 This is a LibreVox recording. All LibreVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibreVox.org. That's L-I-B-R-I-V-O-X dot org. Recorded by me, Glenn Halstram, also known as Smoke Stack Jones. Smoke Stack Jones at gmail.com. You'll also find my blog at toomuchjohnson.blogspot.com. A Christmas Carol in Pros, being a ghost story of Christmas by Charles Dickens. Preface. I have endeavored in this ghostly little book to raise the ghost of an idea, which shall not put my readers out of humor with themselves, with each other, with the season, or with me. May it haunt their houses pleasantly, and no one wished to lay it. Your faithful friend and servant, CD. December, 1843. Stave One. Marley's Ghost. Marley was dead to begin with. There's no doubt whatsoever 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 choose to put his hand to. Old Marley was as dead as a doornail. Mind, I don't mean to say that I know of my own knowledge, what there is particularly dead about a doornail. I might have been inclined myself to regard a coffer-nail as the deadest piece of iron mongry in the trade, but the wisdom of our ancestors is in the simile, and my unhallowed hand shall not disturb it, or the country is done for. You will therefore permit me to repeat, emphatically, that Marley was as dead as a doornail. 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 assigned, his sole residuary legatee, his sole friend, and so mourner. And even Scrooge was not so dreadfully cut up by the sad event, but that he was an excellent man of business in the very day of the funeral, and solemnized it with an undoubted parking. The mention of Marley's funeral brings me back to the point I started from. There is no doubt that Marley was dead. There should 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 than his taking a stroll at night, in an easterly wind upon his own ramparts than there would be of any other middle-aged gentleman rashly turning out after dark in a breezy spot, say St. Paul's church out, 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 knew 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 ground-stone Scrooge, a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous old sinner, hard and sharp as flint from which no steel ever struck our generous fire, secret and self-contained and solitary as an oyster. The cold within him froze his old features, nipped his pointed nose, shriveled his cheek, stiffened his gait, made his eyes red, his thin lips blue, and spoke out shrewdly in his grating voice. A frosty rhyme 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 dark days, and didn't thwart one degree of Christmas. External heat and cold had little influence on Scrooge. No warmth could warm, no wintry weather'd chill him. No wind that blew was bitter than he. No falling snow was more intent upon its purpose. No pelting rain less open to entreaty. Far weather'd and didn't know what have him. The heaviest rain and snow and hail and sleet could boast one advantage over him and only one respect. They often came down handsomely and Scrooge never did. Nobody ever stopped him on 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 to 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 hallways and up courts, and then would wag their tails as though they said, No eye at all is better than an evil eyed dark master. But what did Scrooge care? It was the very thing he liked. To etch his way along the crowded paths of life, warning all human sympathy to keep its distance, was what the knowing ones called 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 with all, 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 warn them. The city clocks had just gone three, but it was quite dark already. It had not been light all day, and candles were flaring in 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 nature lived hard by and was brewing on a larger scale. The door of Scrooge's counting-house was open that he might keep an eye upon his clock, when a dismal little cell beyond sort of tank was copying letters. Scrooge had a very small fire, but the clock's fire was so 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 clock came in with the shovel the master predicted that it would be necessary for them to part. Wherefore the clock put on its white comforter and tried to warm himself at the candle, in which effort not being a man of strong imagination he failed. A merry Christmas, uncle! God save you! cried a cheerful voice. It was the voice of Scrooge's nephew, who had come 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'm 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, return 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 at the spur of the moment, said, Bah! again, and followed 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? Time for balancing of books and having every item in them 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 in his own pudding, buried with a stink 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 it may do you, much good it has ever done you. There are many things from which I 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 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, seen by one consent, to open the 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 in silver in my pocket, I believe that it has done me good, and will do me good, and I say God bless it. The clock in the tank involuntarily floated, becoming immediately sensible of the impropriety. He poked the fire, and extinguished the last frail spark forever. Let me hear another sound out of you, said Scrooge, and you'll keep your Christmas by losing your situation. You're quite a powerful speaker, sir, he said, turning to his nephew. I wonder you don't go to Parliament. Don't be angry, uncle, come dine with us to-morrow. Scrooge said he would see him. Yes, indeed he would. He went up the whole length of 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 it were the only 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 is a reason for not coming now? Good afternoon, said Scrooge. I want nothing from you. I ask nothing of you. Why can't we be friends? Good afternoon! I am sorry, with all my heart that I find you so resolute. We've never had any quarrel for which I have been a party. But I have made the trial an 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, not withstanding. He stopped at the outer door to bestow his greetings of the season on the clock, who, cold as he was, was warm and then Scrooge, for he returned them cordially. There's another fellow but had Scrooge who overheard him. My Clark, with fifteen shillings a week and a wife and family talking about a Merry Christmas, will retire to Bedlam. This lunatic, in letting Scrooge's nephew out, had led 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 Molly, as I believe, said one of the gentlemen, referring to his list, Have I had the pleasure of dressing Mr. Scrooge and Mr. Molly? And Mr. Molly has been dead these seven years, Scrooge replied. He died seven years ago this very night. Oh, we have no doubt his liberality is well represented by his surviving partner, said the gentleman, presenting his credentials. It certainly was, for there had been two kindred spirits. At the ominous word, liberality, Scrooge frowned and shook his head and handed the credentials back. Ah, this festive season of the year, Mr. Scrooge, said this 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 this present time. Many thousands are in want of common necessaries. Hundreds of thousands are in want of common comfort, sir. Are there no prisons, said Scrooge. Bloody prisons, said the gentleman, laying down his head 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 vigor then, said Scrooge. They're both very busy, sir. 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 furnished Christian cheer of mind and body to the multitude, returned the gentleman. I'm endeavouring to raise a fund, to buy the pours of meat and drink and means of warmth. We choose this time because it is the time of all others when want is kidney felt and abundance rejoices. What shall I put you down for?" Nothing, Scrooge replied. Are 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. It's up to support the establishments I have mentioned. They cost enough, and those who are badly off must go there. If they can't go there, many would rather die. If they would rather die, said Scrooge, they'd 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. As mine occupies me constantly, good afternoon, gentlemen. Seeing clearly that this would be useless to pursue the point, the gentleman withdrew. Scrooge resumed his labours with an improved opinion of himself and in a more facetious temper than usual with him. Meanwhile the fog and darkness thickened so that people ran about with flaring links poffering the services to go before horses and carriages and conduct them on their way. The ancient tower of the church whose gruffo bell peeping slightly down at Scrooge out of a Gothic window in the wall became invisible and struck the hours and quarters in the clouds with tremendous vibrations afterwards as if its teeth were shattering in its frozen head up there. The code became intense. In the main street at the corner of the court some labours were repairing the gas pipes and it lighted a great fire in Abrasia, round to which a party of ragged men and boys were gathered, warming their hands and winking their eyes before the blaze in rapture. The waterplug being left in solitude it's overflowing with sullen mick and gild and turned to misanthropic