2046
2047
2048
2049
2050
2051
2052
2053
2054
2055
2056
2057
2058
2059
2060
2061
2062
2063
2064
2065
2066
2067
2068
2069
2070
2071
2072
2073
2074
2075
2076
2077
2078
2079
2080
2081
2082
2083
2084
2085
2086
2087
2088
2089
2090
2091
2092
2093
2094
2095
2096
2097
2098
2099
2100
2101
2102
2103
2104
2105
2106
2107
2108
2109
2110
2111
2112
2113
2114
2115
2116
2117
2118
2119
2120
2121
2122
2123
2124
2125
2126
2127
2128
2129
2130
2131
2132
2133
2134
2135
2136
2137
2138
2139
2140
2141
2142
2143
2144
2145
2146
2147
2148
2149
2150
2151
2152
2153
2154
2155
2156
2157
2158
2159
2160
2161
2162
2163
2164
2165
2166
2167
2168
2169
2170
2171
2172
2173
2174
2175
2176
2177
2178
2179
2180
2181
2182
2183
2184
2185
2186
2187
2188
2189
2190
2191
2192
2193
2194
2195
2196
2197
2198
2199
2200
2201
2202
2203
2204
2205
2206
2207
2208
2209
2210
2211
2212
2213
2214
2215
2216
2217
2218
2219
2220
2221
2222
2223
2224
2225
2226
2227
2228
2229
2230
2231
2232
2233
2234
2235
2236
2237
2238
2239
2240
2241
2242
2243
2244
2245
2246
2247
2248
2249
2250
2251
2252
2253
2254
2255
2256
2257
2258
2259
2260
2261
2262
2263
2264
2265
2266
2267
2268
2269
2270
2271
2272
2273
2274
2275
2276
2277
2278
2279
2280
2281
2282
2283
2284
2285
2286
2287
2288
2289
2290
2291
2292
2293
2294
2295
2296
2297
2298
2299
2300
2301
2302
2303
2304
2305
2306
2307
2308
2309
2310
2311
2312
2313
2314
2315
2316
2317
2318
2319
2320
2321
2322
2323
2324
2325
2326
2327
2328
2329
2330
2331
2332
2333
2334
2335
2336
2337
2338
2339
2340
2341
2342
2343
2344
2345
2346
2347
2348
2349
2350
2351
2352
2353
2354
2355
2356
2357
2358
2359
2360
2361
2362
2363
2364
2365
2366
2367
2368
2369
2370
2371
2372
2373
2374
2375
2376
2377
2378
2379
2380
2381
2382
2383
2384
2385
2386
2387
2388
2389
2390
2391
2392
2393
2394
2395
2396
2397
2398
2399
2400
2401
2402
2403
2404
2405
2406
2407
2408
2409
2410
2411
2412
2413
2414
2415
2416
2417
2418
2419
2420
2421
2422
2423
2424
2425
2426
2427
2428
2429
2430
2431
2432
2433
2434
2435
2436
2437
2438
2439
2440
2441
2442
2443
2444
2445
2446
2447
2448
2449
2450
2451
2452
2453
2454
2455
2456
2457
2458
2459
2460
2461
2462
2463
2464
2465
2466
2467
2468
2469
2470
2471
2472
2473
2474
2475
2476
2477
2478
2479
2480
2481
2482
2483
2484
2485
2486
2487
2488
2489
2490
2491
2492
2493
2494
2495
2496
2497
2498
2499
2500
2501
2502
2503
2504
2505
2506
2507
2508
2509
2510
2511
2512
2513
2514
2515
2516
2517
2518
2519
2520
2521
2522
2523
2524
2525
2526
2527
2528
2529
2530
2531
2532
2533
2534
2535
2536
2537
2538
2539
2540
2541
2542
2543
2544
2545
2546
2547
2548
2549
2550
2551
2552
2553
2554
2555
2556
2557
2558
2559
2560
2561
2562
2563
2564
2565
2566
2567
2568
2569
2570
2571
2572
2573
2574
2575
2576
2577
2578
2579
2580
2581
2582
2583
2584
2585
2586
2587
2588
2589
2590
2591
2592
2593
2594
2595
2596
2597
2598
2599
2600
2601
2602
2603
2604
2605
2606
2607
2608
2609
2610
2611
2612
2613
2614
2615
2616
2617
2618
2619
2620
2621
2622
2623
2624
2625
2626
2627
2628
2629
2630
2631
2632
2633
2634
2635
2636
2637
2638
2639
2640
2641
2642
2643
2644
2645
2646
2647
2648
2649
2650
2651
2652
2653
2654
2655
2656
2657
2658
2659
2660
2661
2662
2663
2664
2665
2666
2667
2668
2669
2670
2671
2672
2673
2674
2675
2676
2677
2678
2679
2680
2681
2682
2683
2684
2685
2686
2687
2688
2689
2690
2691
2692
2693
2694
2695
2696
2697
2698
2699
2700
2701
2702
2703
2704
2705
2706
2707
2708
2709
2710
2711
2712
2713
2714
2715
2716
2717
2718
2719
2720
2721
2722
2723
2724
2725
2726
2727
2728
2729
2730
2731
2732
2733
2734
2735
2736
2737
2738
2739
2740
2741
2742
2743
2744
2745
2746
2747
2748
2749
2750
2751
2752
2753
2754
2755
2756
2757
2758
2759
2760
2761
2762
2763
2764
2765
2766
2767
2768
2769
2770
2771
2772
2773
2774
2775
2776
2777
2778
2779
2780
2781
2782
2783
2784
2785
2786
2787
2788
2789
2790
2791
2792
2793
2794
2795
2796
2797
2798
2799
2800
2801
2802
2803
2804
2805
2806
2807
2808
2809
2810
2811
2812
2813
2814
2815
2816
2817
2818
2819
2820
2821
2822
2823
2824
2825
2826
2827
2828
2829
2830
2831
2832
2833
2834
2835
2836
2837
2838
2839
2840
2841
2842
2843
2844
2845
2846
2847
2848
2849
2850
2851
2852
2853
2854
2855
2856
2857
2858
2859
2860
2861
2862
2863
2864
2865
2866
2867
2868
2869
2870
2871
2872
2873
2874
2875
2876
2877
2878
2879
2880
2881
2882
2883
2884
2885
2886
2887
2888
2889
2890
2891
2892
2893
2894
2895
2896
2897
2898
2899
2900
2901
2902
2903
2904
2905
2906
2907
2908
2909
2910
2911
2912
2913
2914
2915
2916
2917
2918
2919
2920
2921
2922
2923
2924
2925
2926
2927
2928
2929
2930
2931
2932
2933
2934
2935
2936
2937
2938
2939
2940
2941
2942
2943
2944
2945
2946
2947
2948
2949
2950
2951
2952
2953
2954
2955
2956
2957
2958
2959
2960
2961
2962
2963
2964
2965
2966
2967
2968
2969
2970
2971
2972
2973
2974
2975
2976
2977
2978
2979
2980
2981
2982
2983
2984
2985
2986
2987
2988
2989
2990
2991
2992
2993
2994
2995
2996
2997
2998
2999
3000
3001
3002
3003
3004
3005
3006
3007
3008
3009
3010
3011
3012
3013
3014
3015
3016
3017
3018
3019
3020
3021
3022
3023
3024
3025
3026
3027
3028
3029
3030
3031
3032
3033
3034
3035
3036
3037
3038
3039
3040
3041
3042
3043
3044
3045
3046
3047
3048
3049
3050
3051
3052
3053
3054
3055
3056
3057
3058
3059
3060
3061
3062
3063
3064
3065
3066
3067
3068
3069
3070
3071
3072
3073
3074
3075
3076
3077
3078
3079
3080
3081
3082
3083
3084
3085
3086
3087
3088
3089
3090
3091
3092
3093
3094
3095
3096
3097
3098
3099
3100
3101
3102
3103
3104
3105
3106
3107
3108
3109
3110
3111
3112
3113
3114
3115
3116
3117
3118
3119
3120
3121
3122
3123
3124
3125
3126
3127
3128
3129
3130
3131
3132
3133
3134
3135
3136
3137
3138
3139
3140
3141
3142
3143
3144
3145
3146
3147
3148
3149
3150
3151
3152
3153
3154
3155
3156
3157
3158
3159
3160
3161
3162
3163
3164
3165
3166
3167
3168
3169
3170
3171
3172
3173
3174
3175
3176
3177
3178
3179
3180
3181
3182
3183
3184
3185
3186
3187
3188
3189
3190
3191
3192
3193
3194
3195
3196
3197
3198
3199
3200
3201
3202
3203
3204
3205
