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+A CHRISTMAS CAROL
+A Ghost Story of Christmas
+
+by Charles Dickens
+
+STAVE I:  MARLEY'S GHOST
+
+MARLEY was dead: to begin with. There is no doubt
+whatever about that. The register of his burial was
+signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker,
+and the chief mourner. Scrooge signed it: and
+Scrooge's name was good upon 'Change, for anything he
+chose to put his hand to. Old Marley was as dead as a
+door-nail.
+
+Mind! I don't mean to say that I know, of my
+own knowledge, what there is particularly dead about
+a door-nail. I might have been inclined, myself, to
+regard a coffin-nail as the deadest piece of ironmongery
+in the trade. But the wisdom of our ancestors
+is in the simile; and my unhallowed hands
+shall not disturb it, or the Country's done for. You
+will therefore permit me to repeat, emphatically, that
+Marley was as dead as a door-nail.
+
+Scrooge knew he was dead? Of course he did.
+How could it be otherwise? Scrooge and he were
+partners for I don't know how many years. Scrooge
+was his sole executor, his sole administrator, his sole
+assign, his sole residuary legatee, his sole friend, and
+sole mourner. And even Scrooge was not so dreadfully
+cut up by the sad event, but that he was an excellent
+man of business on the very day of the funeral,
+and solemnised it with an undoubted bargain.
+
+The mention of Marley's funeral brings me back to
+the point I started from. There is no doubt that Marley
+was dead. This must be distinctly understood, or
+nothing wonderful can come of the story I am going
+to relate. If we were not perfectly convinced that
+Hamlet's Father died before the play began, there
+would be nothing more remarkable in his taking a
+stroll at night, in an easterly wind, upon his own ramparts,
+than there would be in any other middle-aged
+gentleman rashly turning out after dark in a breezy
+spot--say Saint Paul's Churchyard for instance--
+literally to astonish his son's weak mind.
+
+Scrooge never painted out Old Marley's name.
+There it stood, years afterwards, above the warehouse
+door: Scrooge and Marley. The firm was known as
+Scrooge and Marley. Sometimes people new to the
+business called Scrooge Scrooge, and sometimes Marley,
+but he answered to both names. It was all the
+same to him.
+
+Oh! But he was a tight-fisted hand at the grind-stone,
+Scrooge! a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping,
+clutching, covetous, old sinner! Hard and sharp as flint,
+from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire;
+secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster. The
+cold within him froze his old features, nipped his pointed
+nose, shrivelled his cheek, stiffened his gait; made his
+eyes red, his thin lips blue; and spoke out shrewdly in his
+grating voice. A frosty rime was on his head, and on his
+eyebrows, and his wiry chin. He carried his own low
+temperature always about with him; he iced his office in
+the dog-days; and didn't thaw it one degree at Christmas.
+
+External heat and cold had little influence on
+Scrooge. No warmth could warm, no wintry weather
+chill him. No wind that blew was bitterer than he,
+no falling snow was more intent upon its purpose, no
+pelting rain less open to entreaty. Foul weather didn't
+know where to have him. The heaviest rain, and
+snow, and hail, and sleet, could boast of the advantage
+over him in only one respect. They often "came down"
+handsomely, and Scrooge never did.
+
+Nobody ever stopped him in the street to say, with
+gladsome looks, "My dear Scrooge, how are you?
+When will you come to see me?" No beggars implored
+him to bestow a trifle, no children asked him
+what it was o'clock, no man or woman ever once in all
+his life inquired the way to such and such a place, of
+Scrooge. Even the blind men's dogs appeared to
+know him; and when they saw him coming on, would
+tug their owners into doorways and up courts; and
+then would wag their tails as though they said, "No
+eye at all is better than an evil eye, dark master!"
+
+But what did Scrooge care! It was the very thing
+he liked. To edge his way along the crowded paths
+of life, warning all human sympathy to keep its distance,
+was what the knowing ones call "nuts" to Scrooge.
+
+Once upon a time--of all the good days in the year,
+on Christmas Eve--old Scrooge sat busy in his
+counting-house. It was cold, bleak, biting weather: foggy
+withal: and he could hear the people in the court outside,
+go wheezing up and down, beating their hands
+upon their breasts, and stamping their feet upon the
+pavement stones to warm them. The city clocks had
+only just gone three, but it was quite dark already--
+it had not been light all day--and candles were flaring
+in the windows of the neighbouring offices, like
+ruddy smears upon the palpable brown air. The fog
+came pouring in at every chink and keyhole, and was
+so dense without, that although the court was of the
+narrowest, the houses opposite were mere phantoms.
+To see the dingy cloud come drooping down, obscuring
+everything, one might have thought that Nature
+lived hard by, and was brewing on a large scale.
+
+The door of Scrooge's counting-house was open
+that he might keep his eye upon his clerk, who in a
+dismal little cell beyond, a sort of tank, was copying
+letters. Scrooge had a very small fire, but the clerk's
+fire was so very much smaller that it looked like one
+coal. But he couldn't replenish it, for Scrooge kept
+the coal-box in his own room; and so surely as the
+clerk came in with the shovel, the master predicted
+that it would be necessary for them to part. Wherefore
+the clerk put on his white comforter, and tried to
+warm himself at the candle; in which effort, not being
+a man of a strong imagination, he failed.
+
+"A merry Christmas, uncle! God save you!" cried
+a cheerful voice. It was the voice of Scrooge's
+nephew, who came upon him so quickly that this was
+the first intimation he had of his approach.
+
+"Bah!" said Scrooge, "Humbug!"
+
+He had so heated himself with rapid walking in the
+fog and frost, this nephew of Scrooge's, that he was
+all in a glow; his face was ruddy and handsome; his
+eyes sparkled, and his breath smoked again.
+
+"Christmas a humbug, uncle!" said Scrooge's
+nephew. "You don't mean that, I am sure?"
+
+"I do," said Scrooge. "Merry Christmas! What
+right have you to be merry? What reason have you
+to be merry? You're poor enough."
+
+"Come, then," returned the nephew gaily. "What
+right have you to be dismal? What reason have you
+to be morose? You're rich enough."
+
+Scrooge having no better answer ready on the spur
+of the moment, said, "Bah!" again; and followed it up
+with "Humbug."
+
+"Don't be cross, uncle!" said the nephew.
+
+"What else can I be," returned the uncle, "when I
+live in such a world of fools as this? Merry Christmas!
+Out upon merry Christmas! What's Christmas
+time to you but a time for paying bills without
+money; a time for finding yourself a year older, but
+not an hour richer; a time for balancing your books
+and having every item in 'em through a round dozen
+of months presented dead against you? If I could
+work my will," said Scrooge indignantly, "every idiot
+who goes about with 'Merry Christmas' on his lips,
+should be boiled with his own pudding, and buried
+with a stake of holly through his heart. He should!"
+
+"Uncle!" pleaded the nephew.
+
+"Nephew!" returned the uncle sternly, "keep Christmas
+in your own way, and let me keep it in mine."
+
+"Keep it!" repeated Scrooge's nephew. "But you
+don't keep it."
+
+"Let me leave it alone, then," said Scrooge. "Much
+good may it do you! Much good it has ever done
+you!"
+
+"There are many things from which I might have
+derived good, by which I have not profited, I dare
+say," returned the nephew. "Christmas among the
+rest. But I am sure I have always thought of Christmas
+time, when it has come round--apart from the
+veneration due to its sacred name and origin, if anything
+belonging to it can be apart from that--as a
+good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant
+time; the only time I know of, in the long calendar
+of the year, when men and women seem by one consent
+to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think
+of people below them as if they really were
+fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race
+of creatures bound on other journeys. And therefore,
+uncle, though it has never put a scrap of gold or
+silver in my pocket, I believe that it has done me
+good, and will do me good; and I say, God bless it!"
+
+The clerk in the Tank involuntarily applauded.
+Becoming immediately sensible of the impropriety,
+he poked the fire, and extinguished the last frail spark
+for ever.
+
+"Let me hear another sound from you," said
+Scrooge, "and you'll keep your Christmas by losing
+your situation! You're quite a powerful speaker,
+sir," he added, turning to his nephew. "I wonder you
+don't go into Parliament."
+
+"Don't be angry, uncle. Come! Dine with us to-morrow."
+
+Scrooge said that he would see him--yes, indeed he
+did. He went the whole length of the expression,
+and said that he would see him in that extremity first.
+
+"But why?" cried Scrooge's nephew. "Why?"
+
+"Why did you get married?" said Scrooge.
+
+"Because I fell in love."
+
+"Because you fell in love!" growled Scrooge, as if
+that were the only one thing in the world more ridiculous
+than a merry Christmas. "Good afternoon!"
+
+"Nay, uncle, but you never came to see me before
+that happened. Why give it as a reason for not
+coming now?"
+
+"Good afternoon," said Scrooge.
+
+"I want nothing from you; I ask nothing of you;
+why cannot we be friends?"
+
+"Good afternoon," said Scrooge.
+
+"I am sorry, with all my heart, to find you so
+resolute. We have never had any quarrel, to which I
+have been a party. But I have made the trial in
+homage to Christmas, and I'll keep my Christmas
+humour to the last. So A Merry Christmas, uncle!"
+
+"Good afternoon!" said Scrooge.
+
+"And A Happy New Year!"
+
+"Good afternoon!" said Scrooge.
+
+His nephew left the room without an angry word,
+notwithstanding. He stopped at the outer door to
+bestow the greetings of the season on the clerk, who,
+cold as he was, was warmer than Scrooge; for he returned
+them cordially.
+
+"There's another fellow," muttered Scrooge; who
+overheard him: "my clerk, with fifteen shillings a
+week, and a wife and family, talking about a merry
+Christmas. I'll retire to Bedlam."
+
+This lunatic, in letting Scrooge's nephew out, had
+let two other people in. They were portly gentlemen,
+pleasant to behold, and now stood, with their hats off,
+in Scrooge's office. They had books and papers in
+their hands, and bowed to him.
+
+"Scrooge and Marley's, I believe," said one of the
+gentlemen, referring to his list. "Have I the pleasure
+of addressing Mr. Scrooge, or Mr. Marley?"
+
+"Mr. Marley has been dead these seven years,"
+Scrooge replied. "He died seven years ago, this very
+night."
+
+"We have no doubt his liberality is well represented
+by his surviving partner," said the gentleman, presenting
+his credentials.
+
+It certainly was; for they had been two kindred
+spirits. At the ominous word "liberality," Scrooge
+frowned, and shook his head, and handed the credentials
+back.
+
+"At this festive season of the year, Mr. Scrooge,"
+said the gentleman, taking up a pen, "it is more than
+usually desirable that we should make some slight
+provision for the Poor and destitute, who suffer
+greatly at the present time. Many thousands are in
+want of common necessaries; hundreds of thousands
+are in want of common comforts, sir."
+
+"Are there no prisons?" asked Scrooge.
+
+"Plenty of prisons," said the gentleman, laying down
+the pen again.
+
+"And the Union workhouses?" demanded Scrooge.
+"Are they still in operation?"
+
+"They are. Still," returned the gentleman, "I wish
+I could say they were not."
+
+"The Treadmill and the Poor Law are in full vigour,
+then?" said Scrooge.
+
+"Both very busy, sir."
+
+"Oh! I was afraid, from what you said at first,
+that something had occurred to stop them in their
+useful course," said Scrooge. "I'm very glad to
+hear it."
+
+"Under the impression that they scarcely furnish
+Christian cheer of mind or body to the multitude,"
+returned the gentleman, "a few of us are endeavouring
+to raise a fund to buy the Poor some meat and drink,
+and means of warmth. We choose this time, because
+it is a time, of all others, when Want is keenly felt,
+and Abundance rejoices. What shall I put you down
+for?"