ice. The brightness of the shops where holly springs and berries crackled in the lamp-heat of the windows made pale faces ruddy as they passed. Hulters and grossest trades became splendid joke, a glorious pageant in 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 the Lord Mayor's household should and even the little tailor whom he had fined five shillings in 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 babies sailed out to buy the beef. Fogger yet encoder, piercing, searching, biting cold. If the good St. Dunstan had but nipped the evil spirit's nose with a touch of such weather as that, instead of using his familiar weapons, then indeed he would have roared to lusty purpose. The owner of one scant young nose, gnawed and mumbled by the hungry cold as bones are gnawed by dogs, stooped down at Scrooge's keyhole to regale him with the Christmas carol, but at the first sound of God, bless you, merry gentleman, may nothing you dismay, Scrooge sees 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 expecting clock 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 it's quite convenient, sir. It's not convenient, said Scrooge, and it's not fair. If I were to stop half a crown for it, you'd think yourself ill-used I'll be bound. The clock smiled faintly, and yet, said Scrooge, you don't think me ill-used while I pay a day's wages for no work. The clock 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 his chin. But I suppose you must have the whole day. I'll be here all the earlier the next morning. The clock promised that he would, and Scrooge walked out with a growl. The office was closed at twinkling in the clock, with the long ins of his white comforter dangling below his waist, for he boasted no great coat, went down a slide on Cornhill, at the end of the lane of boys twenty times, in honour of its being Christmas Eve, and then ran home to Campton Town as hard as he could pelt to play at Blind Man's Bluff. Scrooge took his melancholy dinner, and as usual melancholy tavern, and having read all the papers, 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 in so little business to be, no one could scarcely help fancy, that I must have run there when it was a young house, yet 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 feigned 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 in particular about the knocker on the door, except that it was very large. It is also a fact that Scrooge had seen at night and morning during his whole residence in that place, also that Scrooge had 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. It was not an impenetrable shadow as the other objects in the yard were, but in a dismal light about it, like a bad lobster in a dark cellar. It was not angry or ferocious, but looked at Scrooge, as Marley used to look with ghostly spectacles turned up on its ghostly forehead. The hair was curiously stirred, as if by breath of hot air, and though the eyes were wide open, they were perfectly motionless. That and its vivid color made it horrible, but his horror seemed to be in spite of the face and beyond its control, rather than a part of his 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 steadily, walked in, and lighted his candle. He did pause, with the moments of resolution before the shut door, and he did look cautiously behind his purse, as if half expected to be terrified, with the sight of Marley's pigtails sticking out into the hall. But there was nothing in 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 town resounded through the house like thunder. Every room above, in every cask in the wine-merchant 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 the 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 that you might have got a hearse up that staircase and taken it broad-wise with the splinter bar toward the wall and the door towards the ball-strains 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 in the street wouldn't have lighted the entry too well, so he may suppose it was pretty dark with Scrooge's dip. Up Scrooge went, not carrying 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 it should be. Nobody under the table, nobody under the sofa, a small fire in the grave, spoon in base and ready, and the little swastpan of gruel Scrooge had a coat in his head upon the hop. 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, the old fire-guard, two shoes, two fish-baskets, washing stand on three legs in 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 in his night-cap, 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 around with Queen Dutch tiles designed to illustrate the scriptures. There were canes and ables, pharaohs' daughters, queens of Sheba, angelic messengers descending through the air on clouds like featherbeds, Abraham's belt-as-ours apostles putting off to see 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 hole. If each smooth tile had been a blanket 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. Hump-bug, said Scrooge, and walked across the room. After several turns he sat down again. As he drew his head back in the chair, his glance happened to rest upon the bell, a disused bell that hung in the room and communicated for some purpose now forgotten with the 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 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 of the wine-merchant cellar. Scrooge then remembered to have heard that ghosts in haunted houses were described as dragging chains. The cellar door flew over 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 the door. Its humbug still, said Scrooge. I won't believe it. His colour changed their wind without a pause. It came on through the heavy door and passed into the room before his eyes. Pornet coming in the dying flame, left up as though it cried, I know him! Marley's ghost had fell again. The same face. The very same. Marley and 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 the middle. It was long and wound about him like a tail, and it was made for Scrooge observed closely of cash-boxes, keys, padlocks, legends, 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 that Marley had no bowels, but he had never believed it until now. Nor did he believe it even now, although 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 round its head and chin, which wrapper he had not observed before. He was still incredulous and fought against his sentences. How now, said Scrooge, cast a concoct as ever? What do you want of 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 are 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 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 possible, it might involve the necessity of an embarrassing explanation. But the ghost sat down the opposite side of the fireplace as if you were quite used to it. You don't believe 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 undead, just a bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of an undead potato. There's more gravy than 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 specter'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 specters being provided with an infernal atmosphere of its own. Scrooge could not feel it himself, but it was clearly the case, for though the ghost sat perfectly motionless, its hair and skirts and tassels were still agitated as if by the hot vapor 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 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, said 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! This, the spirit raised a frightful cry and shook its chain with such a dismal and appalling noise that Scrooge held tight to his chair to save himself from falling in a swoon. But how much greater was his heart when the phantom, taking off bandage round its head as if it were too warm to wear indoors, his low jaw dropped down upon his breast. Scrooge fell upon his knees and asked 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 fellow men until 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 specter 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, and girded it on of my own free will, and of my own free will I ward. 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 curl you bear yourself? Well, as heavy and as long as this seven Christmas eaves 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. Oh, 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. 