3206
3207
3208
3209
3210
3211
3212
3213
3214
3215
3216
3217
3218
3219
3220
3221
3222
3223
3224
3225
3226
3227
3228
3229
3230
3231
3232
3233
3234
3235
3236
3237
3238
3239
3240
3241
3242
3243
3244
3245
3246
3247
3248
3249
3250
3251
3252
3253
3254
3255
3256
3257
3258
3259
3260
3261
3262
3263
3264
3265
3266
3267
3268
3269
3270
3271
3272
3273
3274
3275
3276
3277
3278
3279
3280
3281
3282
3283
3284
3285
3286
3287
3288
3289
3290
3291
3292
3293
3294
3295
3296
3297
3298
3299
3300
3301
3302
3303
3304
3305
3306
3307
3308
3309
3310
3311
3312
3313
3314
3315
3316
3317
3318
3319
3320
3321
3322
3323
3324
3325
3326
3327
3328
3329
3330
3331
3332
3333
3334
3335
3336
3337
3338
3339
3340
3341
3342
3343
3344
3345
3346
3347
3348
3349
3350
3351
3352
3353
3354
3355
3356
3357
3358
3359
3360
3361
3362
3363
3364
3365
3366
3367
3368
3369
3370
3371
3372
3373
3374
3375
3376
3377
3378
3379
3380
3381
3382
3383
3384
3385
3386
3387
3388
3389
3390
3391
3392
3393
3394
3395
3396
3397
3398
3399
3400
3401
3402
3403
3404
3405
3406
3407
3408
3409
3410
3411
3412
3413
3414
3415
3416
3417
3418
3419
3420
3421
3422
3423
3424
3425
3426
3427
3428
3429
3430
3431
3432
3433
3434
3435
3436
3437
3438
3439
3440
3441
3442
3443
3444
3445
3446
3447
3448
3449
3450
3451
3452
3453
3454
3455
3456
3457
3458
3459
3460
3461
3462
3463
3464
3465
3466
3467
3468
3469
3470
3471
3472
3473
3474
3475
3476
3477
3478
3479
3480
3481
3482
3483
3484
3485
3486
3487
3488
3489
3490
3491
3492
3493
3494
3495
3496
3497
3498
3499
3500
3501
3502
3503
3504
3505
3506
3507
3508
3509
3510
3511
3512
3513
3514
3515
3516
3517
3518
3519
3520
3521
3522
3523
3524
3525
3526
3527
3528
3529
3530
3531
3532
3533
3534
3535
3536
3537
3538
3539
3540
3541
3542
3543
3544
3545
3546
3547
3548
3549
3550
3551
3552
3553
3554
3555
3556
3557
3558
3559
3560
3561
3562
3563
3564
3565
3566
3567
3568
3569
3570
3571
3572
3573
3574
3575
3576
3577
3578
3579
3580
3581
3582
3583
3584
3585
3586
3587
3588
3589
3590
3591
3592
3593
3594
3595
3596
3597
3598
3599
3600
3601
3602
3603
3604
3605
3606
3607
3608
3609
3610
3611
3612
3613
3614
3615
3616
3617
3618
3619
3620
3621
3622
3623
3624
3625
3626
3627
3628
3629
3630
3631
3632
3633
3634
3635
3636
3637
3638
3639
3640
3641
3642
3643
3644
3645
3646
3647
3648
3649
3650
3651
3652
3653
3654
3655
3656
3657
3658
3659
3660
3661
3662
3663
3664
3665
3666
3667
3668
3669
3670
3671
3672
3673
3674
3675
3676
3677
3678
3679
3680
3681
3682
3683
3684
3685
3686
3687
3688
3689
3690
3691
3692
3693
3694
3695
3696
3697
3698
3699
3700
3701
3702
3703
3704
3705
3706
3707
3708
3709
3710
3711
3712
3713
3714
3715
3716
3717
3718
3719
3720
3721
3722
3723
3724
3725
3726
3727
3728
3729
3730
3731
3732
3733
3734
3735
3736
3737
3738
3739
3740
3741
3742
3743
3744
3745
3746
3747
3748
3749
3750
3751
3752
3753
3754
3755
3756
3757
3758
3759
3760
3761
3762
3763
3764
3765
3766
3767
3768
3769
3770
3771
3772
3773
3774
3775
3776
3777
3778
3779
3780
3781
3782
3783
3784
3785
3786
3787
3788
3789
3790
3791
3792
3793
3794
3795
3796
3797
3798
3799
3800
3801
3802
3803
3804
3805
3806
3807
3808
3809
3810
3811
3812
3813
3814
3815
3816
3817
3818
3819
3820
3821
3822
3823
3824
3825
3826
3827
3828
3829
3830
3831
3832
3833
3834
3835
3836
3837
3838
3839
3840
3841
3842
3843
3844
3845
3846
3847
3848
3849
3850
3851
3852
3853
3854
3855
3856
3857
3858
3859
3860
3861
3862
3863
3864
3865
3866
3867
3868
3869
3870
3871
3872
3873
3874
3875
3876
3877
3878
3879
3880
3881
3882
3883
3884
3885
3886
3887
3888
3889
3890
3891
3892
3893
3894
3895
3896
3897
3898
3899
3900
3901
3902
3903
3904
3905
3906
3907
3908
3909
3910
3911
3912
3913
3914
3915
3916
3917
3918
3919
3920
3921
3922
3923
3924
3925
3926
3927
3928
3929
3930
3931
3932
3933
3934
3935
3936
3937
3938
3939
3940
3941
3942
3943
3944
3945
3946
3947
3948
3949
3950
3951
3952
3953
3954
3955
3956
3957
3958
3959
3960
3961
3962
3963
3964
3965
3966
3967
3968
3969
3970
3971
3972
3973
3974
3975
3976
3977
3978
3979
3980
3981
3982
3983
3984
3985
3986
3987
3988
3989
3990
3991
3992
3993
3994
3995
3996
3997
3998
3999
4000
4001
4002
4003
4004
4005
4006
4007
4008
4009
4010
4011
4012
4013
4014
4015
4016
4017
4018
4019
4020
4021
4022
4023
4024
4025
4026
4027
4028
4029
4030
4031
4032
4033
4034
4035
4036
4037
4038
4039
4040
4041
4042
4043
4044
4045
4046
4047
4048
4049
4050
4051
4052
4053
4054
4055
4056
4057
4058
4059
4060
4061
4062
4063
4064
4065
4066
4067
4068
4069
4070
4071
4072
4073
4074
4075
4076
4077
4078
4079
4080
4081
4082
4083
4084
4085
4086
4087
4088
4089
4090
4091
4092
4093
4094
4095
4096
4097
4098
4099
4100
4101
4102
4103
4104
4105
4106
4107
4108
4109
4110
4111
4112
4113
4114
4115
4116
4117
4118
4119
4120
4121
4122
4123
4124
4125
4126
4127
4128
4129
4130
4131
4132
4133
4134
4135
4136
4137
4138
4139
4140
4141
4142
4143
4144
4145
4146
4147
4148
4149
4150
4151
4152
4153
4154
4155
4156
4157
4158
4159
4160
4161
4162
4163
4164
4165
4166
4167
4168
4169
4170
4171
4172
4173
4174
4175
4176
4177
4178
4179
4180
4181
4182
4183
4184
4185
4186
4187
4188
4189
4190
4191
4192
4193
4194
4195
4196
4197
4198
4199
4200
4201
4202
4203
4204
4205
4206
4207
4208
4209
4210
4211
4212
4213
4214
4215
4216
4217
4218
4219
4220
4221
4222
4223
4224
4225
4226
4227
4228
4229
4230
4231
4232
4233
4234
4235
4236
4237
4238
4239
4240
4241
4242
4243
4244
4245
4246
4247
4248
4249
4250
4251
4252
4253
4254
4255
4256
4257
4258
4259
4260
4261
4262
4263
4264
4265
4266
4267
4268
4269
4270
4271
4272
4273
4274
4275
4276
4277
4278
4279
4280
4281
4282
4283
4284
4285
4286
4287
4288
4289
4290
4291
4292
4293
4294
4295
4296
4297
4298
4299
4300
4301
4302
4303
4304
4305
4306
4307
4308
4309
4310
4311
4312
4313
4314
4315
4316
4317
4318
4319
4320
4321
4322
4323
4324
4325
4326
4327
4328
4329
4330
4331
4332
4333
4334
4335
4336
4337
4338
4339
4340
4341
4342
4343
4344
4345
4346
4347
4348
4349
4350
4351
4352
4353
4354
4355
4356
4357
4358
4359
4360
4361
4362
4363
4364
4365