+
+"Nothing!" Scrooge replied.
+
+"You wish to be anonymous?"
+
+"I wish to be left alone," said Scrooge. "Since you
+ask me what I wish, gentlemen, that is my answer.
+I don't make merry myself at Christmas and I can't
+afford to make idle people merry. I help to support
+the establishments I have mentioned--they cost
+enough; and those who are badly off must go there."
+
+"Many can't go there; and many would rather die."
+
+"If they would rather die," said Scrooge, "they had
+better do it, and decrease the surplus population.
+Besides--excuse me--I don't know that."
+
+"But you might know it," observed the gentleman.
+
+"It's not my business," Scrooge returned. "It's
+enough for a man to understand his own business, and
+not to interfere with other people's. Mine occupies
+me constantly. Good afternoon, gentlemen!"
+
+Seeing clearly that it would be useless to pursue
+their point, the gentlemen withdrew. Scrooge resumed
+his labours with an improved opinion of himself,
+and in a more facetious temper than was usual
+with him.
+
+Meanwhile the fog and darkness thickened so, that
+people ran about with flaring links, proffering their
+services to go before horses in carriages, and conduct
+them on their way. The ancient tower of a church,
+whose gruff old bell was always peeping slily down
+at Scrooge out of a Gothic window in the wall, became
+invisible, and struck the hours and quarters in the
+clouds, with tremulous vibrations afterwards as if
+its teeth were chattering in its frozen head up there.
+The cold became intense. In the main street, at the
+corner of the court, some labourers were repairing
+the gas-pipes, and had lighted a great fire in a brazier,
+round which a party of ragged men and boys were
+gathered: warming their hands and winking their
+eyes before the blaze in rapture. The water-plug
+being left in solitude, its overflowings sullenly 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 bloodthirsty in the streets, stirred up
+to-morrow's pudding in his garret, while his lean
+wife and the baby sallied out to buy the beef.
+
+Foggier yet, and colder. Piercing, searching, biting
+cold. If the good Saint Dunstan had but nipped
+the Evil Spirit's nose with a touch of such weather
+as that, instead of using his familiar weapons, then
+indeed he would have roared to lusty purpose. The
+owner of one scant young nose, gnawed and mumbled
+by the hungry cold as bones are gnawed by dogs,
+stooped down at Scrooge's keyhole to regale him with
+a Christmas carol: but at the first sound of
+
+        "God bless you, merry gentleman!
+         May nothing you dismay!"
+
+Scrooge seized the ruler with such energy of action,
+that the singer fled in terror, leaving the keyhole to
+the fog and even more congenial frost.
+
+At length the hour of shutting up the counting-house
+arrived. With an ill-will Scrooge dismounted from his
+stool, and tacitly admitted the fact to the expectant
+clerk in the Tank, who instantly snuffed his candle out,
+and put on his hat.
+
+"You'll want all day to-morrow, I suppose?" said
+Scrooge.
+
+"If quite convenient, sir."
+
+"It's not convenient," said Scrooge, "and it's not
+fair. If I was to stop half-a-crown for it, you'd
+think yourself ill-used, I'll be bound?"
+
+The clerk smiled faintly.
+
+"And yet," said Scrooge, "you don't think me ill-used,
+when I pay a day's wages for no work."
+
+The clerk observed that it was only once a year.
+
+"A poor excuse for picking a man's pocket every
+twenty-fifth of December!" said Scrooge, buttoning
+his great-coat to the chin. "But I suppose you must
+have the whole day. Be here all the earlier next
+morning."
+
+The clerk promised that he would; and Scrooge
+walked out with a growl. The office was closed in a
+twinkling, and the clerk, with the long ends of his
+white comforter dangling below his waist (for he
+boasted no great-coat), went down a slide on Cornhill,
+at the end of a lane of boys, twenty times, in
+honour of its being Christmas Eve, and then ran home
+to Camden Town as hard as he could pelt, to play
+at blindman's-buff.
+
+Scrooge took his melancholy dinner in his usual
+melancholy tavern; and having read all the newspapers, and
+beguiled the rest of the evening with his
+banker's-book, went home to bed. He lived in
+chambers which had once belonged to his deceased
+partner. They were a gloomy suite of rooms, in a
+lowering pile of building up a yard, where it had so
+little business to be, that one could scarcely help
+fancying it must have run there when it was a young
+house, playing at hide-and-seek with other houses,
+and forgotten the way out again. It was old enough
+now, and dreary enough, for nobody lived in it but
+Scrooge, the other rooms being all let out as offices.
+The yard was so dark that even Scrooge, who knew
+its every stone, was fain to grope with his hands.
+The fog and frost so hung about the black old gateway
+of the house, that it seemed as if the Genius of
+the Weather sat in mournful meditation on the
+threshold.
+
+Now, it is a fact, that there was nothing at all
+particular about the knocker on the door, except that it
+was very large. It is also a fact, that Scrooge had
+seen it, night and morning, during his whole residence
+in that place; also that Scrooge had as little of what
+is called fancy about him as any man in the city of
+London, even including--which is a bold word--the
+corporation, aldermen, and livery. Let it also be
+borne in mind that Scrooge had not bestowed one
+thought on Marley, since his last mention of his
+seven years' dead partner that afternoon. And then
+let any man explain to me, if he can, how it happened
+that Scrooge, having his key in the lock of the door,
+saw in the knocker, without its undergoing any intermediate
+process of change--not a knocker, but Marley's face.
+
+Marley's face. It was not in impenetrable shadow
+as the other objects in the yard were, but had a
+dismal light about it, like a bad lobster in a dark
+cellar. It was not angry or ferocious, but looked
+at Scrooge as Marley used to look: with ghostly
+spectacles turned up on its ghostly forehead. The
+hair was curiously stirred, as if by breath or hot air;
+and, though the eyes were wide open, they were perfectly
+motionless. That, and its livid colour, made it
+horrible; but its horror seemed to be in spite of the
+face and beyond its control, rather than a part of
+its own expression.
+
+As Scrooge looked fixedly at this phenomenon, it
+was a knocker again.
+
+To say that he was not startled, or that his blood
+was not conscious of a terrible sensation to which it
+had been a stranger from infancy, would be untrue.
+But he put his hand upon the key he had relinquished,
+turned it sturdily, walked in, and lighted his candle.
+
+He did pause, with a moment's irresolution, before
+he shut the door; and he did look cautiously behind
+it first, as if he half expected to be terrified with the
+sight of Marley's pigtail sticking out into the hall.
+But there was nothing on the back of the door, except
+the screws and nuts that held the knocker on, so he
+said "Pooh, pooh!" and closed it with a bang.
+
+The sound resounded through the house like thunder.
+Every room above, and every cask in the wine-merchant's
+cellars below, appeared to have a separate peal
+of echoes of its own. Scrooge was not a man to
+be frightened by echoes. He fastened the door, and
+walked across the hall, and up the stairs; slowly too:
+trimming his candle as he went.
+
+You may talk vaguely about driving a coach-and-six
+up a good old flight of stairs, or through a bad
+young Act of Parliament; but I mean to say you
+might have got a hearse up that staircase, and taken
+it broadwise, with the splinter-bar towards the wall
+and the door towards the balustrades: and done it
+easy. There was plenty of width for that, and room
+to spare; which is perhaps the reason why Scrooge
+thought he saw a locomotive hearse going on before
+him in the gloom. Half-a-dozen gas-lamps out of
+the street wouldn't have lighted the entry too well,
+so you may suppose that it was pretty dark with
+Scrooge's dip.
+
+Up Scrooge went, not caring a button for that.
+Darkness is cheap, and Scrooge liked it. But before
+he shut his heavy door, he walked through his rooms
+to see that all was right. He had just enough recollection
+of the face to desire to do that.
+
+Sitting-room, bedroom, lumber-room. All as they
+should be. Nobody under the table, nobody under
+the sofa; a small fire in the grate; spoon and basin
+ready; and the little saucepan of gruel (Scrooge had
+a cold in his head) upon the hob. Nobody under the
+bed; nobody in the closet; nobody in his dressing-gown,
+which was hanging up in a suspicious attitude
+against the wall. Lumber-room as usual. Old fire-guard,
+old shoes, two fish-baskets, washing-stand on three
+legs, and a poker.
+
+Quite satisfied, he closed his door, and locked
+himself in; double-locked himself in, which was not his
+custom. Thus secured against surprise, he took off
+his cravat; put on his dressing-gown and slippers, and
+his nightcap; and sat down before the fire to take
+his gruel.
+
+It was a very low fire indeed; nothing on such a
+bitter night. He was obliged to sit close to it, and
+brood over it, before he could extract the least
+sensation of warmth from such a handful of fuel.
+The fireplace was an old one, built by some Dutch
+merchant long ago, and paved all round with quaint
+Dutch tiles, designed to illustrate the Scriptures.
+There were Cains and Abels, Pharaoh's daughters;
+Queens of Sheba, Angelic messengers descending
+through the air on clouds like feather-beds, Abrahams,
+Belshazzars, Apostles putting off to sea in butter-boats,
+hundreds of figures to attract his thoughts;
+and yet that face of Marley, seven years dead, came
+like the ancient Prophet's rod, and swallowed up the
+whole. If each smooth tile had been a blank at first,
+with power to shape some picture on its surface from
+the disjointed fragments of his thoughts, there would
+have been a copy of old Marley's head on every one.
+
+"Humbug!" said Scrooge; and walked across the
+room.
+
+After several turns, he sat down again. As he
+threw his head back in the chair, his glance happened
+to rest upon a bell, a disused bell, that hung in the
+room, and communicated for some purpose now forgotten
+with a chamber in the highest story of the
+building. It was with great astonishment, and with
+a strange, inexplicable dread, that as he looked, he
+saw this bell begin to swing. It swung so softly in
+the outset that it scarcely made a sound; but soon it
+rang out loudly, and so did every bell in the house.
+
+This might have lasted half a minute, or a minute,
+but it seemed an hour. The bells ceased as they had
+begun, together. They were succeeded by a clanking
+noise, deep down below; as if some person were
+dragging a heavy chain over the casks in the
+wine-merchant's cellar. Scrooge then remembered to have
+heard that ghosts in haunted houses were described as
+dragging chains.
+
+The cellar-door flew open with a booming sound,
+and then he heard the noise much louder, on the floors
+below; then coming up the stairs; then coming straight
+towards his door.
+
+"It's humbug still!" said Scrooge. "I won't believe it."
+
+His colour changed though, when, without a pause,
+it came on through the heavy door, and passed into
+the room before his eyes. Upon its coming in, the
+dying flame leaped up, as though it cried, "I know
+him; Marley's Ghost!" and fell again.
+
+The same face: the very same. Marley in his pigtail,
+usual waistcoat, tights and boots; the tassels on
+the latter bristling, like his pigtail, and his coat-skirts,
+and the hair upon his head. The chain he drew was
+clasped about his middle. It was long, and wound
+about him like a tail; and it was made (for Scrooge
+observed it closely) of cash-boxes, keys, padlocks,
+ledgers, deeds, and heavy purses wrought in steel.
+His body was transparent; so that Scrooge, observing him,
+and looking through his waistcoat, could see
+the two buttons on his coat behind.
+
+Scrooge had often heard it said that Marley had no
+bowels, but he had never believed it until now.
+
+No, nor did he believe it even now. Though he
+looked the phantom through and through, and saw
+it standing before him; though he felt the chilling
+influence of its death-cold eyes; and marked the very
+texture of the folded kerchief bound about its head
+and chin, which wrapper he had not observed before;
+he was still incredulous, and fought against his senses.
+
+"How now!" said Scrooge, caustic and cold as ever.
+"What do you want with me?"