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 rode beyond the narrow limits of our money-changing hold, and weary journeys lie before me. It was a habit of Scrooge whenever he became thoughtful to put his hands in his breecher's 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 and remorse. He travelled fast, said Scrooge, of the wings of the wind, replied the ghost. You might have gone over a great quantity of ground in seven years, said Scrooge. The ghost on hearing this said of 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-iron, cried the phantom. Not to know the ages of incessant labour by immortal creatures, for this earth must pass into eternity before the good which is susceptible is all developed. Not to know that any Christian spirit walking 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's life's opportunity misuse, yet such was I. Oh, such was I! But you were always a good man of business, Jacob, thought and Scrooge, who now began to apply this to himself. Business! cried the ghost, wringing his 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 and the comprehension of ocean of my business. He held up the chain at arm's length as if it were the cause of all its unveiling grief and flung it heavily upon the ground again. At this time of the rolling year, the specter said, I suffer most. Why did I walk through the crowds of fellow beings with my eyes turned down and never reasoned to that blessed star which led the wise men to a poorer boat where there no poor homes which its light would have conducted me? Scrooge was very much dismayed to hear the specter going on at the straight and began to quake exceedingly. Hear me! said the ghost. My time is nearly gone. I will! said Scrooge. But don't be heart-apart me. Don't be flowery, Jacob. Pray! How is it 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. This was not an agreeable idea. Scrooge shivered and wiped the perspiration from his brow. That is no light part in my penance, pursued the ghost. I am here tonight to warn you that you have yet a chance and hope of escaping my fate. A chance and hope of my procuring of an easter. You are always a good friend to me, said Scrooge. Thank you. You will be haunted, resumed the ghost, by three spirits. Scrooge's countenance fell almost as low as the ghosts had done. Is that the chance and hope you mentioned, Jacob? He demanded in a faltering voice. It is. 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 them all at once and have it over, Jacob? Hitted 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. And when he said these words, the spectre took its wrapper from the table and bound it around 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 with 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 there were then two paces of each other Marley's ghost held up its hand warning him to come no nearer. Scrooge stopped. Not so much an 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 whalings 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 tither in restless haste and moaning as they went. Every one of them wore chains like Marley's ghost. Some few there might be guilty governments were linked together. None were free. Many had been personally no 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 who would sob below upon a doorstep. The misery within them all was clearly that they sought to interfere for good in human matters and had lost the power forever. Whether these creatures faded into mist or mist in shroud rhythm he could not tell, but they and their spare 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. He 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 of the fatigues of the day and the screams of the invisible world, or the dull conversation of the ghost, or the lateness upon the hour much in need of repose, went straight to bed without undressing, and fell asleep upon the instant. The End of Stave One of The Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens 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 fettet eyes when the chimes of a neighbouring church struck the four quarters. So he left the room and went to sleep. He was endeavouring to pierce the darkness with his fettet 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 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 and icicle must have gotten to the works twelve. He touched the spring of his repeater to correct the most preposterous clock. Its rapid little pulse beat twelve and stopped. Why it isn't possible, said Scrooge, that I can have slept through the whole day and far into the night. It isn't possible that anything has happened to the sun, and this is twelve at noon. The idea of 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-ground before he could see anything, and he 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 the first exchange of pay of Mr. Everdee's escruge 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 endeavored not to think the more he thought. Molly's ghost bothered him exceedingly. Every time he resolved within himself after a 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 told one. He resolved to lie awake until the hour had 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 court was so long that he was more than once convinced that he must have sunk into a doze unconsciously in Mr. Clock. At length it broke upon his listening ear. Ding dong, the court had passed, said Scrooge, counting. Ding dong, half past, said Scrooge. Ding dong, the court had to it, said Scrooge. Ding dong, the hour itself, said Scrooge triumphantly, and nothing else. He spoke before the hour bell had sounded, which it now did with a deep, dull, hollow melancholy one. Light flashed up in the room upon an 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-recombed 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, is like an old man viewed through some supernatural medium, which gave him the appearance of having receded from the view when 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 on 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 rounder waist was bound a lustrous belt, the sheen of which was beautiful. It had a branch of fresh green hull in its hand, and, in singular contradiction of that wintery 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 was visible, and which was doubtless the occasion it's 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 the strangest quality. For as its belt sparking 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 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 be? Ask Scrooge. I am. The voice was soft and gentle, singularly low as if instead of being so close beside him that it were at a distance. Oh, 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 them, but he had a special desire to see the spirit in his cap and begged him to be covered. But, 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 forced me through the whole trains of years to wear it low upon my brow? Scrooge reverently disclaimed all intention to offend any knowledge of having willfully bonneted the spirit of any period in his life. Then he made bold to inquire what business brought him here. 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 conductive to that end. The spirit must have heard him thinking for it said immediately, your reclamation then. Take heed. It put out his 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 the weather and the hour to pedestrian purposes. That bet was warm in the thermometer long way below freezing. That he was glad but lightly in his slippers dressing down in nightcap. And that he had a coat upon him at the 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 mortal! Scrooge remonstrated. And livid a fall. The 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 wintery day with snow upon the ground. God have it! 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 blindfolded! Strange to have forgotten it for so many years, observed the ghost. Let us go on. They walked along the road, Scrooge recognizing every gate, every post, every tree, every market-town appeared in the distance with its bridge, its church and winding river. Some shaggy ponies were now seen trotting towards him 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 things that have been, said the ghost. Scrooge knew and named them every one. Why was he filled with gladness when he heard them give each other Merry Christmas as they parted at cross-yards and byways for 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 weathercocks a mounted capola 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, fouls clucked and strutted in the stables, and the coach houses and sheds were overrun with grass. Nor was it more retentive of its ancient state with him, who were entering the dreary hall and glancing through the open doors of many rooms. They found them poorly furnished, cold and vast. There was an earthly savor in the air, a chilly barrenness in the place which associated itself somehow with too much getting up by candlelight and not too much to eat. They went to the ghost and Scrooge across the hall to adorn the back of the house. It opened before them, disclosed a long, bare, melancholy room made bearer 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 paneling, not a drip from the house or a spout in the dull yard behind, not a sigh among the leafless boughs of one despondent bubbler, not the idle swinging of an empty stone house door and no, not a clicking of 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 and ten upon his reading. Suddenly a man in a foreign garb and wonderfully real and distinct to look out stood outside the window with an axe struck in his belt and leading by the bridal and ass laden with wood. Why, it's Halibaba, Scrooge exclaimed in ecstasy. Dear old Honest Halibaba, yes, yes, I know. One Christmas time when Yon Sultry 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 sultans' Scrooge turned upside down by the genie. There he is upon his head. I'm glad of it. What business had he to be married to the princess? To hear Scrooge expanding on all the earnestness of the nature of such subjects in a most extraordinary voice between laughing and crying in an excited face. Would have been a surprise to his business friends in the city, indeed. That's the parrot, cried Scrooge, green body and yellow tail, with a thing like lettuce growing out of the top of his head. There he is. Poor Robinson Crusoe he called him when he came home again after sailing round the island. Poor Robinson Crusoe, where have you bit Robinson Crusoe? The man thought he was dreaming, but he wasn't. He was the parrot, you know. There goes Friday, running for his life and saying hello, ha-pah-loo! Then with the rapidity of transition