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
    "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">

<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
  <head>
    <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=iso-8859-1" />
    <title>
      The Project Gutenberg eBook of A Christmas Carol, by Charles Dickens.
    </title>
    <style type="text/css">
/*<![CDATA[  XML blockout */
<!--
    p {  margin-top: .75em;
         text-align: justify;
         margin-bottom: .75em;
	 text-indent: 2em;
         }
    h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6 {
         text-align: center; /* all headings centered */
         clear: both;
         }
    hr { width: 33%;
	 margin-top: 2em;
	 margin-bottom: 2em;
         margin-left: auto;
         margin-right: auto;
         clear: both;
       }

    table {margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;}

    body{margin-left: 10%;
         margin-right: 10%;
        }

    img{border:none;}

    .pagenum  { /* uncomment the next line for invisible page numbers */
            /*  visibility: hidden;  */
                position: absolute;
                left: 92%;
                font-size: .7em;
                text-align: right;
              } /* page numbers */

    .blockquot{margin-left: 5%; margin-right: 10%;}


    .center   {text-align: center;}
    .left     {text-align: left;}
    .smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}

    .caption  {font-weight: bold;}

    .figcenter   {margin: auto; text-align: center;}

    .poem             {margin-left:10%; margin-right:10%; text-align: left;}
    .poem br          {display: none;}
    .poem .stanza     {margin: 1em 0em 1em 0em;}
    .poem span.i0     {display: block; margin-left: 0em; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;}
    .poem span.i2     {display: block; margin-left: 2em; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;}
    .poem span.i4     {display: block; margin-left: 4em; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;}
    // -->
    /* XML end  ]]>*/
    </style>
  </head>
<body>


<pre>

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: ISO-8859-1

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A CHRISTMAS CAROL ***




Produced by Jason Isbell and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net






</pre>

<h4>There are several editions of this ebook in the Project Gutenberg collection. Various characteristics of each ebook are listed to aid in selecting the preferred file.<br />Click on any of the filenumbers belowto quickly view each ebook.
</h4>


<table summary="" style="margin-right: auto; margin-left: auto" cellpadding="4" border="3">

<tr><td>
 <B><a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/46/46-h/46-h.htm">
46</a></B></td><td>(Original First Edition Cover; 1843 Original Illustrations in Color by John Leech)
</td></tr>

<tr><td>
 <B><a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/19337/19337-h/19337-h.htm">
19337</a></B> </td><td>(Published in 1905; Illustrations in Black and White by G. A. Williams)
</td></tr>

<tr><td>
 <B><a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/24022/24022-h/24022-h.htm">
24022</a></B> </td><td>(Published in 1915; Illustrations in Black and White and Color by By Arthur Rackham)
</td></tr>

<tr><td>
 <B><a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/30368/30368-h/30368-h.htm">
30368</a> </B> </td><td>(First edition with original hand written pages; Black and White illustrations.)
</td></tr>

</table>


<p><!-- Page i --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_i" id="Page_i">[i]</a></span></p>
<h1>A CHRISTMAS CAROL</h1>

<h2>By CHARLES DICKENS</h2>

<h2>ILLUSTRATED BY
GEORGE ALFRED WILLIAMS</h2>

<h5>New York
THE PLATT &amp; PECK CO.</h5>
<p><!-- Page ii --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_ii" id="Page_ii">[ii]</a></span></p>
<h5><i>Copyright, 1905, by</i> <span class="smcap">The Baker &amp; Taylor Company</span></h5>
<p><!-- Page iii --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_iii" id="Page_iii">[iii]</a></span></p>


<div class="figcenter" style="width: 607px;">
<a href="images/i01.jpg"><img src="images/i01-t.jpg" width="607" height="425" alt="&quot;He had been Tim&#39;s blood horse all the way from church.&quot;" title="&quot;He had been Tim&#39;s blood horse all the way from church.&quot;" /></a>
<span class="caption">&quot;He had been Tim&#39;s blood horse all the way from church.&quot;</span>
</div>



<hr style="width: 65%;" />
<h2>INTRODUCTION</h2>


<p>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.</p>

<p>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."</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>Dickens seems to have put his whole self into these glowing
little stories. Whoever sees but a clever ghost story in the<!-- Page iv --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_iv" id="Page_iv">[iv]</a></span>
"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.</p>

<p>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&mdash;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.</p>

<p>
<span style="margin-left: 17.5em;"><span class="smcap">George Alfred Williams.</span></span><br />
<i>Chatham, N.J.</i><br />
<!-- Page v --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_v" id="Page_v">[v]</a></span></p>



<hr style="width: 65%;" />
<h2>CONTENTS</h2>




<table width="80%" summary="Contents">
	<tr><th colspan="2"  class="left">STAVE</th><th align="right">PAGE</th></tr>
	<tr><td>I</td><td><i>Marley's Ghost</i></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_11">11</a></td></tr>
	<tr><td>II</td><td><i>The First of the Three Spirits</i></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_32">32</a></td></tr>
	<tr><td>III</td><td><i>The Second of the Three Spirits</i></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_51">51</a></td></tr>
	<tr><td>IV</td><td><i>The Last of the Spirits</i></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_76">76</a></td></tr>
	<tr><td>V</td><td><i>The End of it</i></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_93">93</a></td></tr>
</table>

<p><!-- Page vi --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_vi" id="Page_vi">[vi]</a></span></p>



<hr style="width: 65%;" />
<h2>ILLUSTRATIONS</h2>


<table width="80%" summary="List of Illustrations">
	<tr><td>
		<i>"He had been Tim's blood horse all the way from church."</i>
	</td><td align='right'>
		<a href="#Page_iii">Frontispiece</a>
	</td></tr>
	<tr><td>
		<i>"A Merry Christmas, Uncle! God save you!" cried a cheerful voice.</i>
	</td><td align='right'>
		<a href="#Page_14">14</a>
	</td></tr>
	<tr><td>
		<i>To sit staring at those fixed glazed eyes in silence, for a moment,
		would play, Scrooge felt, the very deuce with him.</i>
	</td><td align='right'>
		<a href="#Page_26">26</a>
	</td></tr>
	<tr><td>
		<i>"You recollect the way?" inquired the spirit. "Remember it!" cried
		Scrooge, with fervour; "I could walk it blindfold."</i>
	</td><td align='right'>
		<a href="#Page_36">36</a>
	</td></tr>
	<tr><td>
		<i>"Why, it's Ali Baba!" Scrooge exclaimed in ecstasy. "It's dear old
		honest Ali Baba!"</i>
	</td><td align='right'>
		<a href="#Page_38">38</a>
	</td></tr>
</table>
<p><!-- Page 11 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[11]</a></span></p>



<hr style="width: 65%;" />
<h2>A CHRISTMAS CAROL</h2>

<h4>In Prose</h4>

<h3>BEING A GHOST STORY OF CHRISTMAS</h3>



<hr style="width: 65%;" />
<h2>STAVE ONE</h2>

<h3>MARLEY'S GHOST</h3>


<p>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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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<!-- Page 12 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[12]</a></span>
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.</p>

<p>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&mdash;say St.
Paul's Church-yard, for instance&mdash;literally to astonish his son's
weak mind.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>External heat and cold had little influence on Scrooge. No<!-- Page 13 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[13]</a></span>
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.</p>

<p>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!"</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>Once upon a time&mdash;of all the good days in the year, on
Christmas Eve&mdash;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&mdash;it had not
been light all day&mdash;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,<!-- Page 14 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[14]</a></span>
one might have thought that nature lived hard by and was
brewing on a large scale.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>"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.</p>

<p>"Bah!" said Scrooge. "Humbug!"</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>"Christmas a humbug, uncle!" said Scrooge's nephew.
"You don't mean that, I am sure?"</p>

<p>"I do," said Scrooge. "Merry Christmas! What right
have you to be merry? What reason have you to be merry?
You're poor enough."</p>

<p>"Come, then," returned the nephew gaily. "What right
have you to be dismal? What reason have you to be morose?
You're rich enough."</p>

<p>Scrooge, having no better answer ready on the spur of the
moment, said, "Bah!" again; and followed it up with "Humbug!"</p>

<p>"Don't be cross, uncle!" said the nephew.</p>

<div class="figcenter" style="width: 416px;">
<img src="images/i02.jpg" width="415" height="624" alt="&quot;A Merry Christmas, uncle! God save you!&quot; cried a cheerful voice." title="&quot;A Merry Christmas, uncle! God save you!&quot; cried a cheerful voice." />
<span class="caption">&quot;A Merry Christmas, uncle! God save you!&quot; cried a cheerful voice.</span>
</div>

<p>"What else can I be," returned the uncle, "when I live in
<!-- Page 15 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[15]</a></span>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!"</p>

<p>"Uncle!" pleaded the nephew.</p>

<p>"Nephew!" returned the uncle sternly, "keep Christmas
in your own way, and let me keep it in mine."</p>

<p>"Keep it!" repeated Scrooge's nephew. "But you don't
keep it."</p>

<p>"Let me leave it alone, then," said Scrooge. "Much good
may it do you! Much good it has ever done you!"</p>

<p>"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&mdash;apart
from the veneration due to its sacred name and origin, if
anything belonging to it can be apart from that&mdash;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 <i>has</i> done
me good, and <i>will</i> do me good; and I say, God bless it!"</p>

<p>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.<!-- Page 16 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[16]</a></span></p>

<p>"Let me hear another sound from <i>you</i>," 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."</p>

<p>"Don't be angry, uncle. Come! Dine with us to-morrow."</p>

<p>Scrooge said that he would see him&mdash;&mdash;Yes, indeed he
did. He went the whole length of the expression, and said that
he would see him in that extremity first.</p>

<p>"But why?" cried Scrooge's nephew. "Why?"</p>

<p>"Why did you get married?" said Scrooge.</p>

<p>"Because I fell in love."</p>

<p>"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!"</p>

<p>"Nay, uncle, but you never came to see me before that
happened. Why give it as a reason for not coming now?"</p>

<p>"Good afternoon," said Scrooge.</p>

<p>"I want nothing from you; I ask nothing of you; why cannot
we be friends?"</p>