+
+"Much!"--Marley's voice, no doubt about it.
+
+"Who are you?"
+
+"Ask me who I was."
+
+"Who were you then?" said Scrooge, raising his
+voice. "You're particular, for a shade." He was going
+to say "to a shade," but substituted this, as more
+appropriate.
+
+"In life I was your partner, Jacob Marley."
+
+"Can you--can you sit down?" asked Scrooge, looking
+doubtfully at him.
+
+"I can."
+
+"Do it, then."
+
+Scrooge asked the question, because he didn't know
+whether a ghost so transparent might find himself in
+a condition to take a chair; and felt that in the event
+of its being impossible, it might involve the necessity
+of an embarrassing explanation. But the ghost sat
+down on the opposite side of the fireplace, as if he
+were quite used to it.
+
+"You don't believe in me," observed the Ghost.
+
+"I don't," said Scrooge.
+
+"What evidence would you have of my reality beyond that of
+your senses?"
+
+"I don't know," said Scrooge.
+
+"Why do you doubt your senses?"
+
+"Because," said Scrooge, "a little thing affects them.
+A slight disorder of the stomach makes them cheats. You may
+be an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of
+cheese, a fragment of an underdone potato. There's more of
+gravy than of grave about you, whatever you are!"
+
+Scrooge was not much in the habit of cracking
+jokes, nor did he feel, in his heart, by any means
+waggish then. The truth is, that he tried to be
+smart, as a means of distracting his own attention,
+and keeping down his terror; for the spectre's voice
+disturbed the very marrow in his bones.
+
+To sit, staring at those fixed glazed eyes, in silence
+for a moment, would play, Scrooge felt, the very
+deuce with him. There was something very awful,
+too, in the spectre's being provided with an infernal
+atmosphere of its own. Scrooge could not feel it
+himself, but this was clearly the case; for though the
+Ghost sat perfectly motionless, its hair, and skirts,
+and tassels, were still agitated as by the hot vapour
+from an oven.
+
+"You see this toothpick?" said Scrooge, returning
+quickly to the charge, for the reason just assigned;
+and wishing, though it were only for a second, to
+divert the vision's stony gaze from himself.
+
+"I do," replied the Ghost.
+
+"You are not looking at it," said Scrooge.
+
+"But I see it," said the Ghost, "notwithstanding."
+
+"Well!" returned Scrooge, "I have but to swallow
+this, and be for the rest of my days persecuted by a
+legion of goblins, all of my own creation. Humbug,
+I tell you! humbug!"
+
+At this the spirit raised a frightful cry, and shook
+its chain with such a dismal and appalling noise, that
+Scrooge held on tight to his chair, to save himself
+from falling in a swoon. But how much greater was
+his horror, when the phantom taking off the bandage
+round its head, as if it were too warm to wear indoors,
+its lower jaw dropped down upon its breast!
+
+Scrooge fell upon his knees, and clasped his hands
+before his face.
+
+"Mercy!" he said. "Dreadful apparition, why do
+you trouble me?"
+
+"Man of the worldly mind!" replied the Ghost, "do
+you believe in me or not?"
+
+"I do," said Scrooge. "I must. But why do spirits
+walk the earth, and why do they come to me?"
+
+"It is required of every man," the Ghost returned,
+"that the spirit within him should walk abroad among
+his fellowmen, and travel far and wide; and if that
+spirit goes not forth in life, it is condemned to do so
+after death. It is doomed to wander through the
+world--oh, woe is me!--and witness what it cannot
+share, but might have shared on earth, and turned to
+happiness!"
+
+Again the spectre raised a cry, and shook its chain
+and wrung its shadowy hands.
+
+"You are fettered," said Scrooge, trembling. "Tell
+me why?"
+
+"I wear the chain I forged in life," replied the Ghost.
+"I made it link by link, and yard by yard; I girded
+it on of my own free will, and of my own free will I
+wore it. Is its pattern strange to you?"
+
+Scrooge trembled more and more.
+
+"Or would you know," pursued the Ghost, "the
+weight and length of the strong coil you bear yourself?
+It was full as heavy and as long as this, seven
+Christmas Eves ago. You have laboured on it, since.
+It is a ponderous chain!"
+
+Scrooge glanced about him on the floor, in the
+expectation of finding himself surrounded by some fifty
+or sixty fathoms of iron cable: but he could see
+nothing.
+
+"Jacob," he said, imploringly. "Old Jacob Marley,
+tell me more. Speak comfort to me, Jacob!"
+
+"I have none to give," the Ghost replied. "It comes
+from other regions, Ebenezer Scrooge, and is conveyed
+by other ministers, to other kinds of men. Nor
+can I tell you what I would. A very little more is
+all permitted to me. I cannot rest, I cannot stay, I
+cannot linger anywhere. My spirit never walked
+beyond our counting-house--mark me!--in life my
+spirit never roved beyond the narrow limits of our
+money-changing hole; and weary journeys lie before
+me!"
+
+It was a habit with Scrooge, whenever he became
+thoughtful, to put his hands in his breeches pockets.
+Pondering on what the Ghost had said, he did so now,
+but without lifting up his eyes, or getting off his
+knees.
+
+"You must have been very slow about it, Jacob,"
+Scrooge observed, in a business-like manner, though
+with humility and deference.
+
+"Slow!" the Ghost repeated.
+
+"Seven years dead," mused Scrooge. "And travelling
+all the time!"
+
+"The whole time," said the Ghost. "No rest, no
+peace. Incessant torture of remorse."
+
+"You travel fast?" said Scrooge.
+
+"On the wings of the wind," replied the Ghost.
+
+"You might have got over a great quantity of
+ground in seven years," said Scrooge.
+
+The Ghost, on hearing this, set up another cry, and
+clanked its chain so hideously in the dead silence of
+the night, that the Ward would have been justified in
+indicting it for a nuisance.
+
+"Oh! captive, bound, and double-ironed," cried the
+phantom, "not to know, that ages of incessant labour
+by immortal creatures, for this earth must pass into
+eternity before the good of which it is susceptible is
+all developed. Not to know that any Christian spirit
+working kindly in its little sphere, whatever it may
+be, will find its mortal life too short for its vast
+means of usefulness. Not to know that no space of
+regret can make amends for one life's opportunity
+misused! Yet such was I! Oh! such was I!"
+
+"But you were always a good man of business,
+Jacob," faltered Scrooge, who now began to apply this
+to himself.
+
+"Business!" cried the Ghost, wringing its hands
+again. "Mankind was my business. The common
+welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance,
+and benevolence, were, all, my business. The dealings
+of my trade were but a drop of water in the
+comprehensive ocean of my business!"
+
+It held up its chain at arm's length, as if that were
+the cause of all its unavailing grief, and flung it
+heavily upon the ground again.
+
+"At this time of the rolling year," the spectre said,
+"I suffer most. Why did I walk through crowds of
+fellow-beings with my eyes turned down, and never
+raise them to that blessed Star which led the Wise
+Men to a poor abode! Were there no poor homes to
+which its light would have conducted me!"
+
+Scrooge was very much dismayed to hear the
+spectre going on at this rate, and began to quake
+exceedingly.
+
+"Hear me!" cried the Ghost. "My time is nearly
+gone."
+
+"I will," said Scrooge. "But don't be hard upon
+me! Don't be flowery, Jacob! Pray!"
+
+"How it is that I appear before you in a shape that
+you can see, I may not tell. I have sat invisible
+beside you many and many a day."
+
+It was not an agreeable idea. Scrooge shivered,
+and wiped the perspiration from his brow.
+
+"That is no light part of my penance," pursued
+the Ghost. "I am here to-night to warn you, that you
+have yet a chance and hope of escaping my fate. A
+chance and hope of my procuring, Ebenezer."
+
+"You were always a good friend to me," said
+Scrooge. "Thank'ee!"
+
+"You will be haunted," resumed the Ghost, "by
+Three Spirits."
+
+Scrooge's countenance fell almost as low as the
+Ghost's had done.
+
+"Is that the chance and hope you mentioned,
+Jacob?" he demanded, in a faltering voice.
+
+"It is."
+
+"I--I think I'd rather not," said Scrooge.
+
+"Without their visits," said the Ghost, "you cannot
+hope to shun the path I tread. Expect the first to-morrow,
+when the bell tolls One."
+
+"Couldn't I take 'em all at once, and have it over,
+Jacob?" hinted Scrooge.
+
+"Expect the second on the next night at the same
+hour. The third upon the next night when the last
+stroke of Twelve has ceased to vibrate. Look to see
+me no more; and look that, for your own sake, you
+remember what has passed between us!"
+
+When it had said these words, the spectre took its
+wrapper from the table, and bound it round its head,
+as before. Scrooge knew this, by the smart sound its
+teeth made, when the jaws were brought together
+by the bandage. He ventured to raise his eyes again,
+and found his supernatural visitor confronting him
+in an erect attitude, with its chain wound over and
+about its arm.
+
+The apparition walked backward from him; and at
+every step it took, the window raised itself a little,
+so that when the spectre reached it, it was wide open.
+
+It beckoned Scrooge to approach, which he did.
+When they were within two paces of each other,
+Marley's Ghost held up its hand, warning him to
+come no nearer. Scrooge stopped.
+
+Not so much in obedience, as in surprise and fear:
+for on the raising of the hand, he became sensible
+of confused noises in the air; incoherent sounds of
+lamentation and regret; wailings inexpressibly sorrowful and
+self-accusatory. The spectre, after listening for a moment,
+joined in the mournful dirge; and floated out upon the
+bleak, dark night.
+
+Scrooge followed to the window: desperate in his
+curiosity. He looked out.
+
+The air was filled with phantoms, wandering hither
+and thither in restless haste, and moaning as they
+went. Every one of them wore chains like Marley's
+Ghost; some few (they might be guilty governments)
+were linked together; none were free. Many had
+been personally known to Scrooge in their lives. He
+had been quite familiar with one old ghost, in a white
+waistcoat, with a monstrous iron safe attached to
+its ankle, who cried piteously at being unable to assist
+a wretched woman with an infant, whom it saw below,
+upon a door-step. The misery with them all was,
+clearly, that they sought to interfere, for good, in
+human matters, and had lost the power for ever.
+
+Whether these creatures faded into mist, or mist
+enshrouded them, he could not tell. But they and
+their spirit voices faded together; and the night became
+as it had been when he walked home.
+
+Scrooge closed the window, and examined the door
+by which the Ghost had entered. It was double-locked,
+as he had locked it with his own hands, and
+the bolts were undisturbed. He tried to say "Humbug!"
+but stopped at the first syllable. And being,
+from the emotion he had undergone, or the fatigues
+of the day, or his glimpse of the Invisible World, or
+the dull conversation of the Ghost, or the lateness of
+the hour, much in need of repose; went straight to
+bed, without undressing, and fell asleep upon the
+instant.
+
+
+STAVE II:  THE FIRST OF THE THREE SPIRITS
+
+WHEN Scrooge awoke, it was so dark, that looking out of bed,
+he could scarcely distinguish the transparent window from
+the opaque walls of his chamber. He was endeavouring to
+pierce the darkness with his ferret eyes, when the chimes of a
+neighbouring church struck the four quarters. So he listened
+for the hour.
+
+To his great astonishment the heavy bell went on from
+six to seven, and from seven to eight, and regularly up to
+twelve; then stopped. Twelve! It was past two when he
+went to bed. The clock was wrong. An icicle must have
+got into the works. Twelve!
+
+He touched the spring of his repeater, to correct this most
+preposterous clock. Its rapid little pulse beat twelve:
+and stopped.
+
+"Why, it isn't possible," said Scrooge, "that I can have
+slept through a whole day and far into another night. It
+isn't possible that anything has happened to the sun, and
+this is twelve at noon!"