very foreign to his usual character he said in a pity of 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 and nothing, said Scrooge and nothing there was a boy singing a Christmas carol in my door last night I should like to have given him something that's all the girl smiled thoughtfully and waved its hand saying as he did so let us see another Christmas Scrooge's former self grew larger at the words and the room became a little dark and more dirty. The panel shrunk and was cracked fragments of plaster fell out of the ceiling and the naked lathes were shown instead but how all this was bought 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 the door opened and a little girl much younger than the boy came darting in putting her arms about his neck and often kissing him dressed 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 brimfully with glee home for good and all 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 he might come home and he said yes you should and he sent me in a coach to bring you and you ought to be a man said the child opening her eyes and never come back here but first we'll be together all Christmas long and have the merriest time in the world 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 she then began to drag him in her childish eagerness towards the door and he and nothing loath to go accompany her a terrible voice in the hall cried bring down master Scrooge's box there and in the hall appeared the school master himself who glared on master Scrooge with a ferocious condensation put him into a dreadful state of mind by shaking hands with him he then conveyed him and his sister into the various old well of a shivering best parlor that he ever was seen where the mats upon the wall and the celestial and terrestrial globes in the window were waxy with cold here he produced a decanter of curiously light wine and a block of curiously heavy cake and administered installments for those dainties to the young people at the same time sending out a meagre servant to offer a glass of something to the post-boy 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 chase the children bade the school master goodbye willingly and getting into it drove gaily down the garden sweep the quick wheels dashing the whore frost and snow from the old dark leaves of the evergreens like spray always a delicate creature whom a breath might have withered but she had a large heart so she had cried Scrooge you're right I will not gain say it 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 although they had but at that moment left the school behind them in their affairs of the city where shadowy passengers passed and repassed where shadowy carts and coaches battled for the way and all the strife and tumultive a real city were it was made plain enough by the dressing of the shops that there 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 no it said Scrooge I was a princess here they went in at the sight of an old gentleman in a Welsh wig sitting behind such a high desk that if he had been two inches tall he must have knocked his head against the ceiling Scrooge cried in great excitement why it's old Fizzywig bless his heart it's Fizzywig alive again old Fizzywig laid down his pen and looked up at the clock which pointed to the hour of seven he rubbed his hands adjusted his capricious waistcoat laughed all over himself from his shoes to his organ of benevolence oily rich fat jovial voice yo ho there amelisa dick Scrooge has formed a self now a grown young man came briskly in accompanying by his fellow printers dick Wilkins to be sure said Scrooge to the ghost bless me eyes there he is he was very much attached to me was dick poor dick dear dear yo ho my boys said Fizzywig no more work tonight Christmas Eve dick Christmas amelisa let's have the shutters up cried old Fizzywig 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 them up in their places four five six bottom and pinned them seven eight nine and came back before you could go up to twelve panting like race horses hello cried old Fizzywig with wonderful agility clear away my lads and let's have lots of room here hello ho dick chirp amelisa clear away there was nothing they wouldn't have cleared away or couldn't have cleared away with the old Fizzywig looking on it was done in a minute every moveable was packed off as if it were dismissed from public life forever more the floor swept and watered the lamps were trimmed fuel was heaped upon the fire and the warehouse was as snug as warm and dry and bright as a ballroom as you would desire to see upon a winter's night in came the 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. Fizzywig one vast substantial smile in came the three Miss Fizzywigs 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 the 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 bored 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 every how away they all went twenty couple at once danced 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 another butter wonder had them when this result was brought about old Fizzywig clapping his hands to stop the dance cried out well done and the Fiddler plunged his hot face into a tub of porter specially provided for that purpose but scorn ing rest upon his reappears he instantly began again though there were no dancers yet as if the Fiddler had been carried home exhausted in a shutter and he were a brand new man resolved to beat them out of sight or perish there were more dancers there were more forfeits and more dances and there was cake and there was niggas 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 out to the roast and boiled when the Fiddler an artful dog mind a sort of man who knew his business better than you or I could have told him struck up Sir Roger DeCovere that old Fizzywig stood out to dance with Mrs. Fizzywig top couple too when good stiff piece of work cut out for them three or four and twenty pair of partners not to be trifled with people who would dance and had no notion of walking but if they had been twice as many four times old Fizzywig would have been a match for them and so would Mrs. Fizzywig 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 Fizzywig's calves they shown in every part of the dance like moons you wouldn't have predicted it any time what would have become of him next and then old Fizzywig and Mrs. Fizzywig had gone all through the dance advance and retire both hands to your partner bow and curtsy corkscrew thread the needle and back again your place Fizzywig cut cut so deftly he appeared to wink with his legs and came upon his feet again without a stacker when the clock struck eleven the domestic ball broke up Mr. and Mrs. Fizzywig took their stations one on either side of the door with shaking hands with every person individually as he or she went out to wish him or her a merry Christmas when everybody had retired but the two parenthesis they did the same to them and thus the cheerful voices died away and the lads were left to the beds which were under the counter in the back shop during this whole time Scrooge 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 wasn't until now when the bright faces of his former self and Dick returned from him that he remembered the ghost and became conscious that it was looking full upon him while the light upon its head burned very clear a small matter said the ghost to make these silly folks so full of gratitude small echoed Scrooge the spirit signed him to listen to the two parenthesis who were pouring out their hearts in praise of Feziwig and when he had done so said why is it not it's been 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 heeded 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 a burdensome a pleasure or a toil say that his power lies in words and looks since things so slight and insignificant that it is impossible to add or count them up what then the happiness he gives is quite as great as if it caused 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 now said Scrooge now I should like to be able to say a word or two to my clock just now that's all his former self turned down the lamps as he gave utterance to the wish and Scrooge and the ghost against to it side by side in the open air my time grew short and observed the spirit quick this was not addressed to Scrooge or to anyone 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 had begun to bear 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 woman in a morning dress in whose eyes there were tears which sparkled in the light that shown out of the ghosts in Christmas past it matters little she said softly to you very little another idol has displaced me and if I can share 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 an 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 is the pursuit of wealth in the world too much she answered gently all your other hopes emerge into the hope of being beyond the chance of its sort of 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 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 fortunes by our patient industry you are changed when it was made you are 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 have I thought of this I would 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 of value in your sight if this had never been between us said the girl looking mildly not steadyness upon him tell me would you seek me out now and try to win me now ah no he seemed to yield the justice of its supposition in spite of himself that said with the 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 are free