<p>"Good afternoon!" said Scrooge.</p>

<p>"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!"</p>

<p>"Good afternoon," said Scrooge.</p>

<p>"And A Happy New Year!"</p>

<p>"Good afternoon!" said Scrooge.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>"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."<!-- Page 17 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[17]</a></span></p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>"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?"</p>

<p>"Mr. Marley has been dead these seven years," Scrooge
replied. "He died seven years ago, this very night."</p>

<p>"We have no doubt his liberality is well represented by his
surviving partner," said the gentleman, presenting his credentials.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>"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."</p>

<p>"Are there no prisons?" asked Scrooge.</p>

<p>"Plenty of prisons," said the gentleman, laying down the
pen again.</p>

<p>"And the Union workhouses?" demanded Scrooge. "Are
they still in operation?"</p>

<p>"They are. Still," returned the gentleman, "I wish I
could say they were not."</p>

<p>"The Treadmill and the Poor Law are in full vigour, then?"
said Scrooge.</p>

<p>"Both very busy, sir."</p>

<p>"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."<!-- Page 18 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[18]</a></span></p>

<p>"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?"</p>

<p>"Nothing!" Scrooge replied.</p>

<p>"You wish to be anonymous?"</p>

<p>"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&mdash;they
cost enough; and those who are badly off must go there."</p>

<p>"Many can't go there; and many would rather die."</p>

<p>"If they would rather die," said Scrooge, "they had better
do it, and decrease the surplus population. Besides&mdash;excuse
me&mdash;I don't know that."</p>

<p>"But you might know it," observed the gentleman.</p>

<p>"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!"</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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<!-- Page 19 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[19]</a></span>
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.</p>

<p>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</p>

<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">"God bless you, merry gentleman,<br /></span>
<span class="i0">May nothing you dismay!"<br /></span>
</div></div>

<p>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.</p>

<p>At length the hour of shutting up the counting-house arrived.<!-- Page 20 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[20]</a></span>
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.</p>

<p>"You'll want all day to-morrow, I suppose?" said Scrooge.</p>

<p>"If quite convenient, sir."</p>

<p>"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?"</p>

<p>The clerk smiled faintly.</p>

<p>"And yet," said Scrooge, "you don't think <i>me</i> ill used when
I pay a day's wages for no work."</p>

<p>The clerk observed that it was only once a year.</p>

<p>"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."</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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<!-- Page 21 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[21]</a></span>
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.</p>

<p>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&mdash;which is a bold word&mdash;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&mdash;not a knocker, but Marley's
face.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>As Scrooge looked fixedly at this phenomenon, it was a
knocker again.</p>

<p>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<!-- Page 22 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[22]</a></span>
key he had relinquished, turned it sturdily, walked in, and
lighted his candle.</p>

<p>He <i>did</i> pause, with a moment's irresolution, before he shut
the door; and he <i>did</i> 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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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-<!-- Page 23 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[23]</a></span>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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>"Humbug!" said Scrooge; and walked across the room.</p>

<p>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.<!-- Page 24 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[24]</a></span></p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>"It's humbug still!" said Scrooge. "I won't believe it."</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>Scrooge had often heard it said that Marley had no bowels,
but he had never believed it until now.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>"How now!" said Scrooge, caustic and cold as ever. "What
do you want with me?"<!-- Page 25 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[25]</a></span></p>

<p>"Much!"&mdash;Marley's voice, no doubt about it.</p>

<p>"Who are you?"</p>

<p>"Ask me who I <i>was</i>."</p>

<p>"Who <i>were</i> you, then?" said Scrooge, raising his voice.
"You're particular, for a shade." He was going to say "<i>to</i> a
shade," but substituted this, as more appropriate.</p>

<p>"In life I was your partner, Jacob Marley."</p>

<p>"Can you&mdash;can you sit down?" asked Scrooge, looking
doubtfully at him.</p>

<p>"I can."</p>

<p>"Do it, then."</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>"You don't believe in me," observed the Ghost.</p>

<p>"I don't," said Scrooge.</p>

<p>"What evidence would you have of my reality beyond that
of your own senses?"</p>

<p>"I don't know," said Scrooge.</p>

<p>"Why do you doubt your senses?"</p>

<p>"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!"</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>To sit staring at those fixed glazed eyes in silence, for a<!-- Page 26 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[26]</a></span>
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.</p>

<p>"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.</p>

<p>"I do," replied the Ghost.</p>

<p>"You are not looking at it," said Scrooge.</p>

<p>"But I see it," said the Ghost, "notwithstanding."</p>

<p>"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!"</p>

<p>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!</p>

<p>Scrooge fell upon his knees, and clasped his hands before
his face.</p>

<p>"Mercy!" he said. "Dreadful apparition, why do you
trouble me?"</p>

<p>"Man of the worldly mind!" replied the Ghost, "do you
believe in me or not?"</p>

<p>"I do," said Scrooge. "I must. But why do spirits walk
the earth, and why do they come to me?"</p>

<div class="figcenter" style="width: 640px;">
<img src="images/i03.jpg" width="639" height="420" alt="To sit staring at those fixed glazed eyes in silence, for a moment, would play,
Scrooge felt, the very deuce with him." title="To sit staring at those fixed glazed eyes in silence, for a moment, would play,
Scrooge felt, the very deuce with him." />
<span class="caption">To sit staring at those fixed glazed eyes in silence, for a moment, would play,
Scrooge felt, the very deuce with him.</span>
</div>

<p>"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<!-- Page 27 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[27]</a></span>
wander through the world&mdash;oh, woe is me!&mdash;and witness
what it cannot share, but might have shared on earth, and
turned to happiness!"</p>

<p>Again the spectre raised a cry, and shook its chain and
wrung its shadowy hands.</p>

<p>"You are fettered," said Scrooge, trembling. "Tell me
why?"</p>

<p>"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 <i>you</i>?"</p>

<p>Scrooge trembled more and more.</p>

<p>"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!"</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>"Jacob!" he said imploringly. "Old Jacob Marley, tell
me more! Speak comfort to me, Jacob!"</p>

<p>"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&mdash;mark me;&mdash;in life my
spirit never roved beyond the narrow limits of our money-changing
hole; and weary journeys lie before me!"</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>"You must have been very slow about it, Jacob," Scrooge<!-- Page 28 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[28]</a></span>
observed in a business-like manner, though with humility and
deference.</p>

<p>"Slow!" the Ghost repeated.</p>

<p>"Seven years dead," mused Scrooge. "And travelling all
the time?"</p>

<p>"The whole time," said the Ghost. "No rest, no peace.
Incessant torture of remorse."</p>

<p>"You travel fast?" said Scrooge.</p>

<p>"On the wings of the wind," replied the Ghost.</p>

<p>"You might have got over a great quantity of ground in
seven years," said Scrooge.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>"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!"</p>

<p>"But you were always a good man of business, Jacob,"
faltered Scrooge, who now began to apply this to himself.</p>

<p>"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!"</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>"At this time of the rolling year," the spectre said, "I suffer<!-- Page 29 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[29]</a></span>
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 <i>me</i>?"</p>

<p>Scrooge was very much dismayed to hear the spectre going
on at this rate, and began to quake exceedingly.</p>

<p>"Hear me!" cried the Ghost. "My time is nearly gone."</p>

<p>"I will," said Scrooge. "But don't be hard upon me!
Don't be flowery, Jacob! Pray!"</p>

<p>"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."</p>

<p>It was not an agreeable idea. Scrooge shivered, and wiped
the perspiration from his brow.</p>

<p>"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."</p>

<p>"You were always a good friend to me," said Scrooge.
"Thankee!"</p>

<p>"You will be haunted," resumed the Ghost, "by Three
Spirits."</p>

<p>Scrooge's countenance fell almost as low as the Ghost's had
done.</p>

<p>"Is that the chance and hope you mentioned, Jacob?" he
demanded in a faltering voice.</p>

<p>"It is."</p>

<p>"I&mdash;I think I'd rather not," said Scrooge.</p>

<p>"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."</p>

<p>"Couldn't I take 'em all at once, and have it over, Jacob?"
hinted Scrooge.</p>

<p>"Expect the second on the next night at the same hour.<!-- Page 30 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[30]</a></span>
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!"</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>Scrooge followed to the window: desperate in his curiosity.
He looked out.</p>

<p>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.<!-- Page 31 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[31]</a></span></p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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.<!-- Page 32 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[32]</a></span></p>



<hr style="width: 65%;" />
<h2>STAVE TWO</h2>

<h3>THE FIRST OF THE THREE SPIRITS</h3>


<p>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.</p>

<p>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!</p>

<p>He touched the spring of his repeater, to correct this most
preposterous clock. Its rapid little pulse beat twelve, and
stopped.</p>

<p>"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!"</p>

<p>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<!-- Page 33 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[33]</a></span>
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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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?"</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>"Ding, dong!"</p>