+
+The idea being an alarming one, he scrambled out of bed,
+and groped his way to the window. He was obliged to rub
+the frost off with the sleeve of his dressing-gown before he
+could see anything; and could see very little then. All he
+could make out was, that it was still very foggy and extremely
+cold, and that there was no noise of people running to and fro,
+and making a great stir, as there unquestionably would have been
+if night had beaten off bright day, and taken possession of the
+world.  This was a great relief, because "three days after sight
+of this First of Exchange pay to Mr. Ebenezer Scrooge or his
+order," and so forth, would have become a mere United States'
+security if there were no days to count by.
+
+Scrooge went to bed again, and thought, and thought, and thought
+it over and over and over, and could make nothing of it.  The more he
+thought, the more perplexed he was; and the more he endeavoured
+not to think, the more he thought.
+
+Marley's Ghost bothered him exceedingly. Every time he resolved
+within himself, after mature inquiry, that it was all a dream, his
+mind flew back again, like a strong spring released, to its first
+position, and presented the same problem to be worked all through,
+"Was it a dream or not?"
+
+Scrooge lay in this state until the chime had gone three quarters
+more, when he remembered, on a sudden, that the Ghost had warned
+him of a visitation when the bell tolled one.  He resolved to lie
+awake until the hour was passed; and, considering that he could
+no more go to sleep than go to Heaven, this was perhaps the
+wisest resolution in his power.
+
+The quarter was so long, that he was more than once convinced he
+must have sunk into a doze unconsciously, and missed the clock.
+At length it broke upon his listening ear.
+
+"Ding, dong!"
+
+"A quarter past," said Scrooge, counting.
+
+"Ding, dong!"
+
+"Half-past!" said Scrooge.
+
+"Ding, dong!"
+
+"A quarter to it," said Scrooge.
+
+"Ding, dong!"
+
+"The hour itself," said Scrooge, triumphantly, "and nothing else!"
+
+He spoke before the hour bell sounded, which it now did with a
+deep, dull, hollow, melancholy ONE.  Light flashed up in the room
+upon the instant, and the curtains of his bed were drawn.
+
+The curtains of his bed were drawn aside, I tell you, by a
+hand. Not the curtains at his feet, nor the curtains at his
+back, but those to which his face was addressed. The curtains
+of his bed were drawn aside; and Scrooge, starting up into a
+half-recumbent attitude, found himself face to face with the
+unearthly visitor who drew them: as close to it as I am now
+to you, and I am standing in the spirit at your elbow.
+
+It was a strange figure--like a child: yet not so like a
+child as like an old man, viewed through some supernatural
+medium, which gave him the appearance of having receded
+from the view, and being diminished to a child's proportions.
+Its hair, which hung about its neck and down its back, was
+white as if with age; and yet the face had not a wrinkle in
+it, and the tenderest bloom was on the skin. The arms were
+very long and muscular; the hands the same, as if its hold
+were of uncommon strength. Its legs and feet, most delicately
+formed, were, like those upper members, bare. It wore a tunic
+of the purest white; and round its waist was bound
+a lustrous belt, the sheen of which was beautiful. It held
+a branch of fresh green holly in its hand; and, in singular
+contradiction of that wintry emblem, had its dress trimmed
+with summer flowers. But the strangest thing about it was,
+that from the crown of its head there sprung a bright clear
+jet of light, by which all this was visible; and which was
+doubtless the occasion of its using, in its duller moments, a
+great extinguisher for a cap, which it now held under its arm.
+
+Even this, though, when Scrooge looked at it with increasing
+steadiness, was not its strangest quality. For as its belt
+sparkled and glittered now in one part and now in another,
+and what was light one instant, at another time was dark, so
+the figure itself fluctuated in its distinctness: being now a
+thing with one arm, now with one leg, now with twenty legs,
+now a pair of legs without a head, now a head without a
+body: of which dissolving parts, no outline would be visible
+in the dense gloom wherein they melted away. And in the
+very wonder of this, it would be itself again; distinct and
+clear as ever.
+
+"Are you the Spirit, sir, whose coming was foretold to
+me?" asked Scrooge.
+
+"I am!"
+
+The voice was soft and gentle. Singularly low, as if
+instead of being so close beside him, it were at a distance.
+
+"Who, and what are you?" Scrooge demanded.
+
+"I am the Ghost of Christmas Past."
+
+"Long Past?" inquired Scrooge: observant of its dwarfish
+stature.
+
+"No. Your past."
+
+Perhaps, Scrooge could not have told anybody why, if
+anybody could have asked him; but he had a special desire
+to see the Spirit in his cap; and begged him to be covered.
+
+"What!" exclaimed the Ghost, "would you so soon put out,
+with worldly hands, the light I give? Is it not enough
+that you are one of those whose passions made this cap, and
+force me through whole trains of years to wear it low upon
+my brow!"
+
+Scrooge reverently disclaimed all intention to offend
+or any knowledge of having wilfully "bonneted" the Spirit at
+any period of his life. He then made bold to inquire what
+business brought him there.
+
+"Your welfare!" said the Ghost.
+
+Scrooge expressed himself much obliged, but could not
+help thinking that a night of unbroken rest would have been
+more conducive to that end. The Spirit must have heard
+him thinking, for it said immediately:
+
+"Your reclamation, then. Take heed!"
+
+It put out its strong hand as it spoke, and clasped him
+gently by the arm.
+
+"Rise! and walk with me!"
+
+It would have been in vain for Scrooge to plead that the
+weather and the hour were not adapted to pedestrian purposes;
+that bed was warm, and the thermometer a long way below
+freezing; that he was clad but lightly in his slippers,
+dressing-gown, and nightcap; and that he had a cold upon him at
+that time. The grasp, though gentle as a woman's hand,
+was not to be resisted. He rose: but finding that the Spirit
+made towards the window, clasped his robe in supplication.
+
+"I am a mortal," Scrooge remonstrated, "and liable to fall."
+
+"Bear but a touch of my hand there," said the Spirit,
+laying it upon his heart, "and you shall be upheld in more
+than this!"
+
+As the words were spoken, they passed through the wall,
+and stood upon an open country road, with fields on either
+hand. The city had entirely vanished. Not a vestige of it
+was to be seen. The darkness and the mist had vanished
+with it, for it was a clear, cold, winter day, with snow upon
+the ground.
+
+"Good Heaven!" said Scrooge, clasping his hands together,
+as he looked about him. "I was bred in this place. I was
+a boy here!"
+
+The Spirit gazed upon him mildly. Its gentle touch,
+though it had been light and instantaneous, appeared still
+present to the old man's sense of feeling. He was conscious
+of a thousand odours floating in the air, each one connected
+with a thousand thoughts, and hopes, and joys, and cares
+long, long, forgotten!
+
+"Your lip is trembling," said the Ghost. "And what is
+that upon your cheek?"
+
+Scrooge muttered, with an unusual catching in his voice,
+that it was a pimple; and begged the Ghost to lead him
+where he would.
+
+"You recollect the way?" inquired the Spirit.
+
+"Remember it!" cried Scrooge with fervour; "I could
+walk it blindfold."
+
+"Strange to have forgotten it for so many years!" observed
+the Ghost. "Let us go on."
+
+They walked along the road, Scrooge recognising every
+gate, and post, and tree; until a little market-town appeared
+in the distance, with its bridge, its church, and winding river.
+Some ponies now were seen trotting towards them
+with boys upon their backs, who called to other boys in
+country gigs and carts, driven by farmers. All these boys
+were in great spirits, and shouted to each other, until the
+broad fields were so full of merry music, that the crisp air
+laughed to hear it!
+
+"These are but shadows of the things that have been," said
+the Ghost. "They have no consciousness of us."
+
+The jocund travellers came on; and as they came, Scrooge
+knew and named them every one. Why was he rejoiced beyond
+all bounds to see them! Why did his cold eye glisten, and
+his heart leap up as they went past! Why was he filled
+with gladness when he heard them give each other Merry
+Christmas, as they parted at cross-roads and bye-ways, for
+their several homes! What was merry Christmas to Scrooge?
+Out upon merry Christmas! What good had it ever done
+to him?
+
+"The school is not quite deserted," said the Ghost. "A
+solitary child, neglected by his friends, is left there still."
+
+Scrooge said he knew it. And he sobbed.
+
+They left the high-road, by a well-remembered lane, and
+soon approached a mansion of dull red brick, with a little
+weathercock-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 over-run 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 earthy savour in the air, a
+chilly bareness in the place, which associated itself somehow
+with too much getting up by candle-light, and not too
+much to eat.
+
+They went, the Ghost and Scrooge, across the hall, to a
+door at the back of the house. It opened before them, and
+disclosed a long, bare, melancholy room, made barer still by
+lines of plain deal forms and desks. At one of these a lonely
+boy was reading near a feeble fire; and Scrooge sat down
+upon a form, and wept to see his poor forgotten self as he
+used to be.
+
+Not a latent echo in the house, not a squeak and scuffle
+from the mice behind the panelling, not a drip from the
+half-thawed water-spout in the dull yard behind, not a sigh among
+the leafless boughs of one despondent poplar, not the idle
+swinging of an empty store-house door, no, not a clicking in
+the fire, but fell upon the heart of Scrooge with a softening
+influence, and gave a freer passage to his tears.
+
+The Spirit touched him on the arm, and pointed to his
+younger self, intent upon his reading. Suddenly a man, in
+foreign garments: wonderfully real and distinct to look at:
+stood outside the window, with an axe stuck in his belt, and
+leading by the bridle an ass laden with wood.
+
+"Why, it's Ali Baba!" Scrooge exclaimed in ecstasy. "It's
+dear old honest Ali Baba! Yes, yes, I know! One Christmas
+time, when yonder solitary child was left here all alone,
+he did come, for the first time, just like that. Poor boy! And
+Valentine," said Scrooge, "and his wild brother, Orson; there
+they go! And what's his name, who was put down in his
+drawers, asleep, at the Gate of Damascus; don't you see him!
+And the Sultan's Groom turned upside down by the Genii;
+there he is upon his head! Serve him right. I'm glad of it.
+What business had he to be married to the Princess!"
+
+To hear Scrooge expending all the earnestness of his nature
+on such subjects, in a most extraordinary voice between
+laughing and crying; and to see his heightened and excited
+face; would have been a surprise to his business friends in
+the city, indeed.
+
+"There's the Parrot!" cried Scrooge. "Green body and
+yellow tail, with a thing like a lettuce growing out of the
+top of his head; there he is! Poor Robin Crusoe, he called
+him, when he came home again after sailing round the
+island. 'Poor Robin Crusoe, where have you been, Robin
+Crusoe?'  The man thought he was dreaming, but he wasn't.
+It was the Parrot, you know. There goes Friday, running
+for his life to the little creek! Halloa! Hoop! Halloo!"
+
+Then, with a rapidity of transition very foreign to his
+usual character, he said, in pity for his former self, "Poor
+boy!" and cried again.
+
+"I wish," Scrooge muttered, putting his hand in his
+pocket, and looking about him, after drying his eyes with his
+cuff: "but it's too late now."
+
+"What is the matter?" asked the Spirit.
+
+"Nothing," said Scrooge. "Nothing. There was a boy
+singing a Christmas Carol at my door last night. I should
+like to have given him something: that's all."
+
+The Ghost smiled thoughtfully, and waved its hand:
+saying as it did so, "Let us see another Christmas!"
+
+Scrooge's former self grew larger at the words, and the
+room became a little darker and more dirty. The panels shrunk,
+the windows cracked; fragments of plaster fell out of the
+ceiling, and the naked laths were shown instead; but how
+all this was brought about, Scrooge knew no more than you
+do. He only knew that it was quite correct; that everything
+had happened so; that there he was, alone again, when all
+the other boys had gone home for the jolly holidays.