today tomorrow yesterday can even believe that you would choose a dourless girl you who in your very confidence with her weigh everything by gain or choosing her if for a moment you are 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 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 is an unprofitable dream from which it has happened well that you are welcome may you be happy in the life that 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 Scrooge no more I do not wish to see it show me no more but the relentless ghost pinion him in both arms and forced him to observe what happened next they were in another scene in place a room not very large a handsome but full of comfort near to the winter fire sat a beautiful young girl so like that lass that Scrooge believed it was the same until he saw her now a comely matron sitting opposite her daughter the noise in the 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 there were not 40 children conducting themselves like one but every child was conducting itself like 40 the consequences were rorious 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 sports got pillaged by the young brigads most ruthlessly what would I not have given to be one of them though I would never 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 the measuring her waist in sport as they did but old young brood I couldn't have done it I should have expected my arm to have grown round for the punishment and never come straight again and yet I should have dearly liked Ion to have touched her nips to have questioned her that she might have opened them to have looked upon the lashes of her downcast eyes and have 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 the lightest license of a child and yet have been man enough to know its value but now a knocking on the door was heard in such a rush immediately ensued that with a laughing face and plundered dress was born towards the center flushed in boisterous group just in time to greet the father who had come home attended by a man laden with Christmas toys and presents then the shouting and struggling and the onslaught that was made on the defenseless porter the scaling him with chairs for ladders to drive into his pockets to spoil him with brown paper parcels to hold on tight by his cravat hug him round the neck, pobble 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 taken in the act of putting a doll's frying pad into his mouth and was more than suspect of having swallowed a fictitious turkey or food on a wooden platter the immense relief of finding this a false alarm the joy, the gratitude and ecstasy they were all indescribable alike it is enough that by degrees the children and their emotions had got out of the parlour and by one stare at a time up to the top of the house when 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 he thought that such another creature quite as graceful and as full of promise might have called him father and had been a springtime and haggard winter of his life his sight grew very dim indeed Bell 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 tell? I don't know she uttered in the same breath laughing as he laughed Mr. Scrooge it was I passed his office window and 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 have shown you the shadows of things that have been, said the ghost that they are what they are do not blame me Scrooge exclaimed I cannot bet it he turned upon the ghost and seen that it looked upon him with a face in which some strange way there were fragments of all faces that had shown him wrestled with it leave me take me back haunt me no longer in the struggle if it can be called a struggle in which the ghost with no visible resistance on its own part was understood by any effort of its adversary Scrooge observed the light was burning high and bright and dimly connecting that with its influence over him he seized his extinguisher cap and by a sudden action pressed it down upon his head the spirit dropped beneath it so that the extinguisher covered its whole form but though Scrooge pressed it down with all its 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 the 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 the end of Stave 2 of A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org recorded by me Glenn Halstrom also known as Smoke Stack Jones Smoke Stack Jones at gmail.com you'll also find my blog at toomuchjohnson.blogspot.com A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens Stave 3 the second of the three spinnits awakening 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 what Bell it was again upon the stroke of one he felt he was restored to consciousness in the right nick of time for the a special purpose of holding a conference with the second messenger dispatched to him through Jacob Marley's intervention but finding that he turned uncomfortably cold when he began to wonder which of his curtains the new spectre would drop back he put them every one aside with his own hands and lying down again established a sharp look out all round the bed before he wished to challenge the spirit in the moment of its appearance 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 expressed 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 handily as this I don't mind in calling you to believe that he was ready for a good broad field of strange appearances and that nothing between a baby and a rhinoceros would have astonished him very much now being prepared for almost anything he was not by any means prepared for nothing and consequently when bells 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 center of a blaze and ruddy light which streamed upon it when the clock proclaimed the hour at 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 the very moment an interesting case of spontaneous combustion without having the consolation of knowing it at last however he began to think as you and 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 his 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 crisper 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 where turkeys, geese, game poultry, brawn great joints of meat suckling pigs, long reeds of sausages mince pies, plum puddings barrels of oysters red hot chestnuts cherry-cheeked apples, juicy oranges luscious pears immense twelve 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 glories to see who bore glowing torch in shape not unlike Plenty's horn and held it up high up and 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 it was not the dog that Scrooge 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 all mantel bordered with white fur this garment hung so loosely on the figure that its capricious breast was bare as if disdaining to be watered or concealed by any out of us 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 sat here and there with shining icicles brown curls were long and free free is its genial face its sparkling eyes its open hand its cheery voice its unconstrained demeanor and its joyful air girded around 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 bored in these later years pursued the phantom I don't think I have said Scrooge I'm afraid I have not have you had many brothers spirit more than 1800 said the ghost the 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 tonight if you have ought to teach me let me profit by it touch my robe Scrooge did as he was told and held it fast holly, mistletoe, redberries ivy, turkey, skis, game, poultry brawn, meat, pig, sausages oysters, pies, puddings, fruit 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 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 went it was mad delight to the boys to see it come plumping down into the road and splitting into artificial little snow stalls the house fronts looked black enough and the windows blacker contrasting with the smooth white sheet of snow upon the roofs and with the dirtiest snow upon the ground which last deposit had been plowed up in deep furrows by the heavy wheels of carts and wagons furrows that crossed and recrossed each other hundreds of times where the great streets branched off and made intricate channels hard to trace in the thick yellow mud in icy water the sky was gloomy and the shortest streets were choked up with the 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 about 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 there was an air of cheerfulness abroad that the clearer summer air and brighter summer sun might have endeavored to diffuse in vain for the people who were shoveling 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 as it went right or less than heartily if it went wrong the polterers' shops were still half open and the fruiterers were radiant in their glory there were great round pot-bellied shades of chestnuts shaped like the waistcats of jolly old gentlemen lolling at the doors and tumbling out into the street in their apoplectic opulence there were ruddy and brown-faced broad-gearthed Spanish onions shining in the fatness of their growth like Spanish friars and winking from their shelves in warden's blindness at the girls as they went by and glanced immurely at the hung-up mistletoe there were pairs and apples there were bunches of grapes made in the shopkeepers' benevolence to dangle from conspicuous hooks that people's mouths might water gratis as they fast there were piles of filberts mossy and brown recalling in their fragrance ancient walks among the woods in pleasant shufflings ankle-deep through withered leaves there were no-folk biffins squat and swathe setting