<p>"A quarter past," said Scrooge, counting.</p>

<p>"Ding, dong!"</p>

<p>"Half past," said Scrooge.</p>

<p>"Ding, dong!"</p>

<p>"A quarter to it," said Scrooge.</p>

<p>"Ding, dong!"</p>

<p>"The hour itself," said Scrooge triumphantly, "and nothing
else!"</p>

<p>He spoke before the hour bell sounded, which it now did with
a deep, dull, hollow, melancholy <span class="smcap">One</span>. Light flashed up in the
room upon the instant, and the curtains of his bed were drawn.<!-- Page 34 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[34]</a></span></p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>It was a strange figure&mdash;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.</p>

<p>Even this, though, when Scrooge looked at it with increasing
steadiness, was <i>not</i> 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<!-- Page 35 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[35]</a></span>
they melted away. And, in the very wonder of this, it would be
itself again; distinct and clear as ever.</p>

<p>"Are you the Spirit, sir, whose coming was foretold to me?"
asked Scrooge.</p>

<p>"I am!"</p>

<p>The voice was soft and gentle. Singularly low, as if, instead
of being so close beside him, it were at a distance.</p>

<p>"Who and what are you?" Scrooge demanded.</p>

<p>"I am the Ghost of Christmas Past."</p>

<p>"Long Past?" inquired Scrooge; observant of its dwarfish
stature.</p>

<p>"No. Your past."</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>"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?"</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>"Your welfare!" said the Ghost.</p>

<p>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:</p>

<p>"Your reclamation, then. Take heed!"</p>

<p>It put out its strong hand as it spoke, and clasped him gently
by the arm.</p>

<p>"Rise! and walk with me!"</p>

<p>It would have been in vain for Scrooge to plead that the
weather and the hour were not adapted to pedestrian purposes;<!-- Page 36 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[36]</a></span>
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.</p>

<p>"I am a mortal," Scrooge remonstrated, "and liable to fall."</p>

<p>"Bear but a touch of my hand <i>there</i>," said the Spirit, laying
it upon his heart, "and you shall be upheld in more than this!"</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>"Good Heaven!" said Scrooge, clasping his hands together
as he looked about him. "I was bred in this place. I was
a boy here!"</p>

<p>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!</p>

<p>"Your lip is trembling," said the Ghost. "And what is
that upon your cheek?"</p>

<p>Scrooge muttered, with an unusual catching in his voice,
that it was a pimple; and begged the Ghost to lead him where
he would.</p>

<p>"You recollect the way?" inquired the Spirit.</p>

<p>"Remember it!" cried Scrooge with fervour; "I could walk
it blindfold."</p>

<p>"Strange to have forgotten it for so many years!" observed
the Ghost. "Let us go on."</p>

<div class="figcenter" style="width: 414px;">
<img src="images/i04.jpg" width="414" height="635" alt="&quot;You recollect the way?&quot; inquired the spirit. &quot;Remember it!&quot; cried Scrooge
with fervour; &quot;I could walk it blindfold.&quot;" title="&quot;You recollect the way?&quot; inquired the spirit. &quot;Remember it!&quot; cried Scrooge
with fervour; &quot;I could walk it blindfold.&quot;" />
<span class="caption">&quot;You recollect the way?&quot; inquired the spirit. &quot;Remember it!&quot; cried Scrooge
with fervour; &quot;I could walk it blindfold.&quot;</span>
</div>

<p>They walked along the road, Scrooge recognising every
<!-- Page 37 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[37]</a></span>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.</p>

<p>"These are but shadows of the things that have been," said
the Ghost. "They have no consciousness of us."</p>

<p>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?</p>

<p>"The school is not quite deserted," said the Ghost. "A
solitary child, neglected by his friends, is left there still."</p>

<p>Scrooge said he knew it. And he sobbed.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>They went, the Ghost and Scrooge, across the hall, to a door<!-- Page 38 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[38]</a></span>
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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>"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 <i>did</i>
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 <i>he</i> to be married to the Princess?"</p>

<p>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.</p>

<div class="figcenter" style="width: 623px;">
<img src="images/i05.jpg" width="623" height="420" alt="&quot;Why, it&#39;s Ali Baba!&quot; Scrooge exclaimed in ecstasy. &quot;It&#39;s dear old honest Ali Baba.&quot;" title="&quot;Why, it&#39;s Ali Baba!&quot; Scrooge exclaimed in ecstasy. &quot;It&#39;s dear old honest Ali Baba.&quot;" />
<span class="caption">&quot;Why, it&#39;s Ali Baba!&quot; Scrooge exclaimed in ecstasy. &quot;It&#39;s dear old honest Ali Baba.&quot;</span>
</div>

<p>"There's the Parrot!" cried Scrooge. "Green body and
<!-- Page 39 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[39]</a></span>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!"</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>"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."</p>

<p>"What is the matter?" asked the Spirit.</p>

<p>"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."</p>

<p>The Ghost smiled thoughtfully, and waved its hand: saying,
as it did so, "Let us see another Christmas!"</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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."</p>

<p>"I have come to bring you home, dear brother!" said the<!-- Page 40 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[40]</a></span>
child, clapping her tiny hands, and bending down to laugh.
"To bring you home, home, home!"</p>

<p>"Home, little Fan?" returned the boy.</p>

<p>"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."</p>

<p>"You are quite a woman, little Fan!" exclaimed the boy.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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,<!-- Page 41 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[41]</a></span>
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.</p>

<p>"Always a delicate creature, whom a breath might have
withered," said the Ghost. "But she had a large heart!"</p>

<p>"So she had," cried Scrooge. "You're right. I will not
gainsay it, Spirit. God forbid!"</p>

<p>"She died a woman," said the Ghost, "and had, as I think,
children."</p>

<p>"One child," Scrooge returned.</p>

<p>"True," said the Ghost. "Your nephew!"</p>

<p>Scrooge seemed uneasy in his mind; and answered briefly,
"Yes."</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>The Ghost stopped at a certain warehouse door, and asked
Scrooge if he knew it.</p>

<p>"Know it!" said Scrooge. "Was I apprenticed here?"</p>

<p>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:</p>

<p>"Why, it's old Fezziwig! Bless his heart, it's Fezziwig alive
again!"</p>

<p>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,<!-- Page 42 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[42]</a></span>
from his shoes to his organ of benevolence; and called out, in a
comfortable, oily, rich, fat, jovial voice:</p>

<p>"Yo ho, there! Ebenezer! Dick!"</p>

<p>Scrooge's former self, now grown a young man, came briskly
in, accompanied by his fellow-'prentice.</p>

<p>"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!"</p>

<p>"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!"</p>

<p>You wouldn't believe how those two fellows went at it!
They charged into the street with the shutters&mdash;one, two, three&mdash;had
'em up in their places&mdash;four, five, six&mdash;barred 'em
and pinned 'em&mdash;seven, eight, nine&mdash;and came back before
you could have got to twelve, panting like race-horses.</p>

<p>"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!"</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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.<!-- Page 43 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[43]</a></span>
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.</p>

<p>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 <i>would</i> dance, and had no notion of walking.<!-- Page 44 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[44]</a></span></p>

<p>But if they had been twice as many&mdash;ah! four times&mdash;old
Fezziwig would have been a match for them, and so would Mrs.
Fezziwig. As to <i>her</i>, 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"&mdash;cut so
deftly, that he appeared to wink with his legs, and came upon
his feet again without a stagger.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>"A small matter," said the Ghost, "to make these silly
folks so full of gratitude."</p>

<p>"Small!" echoed Scrooge.</p>

<p>The Spirit signed to him to listen to the two apprentices,<!-- Page 45 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[45]</a></span>
who were pouring out their hearts in praise of Fezziwig; and,
when he had done so, said:</p>

<p>"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?"</p>

<p>"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."</p>

<p>He felt the Spirit's glance, and stopped.</p>

<p>"What is the matter?" asked the Ghost.</p>

<p>"Nothing particular," said Scrooge.</p>

<p>"Something, I think?" the Ghost insisted.</p>

<p>"No," said Scrooge, "no. I should like to be able to say a
word or two to my clerk just now. That's all."</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>"My time grows short," observed the Spirit. "Quick!"</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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.<!-- Page 46 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[46]</a></span></p>

<p>"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."</p>

<p>"What Idol has displaced you?" he rejoined.</p>

<p>"A golden one."</p>

<p>"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!"</p>

<p>"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?"</p>

<p>"What then?" he retorted. "Even if I have grown so much
wiser, what then? I am not changed towards you."</p>

<p>She shook her head.</p>

<p>"Am I?"</p>

<p>"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 <i>are</i>
changed. When it was made you were another man."</p>

<p>"I was a boy," he said impatiently.</p>

<p>"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 <i>have</i> thought of it, and can release you."</p>

<p>"Have I ever sought release?"</p>

<p>"In words. No. Never."</p>

<p>"In what, then?"</p>

<p>"In a changed nature; in an altered spirit; in another atmosphere
of life; another Hope as its great end. In everything<!-- Page 47 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[47]</a></span>
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!"</p>

<p>He seemed to yield to the justice of this supposition in spite
of himself. But he said, with a struggle, "You think not."</p>

<p>"I would gladly think otherwise if I could," she answered.
"Heaven knows! When <i>I</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&mdash;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."</p>

<p>He was about to speak; but, with her head turned from him,
she resumed.</p>

<p>"You may&mdash;the memory of what is past half makes me
hope you will&mdash;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!"</p>

<p>She left him, and they parted.</p>

<p>"Spirit!" said Scrooge, "show me no more! Conduct me
home. Why do you delight to torture me?"</p>

<p>"One shadow more!" exclaimed the Ghost.</p>

<p>"No more!" cried Scrooge. "No more! I don't wish to see
it. Show me no more!"</p>

<p>But the relentless Ghost pinioned him in both his arms, and
forced him to observe what happened next.</p>

<p>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<!-- Page 48 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[48]</a></span>
believed it was the same, until he saw <i>her</i>, 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.</p>

<p>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-<!-- Page 49 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[49]</a></span>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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>"Belle," said the husband, turning to his wife with a smile,
"I saw an old friend of yours this afternoon."</p>

<p>"Who was it?"</p>

<p>"Guess!"</p>

<p>"How can I? Tut, don't I know?" she added in the same
breath, laughing as he laughed. "Mr. Scrooge."</p>

<p>"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."</p>

<p>"Spirit!" said Scrooge in a broken voice, "remove me from
this place."</p>

<p>"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!"<!-- Page 50 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[50]</a></span></p>

<p>"Remove me!" Scrooge exclaimed. "I cannot bear it!"</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>"Leave me! Take me back! Haunt me no longer!"</p>

<p>In the struggle&mdash;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&mdash;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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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.<!-- Page 51 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[51]</a></span></p>



<hr style="width: 65%;" />
<h2>STAVE THREE</h2>

<h3>THE SECOND OF THE THREE SPIRITS</h3>


<p>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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>Now, being prepared for almost anything, he was not by
any means prepared for nothing; and consequently, when the<!-- Page 52 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[52]</a></span>
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&mdash;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&mdash;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.</p>

<p>The moment Scrooge's hand was on the lock, a strange
voice called him by his name, and bade him enter. He obeyed.</p>

<p>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<!-- Page 53 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[53]</a></span>
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.</p>

<p>"Come in!" exclaimed the Ghost. "Come in! and know
me better, man!"</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>"I am the Ghost of Christmas Present," said the Spirit.
"Look upon me!"</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>"You have never seen the like of me before!" exclaimed
the Spirit.</p>

<p>"Never," Scrooge made answer to it.</p>

<p>"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.</p>

<p>"I don't think I have," said Scrooge. "I am afraid I have
not. Have you had many brothers, Spirit?"</p>

<p>"More than eighteen hundred," said the Ghost.<!-- Page 54 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[54]</a></span></p>

<p>"A tremendous family to provide for," muttered Scrooge.</p>

<p>The Ghost of Christmas Present rose.</p>

<p>"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."</p>

<p>"Touch my robe!"</p>

<p>Scrooge did as he was told, and held it fast.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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.<!-- Page 55 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[55]</a></span></p>

<p>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&mdash;better-natured
missile far than many a wordy jest&mdash;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.</p>

<p>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<!-- Page 56 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[56]</a></span>
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.</p>

<p>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!<!-- Page 57 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[57]</a></span></p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>"Is there a peculiar flavour in what you sprinkle from your
torch?" asked Scrooge.</p>

<p>"There is. My own."</p>

<p>"Would it apply to any kind of dinner on this day?" asked
Scrooge.</p>

<p>"To any kindly given. To a poor one most."</p>

<p>"Why to a poor one most?" asked Scrooge.</p>

<p>"Because it needs it most."</p>

<p>"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."</p>

<p>"I!" cried the Spirit.</p>

<p>"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?"</p>

<p>"I!" cried the Spirit.</p>

<p>"You seek to close these places on the Seventh Day," said
Scrooge. "And it comes to the same thing."</p>

<p>"<i>I</i> seek!" exclaimed the Spirit.</p>

<p>"Forgive me if I am wrong. It has been done in your name,
or at least in that of your family," said Scrooge.</p>

<p>"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."</p>

<p>Scrooge promised that he would; and they went on, invisible,<!-- Page 58 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[58]</a></span>
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.</p>

<p>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!</p>

<p>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.<!-- Page 59 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[59]</a></span></p>

<p>"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!"</p>

<p>"Here's Martha, mother!" said a girl, appearing as she
spoke.</p>

<p>"Here's Martha, mother!" cried the two young Cratchits.
"Hurrah! There's <i>such</i> a goose, Martha!"</p>

<p>"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.</p>

<p>"We'd a deal of work to finish up last night," replied the
girl, "and had to clear away this morning, mother!"</p>

<p>"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!"</p>

<p>"No, no! There's father coming," cried the two young
Cratchits, who were everywhere at once. "Hide, Martha,
hide!"</p>

<p>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!</p>

<p>"Why, where's our Martha?" cried Bob Cratchit, looking
round.</p>

<p>"Not coming," said Mrs. Cratchit.</p>

<p>"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!"</p>

<p>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<!-- Page 60 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[60]</a></span>
hustled Tiny Tim, and bore him off into the wash-house, that
he might hear the pudding singing in the copper.</p>

<p>"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.</p>

<p>"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."</p>

<p>Bob's voice was tremulous when he told them this, and
trembled more when he said that Tiny Tim was growing strong
and hearty.</p>

<p>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&mdash;as if, poor fellow, they were capable of
being made more shabby&mdash;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.</p>

<p>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&mdash;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<!-- Page 61 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[61]</a></span>
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!</p>

<p>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&mdash;too
nervous to bear witnesses&mdash;to take the pudding up, and
bring it in.</p>

<p>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&mdash;a supposition at which the two young Cratchits
became livid! All sorts of horrors were supposed.</p>

<p>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&mdash;flushed, but
smiling proudly&mdash;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.<!-- Page 62 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[62]</a></span></p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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:</p>

<p>"A merry Christmas to us all, my dears. God bless us!"</p>

<p>Which all the family re-echoed.</p>

<p>"God bless us every one!" said Tiny Tim, the last of all.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>"Spirit," said Scrooge with an interest he had never felt
before, "tell me if Tiny Tim will live."</p>

<p>"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."<!-- Page 63 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[63]</a></span></p>

<p>"No, no," said Scrooge. "Oh, no, kind Spirit! say he will
be spared."</p>

<p>"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."</p>

<p>Scrooge hung his head to hear his own words quoted by the
Spirit, and was overcome with penitence and grief.</p>

<p>"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!"</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>"Mr. Scrooge!" said Bob. "I'll give you Mr. Scrooge, the
Founder of the Feast!"</p>

<p>"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."</p>

<p>"My dear," said Bob, "the children! Christmas-day."</p>

<p>"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!"</p>

<p>"My dear!" was Bob's mild answer. "Christmas-day."</p>

<p>"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!"<!-- Page 64 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[64]</a></span></p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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<!-- Page 65 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[65]</a></span>
torch at parting, Scrooge had his eye upon them, and especially
on Tiny Tim, until the last.</p>

<p>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&mdash;artful witches, well they
knew it&mdash;in a glow!</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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<!-- Page 66 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[66]</a></span>
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.</p>

<p>"What place is this?" asked Scrooge.</p>

<p>"A place where Miners live, who labour in the bowels of the
earth," returned the Spirit. "But they know me. See!"</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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&mdash;born of the
wind, one might suppose, as seaweed of the water&mdash;rose and
fell about it, like the waves they skimmed.</p>

<p>But, even here, two men who watched the light had made a<!-- Page 67 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[67]</a></span>
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.</p>

<p>Again the Ghost sped on, above the black and heaving sea&mdash;on,
on&mdash;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.</p>

<p>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!</p>

<p>"Ha, ha!" laughed Scrooge's nephew. "Ha, ha, ha!"</p>

<p>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.<!-- Page 68 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[68]</a></span></p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>"Ha, ha! Ha, ha, ha, ha!"</p>

<p>"He said that Christmas was a humbug, as I live!" cried
Scrooge's nephew. "He believed it, too!"</p>

<p>"More shame for him, Fred!" said Scrooge's niece indignantly.
Bless those women! they never do anything by halves.
They are always in earnest.</p>

<p>She was very pretty; exceedingly pretty. With a dimpled,
surprised-looking, capital face; a ripe little mouth, that seemed
made to be kissed&mdash;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!</p>

<p>"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."</p>

<p>"I'm sure he is very rich, Fred," hinted Scrooge's niece.
"At least, you always tell <i>me</i> so."</p>

<p>"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&mdash;ha, ha, ha!&mdash;that he is ever going to benefit
Us with it."</p>

<p>"I have no patience with him," observed Scrooge's niece.<!-- Page 69 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[69]</a></span>
Scrooge's niece's sisters, and all the other ladies, expressed the
same opinion.</p>

<p>"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."</p>

<p>"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.</p>

<p>"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 <i>you</i> say, Topper?"</p>

<p>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&mdash;the plump one with the lace tucker,
not the one with the roses&mdash;blushed.</p>

<p>"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!"</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>"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<!-- Page 70 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[70]</a></span>
him. He may rail at Christmas till he dies, but he can't help
thinking better of it&mdash;I defy him&mdash;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, <i>that's</i> something; and I think I shook him
yesterday."</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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<!-- Page 71 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[71]</a></span>
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.</p>

<p>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<!-- Page 72 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[72]</a></span>
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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>"Here is a new game," said Scrooge. "One half-hour,
Spirit, only one!"</p>

<p>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:</p>

<p>"I have found it out! I know what it is, Fred! I know
what it is!"</p>

<p>"What is it?" cried Fred.</p>

<p>"It's your uncle Scro-o-o-o-oge!"</p>

<p>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.<!-- Page 73 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[73]</a></span></p>

<p>"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!'"</p>

<p>"Well! Uncle Scrooge!" they cried.</p>

<p>"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!"</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>"Are spirits' lives so short?" asked Scrooge.<!-- Page 74 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[74]</a></span></p>

<p>"My life upon this globe is very brief," replied the Ghost.
"It ends to-night."</p>

<p>"To-night!" cried Scrooge.</p>

<p>"To-night at midnight. Hark! The time is drawing near."</p>

<p>The chimes were ringing the three-quarters past eleven at
that moment.</p>

<p>"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?"</p>

<p>"It might be a claw, for the flesh there is upon it," was the
Spirit's sorrowful reply. "Look here."</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>"Oh, Man! look here! Look, look, down here!" exclaimed
the Ghost.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>"Spirit! are they yours?" Scrooge could say no more.</p>

<p>"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<!-- Page 75 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[75]</a></span>
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!"</p>

<p>"Have they no refuge or resource?" cried Scrooge.</p>

<p>"Are there no prisons?" said the Spirit, turning on him for
the last time with his own words. "Are there no workhouses?"</p>

<p>The bell struck Twelve.</p>

<p>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.<!-- Page 76 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[76]</a></span></p>



<hr style="width: 65%;" />
<h2>STAVE FOUR</h2>

<h3>THE LAST OF THE SPIRITS</h3>


<p>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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>"I am in the presence of the Ghost of Christmas Yet to
Come?" said Scrooge.</p>

<p>The Spirit answered not, but pointed onward with its hand.</p>

<p>"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?"</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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.<!-- Page 77 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[77]</a></span></p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>"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?"</p>

<p>It gave him no reply. The hand was pointed straight before
them.</p>

<p>"Lead on!" said Scrooge. "Lead on! The night is waning
fast, and it is precious time to me, I know. Lead on, Spirit!"</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>"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."</p>

<p>"When did he die?" inquired another.</p>

<p>"Last night, I believe."</p>

<p>"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."<!-- Page 78 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[78]</a></span></p>

<p>"God knows," said the first with a yawn.</p>

<p>"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.</p>

<p>"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 <i>me</i>. That's all I know."</p>

<p>This pleasantry was received with a general laugh.</p>

<p>"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?"</p>

<p>"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."</p>

<p>Another laugh.</p>

<p>"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!"</p>

<p>Speakers and listeners strolled away, and mixed with other
groups. Scrooge knew the men, and looked towards the Spirit
for an explanation.</p>

<p>The Phantom glided on into a street. Its finger pointed to
two persons meeting. Scrooge listened again, thinking that the
explanation might lie here.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>"How are you?" said one.</p>

<p>"How are you?" returned the other.<!-- Page 79 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[79]</a></span></p>

<p>"Well!" said the first. "Old Scratch has got his own at
last, hey?"</p>

<p>"So I am told," returned the second. "Cold, isn't it?"</p>

<p>"Seasonable for Christmas-time. You are not a skater, I
suppose?"</p>

<p>"No. No. Something else to think of. Good morning!"</p>

<p>Not another word. That was their meeting, their conversation,
and their parting.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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 situa<!-- Page 80 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[80]</a></span>tion
in reference to himself, that the Unseen Eyes were looking
at him keenly. It made him shudder, and feel very cold.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>"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,<!-- Page 81 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[81]</a></span>
old Joe, here's a chance! If we haven't all three met here without
meaning it!"</p>

<p>"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."</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>"What odds, then? What odds, Mrs. Dilber?" said the
woman. "Every person has a right to take care of themselves.
<i>He</i> always did!"</p>

<p>"That's true, indeed!" said the laundress. "No man
more so."</p>

<p>"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?"</p>

<p>"No, indeed!" said Mrs. Dilber and the man together.
"We should hope not."</p>

<p>"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?"</p>

<p>"No, indeed," said Mrs. Dilber, laughing.</p>

<p>"If he wanted to keep 'em after he was dead, a wicked old<!-- Page 82 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[82]</a></span>
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."</p>

<p>"It's the truest word that ever was spoke," said Mrs. Dilber,
"It's a judgment on him."</p>

<p>"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."</p>

<p>But the gallantry of her friends would not allow of this;
and the man in faded black, mounting the breach first, produced
<i>his</i> 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.</p>

<p>"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?"</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>"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."</p>

<p>"And now undo <i>my</i> bundle, Joe," said the first woman.<!-- Page 83 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[83]</a></span></p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>"What do you call this?" said Joe. "Bed-curtains?"</p>

<p>"Ah!" returned the woman, laughing and leaning forward
on her crossed arms. "Bed-curtains!"</p>

<p>"You don't mean to say you took 'em down, rings and all,
with him lying there?" said Joe.</p>

<p>"Yes, I do," replied the woman. "Why not?"</p>

<p>"You were born to make your fortune," said Joe, "and you'll
certainly do it."</p>

<p>"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."</p>

<p>"His blankets?" asked Joe.</p>

<p>"Whose else's do you think?" replied the woman. "He
isn't likely to take cold without 'em, I dare say."</p>

<p>"I hope he didn't die of anything catching? Eh?" said
old Joe, stopping in his work, and looking up.</p>

<p>"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."</p>

<p>"What do you call wasting of it?" asked old Joe.</p>

<p>"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."</p>

<p>Scrooge listened to this dialogue in horror. As they sat<!-- Page 84 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[84]</a></span>
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.</p>

<p>"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!"</p>

<p>"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?"</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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<!-- Page 85 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[85]</a></span>
will fall down when released; it is not that the heart and pulse
are still; but that the hand <span class="smcap">WAS</span> 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!</p>

<p>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!</p>

<p>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 <i>they</i> wanted in the room of death,
and why they were so restless and disturbed, Scrooge did not
dare to think.</p>

<p>"Spirit!" he said, "this is a fearful place. In leaving it, I
shall not leave its lesson, trust me. Let us go!"</p>

<p>Still the Ghost pointed with an unmoved finger to the
head.</p>

<p>"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."</p>

<p>Again it seemed to look upon him.</p>

<p>"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."</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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<!-- Page 86 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[86]</a></span>
vain, to work with her needle; and could hardly bear the voices
of her children in their play.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>"Is it good," she said, "or bad?" to help him.</p>

<p>"Bad," he answered.</p>

<p>"We are quite ruined?"</p>

<p>"No. There is hope yet, Caroline."</p>

<p>"If <i>he</i> relents," she said, amazed, "there is! Nothing is
past hope, if such a miracle has happened."</p>

<p>"He is past relenting," said her husband. "He is dead."</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>"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."</p>

<p>"To whom will our debt be transferred?"</p>

<p>"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!"</p>

<p>Yes. Soften it as they would, their hearts were lighter.
The children's faces, hushed and clustered round to hear what<!-- Page 87 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[87]</a></span>
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.</p>

<p>"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."</p>

<p>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,&mdash;the dwelling he had visited
before,&mdash;and found the mother and the children seated round the
fire.</p>

<p>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!</p>

<p>"'And he took a child, and set him in the midst of
them.'"</p>

<p>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?</p>

<p>The mother laid her work upon the table, and put her hand
up to her face.</p>

<p>"The colour hurts my eyes," she said.</p>

<p>The colour? Ah, poor Tiny Tim!</p>

<p>"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."</p>

<p>"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."</p>

<p>They were very quiet again. At last she said, and in a steady,
cheerful voice, that only faltered once:<!-- Page 88 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[88]</a></span></p>

<p>"I have known him walk with&mdash;I have known him walk
with Tiny Tim upon his shoulder very fast indeed."</p>

<p>"And so have I," cried Peter. "Often."</p>

<p>"And so have I," exclaimed another. So had all.</p>

<p>"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!"</p>

<p>She hurried out to meet him; and little Bob in his comforter&mdash;he
had need of it, poor fellow&mdash;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!"</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>"Sunday! You went to-day, then, Robert?" said his wife.</p>

<p>"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!"</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>They drew about the fire, and talked; the girls and mother<!-- Page 89 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[89]</a></span>
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&mdash;"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 <i>that</i> I don't know."</p>

<p>"Knew what, my dear?"</p>

<p>"Why, that you were a good wife," replied Bob.</p>

<p>"Everybody knows that," said Peter.</p>

<p>"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."</p>

<p>"I'm sure he's a good soul!" said Mrs. Cratchit.</p>

<p>"You would be sure of it, my dear," returned Bob, "if you
saw and spoke to him. I shouldn't be at all surprised&mdash;mark
what I say!&mdash;if he got Peter a better situation."</p>

<p>"Only hear that, Peter," said Mrs. Cratchit.</p>

<p>"And then," cried one of the girls, "Peter will be keeping
company with some one, and setting up for himself."</p>

<p>"Get along with you!" retorted Peter, grinning.</p>

<p>"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&mdash;shall we&mdash;or this first parting
that there was among us?"</p>

<p>"Never, father!" cried they all.</p>

<p>"And I know," said Bob, "I know, my dears, that when we<!-- Page 90 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[90]</a></span>
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."</p>

<p>"No, never, father!" they all cried again.</p>

<p>"I am very happy," said little Bob, "I am very happy!"</p>

<p>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!</p>

<p>"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?"</p>

<p>The Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come conveyed him, as
before&mdash;though at a different time, he thought: indeed, there
seemed no order in these latter visions, save that they were in
the Future&mdash;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.</p>

<p>"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."</p>

<p>The Spirit stopped; the hand was pointed elsewhere.</p>

<p>"The house is yonder," Scrooge exclaimed. "Why do you
point away?"</p>

<p>The inexorable finger underwent no change.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>A churchyard. Here, then, the wretched man, whose name<!-- Page 91 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[91]</a></span>
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!</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>"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?"</p>

<p>Still the Ghost pointed downward to the grave by which
it stood.</p>

<p>"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!"</p>

<p>The Spirit was immovable as ever.</p>

<p>Scrooge crept towards it, trembling as he went; and, following
the finger, read upon the stone of the neglected grave his
own name, <span class="smcap">Ebenezer Scrooge</span>.</p>

<p>"Am <i>I</i> that man who lay upon the bed?" he cried upon his
knees.</p>

<p>The finger pointed from the grave to him, and back again.</p>

<p>"No, Spirit! Oh no, no!"</p>

<p>The finger still was there.</p>

<p>"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?"</p>

<p>For the first time the hand appeared to shake.</p>

<p>"Good Spirit," he pursued, as down upon the ground he<!-- Page 92 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[92]</a></span>
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?"</p>

<p>The kind hand trembled.</p>

<p>"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!"</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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.<!-- Page 93 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[93]</a></span></p>



<hr style="width: 65%;" />
<h2>STAVE FIVE</h2>

<h3>THE END OF IT</h3>


<p>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!</p>

<p>"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!"</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>"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&mdash;I am here&mdash;the shadows of the things that
would have been may be dispelled. They will be. I know they
will!"</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>"I don't know what to do!" cried Scrooge, laughing and
crying in the same breath; and making a perfect Laoco&ouml;n 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!<!-- Page 94 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[94]</a></span>
A happy New Year to all the world! Hallo here! Whoop!
Hallo!"</p>

<p>He had frisked into the sitting-room, and was now standing
there: perfectly winded.</p>

<p>"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!"</p>

<p>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!</p>

<p>"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!"</p>

<p>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!</p>

<p>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!</p>

<p>"What's to-day?" cried Scrooge, calling downward to a boy
in Sunday clothes, who perhaps had loitered in to look about
him.</p>

<p>"<span class="smcap">Eh</span>?" returned the boy with all his might of wonder.</p>

<p>"What's to-day, my fine fellow?" said Scrooge.</p>

<p>"To-day!" replied the boy. "Why, <span class="smcap">Christmas Day</span>."</p>

<p>"It's Christmas Day!" said Scrooge to himself. "I haven't
missed it. The Spirits have done it all in one night. They can<!-- Page 95 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[95]</a></span>
do anything they like. Of course they can. Of course they
can. Hallo, my fine fellow!"</p>

<p>"Hallo!" returned the boy.</p>

<p>"Do you know the Poulterer's in the next street but one, at
the corner?" Scrooge inquired.</p>

<p>"I should hope I did," replied the lad.</p>

<p>"An intelligent boy!" said Scrooge. "A remarkable boy!
Do you know whether they've sold the prize Turkey that was
hanging up there?&mdash;Not the little prize Turkey: the big one?"</p>

<p>"What! the one as big as me?" returned the boy.</p>

<p>"What a delightful boy!" said Scrooge. "It's a pleasure
to talk to him. Yes, my buck!"</p>

<p>"It's hanging there now," replied the boy.</p>

<p>"Is it?" said Scrooge. "Go and buy it."</p>

<p>"Walk-<span class="smcap">ER</span>!" exclaimed the boy.</p>

<p>"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!"</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>"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!"</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>"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<!-- Page 96 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[96]</a></span>!&mdash;Here's
the Turkey. Hallo! Whoop! How are you? Merry
Christmas!"</p>

<p>It <i>was</i> 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.</p>

<p>"Why, it's impossible to carry that to Camden Town," said
Scrooge. "You must have a cab."</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>"My dear sir," said Scrooge, quickening his pace, and tak<!-- Page 97 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[97]</a></span>ing
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!"</p>

<p>"Mr. Scrooge?"</p>

<p>"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&mdash;&mdash;" Here Scrooge whispered in
his ear.</p>

<p>"Lord bless me!" cried the gentleman, as if his breath were
taken away. "My dear Mr. Scrooge, are you serious?"</p>

<p>"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?"</p>

<p>"My dear sir," said the other, shaking hands with him, "I
don't know what to say to such munifi&mdash;&mdash;"</p>

<p>"Don't say anything, please," retorted Scrooge. "Come
and see me. Will you come and see me?"</p>

<p>"I will!" cried the old gentleman. And it was clear he
meant to do it.</p>

<p>"Thankee," said Scrooge. "I am much obliged to you. I
thank you fifty times. Bless you!"</p>

<p>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&mdash;that anything&mdash;could give him so much happiness.
In the afternoon he turned his steps towards his nephew's house.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>"Is your master at home, my dear?" said Scrooge to the
girl. Nice girl! Very.</p>

<p>"Yes sir."</p>

<p>"Where is he, my love?" said Scrooge.<!-- Page 98 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[98]</a></span></p>

<p>"He's in the dining-room, sir, along with mistress. I'll
show you up-stairs, if you please."</p>

<p>"Thankee. He knows me," said Scrooge, with his hand
already on the dining-room lock. "I'll go in here, my dear."</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>"Fred!" said Scrooge.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>"Why, bless my soul!" cried Fred, "who's that?"</p>

<p>"It's I. Your uncle Scrooge. I have come to dinner.
Will you let me in, Fred?"</p>

<p>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 <i>he</i> came. So
did the plump sister when <i>she</i> came. So did every one when
<i>they</i> came. Wonderful party, wonderful games, wonderful
unanimity, won-der-ful happiness!</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>"Hallo!" growled Scrooge in his accustomed voice as near<!-- Page 99 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[99]</a></span>
as he could feign it. "What do you mean by coming here at
this time of day?"</p>

<p>"I am very sorry, sir," said Bob. "I <i>am</i> behind my time."</p>

<p>"You are!" repeated Scrooge. "Yes. I think you are.
Step this way, sir, if you please."</p>

<p>"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."</p>

<p>"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!"</p>

<p>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.</p>

<p>"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!"</p>

<hr style='width: 45%;' />

<p>Scrooge was better than his word. He did it all, and infinitely
more; and to Tiny Tim, who did <span class="smcap">NOT</span> 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<!-- Page 100 --><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[100]</a></span>
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.</p>

<p>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!</p>








<pre>





End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of A Christmas Carol, by Charles Dickens

*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A CHRISTMAS CAROL ***

***** This file should be named 19337-h.htm or 19337-h.zip *****
This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
        http://www.gutenberg.org/1/9/3/3/19337/

Produced by Jason Isbell and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net


Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
will be renamed.

Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
redistribution.



*** START: FULL LICENSE ***

THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK

To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
http://gutenberg.org/license).


Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
electronic works

1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.

1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
works.  See paragraph 1.E below.

1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.

1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
States.

1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:

1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
copied or distributed:

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

1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
1.E.9.

1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.

1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.

1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
Gutenberg-tm License.

1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.

1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.

1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
that

- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."

- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
     License.  You must require such a user to return or
     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
     Project Gutenberg-tm works.

- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
     of receipt of the work.

- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.

1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.

1.F.

1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
your equipment.

1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
DAMAGE.

1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
opportunities to fix the problem.

1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER
WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.

1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.

1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.


Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm

Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
people in all walks of life.

Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
assistance they need, is critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
and the Foundation web page at http://www.pglaf.org.


Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
Foundation

The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
number is 64-6221541.  Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at
http://pglaf.org/fundraising.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.

The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at
809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
business@pglaf.org.  Email contact links and up to date contact
information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
page at http://pglaf.org

For additional contact information:
     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
     Chief Executive and Director
     gbnewby@pglaf.org


Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
Literary Archive Foundation

Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
status with the IRS.

The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
particular state visit http://pglaf.org

While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
approach us with offers to donate.

International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.

Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations.
To donate, please visit: http://pglaf.org/donate


Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
works.

Professor Michael S. Hart is the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
with anyone.  For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.


Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.


Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:

     http://www.gutenberg.org

This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.


</pre>

</body>
</html>
generated by cgit v1.2.3 (git 2.25.1) at 2026-05-04 07:38:22 +0000