+
+He was not reading now, but walking up and down despairingly.
+Scrooge looked at the Ghost, and with a mournful shaking of
+his head, glanced anxiously towards the door.
+
+It opened; and a little girl, much younger than the boy,
+came darting in, and putting her arms about his neck, and
+often kissing him, addressed him as her "Dear, dear
+brother."
+
+"I have come to bring you home, dear brother!" said the
+child, clapping her tiny hands, and bending down to laugh.
+"To bring you home, home, home!"
+
+"Home, little Fan?" returned the boy.
+
+"Yes!" said the child, brimful of glee. "Home, for good
+and all. Home, for ever and ever. Father is so much kinder
+than he used to be, that home's like Heaven! He spoke so
+gently to me one dear night when I was going to bed, that
+I was not afraid to ask him once more if you might come
+home; and he said Yes, you should; and sent me in a coach
+to bring you. And you're to be a man!" said the child,
+opening her eyes, "and are never to come back here; but
+first, we're to be together all the Christmas long, and have
+the merriest time in all the world."
+
+"You are quite a woman, little Fan!" exclaimed the boy.
+
+She clapped her hands and laughed, and tried to touch his
+head; but being too little, laughed again, and stood on
+tiptoe to embrace him. Then she began to drag him, in her
+childish eagerness, towards the door; and he, nothing loth to
+go, accompanied her.
+
+A terrible voice in the hall cried, "Bring down Master
+Scrooge's box, there!" and in the hall appeared the schoolmaster
+himself, who glared on Master Scrooge with a ferocious
+condescension, and threw him into a dreadful state of mind
+by shaking hands with him. He then conveyed him and his
+sister into the veriest old well of a shivering best-parlour that
+ever was seen, where the maps upon the wall, and the celestial
+and terrestrial globes in the windows, were waxy with cold.
+Here he produced a decanter of curiously light wine, and a
+block of curiously heavy cake, and administered instalments
+of those dainties to the young people: at the same time,
+sending out a meagre servant to offer a glass of "something"
+to the postboy, who answered that he thanked the gentleman,
+but if it was the same tap as he had tasted before, he had
+rather not. Master Scrooge's trunk being by this time tied
+on to the top of the chaise, the children bade the schoolmaster
+good-bye right willingly; and getting into it, drove
+gaily down the garden-sweep: the quick wheels dashing the
+hoar-frost and snow from off the dark leaves of the evergreens
+like spray.
+
+"Always a delicate creature, whom a breath might have
+withered," said the Ghost. "But she had a large heart!"
+
+"So she had," cried Scrooge. "You're right. I will not
+gainsay it, Spirit. God forbid!"
+
+"She died a woman," said the Ghost, "and had, as I think,
+children."
+
+"One child," Scrooge returned.
+
+"True," said the Ghost. "Your nephew!"
+
+Scrooge seemed uneasy in his mind; and answered briefly,
+"Yes."
+
+Although they had but that moment left the school behind
+them, they were now in the busy thoroughfares of a city,
+where shadowy passengers passed and repassed; where shadowy
+carts and coaches battled for the way, and all the strife and
+tumult of a real city were. It was made plain enough, by
+the dressing of the shops, that here too it was Christmas
+time again; but it was evening, and the streets were
+lighted up.
+
+The Ghost stopped at a certain warehouse door, and asked
+Scrooge if he knew it.
+
+"Know it!" said Scrooge. "Was I apprenticed here!"
+
+They went in. At sight of an old gentleman in a Welsh
+wig, sitting behind such a high desk, that if he had been two
+inches taller he must have knocked his head against the
+ceiling, Scrooge cried in great excitement:
+
+"Why, it's old Fezziwig! Bless his heart; it's Fezziwig
+alive again!"
+
+Old Fezziwig laid down his pen, and looked up at the
+clock, which pointed to the hour of seven. He rubbed his
+hands; adjusted his capacious waistcoat; laughed all over
+himself, from his shoes to his organ of benevolence; and
+called out in a comfortable, oily, rich, fat, jovial voice:
+
+"Yo ho, there! Ebenezer! Dick!"
+
+Scrooge's former self, now grown a young man, came briskly
+in, accompanied by his fellow-'prentice.
+
+"Dick Wilkins, to be sure!" said Scrooge to the Ghost.
+"Bless me, yes. There he is. He was very much attached
+to me, was Dick. Poor Dick! Dear, dear!"
+
+"Yo ho, my boys!" said Fezziwig. "No more work to-night.
+Christmas Eve, Dick. Christmas, Ebenezer! Let's
+have the shutters up," cried old Fezziwig, with a sharp clap
+of his hands, "before a man can say Jack Robinson!"
+
+You wouldn't believe how those two fellows went at it!
+They charged into the street with the shutters--one, two,
+three--had 'em up in their places--four, five, six--barred
+'em and pinned 'em--seven, eight, nine--and came back
+before you could have got to twelve, panting like race-horses.
+
+"Hilli-ho!" cried old Fezziwig, skipping down from the
+high desk, with wonderful agility. "Clear away, my lads,
+and let's have lots of room here! Hilli-ho, Dick! Chirrup,
+Ebenezer!"
+
+Clear away! There was nothing they wouldn't have cleared
+away, or couldn't have cleared away, with old Fezziwig looking
+on. It was done in a minute. Every movable was packed off, as if
+it were dismissed from public life for evermore; the floor was
+swept and watered, the lamps were trimmed, fuel was heaped upon
+the fire; and the warehouse was as snug, and warm, and dry, and
+bright a ball-room, as you would desire to see upon a winter's
+night.
+
+In came a fiddler with a music-book, and went up to the
+lofty desk, and made an orchestra of it, and tuned like fifty
+stomach-aches. In came Mrs. Fezziwig, one vast substantial
+smile. In came the three Miss Fezziwigs, beaming and
+lovable. In came the six young followers whose hearts they
+broke. In came all the young men and women employed in
+the business. In came the housemaid, with her cousin, the
+baker. In came the cook, with her brother's particular friend,
+the milkman. In came the boy from over the way, who was
+suspected of not having board enough from his master; trying
+to hide himself behind the girl from next door but one, who
+was proved to have had her ears pulled by her mistress.
+In they all came, one after another; some shyly, some boldly,
+some gracefully, some awkwardly, some pushing, some pulling;
+in they all came, anyhow and everyhow. Away they all went,
+twenty couple at once; hands half round and back again
+the other way; down the middle and up again; round
+and round in various stages of affectionate grouping; old
+top couple always turning up in the wrong place; new top
+couple starting off again, as soon as they got there; all top
+couples at last, and not a bottom one to help them! When
+this result was brought about, old Fezziwig, clapping his
+hands to stop the dance, cried out, "Well done!" and the
+fiddler plunged his hot face into a pot of porter, especially
+provided for that purpose. But scorning rest, upon his
+reappearance, he instantly began again, though there were no
+dancers yet, as if the other fiddler had been carried home,
+exhausted, on a shutter, and he were a bran-new man
+resolved to beat him out of sight, or perish.
+
+There were more dances, and there were forfeits, and more
+dances, and there was cake, and there was negus, and there
+was a great piece of Cold Roast, and there was a great piece
+of Cold Boiled, and there were mince-pies, and plenty of beer.
+But the great effect of the evening came after the Roast
+and Boiled, when the fiddler (an artful dog, mind! The sort
+of man who knew his business better than you or I could
+have told it him!) struck up "Sir Roger de Coverley."  Then
+old Fezziwig stood out to dance with Mrs. Fezziwig. Top
+couple, too; with a good stiff piece of work cut out for them;
+three or four and twenty pair of partners; people who were
+not to be trifled with; people who would dance, and had no
+notion of walking.
+
+But if they had been twice as many--ah, four times--old
+Fezziwig would have been a match for them, and so would
+Mrs. Fezziwig. As to her, she was worthy to be his partner
+in every sense of the term. If that's not high praise, tell me
+higher, and I'll use it. A positive light appeared to issue
+from Fezziwig's calves. They shone in every part of the
+dance like moons. You couldn't have predicted, at any given
+time, what would have 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
+curtsey, corkscrew, thread-the-needle, and back again to
+your place; Fezziwig "cut"--cut so deftly, that he appeared
+to wink with his legs, and came upon his feet again without
+a stagger.
+
+When the clock struck eleven, this domestic ball broke up.
+Mr. and Mrs. Fezziwig took their stations, one on either side
+of the door, and shaking hands with every person individually
+as he or she went out, wished him or her a Merry Christmas.
+When everybody had retired but the two 'prentices, they did
+the same to them; and thus the cheerful voices died away,
+and the lads were left to their beds; which were under a
+counter in the back-shop.
+
+During the whole of this time, Scrooge had acted like a
+man out of his wits. His heart and soul were in the scene,
+and with his former self. He corroborated everything,
+remembered everything, enjoyed everything, and underwent
+the strangest agitation. It was not until now, when the
+bright faces of his former self and Dick were turned from
+them, that he remembered the Ghost, and became conscious
+that it was looking full upon him, while the light upon its
+head burnt very clear.
+
+"A small matter," said the Ghost, "to make these silly
+folks so full of gratitude."
+
+"Small!" echoed Scrooge.
+
+The Spirit signed to him to listen to the two apprentices,
+who were pouring out their hearts in praise of Fezziwig:
+and when he had done so, said,
+
+"Why! Is it not? He has spent but a few pounds of
+your mortal money: three or four perhaps. Is that so
+much that he deserves this praise?"
+
+"It isn't that," said Scrooge, heated by the remark, and
+speaking unconsciously like his former, not his latter, self.
+"It isn't that, Spirit. He has the power to render us happy
+or unhappy; to make our service light or burdensome; a
+pleasure or a toil. Say that his power lies in words and
+looks; in things so slight and insignificant that it is
+impossible to add and count 'em up: what then? The happiness
+he gives, is quite as great as if it cost a fortune."
+
+He felt the Spirit's glance, and stopped.
+
+"What is the matter?" asked the Ghost.
+
+"Nothing particular," said Scrooge.
+
+"Something, I think?" the Ghost insisted.
+
+"No," said Scrooge, "No. I should like to be able to say
+a word or two to my clerk just now. That's all."
+
+His former self turned down the lamps as he gave utterance
+to the wish; and Scrooge and the Ghost again stood side by
+side in the open air.
+
+"My time grows short," observed the Spirit. "Quick!"
+
+This was not addressed to Scrooge, or to any one whom he
+could see, but it produced an immediate effect. For again
+Scrooge saw himself. He was older now; a man in the prime
+of life. His face had not the harsh and rigid lines of later
+years; but it had begun to wear the signs of care and avarice.
+There was an eager, greedy, restless motion in the eye, which
+showed the passion that had taken root, and where the
+shadow of the growing tree would fall.
+
+He was not alone, but sat by the side of a fair young
+girl in a mourning-dress: in whose eyes there were tears,
+which sparkled in the light that shone out of the Ghost of
+Christmas Past.
+
+"It matters little," she said, softly. "To you, very little.
+Another idol has displaced me; and if it can cheer and comfort
+you in time to come, as I would have tried to do, I have
+no just cause to grieve."
+
+"What Idol has displaced you?" he rejoined.
+
+"A golden one."
+
+"This is the even-handed dealing of the world!" he said.
+"There is nothing on which it is so hard as poverty; and
+there is nothing it professes to condemn with such severity
+as the pursuit of wealth!"
+
+"You fear the world too much," she answered, gently.
+"All your other hopes have merged into the hope of being
+beyond the chance of its sordid reproach. I have seen your
+nobler aspirations fall off one by one, until the master-passion,
+Gain, engrosses you. Have I not?"