off the yellow the oranges and lemons and in the great compactness they'd be carried home in brown-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 there was something going on and to a fish went gasping round and round in their little world in slow and passionless excitement the grossest, oh, the grossest nearly closed were perhaps two shutters down or one, but through those gaps it was not known that the scales descending on the counter made a merry sound or that the twine in roller-departed company so briskly or that the canisters were rattled up and down like juggling tricks or even that the blended sense of tea and coffee were so grateful to the nose or even 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 billious 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 also hurried and so eager in their 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 at which they fastened their aprons behind might have been their own worn outside for general inspection and for Christmas dolls to peck at if they choose but soon the steeples called good people altered church and chapel in a way they came flocking through the streets in their best clothes and with their gayest faces and at the time there emerged from scores of by streets lanes and nameless turnings innumerable people carrying their dinners to the baker's shops the sight of these poor revelers 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 the 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 a good human 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 general shattering forth of all these dinners in the progress of their cooking in the thawed blotch of wet above each baker's oven where the payment smoked as if its stones were cooking too is there a peculiar flavor in which you sprinkle from your torch our scrooge there is my own would it apply to any kind of dinner on this day our scrooge to any kindly given to a poor one most why a poor one most our scrooge because it needs it most spirit said scrooge after a moment's thought I wonder you of all the beings and the many words about us should desire to not these people's opportunities of innocent enjoyment I cried the spirit you would deprive them of all their means of dining every seven day often the only day in which they can be said to dine at all said scrooge wouldn't you I cried the spirit you seek to choose these places on the seven days 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 that of your family said scrooge there are some upon this earth of yours return the spirit will they claim to know us and who do their deeds of passion pride ill will hatred envy bigotry and self-righteousness in our name who are estranged to us and all our kith and kin as if they never lived remember that and charge the doings on themselves not us scrooge promised that he would and they went all 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 bakers 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 that he could have done in any lofty hall and perhaps it was the pleasure the good spirit had in the hour of his or else it was his own kind generous heart in nature and his sympathy with all poor men that let him straight to scrooge his clocks for there he went and took scrooge with him holding to his robe and on the threshold of the door the spirits smiled and stopped to bless Bob Cratchit's dwelling with the twinkling of his torch think of that Bob had but fifteen bob a week himself he pocketed on Saturdays by fifteen copies of his Christian and yet the ghost of Christmas present blessed his four room house then up rose Mrs. Cratchit's wife dressed out poorly in a twice turned gown but brave and ribbons which are cheap and make a good show for six months and she laid the cloth assisted by Belinda Cratchit second of her daughters also brave and 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 son and heir in honor of the day into his mouth rejoiced to find himself so gallantly tired and yearned to show his name in the fashionable parks and now to smaller Cratchit's 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 Cratchit's danced about the table and exalted master Peter Cratchit to the skies while he not proud though his colors nearly choked him blew the fire until the slow potatoes bubbling up not loudly in 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 weren'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 Cratchit's hurrah there's such a goose Martha why bless your heart to lie my dear honey you are said mrs. Cratchit kissing her a dozen times and taking off her show and bonnet for her with a vicious zeal with 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've come said mrs. Cratchit sit you down by the fire my dear and have a warm Lord bless you no no father's coming cried the two young Cratchit's who are everywhere once hide Martha hide so Martha hid herself and in came little Bob the father with at least three feet of comforter exclusive to the fringe hanging down before him and his thread bear 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 of his high spirits for he had been Tim's blood horse all the way from church he had come home rampant not coming upon Christmas day Martha didn't like to see him disappointed if it were only a joke so she came up prematurely from behind the closet door and ran into his arms while the two young Cratchit's 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 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 had hoped 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 the tiny Tim was growing strong and hearty. His act of 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 harb to simmer master Peter the two ubiquitous young Cratchit's went to fetch the goose which they soon returned in high procession such a bustle ensued that you might have thought the goose was the rarest of all birds a feathered phenomenon which a black swan was a matter of course and in truth they very like it in that house Mrs. Cratchit made the gravy already beforehand in a little saucepan hissing hot master Peter mashed the potatoes with an incredible vigor 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 Cratchit's set chairs for everybody not forgetting themselves and mounting God upon their post crammed spoons into the mouths less they should shriek for goose before their turn came to be held at last the dishes were set on and Grace was said it was succeeded by a breathless pause as Mrs. Cratchit looking slowly 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 an even tiny Tim excited by the two young Cratchit's 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 that there ever was such a goose cooked its tenderness and flavor size and cheapness were the themes of universal admiration eeked 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 Cratchit's in particular was steeped in sage and onion to the eyebrows but now the plates being changed by Mrs. Belinda Mrs. Cratchit left the room alone too nervous to hear witnesses to take the pudding up and bring it in suppose it had not been done enough suppose it should break in turning out suppose somebody should have gotten over the wall over the backyard and stolen it well they were married with the goose a supposition at which the two young Cratchit's became livid all sorts of horrors was supposed hello 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 pastry cooks next door to each other with the laundresses next door to that that was the pudding in half a minute Mrs. Cratchit entered flush smiling proudly with the pudding like a speckled cannonball so hard and firm blazing with half of half a quarter of a knighted brandy and bedight with Christmas holly stuck into the top oh what 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 that she hadn't had doubts about the quality of the flour everyone had something to say about it for nobody said or thought it was at all 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 was being tasted and considered perfect apples and oranges were put upon the table and a shovel full of chestnuts on the fire and then all the Cratchit family drew around the hearth in what Bob Cratchit called a circle meaning half of 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 those golden goblets would have done and Bob served it out with beaming looks while the chestnuts on the fire spotted and crackled noisily then Bob proposed a merry Christmas to us all my dears God bless us which all the family be echoed God bless us every one said tiny to him the last of all he sat very close to his father's side upon the stool Bob held his withered little hand in his as if he loved the child and he wished to keep him by his side and dreaded that he might be taken from him and dreaded since Groot with an interest he had never felt before tell me if tiny to him 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 since Groot oh no kind spirit say he will be spared if these shadows remain unaltered by the future none other of my race return the ghost we'll find him here oh what then if he be like to die he'd better do it and decrease the surplus population Scrooge hung his head to his own words quoted by the spirit and was overcome with penitence and grief man said the ghost if man you be at heart not adamant for bear that wicked count 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 rebuke and trembling cast his eyes upon the ground but he raised them speedily upon hearing his own name Mr. Scrooge said Bob I give you Mr. Scrooge the founder of our feast the founder of our feast indeed cried Mrs. Cratchit Redding I wish I had him here I'd give him a piece of my mind to feast upon and hope he'd have a good appetite for it my dear said Bob the children, Christmas Day it should be Christmas Day I'm sure said she in which one drinks the help of such an odious stingy heart unfeeling mad as Mr. Scrooge you know he is Robert nobody knows it better than you poor fellow my dear was Bob's mild answer Christmas Day I'll drink his health for your sake in the days said Mrs. Cratchit but not for years long life to him a merry Christmas and a happy new year 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 last of all but he didn't care too much for it Scrooge was the ogre of the family the mention of his name cast a dark shadow upon the party which was not dispelled for full five minutes after it had passed away there were ten times merrier than before and the mere relief of Scrooge the bail for being done with Bob Cratchit told them how he had a situation in the desire for Master Peter which would bring in if obtained full five and six months 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 favor when he came into the receipt of that bewildering income Martha, who was a poor apprentice at a mill in us then told them what kind of work she had to do and how many hours she worked at the stretch and how she meant to lie a bed tomorrow morning for a good long rest tomorrow being a holiday she passed at home and how she had seen a countess at a Lord some days before and how the Lord was much about as tall as Peter which Peter pulled of his collar so high that you couldn't have seen his head if you had been there all this time the chestnuts and the jug went round and round and by and by they had a song about a lost child traveling 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 the shoes were far from being waterproof 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 they 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 as Scrooge and the spirit went along the streets the brightness of the roaring fires and kitchens parlors and all sorts of rooms was wonderful here the flickering of the blaze and the preparations for a cozy dinner with hot plates baking through and through before the fire and deep red curtains ready to be drawn to shut out the cold and darkness there all the children in the house are running out in the snow to meet their married sisters brothers, cousins, uncles, aunts and to 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 neighbor's house on the single man who saw them enter artful witches where they knew it in a glow but if you were judged from the numbers of people on their way to friendly gatherings you might have thought that no one was 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 exalted how it bared its breath of breast and opened its capricious palm and floated on outpouring with a generous hand light and harmless mirth on everything within its reach the very lamp lighter 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 he had ken the lamp lighter than 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 water spread itself wherever it listed or would have done so but for the frost that held in prisoner and nothing grew but moss and furs in coarse rain 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? asks Scrooge a place where miners live who labor in the bowels of the earth return 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 around 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 gayly in their holiday attire the old man in a voice that seldom rose above the howling 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 finger sank again the spirit did not tear a hair but Bade Scrooge hold his robe and passing on above the moor sped wither not to see to see to Scrooge's horror looking back he saw the last of the land a frightful rage of rocks behind him 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 scarcely tried to undermine the earth built upon a dismal reef of sunken rocks some leaguers so from shore on which the waters chafed and dashed the wild year through there stood a solitary lighthouse great heaps of seaweed clung to its base and storm birds born of the wind one might suppose as seaweed of the water rose and fell about it like the waves they skimmed but even there two men who watched the light and made a fire and through the loophole of the thick stone wall shed out a rare brightness in the awful sea drawing their horny hands over a rough table at which they sat they wished each other merry Christmas in their can of Grog and one of them the elder too with his face all damaged and scarred with hard weathers a figure of an old ship might be struck up a sturdy song that was like the gale in itself again the ghost sped on above the black and heaving sea on, on until being far away as he told screwed from any shore they lighted on a ship they stood beside the helmsman at the wheel the lookout in the bow the officers who had the watched dark ghostly figures in their several stations but every man among them hummed a Christmas tune or had a Christmas thought or spoke below his breath to his companion you know some bygone Christmas day with homeward hoax belonging to it and every man on board waking or sleeping good or bad had had a kind of word for another on that day that on any day in the year and they shared to some extent in their festivities and had remembered those he cared for at a distance and had known that they had delighted to remember him it was a great surprise to Scrooge while listening to the moaning of the wind and thinking what a solemn thing it was to move on through a lonely dark this unknown abyss whose depths were secrets as profound as death it was a great surprise to Scrooge while thus engaged to hear a hearty laugh it was a much greater surprise to Scrooge to recognize it as his own nephews and to find himself in a bright dry gleaming room with the spirit standing smiling by his side and looking at that same nephew with a proving affability ha ha ha laugh Scrooge's nephew ha ha ha if you should happen by any unlikely chance to know a man more blessed in a laugh than Scrooge's nephew all I can say is I should like to know him too introduce him to me and I'll cultivate his acquaintance it is a fair even hand noble adjustment of things that there is infection and sorrow there is nothing in the world so irresistibly contagious as laughter and good humour when Scrooge's nephew laughed in this way holding his sight, rolling his head and twisting his face into the most extravagant contortions Scrooge's niece by marriage laughed as hardly as he and their assembled friends not being a bit behind hand wrought out lustily ha ha ha ha ha he said that Christmas was a humbug as I live, said Scrooge's nephew he believed it too more shame for him friends and Scrooge's niece indignantly bless those women they never do anything by ha ha there are always an earnest she was very pretty, exceedingly pretty with a dimpled surprise looking capital face a ripe little mouth that seemed to be made to be kissed as no doubt it was all kinds of good little dots about her chin that melted into one another when she laughed and the sunniest pair of eyes you ever saw in any little creature's head altogether she was what you would have called provoking, you know but satisfactory too oh, perfectly satisfactory he's a comical old fellow, said Scrooge's nephew that's the truth but not so pleasant as he might be however his offenses carry their own punishment and I have nothing to say against him I'm sure he's very rich Fred hinted Scrooge's niece at least you always tell me so what of that, my dear, said Scrooge's nephew his wealth is of no use to him he don't do any good with it he don't make himself comfortable with it he hasn't the satisfaction of thinking that he is ever going to benefit us with it I have no patience with him, observed Scrooge's niece Scrooge's niece's sisters and all the other ladies expressed the same opinion oh, I have, said Scrooge's nephew I'm sorry for him I couldn't be angry with him if I tried who suffers by his ill-wims himself always here he takes it into his head to dislike us and he won't come and dine with us what's the consequence? he don't lose much of a dinner indeed I think he loses a very good dinner interrupted Scrooge's niece everyone else said the same and they must be allowed to have been competent judges because they had all just had dinner and with the dessert upon the table were clustered around the fire by the lamp light well I'm very glad to hear it, said Scrooge's nephew because I have a great faith in these young housekeepers what do you say, Tarpa? Tarpa had clearly got his eye upon one of Scrooge's niece's sisters for he answered that a bachelor was a wretched outcast who had no right to express an opinional subject whereas Scrooge's niece's sister the plump one with the lace tucker not the one with the roses, blushed do go on Fred, said Scrooge's niece, clamping her hands he never finishes what he begins to say he's such a ridiculous fellow Scrooge's nephew reveled in another laugh and as it was impossible to keep the infection off though the plump sister tried hard to do it with an aromatic vinegar his example was unanimously followed I was only going to say, said Scrooge's nephew that the consequence of his taking a dislike to us and not making merry with us is, as I think that he loses some pleasant moments which could do him no harm I'm sure he loses pleasant to comparisons than he can find in his own thoughts either in his moldy old office or his dusty chambers I need to give him the same chance whether he