+
+"What then?" he retorted. "Even if I have grown so
+much wiser, what then? I am not changed towards you."
+
+She shook her head.
+
+"Am I?"
+
+"Our contract is an old one. It was made when we were
+both poor and content to be so, until, in good season, we could
+improve our worldly fortune by our patient industry. You
+are changed. When it was made, you were another man."
+
+"I was a boy," he said impatiently.
+
+"Your own feeling tells you that you were not what you
+are," she returned. "I am. That which promised happiness
+when we were one in heart, is fraught with misery now that
+we are two. How often and how keenly I have thought of
+this, I will not say. It is enough that I have thought of it,
+and can release you."
+
+"Have I ever sought release?"
+
+"In words. No. Never."
+
+"In what, then?"
+
+"In a changed nature; in an altered spirit; in another
+atmosphere of life; another Hope as its great end. In
+everything that made my love of any worth or value in your
+sight. If this had never been between us," said the girl,
+looking mildly, but with steadiness, upon him; "tell me,
+would you seek me out and try to win me now? Ah, no!"
+
+He seemed to yield to the justice of this supposition, in
+spite of himself. But he said with a struggle, "You think
+not."
+
+"I would gladly think otherwise if I could," she answered,
+"Heaven knows! When I have learned a Truth like this,
+I know how strong and irresistible it must be. But if you
+were free to-day, to-morrow, yesterday, can even I believe
+that you would choose a dowerless girl--you who, in your
+very confidence with her, weigh everything by Gain: or,
+choosing her, if for a moment you were false enough to your
+one guiding principle to do so, do I not know that your
+repentance and regret would surely follow? I do; and I
+release you. With a full heart, for the love of him you
+once were."
+
+He was about to speak; but with her head turned from
+him, she resumed.
+
+"You may--the memory of what is past half makes me
+hope you will--have pain in this. A very, very brief time,
+and you will dismiss the recollection of it, gladly, as an
+unprofitable dream, from which it happened well that you
+awoke. May you be happy in the life you have chosen!"
+
+She left him, and they parted.
+
+"Spirit!" said Scrooge, "show me no more! Conduct
+me home. Why do you delight to torture me?"
+
+"One shadow more!" exclaimed the Ghost.
+
+"No more!" cried Scrooge. "No more. I don't wish to
+see it. Show me no more!"
+
+But the relentless Ghost pinioned him in both his arms,
+and forced him to observe what happened next.
+
+They were in another scene and place; a room, not very
+large or handsome, but full of comfort. Near to the winter
+fire sat a beautiful young girl, so like that last that Scrooge
+believed it was the same, until he saw her, now a comely
+matron, sitting opposite her daughter. The noise in this
+room was perfectly tumultuous, for there were more children
+there, than Scrooge in his agitated state of mind could count;
+and, unlike the celebrated herd in the poem, they were not
+forty children conducting themselves like one, but every
+child was conducting itself like forty. The consequences
+were uproarious beyond belief; but no one seemed to care;
+on the contrary, the mother and daughter laughed heartily,
+and enjoyed it very much; and the latter, soon beginning to
+mingle in the sports, got pillaged by the young brigands
+most ruthlessly. What would I not have given to be one of
+them! Though I never could have been so rude, no, no! I
+wouldn't for the wealth of all the world have crushed that
+braided hair, and torn it down; and for the precious little
+shoe, I wouldn't have plucked it off, God bless my soul! to
+save my life. As to measuring her waist in sport, as they
+did, bold young brood, I couldn't have done it; I should
+have expected my arm to have grown round it for a punishment,
+and never come straight again. And yet I should
+have dearly liked, I own, to have touched her lips; to have
+questioned her, that she might have opened them; to have
+looked upon the lashes of her downcast eyes, and never
+raised a blush; to have let loose waves of hair, an inch of
+which would be a keepsake beyond price: in short, I should
+have liked, I do confess, to have had the lightest licence
+of a child, and yet to have been man enough to know its
+value.
+
+But now a knocking at the door was heard, and such a
+rush immediately ensued that she with laughing face and
+plundered dress was borne towards it the centre of a flushed
+and boisterous group, just in time to greet the father, who
+came home attended by a man laden with Christmas toys
+and presents. Then the shouting and the struggling, and
+the onslaught that was made on the defenceless porter!
+The scaling him with chairs for ladders to dive into his
+pockets, despoil him of brown-paper parcels, hold on tight
+by his cravat, hug him round his neck, pommel his back,
+and kick his legs in irrepressible affection! The shouts of
+wonder and delight with which the development of every
+package was received! The terrible announcement that the
+baby had been taken in the act of putting a doll's frying-pan
+into his mouth, and was more than suspected of having
+swallowed a fictitious turkey, glued on a wooden platter!
+The immense relief of finding this a false alarm! The joy,
+and gratitude, and ecstasy! They are all indescribable alike.
+It is enough that by degrees the children and their emotions
+got out of the parlour, and by one stair at a time, up to the
+top of the house; where they went to bed, and so subsided.
+
+And now Scrooge looked on more attentively than ever,
+when the master of the house, having his daughter leaning
+fondly on him, sat down with her and her mother at his
+own fireside; and when he thought that such another
+creature, quite as graceful and as full of promise, might
+have called him father, and been a spring-time in the
+haggard winter of his life, his sight grew very dim indeed.
+
+"Belle," said the husband, turning to his wife with a
+smile, "I saw an old friend of yours this afternoon."
+
+"Who was it?"
+
+"Guess!"
+
+"How can I? Tut, don't I know?" she added in the
+same breath, laughing as he laughed. "Mr. Scrooge."
+
+"Mr. Scrooge it was. I passed his office window; and as
+it was not shut up, and he had a candle inside, I could
+scarcely help seeing him. His partner lies upon the point
+of death, I hear; and there he sat alone. Quite alone in
+the world, I do believe."
+
+"Spirit!" said Scrooge in a broken voice, "remove me
+from this place."
+
+"I told you these were shadows of the things that have
+been," said the Ghost. "That they are what they are, do
+not blame me!"
+
+"Remove me!" Scrooge exclaimed, "I cannot bear it!"
+
+He turned upon the Ghost, and seeing that it looked upon
+him with a face, in which in some strange way there were
+fragments of all the faces it had shown him, wrestled with it.
+
+"Leave me! Take me back. Haunt me no longer!"
+
+In the struggle, if that can be called a struggle in which
+the Ghost with no visible resistance on its own part was
+undisturbed by any effort of its adversary, Scrooge observed
+that its light was burning high and bright; and dimly
+connecting that with its influence over him, he seized the
+extinguisher-cap, and by a sudden action pressed it down
+upon its head.
+
+The Spirit dropped beneath it, so that the extinguisher
+covered its whole form; but though Scrooge pressed it down
+with all his force, he could not hide the light: which streamed
+from under it, in an unbroken flood upon the ground.
+
+He was conscious of being exhausted, and overcome by an
+irresistible drowsiness; and, further, of being in his own
+bedroom.  He gave the cap a parting squeeze, in which his hand
+relaxed; and had barely time to reel to bed, before he sank
+into a heavy sleep.
+
+
+STAVE III:  THE SECOND OF THE THREE SPIRITS
+
+AWAKING in the middle of a prodigiously tough snore, and
+sitting up in bed to get his thoughts together, Scrooge had
+no occasion to be told that the bell was again upon the
+stroke of One. He felt that he was restored to consciousness
+in the right nick of time, for the especial purpose of holding
+a conference with the second messenger despatched to him
+through Jacob Marley's intervention. But finding that he
+turned uncomfortably cold when he began to wonder which
+of his curtains this new spectre would draw back, he put
+them every one aside with his own hands; and lying down
+again, established a sharp look-out all round the bed. For
+he wished to challenge the Spirit on the moment of its
+appearance, and did not wish to be taken by surprise, and
+made nervous.
+
+Gentlemen of the free-and-easy sort, who plume themselves
+on being acquainted with a move or two, and being usually
+equal to the time-of-day, express the wide range of their
+capacity for adventure by observing that they are good for
+anything from pitch-and-toss to manslaughter; between which
+opposite extremes, no doubt, there lies a tolerably wide and
+comprehensive range of subjects. Without venturing for
+Scrooge quite as hardily as this, I don't mind calling on you
+to believe that he was ready for a good broad field of
+strange appearances, and that nothing between a baby and
+rhinoceros would have astonished him very much.
+
+Now, being prepared for almost anything, he was not by
+any means prepared for nothing; and, consequently, when the
+Bell struck One, and no shape appeared, he was taken with a
+violent fit of trembling. Five minutes, ten minutes, a quarter
+of an hour went by, yet nothing came. All this time, he lay
+upon his bed, the very core and centre of a blaze of ruddy
+light, which streamed upon it when the clock proclaimed the
+hour; and which, being only light, was more alarming than
+a dozen ghosts, as he was powerless to make out what it
+meant, or would be at; and was sometimes apprehensive
+that he might be at that very moment an interesting case of
+spontaneous combustion, without having the consolation of
+knowing it. At last, however, he began to think--as you or
+I would have thought at first; for it is always the person not
+in the predicament who knows what ought to have been done
+in it, and would unquestionably have done it too--at last, I
+say, he began to think that the source and secret of this
+ghostly light might be in the adjoining room, from whence,
+on further tracing it, it seemed to shine. This idea taking
+full possession of his mind, he got up softly and shuffled in
+his slippers to the door.
+
+The moment Scrooge's hand was on the lock, a strange
+voice called him by his name, and bade him enter. He
+obeyed.
+
+It was his own room. There was no doubt about that.
+But it had undergone a surprising transformation. The walls
+and ceiling were so hung with living green, that it looked a
+perfect grove; from every part of which, bright gleaming
+berries glistened. The crisp leaves of holly, mistletoe, and
+ivy reflected back the light, as if so many little mirrors had
+been scattered there; and such a mighty blaze went roaring
+up the chimney, as that dull petrification of a hearth had
+never known in Scrooge's time, or Marley's, or for many and
+many a winter season gone. Heaped up on the floor, to form
+a kind of throne, were turkeys, geese, game, poultry, brawn,
+great joints of meat, sucking-pigs, long wreaths of sausages,
+mince-pies, plum-puddings, barrels of oysters, red-hot chestnuts,
+cherry-cheeked apples, juicy oranges, luscious pears,
+immense twelfth-cakes, and seething bowls of punch, that
+made the chamber dim with their delicious steam. In easy
+state upon this couch, there sat a jolly Giant, glorious to
+see; who bore a glowing torch, in shape not unlike Plenty's
+horn, and held it up, high up, to shed its light on Scrooge,
+as he came peeping round the door.
+
+"Come in!" exclaimed the Ghost. "Come in! and know
+me better, man!"
+
+Scrooge entered timidly, and hung his head before this
+Spirit. He was not the dogged Scrooge he had been; and
+though the Spirit's eyes were clear and kind, he did not like
+to meet them.
+
+"I am the Ghost of Christmas Present," said the Spirit.
+"Look upon me!"
+
+Scrooge reverently did so. It was clothed in one simple
+green robe, or mantle, bordered with white fur. This garment
+hung so loosely on the figure, that its capacious breast was
+bare, as if disdaining to be warded or concealed by any
+artifice. Its feet, observable beneath the ample folds of the
+garment, were also bare; and on its head it wore no other
+covering than a holly wreath, set here and there with shining
+icicles. Its dark brown curls were long and free; free as its
+genial face, its sparkling eye, its open hand, its cheery voice,
+its unconstrained demeanour, and its joyful air. Girded
+round its middle was an antique scabbard; but no sword
+was in it, and the ancient sheath was eaten up with rust.
+
+"You have never seen the like of me before!" exclaimed
+the Spirit.
+
+"Never," Scrooge made answer to it.
+
+"Have never walked forth with the younger members of
+my family; meaning (for I am very young) my elder brothers
+born in these later years?" pursued the Phantom.
+
+"I don't think I have," said Scrooge. "I am afraid I have
+not. Have you had many brothers, Spirit?"
+
+"More than eighteen hundred," said the Ghost.
+
+"A tremendous family to provide for!" muttered Scrooge.
+
+The Ghost of Christmas Present rose.
+
+"Spirit," said Scrooge submissively, "conduct me where
+you will. I went forth last night on compulsion, and I learnt
+a lesson which is working now. To-night, if you have aught
+to teach me, let me profit by it."
+
+"Touch my robe!"
+
+Scrooge did as he was told, and held it fast.
+
+Holly, mistletoe, red berries, ivy, turkeys, geese, game,
+poultry, brawn, meat, pigs, sausages, oysters, pies, puddings,
+fruit, and punch, all vanished instantly. So did the room,
+the fire, the ruddy glow, the hour of night, and they stood
+in the city streets on Christmas morning, where (for the
+weather was severe) the people made a rough, but brisk and
+not unpleasant kind of music, in scraping the snow from the
+pavement in front of their dwellings, and from the tops of
+their houses, whence it was mad delight to the boys to see
+it come plumping down into the road below, and splitting
+into artificial little snow-storms.
+
+The house fronts looked black enough, and the windows
+blacker, contrasting with the smooth white sheet of snow
+upon the roofs, and with the dirtier snow upon the ground;
+which last deposit had been ploughed up in deep furrows by
+the heavy wheels of carts and waggons; furrows that crossed
+and re-crossed each other hundreds of times where the great
+streets branched off; and made intricate channels, hard to trace
+in the thick yellow mud and icy water. The sky was gloomy,
+and the shortest streets were choked up with a dingy mist,
+half thawed, half frozen, whose heavier particles descended
+in a shower of sooty atoms, as if all the chimneys in Great
+Britain had, by one consent, caught fire, and were blazing away
+to their dear hearts' content. There was nothing very cheerful
+in the climate or the town, and yet was there an air of
+cheerfulness abroad that the clearest summer air and brightest
+summer sun might have endeavoured to diffuse in vain.
+
+For, the people who were shovelling away on the housetops
+were jovial and full of glee; calling out to one another
+from the parapets, and now and then exchanging a facetious
+snowball--better-natured missile far than many a wordy jest--
+laughing heartily if it went right and not less heartily if it
+went wrong. The poulterers' shops were still half open, and the
+fruiterers' were radiant in their glory. There were great, round,
+pot-bellied baskets of chestnuts, shaped like the waistcoats
+of jolly old gentlemen, lolling at the doors, and tumbling out
+into the street in their apoplectic opulence. There were
+ruddy, brown-faced, broad-girthed Spanish Onions, shining in
+the fatness of their growth like Spanish Friars, and winking
+from their shelves in wanton slyness at the girls as they went
+by, and glanced demurely at the hung-up mistletoe. There were
+pears and apples, clustered high in blooming pyramids; there
+were bunches of grapes, made, in the shopkeepers' benevolence
+to dangle from conspicuous hooks, that people's mouths might
+water gratis as they passed; there were piles of filberts, mossy
+and brown, recalling, in their fragrance, ancient walks among
+the woods, and pleasant shufflings ankle deep through withered
+leaves; there were Norfolk Biffins, squat and swarthy, setting
+off the yellow of the oranges and lemons, and, in the great
+compactness of their juicy persons, urgently entreating and
+beseeching to be carried home in paper bags and eaten after
+dinner. The very gold and silver fish, set forth among
+these choice fruits in a bowl, though members of a dull and
+stagnant-blooded race, appeared to know that there was
+something going on; and, to a fish, went gasping round and
+round their little world in slow and passionless excitement.
+
+The Grocers'! oh, the Grocers'! nearly closed, with perhaps
+two shutters down, or one; but through those gaps such
+glimpses! It was not alone that the scales descending on the
+counter made a merry sound, or that the twine and roller
+parted company so briskly, or that the canisters were rattled
+up and down like juggling tricks, or even that the blended
+scents of tea and coffee were so grateful to the nose, or even
+that the raisins were so plentiful and rare, the almonds so
+extremely white, the sticks of cinnamon so long and straight,
+the other spices so delicious, the candied fruits so caked and
+spotted with molten sugar as to make the coldest lookers-on
+feel faint and subsequently bilious. Nor was it that the figs
+were moist and pulpy, or that the French plums blushed in
+modest tartness from their highly-decorated boxes, or that
+everything was good to eat and in its Christmas dress; but
+the customers were all so hurried and so eager in the hopeful
+promise of the day, that they tumbled up against each other
+at the door, crashing their wicker baskets wildly, and left
+their purchases upon the counter, and came running back to
+fetch them, and committed hundreds of the like mistakes, in
+the best humour possible; while the Grocer and his people
+were so frank and fresh that the polished hearts with which
+they fastened their aprons behind might have been their own,
+worn outside for general inspection, and for Christmas daws
+to peck at if they chose.
+
+But soon the steeples called good people all, to church and
+chapel, and away they came, flocking through the streets in
+their best clothes, and with their gayest faces. And at the
+same time there emerged from scores of bye-streets, lanes, and
+nameless turnings, innumerable people, carrying their dinners
+to the bakers' shops. The sight of these poor revellers
+appeared to interest the Spirit very much, for he stood with
+Scrooge beside him in a baker's doorway, and taking off the
+covers as their bearers passed, sprinkled incense on their
+dinners from his torch. And it was a very uncommon kind
+of torch, for once or twice when there were angry words
+between some dinner-carriers who had jostled each other, he
+shed a few drops of water on them from it, and their good
+humour was restored directly. For they said, it was a shame
+to quarrel upon Christmas Day. And so it was! God love
+it, so it was!
+
+In time the bells ceased, and the bakers were shut up; and
+yet there was a genial shadowing forth of all these dinners
+and the progress of their cooking, in the thawed blotch of
+wet above each baker's oven; where the pavement smoked as
+if its stones were cooking too.
+
+"Is there a peculiar flavour in what you sprinkle from
+your torch?" asked Scrooge.
+
+"There is. My own."
+
+"Would it apply to any kind of dinner on this day?"
+asked Scrooge.
+
+"To any kindly given. To a poor one most."
+
+"Why to a poor one most?" asked Scrooge.
+
+"Because it needs it most."
+
+"Spirit," said Scrooge, after a moment's thought, "I wonder
+you, of all the beings in the many worlds about us, should
+desire to cramp these people's opportunities of innocent
+enjoyment."
+
+"I!" cried the Spirit.
+
+"You would deprive them of their means of dining every
+seventh day, often the only day on which they can be said
+to dine at all," said Scrooge. "Wouldn't you?"
+
+"I!" cried the Spirit.
+
+"You seek to close these places on the Seventh Day?" said
+Scrooge. "And it comes to the same thing."
+
+"I seek!" exclaimed the Spirit.
+
+"Forgive me if I am wrong. It has been done in your
+name, or at least in that of your family," said Scrooge.
+
+"There are some upon this earth of yours," returned the Spirit,
+"who lay claim to know us, and who do their deeds of passion,
+pride, ill-will, hatred, envy, bigotry, and selfishness
+in our name, who are as strange to us and all our kith and
+kin, as if they had never lived. Remember that, and charge
+their doings on themselves, not us."
+
+Scrooge promised that he would; and they went on,
+invisible, as they had been before, into the suburbs of the
+town. It was a remarkable quality of the Ghost (which
+Scrooge had observed at the baker's), that notwithstanding
+his gigantic size, he could accommodate himself to any place
+with ease; and that he stood beneath a low roof quite as
+gracefully and like a supernatural creature, as it was possible
+he could have done in any lofty hall.
+
+And perhaps it was the pleasure the good Spirit had in
+showing off this power of his, or else it was his own kind,
+generous, hearty nature, and his sympathy with all poor
+men, that led him straight to Scrooge's clerk's; for there he
+went, and took Scrooge with him, holding to his robe; and
+on the threshold of the door the Spirit smiled, and stopped
+to bless Bob Cratchit's dwelling with the sprinkling of his
+torch. Think of that! Bob had but fifteen "Bob" a-week
+himself; he pocketed on Saturdays but fifteen copies of his
+Christian name; and yet the Ghost of Christmas Present
+blessed his four-roomed house!
+
+Then up rose Mrs. Cratchit, Cratchit's wife, dressed out
+but poorly in a twice-turned gown, but brave in ribbons,
+which are cheap and make a goodly show for sixpence; and
+she laid the cloth, assisted by Belinda Cratchit, second of
+her daughters, also brave in ribbons; while Master Peter
+Cratchit plunged a fork into the saucepan of potatoes, and
+getting the corners of his monstrous shirt collar (Bob's private
+property, conferred upon his son and heir in honour of the
+day) into his mouth, rejoiced to find himself so gallantly
+attired, and yearned to show his linen in the fashionable Parks.
+And now two smaller Cratchits, boy and girl, came tearing
+in, screaming that outside the baker's they had smelt the
+goose, and known it for their own; and basking in luxurious
+thoughts of sage and onion, these young Cratchits danced
+about the table, and exalted Master Peter Cratchit to the
+skies, while he (not proud, although his collars nearly choked
+him) blew the fire, until the slow potatoes bubbling up,
+knocked loudly at the saucepan-lid to be let out and
+peeled.
+
+"What has ever got your precious father then?" said Mrs.
+Cratchit. "And your brother, Tiny Tim! And Martha
+warn't as late last Christmas Day by half-an-hour?"
+
+"Here's Martha, mother!" said a girl, appearing as she
+spoke.
+
+"Here's Martha, mother!" cried the two young Cratchits.
+"Hurrah! There's such a goose, Martha!"
+
+"Why, bless your heart alive, my dear, how late you are!"
+said Mrs. Cratchit, kissing her a dozen times, and taking off
+her shawl and bonnet for her with officious zeal.
+
+"We'd a deal of work to finish up last night," replied the
+girl, "and had to clear away this morning, mother!"
+
+"Well! Never mind so long as you are come," said Mrs.
+Cratchit. "Sit ye down before the fire, my dear, and have
+a warm, Lord bless ye!"
+
+"No, no! There's father coming," cried the two young
+Cratchits, who were everywhere at once. "Hide, Martha,
+hide!"
+
+So Martha hid herself, and in came little Bob, the father,
+with at least three feet of comforter exclusive of the fringe,
+hanging down before him; and his threadbare clothes darned
+up and brushed, to look seasonable; and Tiny Tim upon his
+shoulder. Alas for Tiny Tim, he bore a little crutch, and
+had his limbs supported by an iron frame!
+
+"Why, where's our Martha?" cried Bob Cratchit, looking
+round.
+
+"Not coming," said Mrs. Cratchit.
+
+"Not coming!" said Bob, with a sudden declension in his
+high spirits; for he had been Tim's blood horse all the way
+from church, and had come home rampant. "Not coming
+upon Christmas Day!"
+
+Martha didn't like to see him disappointed, if it were only
+in joke; so she came out prematurely from behind the closet
+door, and ran into his arms, while the two young Cratchits
+hustled Tiny Tim, and bore him off into the wash-house,
+that he might hear the pudding singing in the copper.
+
+"And how did little Tim behave?" asked Mrs. Cratchit,
+when she had rallied Bob on his credulity, and Bob had
+hugged his daughter to his heart's content.
+
+"As good as gold," said Bob, "and better. Somehow he
+gets thoughtful, sitting by himself so much, and thinks the
+strangest things you ever heard. He told me, coming home,
+that he hoped the people saw him in the church, because he
+was a cripple, and it might be pleasant to them to remember
+upon Christmas Day, who made lame beggars walk, and blind
+men see."
+
+Bob's voice was tremulous when he told them this, and
+trembled more when he said that Tiny Tim was growing
+strong and hearty.
+
+His active little crutch was heard upon the floor, and back
+came Tiny Tim before another word was spoken, escorted by
+his brother and sister to his stool before the fire; and while
+Bob, turning up his cuffs--as if, poor fellow, they were
+capable of being made more shabby--compounded some hot
+mixture in a jug with gin and lemons, and stirred it round
+and round and put it on the hob to simmer; Master Peter,
+and the two ubiquitous young Cratchits went to fetch the
+goose, with which they soon returned in high procession.
+
+Such a bustle ensued that you might have thought a goose
+the rarest of all birds; a feathered phenomenon, to which a
+black swan was a matter of course--and in truth it was
+something very like it in that house. Mrs. Cratchit made
+the gravy (ready beforehand in a little saucepan) hissing hot;
+Master Peter mashed the potatoes with incredible vigour;
+Miss Belinda sweetened up the apple-sauce; Martha dusted
+the hot plates; Bob took Tiny Tim beside him in a tiny
+corner at the table; the two young Cratchits set chairs for
+everybody, not forgetting themselves, and mounting guard
+upon their posts, crammed spoons into their mouths, lest
+they should shriek for goose before their turn came to be
+helped. At last the dishes were set on, and grace was
+said. It was succeeded by a breathless pause, as Mrs.
+Cratchit, looking slowly all along the carving-knife, prepared
+to plunge it in the breast; but when she did, and when the
+long expected gush of stuffing issued forth, one murmur of
+delight arose all round the board, and even Tiny Tim,
+excited by the two young Cratchits, beat on the table with
+the handle of his knife, and feebly cried Hurrah!
+
+There never was such a goose. Bob said he didn't believe
+there ever was such a goose cooked. Its tenderness and
+flavour, size and cheapness, were the themes of universal
+admiration. Eked out by apple-sauce and mashed potatoes,
+it was a sufficient dinner for the whole family; indeed, as
+Mrs. Cratchit said with great delight (surveying one small
+atom of a bone upon the dish), they hadn't ate it all at
+last! Yet every one had had enough, and the youngest
+Cratchits in particular, were steeped in sage and onion to
+the eyebrows! But now, the plates being changed by Miss
+Belinda, Mrs. Cratchit left the room alone--too nervous to
+bear witnesses--to take the pudding up and bring it in.
+
+Suppose it should not be done enough! Suppose it should
+break in turning out! Suppose somebody should have got
+over the wall of the back-yard, and stolen it, while they
+were merry with the goose--a supposition at which the two
+young Cratchits became livid! All sorts of horrors were
+supposed.
+
+Hallo! A great deal of steam! The pudding was out of
+the copper. A smell like a washing-day! That was the
+cloth. A smell like an eating-house and a pastrycook's next
+door to each other, with a laundress's next door to that!
+That was the pudding! In half a minute Mrs. Cratchit
+entered--flushed, but smiling proudly--with the pudding,
+like a speckled cannon-ball, so hard and firm, blazing in half
+of half-a-quartern of ignited brandy, and bedight with
+Christmas holly stuck into the top.
+
+Oh, a wonderful pudding! Bob Cratchit said, and calmly
+too, that he regarded it as the greatest success achieved by
+Mrs. Cratchit since their marriage. Mrs. Cratchit said that
+now the weight was off her mind, she would confess she had
+had her doubts about the quantity of flour. Everybody had
+something to say about it, but nobody said or thought it
+was at all a small pudding for a large family. It would have
+been flat heresy to do so. Any Cratchit would have blushed
+to hint at such a thing.
+
+At last the dinner was all done, the cloth was cleared, the
+hearth swept, and the fire made up. The compound in the
+jug being tasted, and considered perfect, apples and oranges
+were put upon the table, and a shovel-full of chestnuts on the
+fire. Then all the Cratchit family drew round the hearth, in
+what Bob Cratchit called a circle, meaning half a one; and
+at Bob Cratchit's elbow stood the family display of glass.
+Two tumblers, and a custard-cup without a handle.
+
+These held the hot stuff from the jug, however, as well as
+golden goblets would have done; and Bob served it out with
+beaming looks, while the chestnuts on the fire sputtered and
+cracked noisily. Then Bob proposed:
+
+"A Merry Christmas to us all, my dears. God bless us!"
+
+Which all the family re-echoed.
+
+"God bless us every one!" said Tiny Tim, the last of all.
+
+He sat very close to his father's side upon his little
+stool. Bob held his withered little hand in his, as if he
+loved the child, and wished to keep him by his side, and
+dreaded that he might be taken from him.
+
+"Spirit," said Scrooge, with an interest he had never felt
+before, "tell me if Tiny Tim will live."
+
+"I see a vacant seat," replied the Ghost, "in the poor
+chimney-corner, and a crutch without an owner, carefully
+preserved. If these shadows remain unaltered by the Future,
+the child will die."
+
+"No, no," said Scrooge. "Oh, no, kind Spirit! say he
+will be spared."
+
+"If these shadows remain unaltered by the Future, none
+other of my race," returned the Ghost, "will find him here.
+What then? If he be like to die, he had better do it, and
+decrease the surplus population."
+
+Scrooge hung his head to hear his own words quoted by
+the Spirit, and was overcome with penitence and grief.
+
+"Man," said the Ghost, "if man you be in heart, not
+adamant, forbear that wicked cant until you have discovered
+What the surplus is, and Where it is. Will you decide what
+men shall live, what men shall die? It may be, that in the
+sight of Heaven, you are more worthless and less fit to live
+than millions like this poor man's child. Oh God! to hear
+the Insect on the leaf pronouncing on the too much life
+among his hungry brothers in the dust!"
+
+Scrooge bent before the Ghost's rebuke, and trembling cast
+his eyes upon the ground. But he raised them speedily, on
+hearing his own name.
+
+"Mr. Scrooge!" said Bob; "I'll give you Mr. Scrooge, the
+Founder of the Feast!"
+
+"The Founder of the Feast indeed!" cried Mrs. Cratchit,
+reddening. "I wish I had him here. I'd give him a piece
+of my mind to feast upon, and I hope he'd have a good
+appetite for it."
+
+"My dear," said Bob, "the children! Christmas Day."
+
+"It should be Christmas Day, I am sure," said she, "on
+which one drinks the health of such an odious, stingy, hard,
+unfeeling man as Mr. Scrooge. You know he is, Robert!
+Nobody knows it better than you do, poor fellow!"
+
+"My dear," was Bob's mild answer, "Christmas Day."
+
+"I'll drink his health for your sake and the Day's," said
+Mrs. Cratchit, "not for his. Long life to him! A merry
+Christmas and a happy new year! He'll be very merry and
+very happy, I have no doubt!"
+
+The children drank the toast after her. It was the first of
+their proceedings which had no heartiness. Tiny Tim drank
+it last of all, but he didn't care twopence for it. Scrooge
+was the Ogre of the family. The mention of his name cast
+a dark shadow on the party, which was not dispelled for full
+five minutes.
+
+After it had passed away, they were ten times merrier than
+before, from the mere relief of Scrooge the Baleful being done
+with. Bob Cratchit told them how he had a situation in his
+eye for Master Peter, which would bring in, if obtained, full
+five-and-sixpence weekly. The two young Cratchits laughed
+tremendously at the idea of Peter's being a man of business;
+and Peter himself looked thoughtfully at the fire from
+between his collars, as if he were deliberating what particular
+investments he should favour when he came into the receipt
+of that bewildering income. Martha, who was a poor
+apprentice at a milliner's, then told them what kind of work
+she had to do, and how many hours she worked at a stretch,
+and how she meant to lie abed to-morrow morning for a
+good long rest; to-morrow being a holiday she passed at
+home. Also how she had seen a countess and a lord some
+days before, and how the lord "was much about as tall as
+Peter;" at which Peter pulled up his collars so high that you
+couldn't have seen his head if you had been there. All this
+time the chestnuts and the jug went round and round; and
+by-and-bye they had a song, about a lost child travelling in
+the snow, from Tiny Tim, who had a plaintive little voice,
+and sang it very well indeed.
+
+There was nothing of high mark in this. They were not
+a handsome family; they were not well dressed; their shoes
+were far from being water-proof; their clothes were scanty;
+and Peter might have known, and very likely did, the inside
+of a pawnbroker's. But, they were happy, grateful, pleased
+with one another, and contented with the time; and when
+they faded, and looked happier yet in the bright sprinklings
+of the Spirit's torch at parting, Scrooge had his eye upon
+them, and especially on Tiny Tim, until the last.
+
+By this time it was getting dark, and snowing pretty
+heavily; and as Scrooge and the Spirit went along the streets,
+the brightness of the roaring fires in kitchens, parlours, and
+all sorts of rooms, was wonderful. Here, the flickering of
+the blaze showed preparations for a cosy dinner, with hot
+plates baking through and through before the fire, and deep
+red curtains, ready to be drawn to shut out cold and darkness.
+There all the children of the house were running out
+into the snow to meet their married sisters, brothers, cousins,
+uncles, aunts, and be the first to greet them. Here, again,
+were shadows on the window-blind of guests assembling; and
+there a group of handsome girls, all hooded and fur-booted,
+and all chattering at once, tripped lightly off to some near
+neighbour's house; where, woe upon the single man who saw
+them enter--artful witches, well they knew it--in a glow!
+
+But, if you had judged from the numbers of people on
+their way to friendly gatherings, you might have thought
+that no one was at home to give them welcome when they
+got there, instead of every house expecting company, and
+piling up its fires half-chimney high. Blessings on it, how
+the Ghost exulted! How it bared its breadth of breast, and
+opened its capacious palm, and floated on, outpouring, with
+a generous hand, its bright and harmless mirth on everything
+within its reach! The very lamplighter, 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 lamplighter
+that he had any company but Christmas!
+
+And now, without a word of warning from the Ghost, they
+stood upon a bleak and desert moor, where monstrous masses
+of rude stone were cast about, as though it were the burial-place
+of giants; and water spread itself wheresoever it listed,
+or would have done so, but for the frost that held it prisoner;
+and nothing grew but moss and furze, and coarse rank grass.
+Down in the west the setting sun had left a streak of fiery
+red, which glared upon the desolation for an instant, like a
+sullen eye, and frowning lower, lower, lower yet, was lost in
+the thick gloom of darkest night.
+
+"What place is this?" asked Scrooge.
+
+"A place where Miners live, who labour in the bowels of
+the earth," returned the Spirit. "But they know me. See!"
+
+A light shone from the window of a hut, and swiftly they
+advanced towards it. Passing through the wall of mud and
+stone, they found a cheerful company assembled round a
+glowing fire. An old, old man and woman, with their
+children and their children's children, and another generation
+beyond that, all decked out gaily in their holiday attire.
+The old man, in a voice that seldom rose above the howling
+of the wind upon the barren waste, was singing them a
+Christmas song--it had been a very old song when he was a
+boy--and from time to time they all joined in the chorus.
+So surely as they raised their voices, the old man got quite
+blithe and loud; and so surely as they stopped, his vigour
+sank again.
+
+The Spirit did not tarry here, but bade Scrooge hold his
+robe, and passing on above the moor, sped--whither? Not
+to sea? To sea. To Scrooge's horror, looking back, he saw
+the last of the land, a frightful range of rocks, behind them;
+and his ears were deafened by the thundering of water, as it
+rolled and roared, and raged among the dreadful caverns it
+had worn, and fiercely tried to undermine the earth.
\ No newline at end of file