likes it or not for I pity him he may rail at Christmas till he dies but I can't help thinking better of it I defy him if he finds me going there in good temper year after year and saying uncle Scrooge how are you if it only puts him in the vein to leave his poor clock fifty pounds that's something and I think I shook him yesterday it was their turn to laugh now at the notion of shaking Scrooge pumping thoroughly good nature to not caring much what they laughed at so that they laughed at any rate he encouraged them in their merryment and passed the bottle joyously after teeth he had some music for they were a musical family and knew what they were about when they sung a glee or catch I can assure you especially topper who would growl away in the bass like a good one and never swelled the large veins in his forehead or get rid in the face over it Scrooge's niece played well upon the harp and in mere nothing you might learn to whistle it in two minutes which had been familiar to the child who fetched Scrooge from the boarding school as he had been reminded by the ghost of Christmas past when this strain of music sounded all the things the ghost had shown him came upon his mind he softened more and more and thought if he could listen to it often years ago he might have cultivated the kindness of life for his own happiness with his own hands without resorting to the sexton spade that buried Jake and Molly but they didn't devote the whole evening to music after a while they played forfeits for it's good to be children sometimes it never bettered Christmas when its mighty founder was a child himself stop there was first a game at blind man's bluff of course there was and I no more believe topper was really blind than I believe he had eyes in his boots my opinion is that it was a dumb thing between him and Scrooge's nephew and that the ghost of Christmas present knew it when he went out of that plump sister in the lace Tucker was an outrage on the credulity of human nature knocking down the fire and tumbling over chairs bopping against the piano smothered himself among the curtains wherever she went there went he he always knew where the plump sister was he wouldn't catch anybody else if he would fall up against him and some of them did on purpose he would have made a faint of endeavoring to seize you which would have been in the front to your understanding and would instantly have sidled off in the direction of the plump sister she often cried out it wasn't fair it really was not but when at last he caught her when in spite of all the silk and rustlings and rapid flutterings passed him he got her into a corner when there was no escape then his conduct was the most extrable for his pretending not to know his pretending that it was necessary to touch her headdress and further to assure himself of her identity by pressing a certain ring upon her finger a certain chain about her neck was vile monstrous no doubt she told him her opinion of it when another blind man being in office there were so many confidential together behind the curtains Scrooge's niece was not one of the blind man's black party but made comfortable with the large chair in a footstool in a snug corner where the ghost and Scrooge were close behind her but she joined in the forefronts and loved her love to admiration with all the letters of the alphabet in the game of how, when and where she was very great and to the secret joy of Scrooge's nephew beat her sister's hollow though they were sharp girls too as Topper would have told you there might have been twenty people there young and old but they all played and so did Scrooge for wholly forgetting in the interest he had in what was going on that his voice made no sound in their ears he sometimes came out with his guests quite loud and very often guests quite right too for the sharpest needle best white chapel warranted not to cut in the eye was not sharper than Scrooge blunt as he took it in his head to be the ghost was greatly pleased to find him in this mood and looked upon him with such favor that he begged like a boy to be allowed to stay until the guests departed but this the spirit said could not be done here's a new game said Scrooge one half hour spirit only one it was a game called yes or no where Scrooge's nephew had to think of something and the rest must find out what he only answering to their questions yes or no as the case was the risk fire of questioning to which he was exposed elicited from him that he was thinking of an animal a live animal rather a disagreeable animal a savage animal an animal that growled and grunted sometimes and talked sometimes and lived in London and walked about in streets and wasn't made a show of and wasn't led by anybody and didn't live in a menagerie and was never killed in a market and it was not a horse or an ass or a cow or a bull or a tiger or a dog or a pig or a cat or a bear at every fresh question that was put to him this nephew burst into a fresh roar of laughter and was so inexpressibly tickled that he was obliged to get off off the sofa and stamp and last the plump sister falling into a similar state cried out I found it I know what it is Fred I know what it is what is it said Fred it's your Uncle Scrooge which it certainly was admiration was the universal sentiment though some objected that the reply to is it a bear or to have been yes in as much as an answer in the negative was sufficient to have diverted their thoughts from Mr. Scrooge supposing they never had any tendency that way he has given us plenty of Mary but I'm sure said Fred and it would be ungrateful not to drink his health here is a glass of mulled wine ready to our hand at the moment and I say Uncle Scrooge well Uncle Scrooge they cried a merry Christmas and a happy New Year to the old man wherever he is said Scrooge's nephew he wouldn't take it from me but he may have it nevertheless Uncle Scrooge Uncle Scrooge had imperceptibly became so gay and light of heart that he would have pledged the unconscious company in return and thanked them in an inaudible speech if the ghost had given him time but the whole scene passed off in the breath of the last word spoken by his nephew and he and the spirit were again upon their travels much they saw and far they went and many homes they visited but always with a happy end the spirit stood beside sick beds and they were cheerful on foreign lands and they were close at home by struggling men and they were patient with their greater hope by poverty and it was rich in Almshouse Hospital in jail in misery's every refuge where a vain man and his little breacher thought he had not made fast the door and barred the spirit out he left his blessing and taught Scrooge his precepts it was a long night if it were only a night but Scrooge had his doubts about this to be condensed into a space of time they passed together it was strange too that while Scrooge remained on altar in his outward form the ghost grew older, clearly older Scrooge had observed this change but never spoke of it until they had left a children's twelve night party when looking at the spirit as they stood together in an open place he noticed that his hair was grey our spirit's life so short ah Scrooge my life upon this globe very brief, replied the ghost it ends tonight tonight, cried Scrooge tonight at midnight park, the time is drawing near the chimes were ringing three quarters past eleven at the moment forgive me if I'm not justified in what I ask said Scrooge looking intently at the spirit's robe but I see something strange and not belonging to yourself protruding from your skirts is that a foot or a claw it might be a claw for the flesh there is upon it was the spirit's sorrowful reply look here from the foldings of his robe he brought two children wretched abject frightful he dismiserable they knelt down in his feet and clung upon the outside of his garment oh man, look here look, look down here exclaimed the ghost they were a boy and girl meager ragged scowling, wolfish but prostrate to in their humility where graceful youth should have filled their features out and touched them with its freshest tints a stale and shrilled hand like that of age and pinched and twisted them and pulled them into shreds where angels might have sat and thrown devils lurked and glared out menacing no change, no degradation no perversion of humanity in any grade through all the mysteries of wonderful creation has monsters half so horrible and dread Scrooge started back appalled having them shown to him in this way he tried to say they were fine children but the words choked themselves rather than be parties to a lie of such enormous magnitude spirit are they yours? Scrooge could say no more they are men said the spirit and they cling to me appealing from their fathers the boy is ignorance the girl is want beware them both in all of their degree but most of all beware the boy for on his brow I see written witches doom lest the writing be erased deny it cried the spirit stretching out his hand towards the city stand to those who tell it ye for your facetious purposes make it worse and by the end have they no refuge or resource? cried Scrooge are there no prisons? said the spirit turning on him for the last time with his own words are there no work houses? the bell struck twelve Scrooge looked about him for the ghost and saw it not as the last stroke ceased to vibrate remembered the prediction of old Jacob Barley and lifting up his eyes beheld a solemn phantom draped and hooded coming like a mist along the ground towards him end of stave three of a Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens