A Christmas Carol Charles Dickens
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I have endeavoured in this Ghostly little
book, to raise the Ghost of an Idea, which
shall not put my readers out of humour
with themselves, with each other, with the
season, or with me. May it haunt their
houses pleasantly, and no one wish to lay it.
Their faithful Friend and Servant, C. D.
December, 1843.
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Stave 1: Marley’s Ghost
Marley was dead: to begin with. There is no doubt
whatever about that. The register of his burial was signed
by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker, and the chief
mourner. Scrooge signed it. And Scrooge’s name was
good upon ‘Change, for anything he chose to put his hand
to.
Old Marley was as dead as a door-nail.
Mind! I don’t mean to say that I know, of my own
knowledge, what there is particularly dead about a door-
nail. I might have been inclined, myself, to regard a coffin-
nail as the deadest piece of ironmongery in the trade. But
the wisdom of our ancestors is in the simile; and my
unhallowed hands shall not disturb it, or the Country’s
done for. You will therefore permit me to repeat,
emphatically, that Marley was as dead as a door-nail.
Scrooge knew he was dead? Of course he did. How
could it be otherwise? Scrooge and he were partners for I
don’t know how many years. Scrooge was his sole
executor, his sole administrator, his sole assign, his sole
residuary legatee, his sole friend, and sole mourner. And
even Scrooge was not so dreadfully cut up by the sad
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event, but that he was an excellent man of business on the
very day of the funeral, and solemnised it with an
undoubted bargain. The mention of Marley’s funeral
brings me back to the point I started from. There is no
doubt that Marley was dead. This must be distinctly
understood, or nothing wonderful can come of the story I
am going to relate. If we were not perfectly convinced
that Hamlet’s Father died before the play began, there
would be nothing more remarkable in his taking a stroll at
night, in an easterly wind, upon his own ramparts, than
there would be in any other middle-aged gentleman rashly
turning out after dark in a breezy spot — say Saint Paul’s
Churchyard for instance — literally to astonish his son’s
weak mind.
Scrooge never painted out Old Marley’s name. There it
stood, years afterwards, above the warehouse door:
Scrooge and Marley. The firm was known as Scrooge and
Marley. Sometimes people new to the business called
Scrooge Scrooge, and sometimes Marley, but he answered
to both names. It was all the same to him.
Oh! But he was a tight-fisted hand at the grind- stone,
Scrooge! a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping,
clutching, covetous, old sinner! Hard and sharp as flint,
from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire;
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secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster. The
cold within him froze his old features, nipped his pointed
nose, shrivelled his cheek, stiffened his gait; made his eyes
red, his thin lips blue; and spoke out shrewdly in his
grating voice. A frosty rime was on his head, and on his
eyebrows, and his wiry chin. He carried his own low
temperature always about with him; he iced his office in
the dogdays; and didn’t thaw it one degree at Christmas.
External heat and cold had little influence on Scrooge.
No warmth could warm, no wintry weather chill him. No
wind that blew was bitterer than he, no falling snow was
more intent upon its purpose, no pelting rain less open to
entreaty. Foul weather didn’t know where to have him.
The heaviest rain, and snow, and hail, and sleet, could
boast of the advantage over him in only one respect. They
often ‘came down’ handsomely, and Scrooge never did.
Nobody ever stopped him in the street to say, with
gladsome looks, ‘My dear Scrooge, how are you? When
will you come to see me?’ No beggars implored him to
bestow a trifle, no children asked him what it was o’clock,
no man or woman ever once in all his life inquired the
way to such and such a place, of Scrooge. Even the blind
men’s dogs appeared to know him; and when they saw
him coming on, would tug their owners into doorways
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and up courts; and then would wag their tails as though
they said, ‘No eye at all is better than an evil eye, dark
master!’
But what did Scrooge care! It was the very thing he
liked. To edge his way along the crowded paths of life,
warning all human sympathy to keep its distance, was
what the knowing ones call ‘nuts’ to Scrooge.
Once upon a time — of all the good days in the year,
on Christmas Eve — old Scrooge sat busy in his counting-
house. It was cold, bleak, biting weather: foggy withal:
and he could hear the people in the court outside, go
wheezing up and down, beating their hands upon their
breasts, and stamping their feet upon the pavement stones
to warm them. The city clocks had only just gone three,
but it was quite dark already — it had not been light all
day — and candles were flaring in the windows of the
neighbouring offices, like ruddy smears upon the palpable
brown air. The fog came pouring in at every chink and
keyhole, and was so dense without, that although the
court was of the narrowest, the houses opposite were mere
phantoms. To see the dingy cloud come drooping down,
obscuring everything, one might have thought that Nature
lived hard by, and was brewing on a large scale.
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The door of Scrooge’s counting-house was open that
he might keep his eye upon his clerk, who in a dismal
little cell beyond, a sort of tank, was copying letters.
Scrooge had a very small fire, but the clerk’s fire was so
very much smaller that it looked like one coal. But he
couldn’t replenish it, for Scrooge kept the coal-box in his
own room; and so surely as the clerk came in with the
shovel, the master predicted that it would be necessary for
them to part. Wherefore the clerk put on his white
comforter, and tried to warm himself at the candle; in
which effort, not being a man of a strong imagination, he
failed.
‘A merry Christmas, uncle! God save you!’ cried a
cheerful voice. It was the voice of Scrooge’s nephew, who
came upon him so quickly that this was the first intimation
he had of his approach.
‘Bah!’ said Scrooge, ‘Humbug!’
He had so heated himself with rapid walking in the fog
and frost, this nephew of Scrooge’s, that he was all in a
glow; his face was ruddy and handsome; his eyes sparkled,
and his breath smoked again. ‘Christmas a humbug, uncle!’
said Scrooge’s nephew. ‘You don’t mean that, I am sure?’
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‘I do,’ said Scrooge. ‘Merry Christmas! What right have
you to be merry? What reason have you to be merry?
You’re poor enough.’
‘Come, then,’ returned the nephew gaily. ‘What right
have you to be dismal? What reason have you to be
morose? You’re rich enough.’
Scrooge having no better answer ready on the spur of
the moment, said ‘Bah!’ again; and followed it up with
‘Humbug.’
‘Don’t be cross, uncle!’ said the nephew.
‘What else can I be,’ returned the uncle, ‘when I live in
such a world of fools as this? Merry Christmas! Out upon
merry Christmas! What’s Christmas time to you but a time
for paying bills without money; a time for finding yourself
a year older, but not an hour richer; a time for balancing
your books and having every item in ‘em through a round
dozen of months presented dead against you? If I could
work my will,’ said Scrooge indignantly, ‘every idiot who
goes about with ‘Merry Christmas’ on his lips, should be
boiled with his own pudding, and buried with a stake of
holly through his heart. He should!’
‘Uncle!’ pleaded the nephew.
‘Nephew!’ returned the uncle sternly, ‘keep Christmas
in your own way, and let me keep it in mine.’
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‘Keep it!’ repeated Scrooge’s nephew. ‘But you don’t
keep it.’
‘Let me leave it alone, then,’ said Scrooge. ‘Much good
may it do you! Much good it has ever done you!’
‘There are many things from which I might have
derived good, by which I have not profited, I dare say,’
returned the nephew. ‘Christmas among the rest. But I am
sure I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has
come round — apart from the veneration due to its sacred
name and origin, if anything belonging to it can be apart
from that — as a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable,
pleasant time: the only time I know of, in the long
calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one
consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of
people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers
to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on
other journeys. And therefore, uncle, though it has never
put a scrap of gold or silver in my pocket, I believe that it
has done me good, and will do me good; and I say, God
bless it!’
The clerk in the Tank involuntarily applauded.
Becoming immediately sensible of the impropriety, he
poked the fire, and extinguished the last frail spark for
ever.
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‘Let me hear another sound from you,’ said Scrooge,
‘and you’ll keep your Christmas by losing your situation!
You’re quite a powerful speaker, sir,’ he added, turning to
his nephew. ‘I wonder you don’t go into Parliament.’
‘Don’t be angry, uncle. Come! Dine with us
tomorrow.’
Scrooge said that he would see him — yes, indeed he
did. He went the whole length of the expression, and said
that he would see him in that extremity first.
‘But why?’ cried Scrooge’s nephew. ‘Why?’
‘Why did you get married?’ said Scrooge.
‘Because I fell in love.’
‘Because you fell in love!’ growled Scrooge, as if that
were the only one thing in the world more ridiculous than
a merry Christmas. ‘Good afternoon!’
‘Nay, uncle, but you never came to see me before that
happened. Why give it as a reason for not coming now?’
‘Good afternoon,’ said Scrooge.
‘I want nothing from you; I ask nothing of you; why
cannot we be friends?’
‘Good afternoon,’ said Scrooge.
‘I am sorry, with all my heart, to find you so resolute.
We have never had any quarrel, to which I have been a
party. But I have made the trial in homage to Christmas,
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and I’ll keep my Christmas humour to the last. So A
Merry Christmas, uncle!’
‘Good afternoon,’ said Scrooge.
‘And A Happy New Year!’
‘Good afternoon,’ said Scrooge.
His nephew left the room without an angry word,
notwithstanding. He stopped at the outer door to bestow
the greetings of the season on the clerk, who cold as he
was, was warmer than Scrooge; for he returned them
cordially.
‘There’s another fellow,’ muttered Scrooge; who
overheard him: ‘my clerk, with fifteen shillings a week,
and a wife and family, talking about a merry Christmas. I’ll
retire to Bedlam.’
This lunatic, in letting Scrooge’s nephew out, had let
two other people in. They were portly gentlemen,
pleasant to behold, and now stood, with their hats off, in
Scrooge’s office. They had books and papers in their
hands, and bowed to him.
‘Scrooge and Marley’s, I believe,’ said one of the
gentlemen, referring to his list. ‘Have I the pleasure of
addressing Mr. Scrooge, or Mr. Marley?’
‘Mr. Marley has been dead these seven years,’ Scrooge
replied. ‘He died seven years ago, this very night.’
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‘We have no doubt his liberality is well represented by
his surviving partner,’ said the gentleman, presenting his
credentials.
It certainly was; for they had been two kindred spirits.
At the ominous word ‘liberality,’ Scrooge frowned, and
shook his head, and handed the credentials back.
‘At this festive season of the year, Mr. Scrooge,’ said
the gentleman, taking up a pen, ‘it is more than usually
desirable that we should make some slight provision for
the Poor and Destitute, who suffer greatly at the present
time. Many thousands are in want of common necessaries;
hundreds of thousands are in want of common comforts,
sir.’
‘Are there no prisons?’ asked Scrooge.
‘Plenty of prisons,’ said the gentleman, laying down the
pen again.
‘And the Union workhouses?’ demanded Scrooge. ‘Are
they still in operation?’
‘They are. Still,’ returned the gentleman, ‘I wish I
could say they were not.’
‘The Treadmill and the Poor Law are in full vigour,
then?’ said Scrooge.
‘Both very busy, sir.’
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‘Oh! I was afraid, from what you said at first, that
something had occurred to stop them in their useful
course,’ said Scrooge. ‘I’m very glad to hear it.’
‘Under the impression that they scarcely furnish
Christian cheer of mind or body to the multitude,’
returned the gentleman, ‘a few of us are endeavouring to
raise a fund to buy the Poor some meat and drink. and
means of warmth. We choose this time, because it is a
time, of all others, when Want is keenly felt, and
Abundance rejoices. What shall I put you down for?’
‘Nothing!’ Scrooge replied.
‘You wish to be anonymous?’
‘I wish to be left alone,’ said Scrooge. ‘Since you ask
me what I wish, gentlemen, that is my answer. I don’t
make merry myself at Christmas and I can’t afford to make
idle people merry. I help to support the establishments I
have mentioned — they cost enough; and those who are
badly off must go there.’
‘Many can’t go there; and many would rather die.’
‘If they would rather die,’ said Scrooge, ‘they had
better do it, and decrease the surplus population. Besides
— excuse me — I don’t know that.’
‘But you might know it,’ observed the gentleman.
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‘It’s not my business,’ Scrooge returned. ‘It’s enough
for a man to understand his own business, and not to
interfere with other people’s. Mine occupies me
constantly. Good afternoon, gentlemen!’
Seeing clearly that it would be useless to pursue their
point, the gentlemen withdrew. Scrooge returned his
labours with an improved opinion of himself, and in a
more facetious temper than was usual with him.
Meanwhile the fog and darkness thickened so, that
people ran about with flaring links, proffering their
services to go before horses in carriages, and conduct them
on their way. The ancient tower of a church, whose gruff
old bell was always peeping slily down at Scrooge out of a
Gothic window in the wall, became invisible, and struck
the hours and quarters in the clouds, with tremulous
vibrations afterwards as if its teeth were chattering in its
frozen head up there. The cold became intense. In the
main street at the corner of the court, some labourers were
repairing the gas-pipes, and had lighted a great fire in a
brazier, round which a party of ragged men and boys were
gathered: warming their hands and winking their eyes
before the blaze in rapture. The water-plug being left in
solitude, its overflowing sullenly congealed, and turned to
misanthropic ice. The brightness of the shops where holly
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sprigs and berries crackled in the lamp heat of the
windows, made pale faces ruddy as they passed. Poulterers’
and grocers’ trades became a splendid joke; a glorious
pageant, with which it was next to impossible to believe
that such dull principles as bargain and sale had anything to
do. The Lord Mayor, in the stronghold of the mighty
Mansion House, gave orders to his fifty cooks and butlers
to keep Christmas as a Lord Mayor’s household should;
and even the little tailor, whom he had fined five shillings
on the previous Monday for being drunk and bloodthirsty
in the streets, stirred up to-morrow’s pudding in his garret,
while his lean wife and the baby sallied out to buy the
beef.
Foggier yet, and colder! Piercing, searching, biting
cold. If the good Saint Dunstan had but nipped the Evil
Spirit’s nose with a touch of such weather as that, instead
of using his familiar weapons, then indeed he would have
roared to lusty purpose. The owner of one scant young
nose, gnawed and mumbled by the hungry cold as bones
are gnawed by dogs, stooped down at Scrooge’s keyhole
to regale him with a Christmas carol: but at the first sound
of
‘God bless you, merry gentleman! May nothing you
dismay!’
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Scrooge seized the ruler with such energy of action,
that the singer fled in terror, leaving the keyhole to the fog
and even more congenial frost.
At length the hour of shutting up the counting- house
arrived. With an ill-will Scrooge dismounted from his
stool, and tacitly admitted the fact to the expectant clerk in
the Tank, who instantly snuffed his candle out, and put on
his hat.
‘You’ll want all day to-morrow, I suppose?’ said
Scrooge.
‘If quite convenient, sir.’
‘It’s not convenient,’ said Scrooge, ‘and it’s not fair. If I
was to stop half-a-crown for it, you’d think yourself ill-
used, I’ll be bound?’
The clerk smiled faintly.
‘And yet,’ said Scrooge, ‘you don’t think me ill-used,
when I pay a day’s wages for no work.’
The clerk observed that it was only once a year.
‘A poor excuse for picking a man’s pocket every
twenty-fifth of December!’ said Scrooge, buttoning his
great-coat to the chin. ‘But I suppose you must have the
whole day. Be here all the earlier next morning.’
The clerk promised that he would; and Scrooge walked
out with a growl. The office was closed in a twinkling,
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and the clerk, with the long ends of his white comforter
dangling below his waist (for he boasted no great-coat),
went down a slide on Cornhill, at the end of a lane of
boys, twenty times, in honour of its being Christmas Eve,
and then ran home to Camden Town as hard as he could
pelt, to play at blindman’s-buff.
Scrooge took his melancholy dinner in his usual
melancholy tavern; and having read all the newspapers,
and beguiled the rest of the evening with his banker’s-
book, went home to bed. He lived in chambers which had
once belonged to his deceased partner. They were a
gloomy suite of rooms, in a lowering pile of building up a
yard, where it had so little business to be, that one could
scarcely help fancying it must have run there when it was
a young house, playing at hide-and-seek with other
houses, and forgotten the way out again. It was old
enough now, and dreary enough, for nobody lived in it
but Scrooge, the other rooms being all let out as offices.
The yard was so dark that even Scrooge, who knew its
every stone, was fain to grope with his hands. The fog and
frost so hung about the black old gateway of the house,
that it seemed as if the Genius of the Weather sat in
mournful meditation on the threshold.
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Now, it is a fact, that there was nothing at all particular
about the knocker on the door, except that it was very
large. It is also a fact, that Scrooge had seen it, night and
morning, during his whole residence in that place; also
that Scrooge had as little of what is called fancy about him
as any man in the city of London, even including —
which is a bold word — the corporation, aldermen, and
livery. Let it also be borne in mind that Scrooge had not
bestowed one thought on Marley, since his last mention of
his seven years’ dead partner that afternoon. And then let
any man explain to me, if he can, how it happened that
Scrooge, having his key in the lock of the door, saw in the
knocker, without its undergoing any intermediate process
of change — not a knocker, but Marley’s face.
Marley’s face. It was not in impenetrable shadow as the
other objects in the yard were, but had a dismal light
about it, like a bad lobster in a dark cellar. It was not angry
or ferocious, but looked at Scrooge as Marley used to
look: with ghostly spectacles turned up on its ghostly
forehead. The hair was curiously stirred, as if by breath or
hot air; and, though the eyes were wide open, they were
perfectly motionless. That, and its livid colour, made it
horrible; but its horror seemed to be in spite of the face
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and beyond its control, rather than a part or its own
expression.
As Scrooge looked fixedly at this phenomenon, it was a
knocker again.
To say that he was not startled, or that his blood was
not conscious of a terrible sensation to which it had been a
stranger from infancy, would be untrue. But he put his
hand upon the key he had relinquished, turned it sturdily,
walked in, and lighted his candle.
He did pause, with a moment’s irresolution, before he
shut the door; and he did look cautiously behind it first, as
if he half-expected to be terrified with the sight of
Marley’s pigtail sticking out into the hall. But there was
nothing on the back of the door, except the screws and
nuts that held the knocker on, so he said ‘Pooh, pooh!’
and closed it with a bang.
The sound resounded through the house like thunder.
Every room above, and every cask in the wine-merchant’s
cellars below, appeared to have a separate peal of echoes of
its own. Scrooge was not a man to be frightened by
echoes. He fastened the door, and walked across the hall,
and up the stairs; slowly too: trimming his candle as he
went.
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You may talk vaguely about driving a coach-and-six up
a good old flight of stairs, or through a bad young Act of
Parliament; but I mean to say you might have got a hearse
up that staircase, and taken it broadwise, with the splinter-
bar towards the wall and the door towards the balustrades:
and done it easy. There was plenty of width for that, and
room to spare; which is perhaps the reason why Scrooge
thought he saw a locomotive hearse going on before him
in the gloom. Half a dozen gas-lamps out of the street
wouldn’t have lighted the entry too well, so you may
suppose that it was pretty dark with Scrooge’s dip.
Up Scrooge went, not caring a button for that.
Darkness is cheap, and Scrooge liked it. But before he shut
his heavy door, he walked through his rooms to see that
all was right. He had just enough recollection of the face
to desire to do that.
Sitting-room, bedroom, lumber-room. All as they
should be. Nobody under the table, nobody under the
sofa; a small fire in the grate; spoon and basin ready; and
the little saucepan of gruel (Scrooge had a cold in his head)
upon the hob. Nobody under the bed; nobody in the
closet; nobody in his dressing-gown, which was hanging
up in a suspicious attitude against the wall. Lumber-room
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as usual. Old fire-guards, old shoes, two fish-baskets,
washing-stand on three legs, and a poker.
Quite satisfied, he closed his door, and locked himself
in; double-locked himself in, which was not his custom.
Thus secured against surprise, he took off his cravat; put
on his dressing-gown and slippers, and his nightcap; and
sat down before the fire to take his gruel.
It was a very low fire indeed; nothing on such a bitter
night. He was obliged to sit close to it, and brood over it,
before he could extract the least sensation of warmth from
such a handful of fuel. The fireplace was an old one, built
by some Dutch merchant long ago, and paved all round
with quaint Dutch tiles, designed to illustrate the
Scriptures. There were Cains and Abels, Pharaohs’
daughters; Queens of Sheba, Angelic messengers
descending through the air on clouds like feather-beds,
Abrahams, Belshazzars, Apostles putting off to sea in
butter-boats, hundreds of figures to attract his thoughts —
and yet that face of Marley, seven years dead, came like
the ancient Prophet’s rod, and swallowed up the whole. If
each smooth tile had been a blank at first, with power to
shape some picture on its surface from the disjointed
fragments of his thoughts, there would have been a copy
of old Marley’s head on every one.
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‘Humbug!’ said Scrooge; and walked across the room.
After several turns, he sat down again. As he threw his
head back in the chair, his glance happened to rest upon a
bell, a disused bell, that hung in the room, and
communicated for some purpose now forgotten with a
chamber in the highest story of the building. It was with
great astonishment, and with a strange, inexplicable dread,
that as he looked, he saw this bell begin to swing. It swung
so softly in the outset that it scarcely made a sound; but
soon it rang out loudly, and so did every bell in the house.
This might have lasted half a minute, or a minute, but
it seemed an hour. The bells ceased as they had begun,
together. They were succeeded by a clanking noise, deep
down below; as if some person were dragging a heavy
chain over the casks in the wine merchant’s cellar. Scrooge
then remembered to have heard that ghosts in haunted
houses were described as dragging chains.
The cellar-door flew open with a booming sound, and
then he heard the noise much louder, on the floors below;
then coming up the stairs; then coming straight towards
his door.
‘It’s humbug still!’ said Scrooge. ‘I won’t believe it.’
His colour changed though, when, without a pause, it
came on through the heavy door, and passed into the
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room before his eyes. Upon its coming in, the dying flame
leaped up, as though it cried ‘I know him; Marley’s
Ghost!’ and fell again.
The same face: the very same. Marley in his pigtail,
usual waistcoat, tights and boots; the tassels on the latter
bristling, like his pigtail, and his coat-skirts, and the hair
upon his head. The chain he drew was clasped about his
middle. It was long, and wound about him like a tail; and
it was made (for Scrooge observed it closely) of cash-
boxes, keys, padlocks, ledgers, deeds, and heavy purses
wrought in steel. His body was transparent; so that
Scrooge, observing him, and looking through his
waistcoat, could see the two buttons on his coat behind.
Scrooge had often heard it said that Marley had no
bowels, but he had never believed it until now.
No, nor did he believe it even now. Though he looked
the phantom through and through, and saw it standing
before him; though he felt the chilling influence of its
death-cold eyes; and marked the very texture of the folded
kerchief bound about its head and chin, which wrapper he
had not observed before; he was still incredulous, and
fought against his senses.
‘How now!’ said Scrooge, caustic and cold as ever.
‘What do you want with me?’
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‘Much!’ — Marley’s voice, no doubt about it.
‘Who are you?’
‘Ask me who I was.’
‘Who were you then?’ said Scrooge, raising his voice.
‘You’re particular, for a shade.’ He was going to say ‘to a
shade,’ but substituted this, as more appropriate.
‘In life I was your partner, Jacob Marley.’
‘Can you — can you sit down?’ asked Scrooge, looking
doubtfully at him.
‘I can.’
‘Do it, then.’
Scrooge asked the question, because he didn’t know
whether a ghost so transparent might find himself in a
condition to take a chair; and felt that in the event of its
being impossible, it might involve the necessity of an
embarrassing explanation. But the ghost sat down on the
opposite side of the fireplace, as if he were quite used to it.
‘You don’t believe in me,’ observed the Ghost.
‘I don’t.’ said Scrooge.
‘What evidence would you have of my reality beyond
that of your senses?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Scrooge.
‘Why do you doubt your senses?’
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‘Because,’ said Scrooge, ‘a little thing affects them. A
slight disorder of the stomach makes them cheats. You
may be an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a
crumb of cheese, a fragment of an underdone potato.
There’s more of gravy than of grave about you, whatever
you are!’
Scrooge was not much in the habit of cracking jokes,
nor did he feel, in his heart, by any means waggish then.
The truth is, that he tried to be smart, as a means of
distracting his own attention, and keeping down his terror;
for the spectre’s voice disturbed the very marrow in his
bones.
To sit, staring at those fixed glazed eyes, in silence for a
moment, would play, Scrooge felt, the very deuce with
him. There was something very awful, too, in the spectre’s
being provided with an infernal atmosphere of its own.
Scrooge could not feel it himself, but this was clearly the
case; for though the Ghost sat perfectly motionless, its hair,
and skirts, and tassels, were still agitated as by the hot
vapour from an oven.
‘You see this toothpick?’ said Scrooge, returning
quickly to the charge, for the reason just assigned; and
wishing, though it were only for a second, to divert the
vision’s stony gaze from himself.
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‘I do,’ replied the Ghost.
‘You are not looking at it,’ said Scrooge.
‘But I see it,’ said the Ghost, ‘notwithstanding.’
‘Well!’ returned Scrooge, ‘I have but to swallow this,
and be for the rest of my days persecuted by a legion of
goblins, all of my own creation. Humbug, I tell you!
humbug!’
At this the spirit raised a frightful cry, and shook its
chain with such a dismal and appalling noise, that Scrooge
held on tight to his chair, to save himself from falling in a
swoon. But how much greater was his horror, when the
phantom taking off the bandage round its head, as if it
were too warm to wear indoors, its lower jaw dropped
down upon its breast!
Scrooge fell upon his knees, and clasped his hands
before his face.
‘Mercy!’ he said. ‘Dreadful apparition, why do you
trouble me?’
‘Man of the worldly mind!’ replied the Ghost, ‘do you
believe in me or not?’
‘I do,’ said Scrooge. ‘I must. But why do spirits walk
the earth, and why do they come to me?’
‘It is required of every man,’ the Ghost returned, ‘that
the spirit within him should walk abroad among his
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fellowmen, and travel far and wide; and if that spirit goes
not forth in life, it is condemned to do so after death. It is
doomed to wander through the world — oh, woe is me!
— and witness what it cannot share, but might have
shared on earth, and turned to happiness!’
Again the spectre raised a cry, and shook its chain and
wrung its shadowy hands.
‘You are fettered,’ said Scrooge, trembling. ‘Tell me
why?’
‘I wear the chain I forged in life,’ replied the Ghost. ‘I
made it link by link, and yard by yard; I girded it on of my
own free will, and of my own free will I wore it. Is its
pattern strange to you?’
Scrooge trembled more and more.
‘Or would you know,’ pursued the Ghost, ‘the weight
and length of the strong coil you bear yourself? It was full
as heavy and as long as this, seven Christmas Eves ago.
You have laboured on it, since. It is a ponderous chain!’
Scrooge glanced about him on the floor, in the
expectation of finding himself surrounded by some fifty or
sixty fathoms of iron cable: but he could see nothing.
‘Jacob,’ he said, imploringly. ‘Old Jacob Marley, tell me
more. Speak comfort to me, Jacob!’
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‘I have none to give,’ the Ghost replied. ‘It comes from
other regions, Ebenezer Scrooge, and is conveyed by
other ministers, to other kinds of men. Nor can I tell you
what I would. A very little more, is all permitted to me. I
cannot rest, I cannot stay, I cannot linger anywhere. My
spirit never walked beyond our counting-house — mark
me! — in life my spirit never roved beyond the narrow
limits of our money-changing hole; and weary journeys lie
before me!’
It was a habit with Scrooge, whenever he became
thoughtful, to put his hands in his breeches pockets.
Pondering on what the Ghost had said, he did so now, but
without lifting up his eyes, or getting off his knees.
‘You must have been very slow about it, Jacob,’
Scrooge observed, in a business-like manner, though with
humility and deference.
‘Slow!’ the Ghost repeated.
‘Seven years dead,’ mused Scrooge. ‘And travelling all
the time!’
‘The whole time,’ said the Ghost. ‘No rest, no peace.
Incessant torture of remorse.’
‘You travel fast?’ said Scrooge.
‘On the wings of the wind,’ replied the Ghost.
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‘You might have got over a great quantity of ground in
seven years,’ said Scrooge.
The Ghost, on hearing this, set up another cry, and
clanked its chain so hideously in the dead silence of the
night, that the Ward would have been justified in
indicting it for a nuisance.
‘Oh! captive, bound, and double-ironed,’ cried the
phantom, ‘not to know, that ages of incessant labour, by
immortal creatures, for this earth must pass into eternity
before the good of which it is susceptible is all developed.
Not to know that any Christian spirit working kindly in
its little sphere, whatever it may be, will find its mortal life
too short for its vast means of usefulness. Not to know that
no space of regret can make amends for one life’s
opportunity misused! Yet such was I! Oh! such was I!’
‘But you were always a good man of business, Jacob,’
faltered Scrooge, who now began to apply this to himself.
‘Business!’ cried the Ghost, wringing its hands again.
‘Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my
business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence,
were, all, my business. The dealings of my trade were but
a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my
business!’
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It held up its chain at arm’s length, as if that were the
cause of all its unavailing grief, and flung it heavily upon
the ground again.
‘At this time of the rolling year,’ the spectre said ‘I
suffer most. Why did I walk through crowds of fellow-
beings with my eyes turned down, and never raise them to
that blessed Star which led the Wise Men to a poor abode!
Were there no poor homes to which its light would have
conducted me!’
Scrooge was very much dismayed to hear the spectre
going on at this rate, and began to quake exceedingly.
‘Hear me!’ cried the Ghost. ‘My time is nearly gone.’
‘I will,’ said Scrooge. ‘But don’t be hard upon me!
Don’t be flowery, Jacob! Pray!’ ‘How it is that I appear
before you in a shape that you can see, I may not tell. I
have sat invisible beside you many and many a day.’
It was not an agreeable idea. Scrooge shivered, and
wiped the perspiration from his brow.
‘That is no light part of my penance,’ pursued the
Ghost. ‘I am here to-night to warn you, that you have yet
a chance and hope of escaping my fate. A chance and
hope of my procuring, Ebenezer.’
‘You were always a good friend to me,’ said Scrooge.
‘Thank ‘ee!’
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‘You will be haunted,’ resumed the Ghost, ‘by Three
Spirits.’
Scrooge’s countenance fell almost as low as the Ghost’s
had done.
‘Is that the chance and hope you mentioned, Jacob?’ he
demanded, in a faltering voice.
‘It is.’
‘I — I think I’d rather not,’ said Scrooge.
‘Without their visits,’ said the Ghost, ‘you cannot hope
to shun the path I tread. Expect the first tomorrow, when
the bell tolls One.’
‘Couldn’t I take ‘em all at once, and have it over,
Jacob?’ hinted Scrooge.
‘Expect the second on the next night at the same hour.
The third upon the next night when the last stroke of
Twelve has ceased to vibrate. Look to see me no more;
and look that, for your own sake, you remember what has
passed between us!’
When it had said these words, the spectre took its
wrapper from the table, and bound it round its head, as
before. Scrooge knew this, by the smart sound its teeth
made, when the jaws were brought together by the
bandage. He ventured to raise his eyes again, and found
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his supernatural visitor confronting him in an erect
attitude, with its chain wound over and about its arm.
The apparition walked backward from him; and at
every step it took, the window raised itself a little, so that
when the spectre reached it, it was wide open. It
beckoned Scrooge to approach, which he did. When they
were within two paces of each other, Marley’s Ghost held
up its hand, warning him to come no nearer. Scrooge
stopped.
Not so much in obedience, as in surprise and fear: for
on the raising of the hand, he became sensible of confused
noises in the air; incoherent sounds of lamentation and
regret; wailings inexpressibly sorrowful and self-accusatory.
The spectre, after listening for a moment, joined in the
mournful dirge; and floated out upon the bleak, dark
night.
Scrooge followed to the window: desperate in his
curiosity. He looked out.
The air was filled with phantoms, wandering hither and
thither in restless haste, and moaning as they went. Every
one of them wore chains like Marley’s Ghost; some few
(they might be guilty governments) were linked together;
none were free. Many had been personally known to
Scrooge in their lives. He had been quite familiar with one
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old ghost, in a white waistcoat, with a monstrous iron safe
attached to its ankle, who cried piteously at being unable
to assist a wretched woman with an infant, whom it saw
below, upon a door-step. The misery with them all was,
clearly, that they sought to interfere, for good, in human
matters, and had lost the power for ever.
Whether these creatures faded into mist, or mist
enshrouded them, he could not tell. But they and their
spirit voices faded together; and the night became as it had
been when he walked home.
Scrooge closed the window, and examined the door by
which the Ghost had entered. It was double-locked, as he
had locked it with his own hands, and the bolts were
undisturbed. He tried to say ‘Humbug!’ but stopped at the
first syllable. And being, from the emotion he had
undergone, or the fatigues of the day, or his glimpse of the
Invisible World, or the dull conversation of the Ghost, or
the lateness of the hour, much in need of repose; went
straight to bed, without undressing, and fell asleep upon
the instant.
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Stave 2: The First of the Three Spirits
When Scrooge awoke, it was so dark, that looking out
of bed, he could scarcely distinguish the transparent
window from the opaque walls of his chamber. He was
endeavouring to pierce the darkness with his ferret eyes,
when the chimes of a neighbouring church struck the four
quarters. So he listened for the hour.
To his great astonishment the heavy bell went on from
six to seven, and from seven to eight, and regularly up to
twelve; then stopped. Twelve. It was past two when he
went to bed. The clock was wrong. An icicle must have
got into the works. Twelve.
He touched the spring of his repeater, to correct this
most preposterous clock. Its rapid little pulse beat twelve:
and stopped.
‘Why, it isn’t possible,’ said Scrooge, ‘that I can have
slept through a whole day and far into another night. It
isn’t possible that anything has happened to the sun, and
this is twelve at noon.’
The idea being an alarming one, he scrambled out of
bed, and groped his way to the window. He was obliged
to rub the frost off with the sleeve of his dressing-gown
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before he could see anything; and could see very little
then. All he could make out was, that it was still very
foggy and extremely cold, and that there was no noise of
people running to and fro, and making a great stir, as there
unquestionably would have been if night had beaten off
bright day, and taken possession of the world. This was a
great relief, because ‘Three days after sight of this First of
Exchange pay to Mr. Ebenezer Scrooge on his order,’ and
so forth, would have become a mere United States
security if there were no days to count by.
Scrooge went to bed again, and thought, and thought,
and thought it over and over, and could make nothing of
it. The more he thought, the more perplexed he was; and,
the more he endeavoured not to think, the more he
thought.
Marley’s Ghost bothered him exceedingly. Every time
he resolved within himself, after mature inquiry that it was
all a dream, his mind flew back again, like a strong spring
released, to its first position, andpresented 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 hadwarned him of a visitation when the
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bell tolled one. He resolved to lie awake until the hour
was passed; and, considering that he could no more go to
sleep than go to heaven, this was, perhaps, the wisest
resolution in his power.
The quarter was so long, that he was more than once
convinced he must have sunk into a doze unconsciously,
and missed the clock. At length it broke upon his listening
ear.
‘Ding, dong!’
‘A quarter past,’ said Scrooge, counting.
‘Ding, dong!’
‘Half past,’ said Scrooge.
‘Ding, dong!’
‘A quarter to it,’ said Scrooge. ‘Ding, dong!’
‘The hour itself,’ said Scrooge triumphantly, ‘and
nothing else!’
He spoke before the hour bell sounded, which it now
did with a deep, dull, hollow, melancholy ONE. Light
flashed up in the room upon the instant, and the curtains
of his bed were drawn.
The curtains of his bed were drawn aside, I tell you, by
a hand. Not the curtains at his feet, nor the curtains at his
back, but those to which his face was addressed. The
curtains of his bed were drawn aside; and Scrooge, starting
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up into a half-recumbent attitude, found himself face to
face with the unearthly visitor who drew them: as close to
it as I am now to you, and I am standing in the spirit at
your elbow.
It was a strange figure — like a child: yet not so like a
child as like an old man, viewed through some
supernatural medium, which gave him the appearance of
having receded from the view, and being diminished to a
child’s proportions. Its hair, which hung about its neck
and down its back, was white as if with age; and yet the
face had not a wrinkle in it, and the tenderest bloom was
on the skin. The arms were very long and muscular; the
hands the same, as if its hold were of uncommon strength.
Its legs and feet, most delicately formed, were, like those
upper members, bare. It wore a tunic of the purest white,
and round its waist was bound a lustrous belt, the sheen of
which was beautiful. It held a branch of fresh green holly
in its hand; and, in singular contradiction of that wintry
emblem, had its dress trimmed with summer flowers. But
the strangest thing about it was, that from the crown of its
head there sprung a bright clear jet of light, by which all
this was visible; and which was doubtless the occasion of
its using, in its duller moments, a great extinguisher for a
cap, which it now held under its arm.
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Even this, though, when Scrooge looked at it with
increasing steadiness, was not its strangest quality. For as its
belt sparkled and glittered now in one part and now in
another, and what was light one instant, at another time
was dark, so the figure itself fluctuated in its distinctness:
being now a thing with one arm, now with one leg, now
with twenty legs, now a pair of legs without a head, now a
head without a body: of which dissolving parts, no outline
would be visible in the dense gloom wherein they melted
away. And in the very wonder of this, it would be itself
again; distinct and clear as ever.
‘Are you the Spirit, sir, whose coming was foretold to
me.’ asked Scrooge.
‘I am.’
The voice was soft and gentle. Singularly low, as if
instead of being so close beside him, it were at a distance.
‘Who, and what are you.’ Scrooge demanded.
‘I am the Ghost of Christmas Past.’
‘Long Past.’ inquired Scrooge: observant of its dwarfish
stature.
‘No. Your past.’
Perhaps, Scrooge could not have told anybody why, if
anybody could have asked him; but he had a special desire
to see the Spirit in his cap; and begged him to be covered.
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‘What.’ exclaimed the Ghost, ‘would you so soon put
out, with worldly hands, the light I give. Is it not enough
that you are one of those whose passions made this cap,
and force me through whole trains of years to wear it low
upon my brow.’
Scrooge reverently disclaimed all intention to offend or
any knowledge of having wilfully bonneted the Spirit at
any period of his life. He then made bold to inquire what
business brought him there.
‘Your welfare.’ said the Ghost.
Scrooge expressed himself much obliged, but could not
help thinking that a night of unbroken rest would have
been more conducive to that end. The Spirit must have
heard him thinking, for it said immediately:
‘Your reclamation, then. Take heed.’
It put out its strong hand as it spoke, and clasped him
gently by the arm.
‘Rise. and walk with me.’
It would have been in vain for Scrooge to plead that
the weather and the hour were not adapted to pedestrian
purposes; that bed was warm, and the thermometer a long
way below freezing; that he was clad but lightly in his
slippers, dressing-gown, and nightcap; and that he had a
cold upon him at that time. The grasp, though gentle as a
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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 liable to fall.’
‘Bear but a touch of my hand there,’ said the Spirit,
laying it upon his heart,’ and you shall be upheld in more
than this.’
As the words were spoken, they passed through the
wall, and stood upon an open country road, with fields on
either hand. The city had entirely vanished. Not a vestige
of it was to be seen. The darkness and the mist had
vanished with it, for it was a clear, cold, winter day, with
snow upon the ground.
‘Good Heaven!’ said Scrooge, clasping his hands
together, as he looked about him. ‘I was bred in this place.
I was a boy here.’
The Spirit gazed upon him mildly. Its gentle touch,
though it had been light and instantaneous, appeared still
present to the old man’s sense of feeling. He was conscious
of a thousand odours floating in the air, each one
connected with a thousand thoughts, and hopes, and joys,
and cares long, long, forgotten.
‘Your lip is trembling,’ said the Ghost. ‘And what is
that upon your cheek.’
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Scrooge muttered, with an unusual catching in his
voice, that it was a pimple; and begged the Ghost to lead
him where he would.
‘You recollect the way.’ inquired the Spirit.
‘Remember it.’ cried Scrooge with fervour; ‘I could
walk it blindfold.’
‘Strange to have forgotten it for so many years.’
observed the Ghost. ‘Let us go on.’
They walked along the road, Scrooge recognising every
gate, and post, and tree; until a little market-town
appeared in the distance, with its bridge, its church, and
winding river. Some shaggy ponies now were seen
trotting towards them with boys upon their backs, who
called to other boys in country gigs and carts, driven by
farmers. All these boys were in great spirits, and shouted to
each other, until the broad fields were so full of merry
music, that the crisp air laughed to hear it.
‘These are but shadows of the things that have been,’
said the Ghost. ‘They have no consciousness of us.’
The jocund travellers came on; and as they came,
Scrooge knew and named them every one. Why was he
rejoiced beyond all bounds to see them. Why did his cold
eye glisten, and his heart leap up as they went past. Why
was he filled with gladness when he heard them give each
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other Merry Christmas, as they parted at cross-roads and
bye-ways, for their several homes. What was merry
Christmas to Scrooge. Out upon merry Christmas. What
good had it ever done to him.
‘The school is not quite deserted,’ said the Ghost. ‘A
solitary child, neglected by his friends, is left there still.’
Scrooge said he knew it. And he sobbed.
They left the high-road, by a well-remembered lane,
and soon approached a mansion of dull red brick, with a
little weathercock-surmounted cupola, on the roof, and a
bell hanging in it. It was a large house, but one of broken
fortunes; for the spacious offices were little used, their
walls were damp and mossy, their windows broken, and
their gates decayed. Fowls clucked and strutted in the
stables; and the coach-houses and sheds were over-run
with grass. Nor was it more retentive of its ancient state,
within; for entering the dreary hall, and glancing through
the open doors of many rooms, they found them poorly
furnished, cold, and vast. There was an earthy savour in
the air, a chilly bareness in the place, which associated
itself somehow with too much getting up by candle-light,
and not too much to eat.
They went, the Ghost and Scrooge, across the hall, to a
door at the back of the house. It opened before them, and
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disclosed a long, bare, melancholy room, made barer still
by lines of plain deal forms and desks. At one of these a
lonely boy was reading near a feeble fire; and Scrooge sat
down upon a form, and wept to see his poor forgotten self
as he used to be.
Not a latent echo in the house, not a squeak and scuffle
from the mice behind the panelling, not a drip from the
half-thawed water-spout in the dull yard behind, not a
sigh among the leafless boughs of one despondent poplar,
not the idle swinging of an empty store-house door, no,
not a clicking in the fire, but fell upon the heart of
Scrooge with a softening influence, and gave a freer
passage to his tears.
The Spirit touched him on the arm, and pointed to his
younger self, intent upon his reading. Suddenly a man, in
foreign garments: wonderfully real and distinct to look at:
stood outside the window, with an axe stuck in his belt,
and leading by the bridle an ass laden with wood.
‘Why, it’s Ali Baba.’ Scrooge exclaimed in ecstasy. ‘It’s
dear old honest Ali Baba. Yes, yes, I know. One
Christmas time, when yonder solitary child was left here
all alone, he did come, for the first time, just like that.
Poor boy. And Valentine,’ said Scrooge,’ and his wild
brother, Orson; there they go. And what’s his name, who
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was put down in his drawers, asleep, at the Gate of
Damascus; don’t you see him. And the Sultan’s Groom
turned upside down by the Genii; there he is upon his
head. Serve him right. I’m glad of it. What business had he
to be married to the Princess.’
To hear Scrooge expending all the earnestness of his
nature on such subjects, in a most extraordinary voice
between laughing and crying; and to see his heightened
and excited face; would have been a surprise to his
business friends in the city, indeed.
‘There’s the Parrot.’ cried Scrooge. ‘Green body and
yellow tail, with a thing like a lettuce growing out of the
top of his head; there he is. Poor Robin Crusoe, he called
him, when he came home again after sailing round the
island. ‘Poor Robin Crusoe, where have you been, Robin
Crusoe.’ The man thought he was dreaming, but he
wasn’t. It was the Parrot, you know. There goes Friday,
running for his life to the little creek. Halloa. Hoop.
Hallo.’
Then, with a rapidity of transition very foreign to his
usual character, he said, in pity for his former self, ‘Poor
boy.’ and cried again.
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‘I wish,’ Scrooge muttered, putting his hand in his
pocket, and looking about him, after drying his eyes with
his cuff: ‘but it’s too late now.’
‘What is the matter.’ asked the Spirit.
‘Nothing,’ said Scrooge. ‘Nothing. There was a boy
singing a Christmas Carol at my door last night. I should
like to have given him something: that’s all.’
The Ghost smiled thoughtfully, and waved its hand:
saying as it did so, ‘Let us see another Christmas.’
Scrooge’s former self grew larger at the words, and the
room became a little darker and more dirty. The panels
shrunk, the windows cracked; fragments of plaster fell out
of the ceiling, and the naked laths were shown instead; but
how all this was brought about, Scrooge knew no more
than you do. He only knew that it was quite correct; that
everything had happened so; that there he was, alone
again, when all the other boys had gone home for the jolly
holidays.
He was not reading now, but walking up and down
despairingly.
Scrooge looked at the Ghost, and with a mournful
shaking of his head, glanced anxiously towards the door.
It opened; and a little girl, much younger than the boy,
came darting in, and putting her arms about his neck, and
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often kissing him, addressed him as her ‘Dear, dear
brother.’
‘I have come to bring you home, dear brother.’ said the
child, clapping her tiny hands, and bending down to
laugh. ‘To bring you home, home, home.’
‘Home, little Fan.’ returned the boy.
‘Yes.’ said the child, brimful of glee. ‘Home, for good
and all. Home, for ever and ever. Father is so much kinder
than he used to be, that home’s like Heaven. He spoke so
gently to me one dear night when I was going to bed, that
I was not afraid to ask him once more if you might come
home; and he said Yes, you should; and sent me in a
coach to bring you. And you’re to be a man.’ said the
child, opening her eyes,’ and are never to come back here;
but first, we’re to be together all the Christmas long, and
have the merriest time in all the world.’
‘You are quite a woman, little Fan.’ exclaimed the boy.
She clapped her hands and laughed, and tried to touch
his head; but being too little, laughed again, and stood on
tiptoe to embrace him. Then she began to drag him, in
her childish eagerness, towards the door; and he, nothing
loth to go, accompanied her.
A terrible voice in the hall cried. ‘Bring down Master
Scrooge’s box, there.’ and in the hall appeared the
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schoolmaster himself, who glared on Master Scrooge with
a ferocious condescension, and threw him into a dreadful
state of mind by shaking hands with him. He then
conveyed him and his sister into the veriest old well of a
shivering best-parlour that ever was seen, where the maps
upon the wall, and the celestial and terrestrial globes in the
windows, were waxy with cold. Here he produced a
decanter of curiously light wine, and a block of curiously
heavy cake, and administered instalments of those dainties
to the young people: at the same time, sending out a
meagre servant to offer a glass of something to the
postboy, who answered that he thanked the gentleman,
but if it was the same tap as he had tasted before, he had
rather not. Master Scrooge’s trunk being by this time tied
on to the top of the chaise, the children bade the
schoolmaster good-bye right willingly; and getting into it,
drove gaily down the garden-sweep: the quick wheels
dashing the hoar-frost and snow from off the dark leaves
of the evergreens like spray.
‘Always a delicate creature, whom a breath might have
withered,’ said the Ghost. ‘But she had a large heart.’
‘So she had,’ cried Scrooge. ‘You’re right. I will not
gainsay it, Spirit. God forbid.’
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‘She died a woman,’ said the Ghost, ‘and had, as I
think, children.’
‘One child,’ Scrooge returned.
‘True,’ said the Ghost. ‘Your nephew.’
Scrooge seemed uneasy in his mind; and answered
briefly, ‘Yes.’
Although they had but that moment left the school
behind them, they were now in the busy thoroughfares of
a city, where shadowy passengers passed and repassed;
where shadowy carts and coaches battle for the way, and
all the strife and tumult of a real city were. It was made
plain enough, by the dressing of the shops, that here too it
was Christmas time again; but it was evening, and the
streets were lighted up.
The Ghost stopped at a certain warehouse door, and
asked Scrooge if he knew it.
‘Know it.’ said Scrooge. ‘I was apprenticed here.’
They went in. At sight of an old gentleman in a Welsh
wig, sitting behind such a high desk, that if he had been
two inches taller he must have knocked his head against
the ceiling, Scrooge cried in great excitement:
‘Why, it’s old Fezziwig. Bless his heart; it’s Fezziwig
alive again.’
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Old Fezziwig laid down his pen, and looked up at the
clock, which pointed to the hour of seven. He rubbed his
hands; adjusted his capacious waistcoat; laughed all over
himself, from his shows to his organ of benevolence; and
called out in a comfortable, oily, rich, fat, jovial voice:
‘Yo ho, there. Ebenezer. Dick.’
Scrooge’s former self, now grown a young man, came
briskly in, accompanied by his fellow-prentice.
‘Dick Wilkins, to be sure.’ said Scrooge to the Ghost.
‘Bless me, yes. There he is. He was very much attached to
me, was Dick. Poor Dick. Dear, dear.’
‘Yo ho, my boys.’ said Fezziwig. ‘No more work to-
night. Christmas Eve, Dick. Christmas, Ebenezer. Let’s
have the shutters up,’ cried old Fezziwig, with a sharp clap
of his hands,’ before a man can say Jack Robinson.’
You wouldn’t believe how those two fellows went at
it. They charged into the street with the shutters — one,
two, three — had them up in their places — four, five, six
— barred them and pinned then — seven, eight, nine —
and came back before you could have got to twelve,
panting like race-horses.
‘Hilli-ho!’ cried old Fezziwig, skipping down from the
high desk, with wonderful agility. ‘Clear away, my lads,
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and let’s have lots of room here. Hilli-ho, Dick. Chirrup,
Ebenezer.’
Clear away. There was nothing they wouldn’t have
cleared away, or couldn’t have cleared away, with old
Fezziwig looking on. It was done in a minute. Every
movable was packed off, as if it were dismissed from
public life for evermore; the floor was swept and watered,
the lamps were trimmed, fuel was heaped upon the fire;
and the warehouse was as snug, and warm, and dry, and
bright a ball-room, as you would desire to see upon a
winter’s night.
In came a fiddler with a music-book, and went up to
the lofty desk, and made an orchestra of it, and tuned like
fifty stomach-aches. In came Mrs Fezziwig, one vast
substantial smile. In came the three Miss Fezziwigs,
beaming and lovable. In came the six young followers
whose hearts they broke. In came all the young men and
women employed in the business. In came the housemaid,
with her cousin, the baker. In came the cook, with her
brother’s particular friend, the milkman. In came the boy
from over the way, who was suspected of not having
board enough from his master; trying to hide himself
behind the girl from next door but one, who was proved
to have had her ears pulled by her mistress. In they all
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came, one after another; some shyly, some boldly, some
gracefully, some awkwardly, some pushing, some pulling;
in they all came, anyhow and everyhow. Away they all
went, twenty couples at once; hands half round and back
again the other way; down the middle and up again;
round and round in various stages of affectionate grouping;
old top couple always turning up in the wrong place; new
top couple starting off again, as soon as they got there; all
top couples at last, and not a bottom one to help them.
When this result was brought about, old Fezziwig,
clapping his hands to stop the dance, cried out,’ Well
done.’ and the fiddler plunged his hot face into a pot of
porter, especially provided for that purpose. But scorning
rest, upon his reappearance, he instantly began again,
though there were no dancers yet, as if the other fiddler
had been carried home, exhausted, on a shutter, and he
were a bran-new man resolved to beat him out of sight, or
perish.
There were more dances, and there were forfeits, and
more dances, and there was cake, and there was negus,
and there was a great piece of Cold Roast, and there was a
great piece of Cold Boiled, and there were mince-pies,
and plenty of beer. But the great effect of the evening
came after the Roast and Boiled, when the fiddler (an
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artful dog, mind. The sort of man who knew his business
better than you or I could have told it him.) struck up Sir
Roger de Coverley.’ Then old Fezziwig stood out to
dance with Mrs Fezziwig. Top couple, too; with a good
stiff piece of work cut out for them; three or four and
twenty pair of partners; people who were not to be trifled
with; people who would dance, and had no notion of
walking.
But if they had been twice as many — ah, four times
— old Fezziwig would have been a match for them, and
so would Mrs Fezziwig. As to her, she was worthy to be
his partner in every sense of the term. If that’s not high
praise, tell me higher, and I’ll use it. A positive light
appeared to issue from Fezziwig’s calves. They shone in
every part of the dance like moons. You couldn’t have
predicted, at any given time, what would have become of
them next. And when old Fezziwig and Mrs Fezziwig had
gone all through the dance; advance and retire, both hands
to your partner, bow and curtsey, corkscrew, thread-the-
needle, and back again to your place; Fezziwig cut — cut
so deftly, that he appeared to wink with his legs, and came
upon his feet again without a stagger.
When the clock struck eleven, this domestic ball broke
up. Mr and Mrs Fezziwig took their stations, one on
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either side of the door, and shaking hands with every
person individually as he or she went out, wished him or
her a Merry Christmas. When everybody had retired but
the two prentices, they did the same to them; and thus the
cheerful voices died away, and the lads were left to their
beds; which were under a counter in the back-shop.
During the whole of this time, Scrooge had acted like a
man out of his wits. His heart and soul were in the scene,
and with his former self. He corroborated everything,
remembered everything, enjoyed everything, and
underwent the strangest agitation. It was not until now,
when the bright faces of his former self and Dick were
turned from them, that he remembered the Ghost, and
became conscious that it was looking full upon him, while
the light upon its head burnt very clear.
‘A small matter,’ said the Ghost, ‘to make these silly
folks so full of gratitude.’
‘Small.’ echoed Scrooge.
The Spirit signed to him to listen to the two
apprentices, who were pouring out their hearts in praise of
Fezziwig: and when he had done so, said,
‘Why. Is it not. He has spent but a few pounds of your
mortal money: three or four perhaps. Is that so much that
he deserves this praise.’
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‘It isn’t that,’ said Scrooge, heated by the remark, and
speaking unconsciously like his former, not his latter, self.
‘It isn’t that, Spirit. He has the power to render us happy
or unhappy; to make our service light or burdensome; a
pleasure or a toil. Say that his power lies in words and
looks; in things so slight and insignificant that it is
impossible to add and count them up: what then. The
happiness he gives, is quite as great as if it cost a fortune.’
He felt the Spirit’s glance, and stopped.
‘What is the matter.’ asked the Ghost.
‘Nothing in particular,’ said Scrooge.
‘Something, I think.’ the Ghost insisted.
‘No,’ said Scrooge,’ No. I should like to be able to say
a word or two to my clerk just now. That’s all.’
His former self turned down the lamps as he gave
utterance to the wish; and Scrooge and the Ghost again
stood side by side in the open air.
‘My time grows short,’ observed the Spirit. ‘Quick.’
This was not addressed to Scrooge, or to any one
whom he could see, but it produced an immediate effect.
For again Scrooge saw himself. He was older now; a man
in the prime of life. His face had not the harsh and rigid
lines of later years; but it had begun to wear the signs of
care and avarice. There was an eager, greedy, restless
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motion in the eye, which showed the passion that had
taken root, and where the shadow of the growing tree
would fall.
He was not alone, but sat by the side of a fair young
girl in a mourning-dress: in whose eyes there were tears,
which sparkled in the light that shone out of the Ghost of
Christmas Past.
‘It matters little,’ she said, softly. ‘To you, very little.
Another idol has displaced me; and if it can cheer and
comfort you in time to come, as I would have tried to do,
I have no just cause to grieve.’
‘What Idol has displaced you.’ he rejoined.
‘A golden one.’
‘This is the even-handed dealing of the world.’ he said.
‘There is nothing on which it is so hard as poverty; and
there is nothing it professes to condemn with such severity
as the pursuit of wealth.’
‘You fear the world too much,’ she answered, gently.
‘All your other hopes have merged into the hope of being
beyond the chance of its sordid reproach. I have seen your
nobler aspirations fall off one by one, until the master-
passion, Gain, engrosses you. Have I not.’
‘What then.’ he retorted. ‘Even if I have grown so
much wiser, what then. I am not changed towards you.’
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She shook her head.
‘Am I.’
‘Our contract is an old one. It was made when we
were both poor and content to be so, until, in good
season, we could improve our worldly fortune by our
patient industry. You are changed. When it was made,
you were another man.’
‘I was a boy,’ he said impatiently.
‘Your own feeling tells you that you were not what
you are,’ she returned. ‘I am. That which promised
happiness when we were one in heart, is fraught with
misery now that we are two. How often and how keenly I
have thought of this, I will not say. It is enough that I
have thought of it, and can release you.’
‘Have I ever sought release.’
‘In words. No. Never.’
‘In what, then.’
‘In a changed nature; in an altered spirit; in another
atmosphere of life; another Hope as its great end. In
everything that made my love of any worth or value in
your sight. If this had never been between us,’ said the
girl, looking mildly, but with steadiness, upon him;’ tell
me, would you seek me out and try to win me now. Ah,
no.’
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He seemed to yield to the justice of this supposition, in
spite of himself. But he said with a struggle,’ You think
not.’
‘I would gladly think otherwise if I could,’ she
answered, ‘Heaven knows. When I have learned a Truth
like this, I know how strong and irresistible it must be.
But if you were free to-day, to-morrow, yesterday, can
even I believe that you would choose a dowerless girl —
you who, in your very confidence with her, weigh
everything by Gain: or, choosing her, if for a moment you
were false enough to your one guiding principle to do so,
do I not know that your repentance and regret would
surely follow. I do; and I release you. With a full heart, for
the love of him you once were.’
He was about to speak; but with her head turned from
him, she resumed.
‘You may — the memory of what is past half makes me
hope you will — have pain in this. A very, very brief
time, and you will dismiss the recollection of it, gladly, as
an unprofitable dream, from which it happened well that
you awoke. May you be happy in the life you have
chosen.’
She left him, and they parted.
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‘Spirit.’ said Scrooge,’ show me no more. Conduct me
home. Why do you delight to torture me.’
‘One shadow more.’ exclaimed the Ghost.
‘No more.’ cried Scrooge. ‘No more, I don’t wish to
see it. Show me no more.’
But the relentless Ghost pinioned him in both his arms,
and forced him to observe what happened next.
They were in another scene and place; a room, not
very large or handsome, but full of comfort. Near to the
winter fire sat a beautiful young girl, so like that last that
Scrooge believed it was the same, until he saw her, now a
comely matron, sitting opposite her daughter. The noise
in this room was perfectly tumultuous, for there were
more children there, than Scrooge in his agitated state of
mind could count; and, unlike the celebrated herd in the
poem, they were not forty children conducting themselves
like one, but every child was conducting itself like forty.
The consequences were uproarious beyond belief; but no
one seemed to care; on the contrary, the mother and
daughter laughed heartily, and enjoyed it very much; and
the latter, soon beginning to mingle in the sports, got
pillaged by the young brigands most ruthlessly. What
would I not have given to one of them. Though I never
could have been so rude, no, no. I wouldn’t for the
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wealth of all the world have crushed that braided hair, and
torn it down; and for the precious little shoe, I wouldn’t
have plucked it off, God bless my soul. to save my life. As
to measuring her waist in sport, as they did, bold young
brood, I couldn’t have done it; I should have expected my
arm to have grown round it for a punishment, and never
come straight again. And yet I should have dearly liked, I
own, to have touched her lips; to have questioned her,
that she might have opened them; to have looked upon
the lashes of her downcast eyes, and never raised a blush;
to have let loose waves of hair, an inch of which would be
a keepsake beyond price: in short, I should have liked, I
do confess, to have had the lightest licence of a child, and
yet to have been man enough to know its value.
But now a knocking at the door was heard, and such a
rush immediately ensued that she with laughing face and
plundered dress was borne towards it the centre of a
flushed and boisterous group, just in time to greet the
father, who came home attended by a man laden with
Christmas toys and presents. Then the shouting and the
struggling, and the onslaught that was made on the
defenceless porter. The scaling him with chairs for ladders
to dive into his pockets, despoil him of brown-paper
parcels, hold on tight by his cravat, hug him round his
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neck, pommel his back, and kick his legs in irrepressible
affection. The shouts of wonder and delight with which
the development of every package was received. The
terrible announcement that the baby had been taken in the
act of putting a doll’s frying-pan into his mouth, and was
more than suspected of having swallowed a fictitious
turkey, glued on a wooden platter. The immense relief of
finding this a false alarm. The joy, and gratitude, and
ecstasy. They are all indescribable alike. It is enough that
by degrees the children and their emotions got out of the
parlour, and by one stair at a time, up to the top of the
house; where they went to bed, and so subsided.
And now Scrooge looked on more attentively than
ever, when the master of the house, having his daughter
leaning fondly on him, sat down with her and her mother
at his own fireside; and when he thought that such
another creature, quite as graceful and as full of promise,
might have called him father, and been a spring-time in
the haggard winter of his life, his sight grew very dim
indeed.
‘Belle,’ said the husband, turning to his wife with a
smile,’ I saw an old friend of yours this afternoon.’
‘Who was it.’
‘Guess.’
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‘How can I. Tut, don’t I know.’ she added in the same
breath, laughing as he laughed. ‘Mr Scrooge.’
‘Mr Scrooge it was. I passed his office window; and as
it was not shut up, and he had a candle inside, I could
scarcely help seeing him. His partner lies upon the point of
death, I hear; and there he sat alone. Quite alone in the
world, I do believe.’
‘Spirit.’ said Scrooge in a broken voice,’ remove me
from this place.’
‘I told you these were shadows of the things that have
been,’ said the Ghost. ‘That they are what they are, do not
blame me.’
‘Remove me.’ Scrooge exclaimed,’ I cannot bear it.’
He turned upon the Ghost, and seeing that it looked
upon him with a face, in which in some strange way there
were fragments of all the faces it had shown him, wrestled
with it.
‘Leave me. Take me back. Haunt me no longer.’
In the struggle, if that can be called a struggle in which
the Ghost with no visible resistance on its own part was
undisturbed by any effort of its adversary, Scrooge
observed that its light was burning high and bright; and
dimly connecting that with its influence over him, he
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seized the extinguisher-cap, and by a sudden action
pressed it down upon its head.
The Spirit dropped beneath it, so that the extinguisher
covered its whole form; but though Scrooge pressed it
down with all his force, he could not hide the light, which
streamed from under it, in an unbroken flood upon the
ground.
He was conscious of being exhausted, and overcome by
an irresistible drowsiness; and, further, of being in his own
bedroom. He gave the cap a parting squeeze, in which his
hand relaxed; and had barely time to reel to bed, before he
sank into a heavy sleep.
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Stave 3: The Second of the Three Spirits
Awaking in the middle of a prodigiously tough snore,
and sitting up in bed to get his thoughts together, Scrooge
had no occasion to be told that the bell was again upon
the stroke of One. He felt that he was restored to
consciousness in the right nick of time, for the especial
purpose of holding a conference with the second
messenger despatched to him through Jacob Marley’s
intervention. But, finding that he turned uncomfortably
cold when he began to wonder which of his curtains this
new spectre would draw back, he put them every one
aside with his own hands, and lying down again,
established a sharp look-out all round the bed. For, he
wished to challenge the Spirit on the moment of its
appearance, and did not wish to be taken by surprise, and
made nervous.
Gentlemen of the free-and-easy sort, who plume
themselves on being acquainted with a move or two, and
being usually equal to the time-of-day, express the wide
range of their capacity for adventure by observing that
they are good for anything from pitch-and-toss to
manslaughter; between which opposite extremes, no
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doubt, there lies a tolerably wide and comprehensive range
of subjects. Without venturing for Scrooge quite as hardily
as this, I don’t mind calling on you to believe that he was
ready for a good broad field of strange appearances, and
that nothing between a baby and rhinoceros would have
astonished him very much.
Now, being prepared for almost anything, he was not
by any means prepared for nothing; and, consequently,
when the Bell struck One, and no shape appeared, he was
taken with a violent fit of trembling. Five minutes, ten
minutes, a quarter of an hour went by, yet nothing came.
All this time, he lay upon his bed, the very core and centre
of a blaze of ruddy light, which streamed upon it when
the clock proclaimed the hour; and which, being only
light, was more alarming than a dozen ghosts, as he was
powerless to make out what it meant, or would be at; and
was sometimes apprehensive that he might be at that very
moment an interesting case of spontaneous combustion,
without having the consolation of knowing it. At last,
however, he began to think — as you or I would have
thought at first; for it is always the person not in the
predicament who knows what ought to have been done in
it, and would unquestionably have done it too — at last, I
say, he began to think that the source and secret of this
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ghostly light might be in the adjoining room, from
whence, on further tracing it, it seemed to shine. This idea
taking full possession of his mind, he got up softly and
shuffled in his slippers to the door.
The moment Scrooge’s hand was on the lock, a strange
voice called him by his name, and bade him enter. He
obeyed.
It was his own room. There was no doubt about that.
But it had undergone a surprising transformation. The
walls and ceiling were so hung with living green, that it
looked a perfect grove; from every part of which, bright
gleaming berries glistened. The crisp leaves of holly,
mistletoe, and ivy reflected back the light, as if so many
little mirrors had been scattered there; and such a mighty
blaze went roaring up the chimney, as that dull
petrification of a hearth had never known in Scrooge’s
time, or Marley’s, or for many and many a winter season
gone. Heaped up on the floor, to form a kind of throne,
were turkeys, geese, game, poultry, brawn, great joints of
meat, sucking-pigs, long wreaths of sausages, mince-pies,
plum-puddings, barrels of oysters, red-hot chestnuts,
cherry-cheeked apples, juicy oranges, luscious pears,
immense twelfth-cakes, and seething bowls of punch, that
made the chamber dim with their delicious steam. In easy
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state upon this couch, there sat a jolly Giant, glorious to
see, who bore a glowing torch, in shape not unlike
Plenty’s horn, and held it up, high up, to shed its light on
Scrooge, as he came peeping round the door.
‘Come in.’ exclaimed the Ghost. ‘Come in, and know
me better, man.’
Scrooge entered timidly, and hung his head before this
Spirit. He was not the dogged Scrooge he had been; and
though the Spirit’s eyes were clear and kind, he did not
like to meet them.
‘I am the Ghost of Christmas Present,’ said the Spirit.
‘Look upon me.’
Scrooge reverently did so. It was clothed in one simple
green robe, or mantle, bordered with white fur. This
garment hung so loosely on the figure, that its capacious
breast was bare, as if disdaining to be warded or concealed
by any artifice. Its feet, observable beneath the ample folds
of the garment, were also bare; and on its head it wore no
other covering than a holly wreath, set here and there
with shining icicles. Its dark brown curls were long and
free; free as its genial face, its sparkling eye, its open hand,
its cheery voice, its unconstrained demeanour, and its
joyful air. Girded round its middle was an antique
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scabbard; but no sword was in it, and the ancient sheath
was eaten up with rust.
‘You have never seen the like of me before.’ exclaimed
the Spirit.
‘Never,’ Scrooge made answer to it.
‘Have never walked forth with the younger members
of my family; meaning (for I am very young) my elder
brothers born in these later years.’ pursued the Phantom.
‘I don’t think I have,’ said Scrooge. ‘I am afraid I have
not. Have you had many brothers, Spirit.’
‘More than eighteen hundred,’ said the Ghost.
‘A tremendous family to provide for.’ muttered
Scrooge.
The Ghost of Christmas Present rose.
‘Spirit,’ said Scrooge submissively,’ conduct me where
you will. I went forth last night on compulsion, and I
learnt a lesson which is working now. To-night, if you
have aught to teach me, let me profit by it.’
‘Touch my robe.’
Scrooge did as he was told, and held it fast.
Holly, mistletoe, red berries, ivy, turkeys, geese, game,
poultry, brawn, meat, pigs, sausages, oysters, pies,
puddings, fruit, and punch, all vanished instantly. So did
the room, the fire, the ruddy glow, the hour of night, and
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they stood in the city streets on Christmas morning, where
(for the weather was severe) the people made a rough, but
brisk and not unpleasant kind of music, in scraping the
snow from the pavement in front of their dwellings, and
from the tops of their houses, whence it was mad delight
to the boys to see it come plumping down into the road
below, and splitting into artificial little snow-storms.
The house fronts looked black enough, and the
windows blacker, contrasting with the smooth white sheet
of snow upon the roofs, and with the dirtier snow upon
the ground; which last deposit had been ploughed up in
deep furrows by the heavy wheels of carts and waggons;
furrows that crossed and recrossed each other hundreds of
times where the great streets branched off; and made
intricate channels, hard to trace in the thick yellow mud
and icy water. The sky was gloomy, and the shortest
streets were choked up with a dingy mist, half thawed, half
frozen, whose heavier particles descended in shower of
sooty atoms, as if all the chimneys in Great Britain had, by
one consent, caught fire, and were blazing away to their
dear hearts’ content. There was nothing very cheerful in
the climate or the town, and yet was there an air of
cheerfulness abroad that the clearest summer air and
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brightest summer sun might have endeavoured to diffuse
in vain.
For, the people who were shovelling away on the
housetops were jovial and full of glee; calling out to one
another from the parapets, and now and then exchanging
a facetious snowball — better-natured missile far than
many a wordy jest — laughing heartily if it went right and
not less heartily if it went wrong. The poulterers’ shops
were still half open, and the fruiterers’ were radiant in
their glory. There were great, round, round, pot-bellied
baskets of chestnuts, shaped like the waistcoats of jolly old
gentlemen, lolling at the doors, and tumbling out into the
street in their apoplectic opulence. There were ruddy,
brown-faced, broad-girthed Spanish onions, shining in the
fatness of their growth like Spanish Friars, and winking
from their shelves in wanton slyness at the girls as they
went by, and glanced demurely at the hung-up mistletoe.
There were pears and apples, clustered high in blooming
pyramids; there were bunches of grapes, made, in the
shopkeepers’ benevolence to dangle from conspicuous
hooks, that people’s mouths might water gratis as they
passed; there were piles of filberts, mossy and brown,
recalling, in their fragrance, ancient walks among the
woods, and pleasant shufflings ankle deep through
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withered leaves; there were Norfolk Biffins, squab and
swarthy, setting off the yellow of the oranges and lemons,
and, in the great compactness of their juicy persons,
urgently entreating and beseeching to be carried home in
paper bags and eaten after dinner. The very gold and silver
fish, set forth among these choice fruits in a bowl, though
members of a dull and stagnant-blooded race, appeared to
know that there was something going on; and, to a fish,
went gasping round and round their little world in slow
and passionless excitement.
The Grocers’. oh the Grocers’. nearly closed, with
perhaps two shutters down, or one; but through those
gaps such glimpses. It was not alone that the scales
descending on the counter made a merry sound, or that
the twine and roller parted company so briskly, or that the
canisters were rattled up and down like juggling tricks, or
even that the blended scents of tea and coffee were so
grateful to the nose, or even that the raisins were so
plentiful and rare, the almonds so extremely white, the
sticks of cinnamon so long and straight, the other spices so
delicious, the candied fruits so caked and spotted with
molten sugar as to make the coldest lookers-on feel faint
and subsequently bilious. Nor was it that the figs were
moist and pulpy, or that the French plums blushed in
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modest tartness from their highly-decorated boxes, or that
everything was good to eat and in its Christmas dress; but
the customers were all so hurried and so eager in the
hopeful promise of the day, that they tumbled up against
each other at the door, crashing their wicker baskets
wildly, and left their purchases upon the counter, and
came running back to fetch them, and committed
hundreds of the like mistakes, in the best humour possible;
while the Grocer and his people were so frank and fresh
that the polished hearts with which they fastened their
aprons behind might have been their own, worn outside
for general inspection, and for Christmas daws to peck at if
they chose.
But soon the steeples called good people all, to church
and chapel, and away they came, flocking through the
streets in their best clothes, and with their gayest faces.
And at the same time there emerged from scores of bye-
streets, lanes, and nameless turnings, innumerable people,
carrying their dinners to the baker’ shops. The sight of
these poor revellers appeared to interest the Spirit very
much, for he stood with Scrooge beside him in a baker’s
doorway, and taking off the covers as their bearers passed,
sprinkled incense on their dinners from his torch. And it
was a very uncommon kind of torch, for once or twice
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when there were angry words between some dinner-
carriers who had jostled each other, he shed a few drops of
water on them from it, and their good humour was
restored directly. For they said, it was a shame to quarrel
upon Christmas Day. And so it was. God love it, so it was.
In time the bells ceased, and the bakers were shut up;
and yet there was a genial shadowing forth of all these
dinners and the progress of their cooking, in the thawed
blotch of wet above each baker’s oven; where the
pavement smoked as if its stones were cooking too.
‘Is there a peculiar flavour in what you sprinkle from
your torch.’ asked Scrooge.
‘There is. My own.’
‘Would it apply to any kind of dinner on this day.’
asked Scrooge.
‘To any kindly given. To a poor one most.’
‘Why to a poor one most.’ asked Scrooge.
‘Because it needs it most.’
‘Spirit,’ said Scrooge, after a moment’s thought,’ I
wonder you, of all the beings in the many worlds about
us, should desire to cramp these people’s opportunities of
innocent enjoyment.’
‘I.’ cried the Spirit.
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‘You would deprive them of their means of dining
every seventh day, often the only day on which they can
be said to dine at all,’ said Scrooge. ‘Wouldn’t you.’
‘I.’ cried the Spirit.
‘You seek to close these places on the Seventh Day.’
said Scrooge. ‘And it comes to the same thing.’
‘I seek.’ exclaimed the Spirit.
‘Forgive me if I am wrong. It has been done in your
name, or at least in that of your family,’ said Scrooge.
‘There are some upon this earth of yours,’ returned the
Spirit,’ who lay claim to know us, and who do their deeds
of passion, pride, ill-will, hatred, envy, bigotry, and
selfishness in our name, who are as strange to us and all
our kith and kin, as if they had never lived. Remember
that, and charge their doings on themselves, not us.’
Scrooge promised that he would; and they went on,
invisible, as they had been before, into the suburbs of the
town. It was a remarkable quality of the Ghost (which
Scrooge had observed at the baker’s), that notwithstanding
his gigantic size, he could accommodate himself to any
place with ease; and that he stood beneath a low roof quite
as gracefully and like a supernatural creature, as it was
possible he could have done in any lofty hall.
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And perhaps it was the pleasure the good Spirit had in
showing off this power of his, or else it was his own kind,
generous, hearty nature, and his sympathy with all poor
men, that led him straight to Scrooge’s clerk’s; for there he
went, and took Scrooge with him, holding to his robe;
and on the threshold of the door the Spirit smiled, and
stopped to bless Bob Cratchit’s dwelling with the
sprinkling of his torch. Think of that. Bob had but fifteen
bob a-week himself; he pocketed on Saturdays but fifteen
copies of his Christian name; and yet the Ghost of
Christmas Present blessed his four-roomed house.
Then up rose Mrs Cratchit, Cratchit’s wife, dressed out
but poorly in a twice-turned gown, but brave in ribbons,
which are cheap and make a goodly show for sixpence;
and she laid the cloth, assisted by Belinda Cratchit, second
of her daughters, also brave in ribbons; while Master Peter
Cratchit plunged a fork into the saucepan of potatoes, and
getting the corners of his monstrous shirt collar (Bob’s
private property, conferred upon his son and heir in
honour of the day) into his mouth, rejoiced to find himself
so gallantly attired, and yearned to show his linen in the
fashionable Parks. And now two smaller Cratchits, boy
and girl, came tearing in, screaming that outside the
baker’s they had smelt the goose, and known it for their
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own; and basking in luxurious thoughts of sage and onion,
these young Cratchits danced about the table, and exalted
Master Peter Cratchit to the skies, while he (not proud,
although his collars nearly choked him) blew the fire, until
the slow potatoes bubbling up, knocked loudly at the
saucepan-lid to be let out and peeled.
‘What has ever got your precious father then.’ said Mrs
Cratchit. ‘And your brother, Tiny Tim. And Martha
warn’t as late last Christmas Day by half-an-hour.’
‘Here’s Martha, mother.’ said a girl, appearing as she
spoke.
‘Here’s Martha, mother.’ cried the two young
Cratchits. ‘Hurrah. There’s such a goose, Martha.’
‘Why, bless your heart alive, my dear, how late you
are.’ said Mrs Cratchit, kissing her a dozen times, and
taking off her shawl and bonnet for her with officious zeal.
‘We’d a deal of work to finish up last night,’ replied the
girl,’ and had to clear away this morning, mother.’
‘Well. Never mind so long as you are come,’ said Mrs
Cratchit. ‘Sit ye down before the fire, my dear, and have a
warm, Lord bless ye.’
‘No, no. There’s father coming,’ cried the two young
Cratchits, who were everywhere at once. ‘Hide, Martha,
hide.’
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So Martha hid herself, and in came little Bob, the
father, with at least three feet of comforter exclusive of the
fringe, hanging down before him; and his threadbare
clothes darned up and brushed, to look seasonable; and
Tiny Tim upon his shoulder. Alas for Tiny Tim, he bore a
little crutch, and had his limbs supported by an iron frame.
‘Why, where’s our Martha.’ cried Bob Cratchit,
looking round.
‘Not coming,’ said Mrs Cratchit.
‘Not coming.’ said Bob, with a sudden declension in
his high spirits; for he had been Tim’s blood horse all the
way from church, and had come home rampant. ‘Not
coming upon Christmas Day.’
Martha didn’t like to see him disappointed, if it were
only in joke; so she came out prematurely from behind
the closet door, and ran into his arms, while the two
young Cratchits hustled Tiny Tim, and bore him off into
the wash-house, that he might hear the pudding singing in
the copper.
‘And how did little Tim behave. asked Mrs Cratchit,
when she had rallied Bob on his credulity, and Bob had
hugged his daughter to his heart’s content.
‘As good as gold,’ said Bob,’ and better. Somehow he
gets thoughtful, sitting by himself so much, and thinks the
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strangest things you ever heard. He told me, coming
home, that he hoped the people saw him in the church,
because he was a cripple, and it might be pleasant to them
to remember upon Christmas Day, who made lame
beggars walk, and blind men see.’
Bob’s voice was tremulous when he told them this, and
trembled more when he said that Tiny Tim was growing
strong and hearty.
His active little crutch was heard upon the floor, and
back came Tiny Tim before another word was spoken,
escorted by his brother and sister to his stool before the
fire; and while Bob, turning up his cuffs — as if, poor
fellow, they were capable of being made more shabby —
compounded some hot mixture in a jug with gin and
lemons, and stirred it round and round and put it on the
hob to simmer; Master Peter, and the two ubiquitous
young Cratchits went to fetch the goose, with which they
soon returned in high procession.
Such a bustle ensued that you might have thought a
goose the rarest of all birds; a feathered phenomenon, to
which a black swan was a matter of course — and in truth
it was something very like it in that house. Mrs Cratchit
made the gravy (ready beforehand in a little saucepan)
hissing hot; Master Peter mashed the potatoes with
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incredible vigour; Miss Belinda sweetened up the apple-
sauce; Martha dusted the hot plates; Bob took Tiny Tim
beside him in a tiny corner at the table; the two young
Cratchits set chairs for everybody, not forgetting
themselves, and mounting guard upon their posts,
crammed spoons into their mouths, lest they should shriek
for goose before their turn came to be helped. At last the
dishes were set on, and grace was said. It was succeeded by
a breathless pause, as Mrs Cratchit, looking slowly all
along the carving-knife, prepared to plunge it in the
breast; but when she did, and when the long expected
gush of stuffing issued forth, one murmur of delight arose
all round the board, and even Tiny Tim, excited by the
two young Cratchits, beat on the table with the handle of
his knife, and feebly cried Hurrah.
There never was such a goose. Bob said he didn’t
believe there ever was such a goose cooked. Its tenderness
and flavour, size and cheapness, were the themes of
universal admiration. Eked out by apple-sauce and mashed
potatoes, it was a sufficient dinner for the whole family;
indeed, as Mrs Cratchit said with great delight (surveying
one small atom of a bone upon the dish), they hadn’t ate it
all at last. Yet every one had had enough, and the
youngest Cratchits in particular, were steeped in sage and
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onion to the eyebrows. But now, the plates being changed
by Miss Belinda, Mrs Cratchit left the room alone — too
nervous to bear witnesses — to take the pudding up and
bring it in.
Suppose it should not be done enough. Suppose it
should break in turning out. Suppose somebody should
have got over the wall of the back-yard, and stolen it,
while they were merry with the goose — a supposition at
which the two young Cratchits became livid. All sorts of
horrors were supposed.
Hallo. A great deal of steam. The pudding was out of
the copper. A smell like a washing-day. That was the
cloth. A smell like an eating-house and a pastrycook’s next
door to each other, with a laundress’s next door to that.
That was the pudding. In half a minute Mrs Cratchit
entered — flushed, but smiling proudly — with the
pudding, like a speckled cannon-ball, so hard and firm,
blazing in half of half-a-quartern of ignited brandy, and
bedight with Christmas holly stuck into the top.
Oh, a wonderful pudding. Bob Cratchit said, and
calmly too, that he regarded it as the greatest success
achieved by Mrs Cratchit since their marriage. Mrs
Cratchit said that now the weight was off her mind, she
would confess she had had her doubts about the quantity
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of flour. Everybody had something to say about it, but
nobody said or thought it was at all a small pudding for a
large family. It would have been flat heresy to do so. Any
Cratchit would have blushed to hint at such a thing.
At last the dinner was all done, the cloth was cleared,
the hearth swept, and the fire made up. The compound in
the jug being tasted, and considered perfect, apples and
oranges were put upon the table, and a shovel-full of
chestnuts on the fire. Then all the Cratchit family drew
round the hearth, in what Bob Cratchit called a circle,
meaning half a one; and at Bob Cratchit’s elbow stood the
family display of glass. Two tumblers, and a custard-cup
without a handle.
These held the hot stuff from the jug, however, as well
as golden goblets would have done; and Bob served it out
with beaming looks, while the chestnuts on the fire
sputtered and cracked noisily. Then Bob proposed:
‘A Merry Christmas to us all, my dears. God bless us.’
Which all the family re-echoed.
‘God bless us every one.’ said Tiny Tim, the last of all.
He sat very close to his father’s side upon his little stool.
Bob held his withered little hand in his, as if he loved the
child, and wished to keep him by his side, and dreaded
that he might be taken from him.
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‘Spirit,’ said Scrooge, with an interest he had never felt
before, ‘tell me if Tiny Tim will live.’
‘I see a vacant seat,’ replied the Ghost, ‘in the poor
chimney-corner, and a crutch without an owner, carefully
preserved. If these shadows remain unaltered by the
Future, the child will die.’
‘No, no,’ said Scrooge. ‘Oh, no, kind Spirit. say he will
be spared.’
‘If these shadows remain unaltered by the Future, none
other of my race,’ returned the Ghost, ‘will find him here.
What then. If he be like to die, he had better do it, and
decrease the surplus population.’
Scrooge hung his head to hear his own words quoted
by the Spirit, and was overcome with penitence and grief.
‘Man,’ said the Ghost, ‘if man you be in heart, not
adamant, forbear that wicked cant until you have
discovered What the surplus is, and Where it is. Will you
decide what men shall live, what men shall die. It may be,
that in the sight of Heaven, you are more worthless and
less fit to live than millions like this poor man’s child. Oh
God. to hear the Insect on the leaf pronouncing on the
too much life among his hungry brothers in the dust.’
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Scrooge bent before the Ghost’s rebuke, and trembling
cast his eyes upon the ground. But he raised them
speedily, on hearing his own name.
‘Mr Scrooge.’ said Bob; ‘I’ll give you Mr Scrooge, the
Founder of the Feast.’
‘The Founder of the Feast indeed.’ cried Mrs Cratchit,
reddening. ‘I wish I had him here. I’d give him a piece of
my mind to feast upon, and I hope he’d have a good
appetite for it.’
‘My dear,’ said Bob, ‘the children. Christmas Day.’
‘It should be Christmas Day, I am sure,’ said she, ‘on
which one drinks the health of such an odious, stingy,
hard, unfeeling man as Mr Scrooge. You know he is,
Robert. Nobody knows it better than you do, poor
fellow.’
‘My dear,’ was Bob’s mild answer, ‘Christmas Day.’
‘I’ll drink his health for your sake and the Day’s,’ said
Mrs Cratchit, ‘not for his. Long life to him. A merry
Christmas and a happy new year. He’ll be very merry and
very happy, I have no doubt.’
The children drank the toast after her. It was the first of
their proceedings which had no heartiness. Tiny Tim
drank it last of all, but he didn’t care twopence for it.
Scrooge was the Ogre of the family. The mention of his
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name cast a dark shadow on the party, which was not
dispelled for full five minutes.
After it had passed away, they were ten times merrier
than before, from the mere relief of Scrooge the Baleful
being done with. Bob Cratchit told them how he had a
situation in his eye for Master Peter, which would bring
in, if obtained, full five-and-sixpence weekly. The two
young Cratchits laughed tremendously at the idea of
Peter’s being a man of business; and Peter himself looked
thoughtfully at the fire from between his collars, as if he
were deliberating what particular investments he should
favour when he came into the receipt of that bewildering
income. Martha, who was a poor apprentice at a
milliner’s, then told them what kind of work she had to
do, and how many hours she worked at a stretch, and how
she meant to lie abed to-morrow morning for a good long
rest; to-morrow being a holiday she passed at home. Also
how she had seen a countess and a lord some days before,
and how the lord was much about as tall as Peter; at which
Peter pulled up his collars so high that you couldn’t have
seen his head if you had been there. All this time the
chestnuts and the jug went round and round; and by-and-
bye they had a song, about a lost child travelling in the
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snow, from Tiny Tim, who had a plaintive little voice,
and sang it very well indeed.
There was nothing of high mark in this. They were not
a handsome family; they were not well dressed; their shoes
were far from being water-proof; their clothes were
scanty; and Peter might have known, and very likely did,
the inside of a pawnbroker’s. But, they were happy,
grateful, pleased with one another, and contented with the
time; and when they faded, and looked happier yet in the
bright sprinklings of the Spirit’s torch at parting, Scrooge
had his eye upon them, and especially on Tiny Tim, until
the last.
By this time it was getting dark, and snowing pretty
heavily; and as Scrooge and the Spirit went along the
streets, the brightness of the roaring fires in kitchens,
parlours, and all sorts of rooms, was wonderful. Here, the
flickering of the blaze showed preparations for a cosy
dinner, with hot plates baking through and through before
the fire, and deep red curtains, ready to be drawn to shut
out cold and darkness. There all the children of the house
were running out into the snow to meet their married
sisters, brothers, cousins, uncles, aunts, and be the first to
greet them. Here, again, were shadows on the window-
blind of guests assembling; and there a group of handsome
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girls, all hooded and fur-booted, and all chattering at once,
tripped lightly off to some near neighbour’s house; where,
woe upon the single man who saw them enter — artful
witches, well they knew it — in a glow.
But, if you had judged from the numbers of people on
their way to friendly gatherings, you might have thought
that no one was at home to give them welcome when
they got there, instead of every house expecting company,
and piling up its fires half-chimney high. Blessings on it,
how the Ghost exulted. How it bared its breadth of breast,
and opened its capacious palm, and floated on,
outpouring, with a generous hand, its bright and harmless
mirth on everything within its reach. The very
lamplighter, who ran on before, dotting the dusky street
with specks of light, and who was dressed to spend the
evening somewhere, laughed out loudly as the Spirit
passed, though little kenned the lamplighter that he had
any company but Christmas.
And now, without a word of warning from the Ghost,
they stood upon a bleak and desert moor, where
monstrous masses of rude stone were cast about, as though
it were the burial-place of giants; and water spread itself
wheresoever it listed, or would have done so, but for the
frost that held it prisoner; and nothing grew but moss and
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furze, and coarse rank grass. Down in the west the setting
sun had left a streak of fiery red, which glared upon the
desolation for an instant, like a sullen eye, and frowning
lower, lower, lower yet, was lost in the thick gloom of
darkest night.
‘What place is this.’ asked Scrooge.
‘A place where Miners live, who labour in the bowels
of the earth,’ returned the Spirit. ‘But they know me.
See.’
A light shone from the window of a hut, and swiftly
they advanced towards it. Passing through the wall of mud
and stone, they found a cheerful company assembled
round a glowing fire. An old, old man and woman, with
their children and their children’s children, and another
generation beyond that, all decked out gaily in their
holiday attire. The old man, in a voice that seldom rose
above the howling of the wind upon the barren waste,
was singing them a Christmas song — it had been a very
old song when he was a boy — and from time to time
they all joined in the chorus. So surely as they raised their
voices, the old man got quite blithe and loud; and so
surely as they stopped, his vigour sank again.
The Spirit did not tarry here, but bade Scrooge hold his
robe, and passing on above the moor, sped — whither.
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Not to sea. To sea. To Scrooge’s horror, looking back, he
saw the last of the land, a frightful range of rocks, behind
them; and his ears were deafened by the thundering of
water, as it rolled and roared, and raged among the
dreadful caverns it had worn, and fiercely tried to
undermine the earth.
Built upon a dismal reef of sunken rocks, some league
or so from shore, on which the waters chafed and dashed,
the wild year through, there stood a solitary lighthouse.
Great heaps of sea-weed clung to its base, and storm-birds
— born of the wind one might suppose, as sea-weed of
the water — rose and fell about it, like the waves they
skimmed.
But even here, two men who watched the light had
made a fire, that through the loophole in the thick stone
wall shed out a ray of brightness on the awful sea. Joining
their horny hands over the rough table at which they sat,
they wished each other Merry Christmas in their can of
grog; and one of them: the elder, too, with his face all
damaged and scarred with hard weather, as the figure-head
of an old ship might be: struck up a sturdy song that was
like a Gale in itself.
Again the Ghost sped on, above the black and heaving
sea — on, on — until, being far away, as he told Scrooge,
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from any shore, they lighted on a ship. They stood beside
the helmsman at the wheel, the look-out in the bow, the
officers who had the watch; dark, ghostly figures in their
several stations; but every man among them hummed a
Christmas tune, or had a Christmas thought, or spoke
below his breath to his companion of some bygone
Christmas Day, with homeward hopes belonging to it.
And every man on board, waking or sleeping, good or
bad, had had a kinder word for another on that day than
on any day in the year; and had shared to some extent in
its festivities; and had remembered those he cared for at a
distance, and had known that they delighted to remember
him.
It was a great surprise to Scrooge, while listening to the
moaning of the wind, and thinking what a solemn thing it
was to move on through the lonely darkness over an
unknown abyss, whose depths were secrets as profound as
Death: it was a great surprise to Scrooge, while thus
engaged, to hear a hearty laugh. It was a much greater
surprise to Scrooge to recognise it as his own nephew’s
and to find himself in a bright, dry, gleaming room, with
the Spirit standing smiling by his side, and looking at that
same nephew with approving affability.
‘Ha, ha.’ laughed Scrooge’s nephew. ‘Ha, ha, ha.’
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If you should happen, by any unlikely chance, to know
a man more blest in a laugh than Scrooge’s nephew, all I
can say is, I should like to know him too. Introduce him
to me, and I’ll cultivate his acquaintance.
It is a fair, even-handed, noble adjustment of things,
that while there is infection in disease and sorrow, there is
nothing in the world so irresistibly contagious as laughter
and good-humour. When Scrooge’s nephew laughed in
this way: holding his sides, rolling his head, and twisting
his face into the most extravagant contortions: Scrooge’s
niece, by marriage, laughed as heartily as he. And their
assembled friends being not a bit behindhand, roared out
lustily.
‘Ha, ha. Ha, ha, ha, ha.’
‘He said that Christmas was a humbug, as I live.’ cried
Scrooge’s nephew. ‘He believed it too.’
‘More shame for him, Fred.’ said Scrooge’s niece,
indignantly. Bless those women; they never do anything
by halves. They are always in earnest.
She was very pretty: exceedingly pretty. With a
dimpled, surprised-looking, capital face; a ripe little
mouth, that seemed made to be kissed — as no doubt it
was; all kinds of good little dots about her chin, that
melted into one another when she laughed; and the
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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.
‘He’s a comical old fellow,’ said Scrooge’s nephew,’
that’s the truth: and not so pleasant as he might be.
However, his offences carry their own punishment, and I
have nothing to say against him.’
‘I’m sure he is very rich, Fred,’ hinted Scrooge’s niece.
‘At least you always tell me so.’
‘What of that, my dear.’ said Scrooge’s nephew. ‘His
wealth is of no use to him. He don’t do any good with it.
He don’t make himself comfortable with it. He hasn’t the
satisfaction of thinking — ha, ha, ha. — that he is ever
going to benefit us with it.’
‘I have no patience with him,’ observed Scrooge’s
niece. Scrooge’s niece’s sisters, and all the other ladies,
expressed the same opinion.
‘Oh, I have.’ said Scrooge’s nephew. ‘I am sorry for
him; I couldn’t be angry with him if I tried. Who suffers
by his ill whims. Himself, always. Here, he takes it into his
head to dislike us, and he won’t come and dine with us.
What’s the consequence. He don’t lose much of a dinner.’
‘Indeed, I think he loses a very good dinner,’
interrupted Scrooge’s niece. Everybody else said the same,
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and they must be allowed to have been competent judges,
because they had just had dinner; and, with the dessert
upon the table, were clustered round the fire, by
lamplight.
‘Well. I’m very glad to hear it,’ said Scrooge’s nephew,
‘because I haven’t great faith in these young housekeepers.
What do you say, Topper.’
Topper had clearly got his eye upon one of Scrooge’s
niece’s sisters, for he answered that a bachelor was a
wretched outcast, who had no right to express an opinion
on the subject. Whereat Scrooge’s niece’s sister — the
plump one with the lace tucker: not the one with the
roses — blushed.
‘Do go on, Fred,’ said Scrooge’s niece, clapping her
hands. ‘He never finishes what he begins to say. He is such
a ridiculous fellow.’
Scrooge’s nephew revelled in another laugh, and as it
was impossible to keep the infection off; though the
plump sister tried hard to do it with aromatic vinegar; his
example was unanimously followed.
‘I was only going to say,’ said Scrooge’s nephew,’ that
the consequence of his taking a dislike to us, and not
making merry with us, is, as I think, that he loses some
pleasant moments, which could do him no harm. I am
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sure he loses pleasanter companions than he can find in his
own thoughts, either in his mouldy old office, or his dusty
chambers. I mean to give him the same chance every year,
whether he likes it or not, for I pity him. He may rail at
Christmas till he dies, but he can’t help thinking better of
it — I defy him — if he finds me going there, in good
temper, year after year, and saying Uncle Scrooge, how
are you. If it only puts him in the vein to leave his poor
clerk fifty pounds, that’s something; and I think I shook
him yesterday.’
It was their turn to laugh now at the notion of his
shaking Scrooge. But being thoroughly good-natured, and
not much caring what they laughed at, so that they
laughed at any rate, he encouraged them in their
merriment, and passed the bottle joyously.
After tea. they had some music. For they were a
musical family, and knew what they were about, when
they sung a Glee or Catch, I can assure you: especially
Topper, who could growl away in the bass like a good
one, and never swell the large veins in his forehead, or get
red in the face over it. Scrooge’s niece played well upon
the harp; and played among other tunes a simple little air
(a mere nothing: you might learn to whistle it in two
minutes), which had been familiar to the child who
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fetched Scrooge from the boarding-school, as he had been
reminded by the Ghost of Christmas Past. When this strain
of music sounded, all the things that Ghost had shown
him, came upon his mind; he softened more and more;
and thought that if he could have listened to it often, years
ago, he might have cultivated the kindnesses of life for his
own happiness with his own hands, without resorting to
the sexton’s spade that buried Jacob Marley.
But they didn’t devote the whole evening to music.
After a while they played at forfeits; for it is good to be
children sometimes, and never better than at Christmas,
when its mighty Founder was a child himself. Stop. There
was first a game at blind-man’s buff. Of course there was.
And I no more believe Topper was really blind than I
believe he had eyes in his boots. My opinion is, that it was
a done thing between him and Scrooge’s nephew; and that
the Ghost of Christmas Present knew it. The way he went
after that plump sister in the lace tucker, was an outrage
on the credulity of human nature. Knocking down the
fire-irons, tumbling over the chairs, bumping against the
piano, smothering 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 you
had fallen up against him (as some of them did), on
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purpose, he would have made a feint of endeavouring to
seize you, which would have been an affront to your
understanding, and would instantly have sidled off in the
direction of the plump sister. She often cried out that it
wasn’t fair; and it really was not. But when at last, he
caught her; when, in spite of all her silken rustlings, and
her rapid flutterings past him, he got her into a corner
whence there was no escape; then his conduct was the
most execrable. For his pretending not to know her; his
pretending that it was necessary to touch her head-dress,
and further to assure himself of her identity by pressing a
certain ring upon her finger, and a certain chain about her
neck; was vile, monstrous. No doubt she told him her
opinion of it, when, another blind-man being in office,
they were so very confidential together, behind the
curtains.
Scrooge’s niece was not one of the blind-man’s buff
party, but was made comfortable with a large chair and a
footstool, in a snug corner, where the Ghost and Scrooge
were close behind her. But she joined in the forfeits, and
loved her love to admiration with all the letters of the
alphabet. Likewise at the game of How, When, and
Where, she was very great, and to the secret joy of
Scrooge’s nephew, beat her sisters hollow: though they
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were sharp girls too, as could have told you. There might
have been twenty people there, young and old, but they
all played, and so did Scrooge, for, wholly forgetting the
interest he had in what was going on, that his voice made
no sound in their ears, he sometimes came out with his
guess quite loud, and very often guessed quite right, too;
for the sharpest needle, best Whitechapel, warranted not
to cut in the eye, was not sharper than Scrooge; blunt as
he took it in his head to be.
The Ghost was greatly pleased to find him in this
mood, and looked upon him with such favour, that he
begged like a boy to be allowed to stay until the guests
departed. But this the Spirit said could not be done.
‘Here is a new game,’ said Scrooge. ‘One half hour,
Spirit, only one.’
It was a Game called Yes and No, where Scrooge’s
nephew had to think of something, and the rest must find
out what; he only answering to their questions yes or no,
as the case was. The brisk fire of questioning to which he
was exposed, elicited from him that he was thinking of an
animal, a live animal, rather a disagreeable animal, a savage
animal, an animal that growled and grunted sometimes,
and talked sometimes, and lived in London, and walked
about the streets, and wasn’t made a show of, and wasn’t
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led by anybody, and didn’t live in a menagerie, and was
never killed in a market, and was not a horse, or an ass, or
a cow, or a bull, or a tiger, or a dog, or a pig, or a cat, or a
bear. At every fresh question that was put to him, this
nephew burst into a fresh roar of laughter; and was so
inexpressibly tickled, that he was obliged to get up off the
sofa and stamp. At last the plump sister, falling into a
similar state, cried out:
‘I have found it out. I know what it is, Fred. I know
what it is.’
‘What is it.’ cried Fred.
‘It’s your Uncle Scrooge.’
Which it certainly was. Admiration was the universal
sentiment, though some objected that the reply to ‘Is it a
bear.’ ought to have been ‘Yes;’ inasmuch as an answer in
the negative was sufficient to have diverted their thoughts
from Mr Scrooge, supposing they had ever had any
tendency that way.
‘He has given us plenty of merriment, I am sure,’ said
Fred,’ and it would be ungrateful not to drink his health.
Here is a glass of mulled wine ready to our hand at the
moment; and I say, ‘Uncle Scrooge.‘‘
‘Well. Uncle Scrooge.’ they cried.
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‘A Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to the old
man, whatever he is.’ said Scrooge’s nephew. ‘He
wouldn’t take it from me, but may he have it,
nevertheless. Uncle Scrooge.’
Uncle Scrooge had imperceptibly become so gay and
light of heart, that he would have pledged the unconscious
company in return, and thanked them in an inaudible
speech, if the Ghost had given him time. But the whole
scene passed off in the breath of the last word spoken by
his nephew; and he and the Spirit were again upon their
travels.
Much they saw, and far they went, and many homes
they visited, but always with a happy end. The Spirit stood
beside sick beds, and they were cheerful; on foreign lands,
and they were close at home; by struggling men, and they
were patient in their greater hope; by poverty, and it was
rich. In almshouse, hospital, and jail, in misery’s every
refuge, where vain man in his little brief authority had not
made fast the door and barred the Spirit out, he left his
blessing, and taught Scrooge his precepts.
It was a long night, if it were only a night; but Scrooge
had his doubts of this, because the Christmas Holidays
appeared to be condensed into the space of time they
passed together. It was strange, too, that while Scrooge
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remained unaltered in his outward form, the Ghost grew
older, clearly older. Scrooge had observed this change, but
never spoke of it, until they left a children’s Twelfth Night
party, when, looking at the Spirit as they stood together in
an open place, he noticed that its hair was grey.
‘Are spirits’ lives so short.’ asked Scrooge.
‘My life upon this globe, is very brief,’ replied the
Ghost. ‘It ends to-night.’
‘To-night.’ cried Scrooge.
‘To-night at midnight. Hark. The time is drawing
near.’
The chimes were ringing the three quarters past eleven
at that moment.
‘Forgive me if I am not justified in what I ask,’ said
Scrooge, looking intently at the Spirit’s robe,’ but I see
something strange, and not belonging to yourself,
protruding from your skirts. Is it a foot or a claw.’
‘It might be a claw, for the flesh there is upon it,’ was
the Spirit’s sorrowful reply. ‘Look here.’
From the foldings of its robe, it brought two children;
wretched, abject, frightful, hideous, miserable. They knelt
down at its feet, and clung upon the outside of its
garment.
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‘Oh, Man. look here. Look, look, down here.’
exclaimed the Ghost.
They were a boy and a girl. Yellow, meagre, ragged,
scowling, wolfish; but prostrate, too, in their humility.
Where graceful youth should have filled their features out,
and touched them with its freshest tints, a stale and
shrivelled hand, like that of age, had pinched, and twisted
them, and pulled them into shreds. Where angels might
have sat enthroned, devils lurked, and glared out
menacing. No change, no degradation, no perversion of
humanity, in any grade, through all the mysteries of
wonderful creation, has monsters half so horrible and
dread.
Scrooge started back, appalled. Having them shown to
him in this way, he tried to say they were fine children,
but the words choked themselves, rather than be parties to
a lie of such enormous magnitude.
‘Spirit. are they yours.’ Scrooge could say no more.
‘They are Man’s,’ said the Spirit, looking down upon
them. ‘And they cling to me, appealing from their fathers.
This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware them
both, and all of their degree, but most of all beware this
boy, for on his brow I see that written which is Doom,
unless the writing be erased. Deny it.’ cried the Spirit,
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stretching out its hand towards the city. ‘Slander those
who tell it ye. Admit it for your factious purposes, and
make it worse. And abide the end.’
‘Have they no refuge or resource.’ cried Scrooge.
‘Are there no prisons.’ said the Spirit, turning on him
for the last time with his own words. ‘Are there no
workhouses.’ The bell struck twelve.
Scrooge looked about him for the Ghost, and saw it
not. As the last stroke ceased to vibrate, he remembered
the prediction of old Jacob Marley, and lifting up his eyes,
beheld a solemn Phantom, draped and hooded, coming,
like a mist along the ground, towards him.
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Stave 4: The Last of the Spirits
The Phantom slowly, gravely, silently approached.
When it came, Scrooge bent down upon his knee; for in
the very air through which this Spirit moved it seemed to
scatter gloom and mystery.
It was shrouded in a deep black garment, which
concealed its head, its face, its form, and left nothing of it
visible save one outstretched hand. But for this it would
have been difficult to detach its figure from the night, and
separate it from the darkness by which it was surrounded.
He felt that it was tall and stately when it came beside
him, and that its mysterious presence filled him with a
solemn dread. He knew no more, for the Spirit neither
spoke nor moved.
‘I am in the presence of the Ghost of Christmas Yet To
Come.’ said Scrooge.
The Spirit answered not, but pointed onward with its
hand.
‘You are about to show me shadows of the things that
have not happened, but will happen in the time before us,’
Scrooge pursued. ‘Is that so, Spirit.’
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The upper portion of the garment was contracted for
an instant in its folds, as if the Spirit had inclined its head.
That was the only answer he received.
Although well used to ghostly company by this time,
Scrooge feared the silent shape so much that his legs
trembled beneath him, and he found that he could hardly
stand when he prepared to follow it. The Spirit pauses a
moment, as observing his condition, and giving him time
to recover.
But Scrooge was all the worse for this. It thrilled him
with a vague uncertain horror, to know that behind the
dusky shroud, there were ghostly eyes intently fixed upon
him, while he, though he stretched his own to the utmost,
could see nothing but a spectral hand and one great heap
of black.
‘Ghost of the Future.’ he exclaimed,’ I fear you more
than any spectre I have seen. But as I know your purpose
is to do me good, and as I hope to live to be another man
from what I was, I am prepared to bear you company, and
do it with a thankful heart. Will you not speak to me.’
It gave him no reply. The hand was pointed straight
before them.
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‘Lead on.’ said Scrooge. ‘Lead on. The night is waning
fast, and it is precious time to me, I know. Lead on,
Spirit.’
The Phantom moved away as it had come towards
him. Scrooge followed in the shadow of its dress, which
bore him up, he thought, and carried him along.
They scarcely seemed to enter the city; for the city
rather seemed to spring up about them, and encompass
them of its own act. But there they were, in the heart of
it; on Change, amongst the merchants; who hurried up
and down, and chinked the money in their pockets, and
conversed in groups, and looked at their watches, and
trifled thoughtfully with their great gold seals; and so
forth, as Scrooge had seen them often.
The Spirit stopped beside one little knot of business
men. Observing that the hand was pointed to them,
Scrooge advanced to listen to their talk.
‘No,’ said a great fat man with a monstrous chin,’ I
don’t know much about it, either way. I only know he’s
dead.’
‘When did he die.’ inquired another.
‘Last night, I believe.’
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‘Why, what was the matter with him.’ asked a third,
taking a vast quantity of snuff out of a very large snuff-
box. ‘I thought he’d never die.’
‘God knows,’ said the first, with a yawn.
‘What has he done with his money.’ asked a red-faced
gentleman with a pendulous excrescence on the end of his
nose, that shook like the gills of a turkey-cock.
‘I haven’t heard,’ said the man with the large chin,
yawning again. ‘Left it to his company, perhaps. He hasn’t
left it to me. That’s all I know.’
This pleasantry was received with a general laugh.
‘It’s likely to be a very cheap funeral,’ said the same
speaker;’ for upon my life I don’t know of anybody to go
to it. Suppose we make up a party and volunteer.’
‘I don’t mind going if a lunch is provided,’ observed
the gentleman with the excrescence on his nose. ‘But I
must be fed, if I make one.’
Another laugh.
‘Well, I am the most disinterested among you, after all,’
said the first speaker,’ for I never wear black gloves, and I
never eat lunch. But I’ll offer to go, if anybody else will.
When I come to think of it, I’m not at all sure that I
wasn’t his most particular friend; for we used to stop and
speak whenever we met. Bye, bye.’
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Speakers and listeners strolled away, and mixed with
other groups. Scrooge knew the men, and looked towards
the Spirit for an explanation.
The Phantom glided on into a street. Its finger pointed
to two persons meeting. Scrooge listened again, thinking
that the explanation might lie here.
He knew these men, also, perfectly. They were men of
aye business: very wealthy, and of great importance. He
had made a point always of standing well in their esteem:
in a business point of view, that is; strictly in a business
point of view.
‘How are you.’ said one.
‘How are you.’ returned the other.
‘Well.’ said the first. ‘Old Scratch has got his own at
last, hey.’
‘So I am told,’ returned the second. ‘Cold, isn’t it.’
‘Seasonable for Christmas time. You’re not a skater, I
suppose.’
‘No. No. Something else to think of. Good morning.’
Not another word. That was their meeting, their
conversation, and their parting.
Scrooge was at first inclined to be surprised that the
Spirit should attach importance to conversations
apparently so trivial; but feeling assured that they must
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have some hidden purpose, he set himself to consider what
it was likely to be. They could scarcely be supposed to
have any bearing on the death of Jacob, his old partner, for
that was Past, and this Ghost’s province was the Future.
Nor could he think of any one immediately connected
with himself, to whom he could apply them. But nothing
doubting that to whomsoever they applied they had some
latent moral for his own improvement, he resolved to
treasure up every word he heard, and everything he saw;
and especially to observe the shadow of himself when it
appeared. For he had an expectation that the conduct of
his future self would give him the clue he missed, and
would render the solution of these riddles easy.
He looked about in that very place for his own image;
but another man stood in his accustomed corner, and
though the clock pointed to his usual time of day for
being there, he saw no likeness of himself among the
multitudes that poured in through the Porch. It gave him
little surprise, however; for he had been revolving in his
mind a change of life, and thought and hoped he saw his
new-born resolutions carried out in this.
Quiet and dark, beside him stood the Phantom, with its
outstretched hand. When he roused himself from his
thoughtful quest, he fancied from the turn of the hand,
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and its situation in reference to himself, that the Unseen
Eyes were looking at him keenly. It made him shudder,
and feel very cold.
They left the busy scene, and went into an obscure part
of the town, where Scrooge had never penetrated before,
although he recognised its situation, and its bad repute.
The ways were foul and narrow; the shops and houses
wretched; the people half-naked, drunken, slipshod, ugly.
Alleys and archways, like so many cesspools, disgorged
their offences of smell, and dirt, and life, upon the
straggling streets; and the whole quarter reeked with
crime, with filth, and misery.
Far in this den of infamous resort, there was a low-
browed, beetling shop, below a pent-house roof, where
iron, old rags, bottles, bones, and greasy offal, were
bought. Upon the floor within, were piled up heaps of
rusty keys, nails, chains, hinges, files, scales, weights, and
refuse iron of all kinds. Secrets that few would like to
scrutinise were bred and hidden in mountains of unseemly
rags, masses of corrupted fat, and sepulchres of bones.
Sitting in among the wares he dealt in, by a charcoal stove,
made of old bricks, was a grey-haired rascal, nearly seventy
years of age; who had screened himself from the cold air
without, by a frousy curtaining of miscellaneous tatters,
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hung upon a line; and smoked his pipe in all the luxury of
calm retirement.
Scrooge and the Phantom came into the presence of
this man, just as a woman with a heavy bundle slunk into
the shop. But she had scarcely entered, when another
woman, similarly laden, came in too; and she was closely
followed by a man in faded black, who was no less startled
by the sight of them, than they had been upon the
recognition of each other. After a short period of blank
astonishment, in which the old man with the pipe had
joined them, they all three burst into a laugh.
‘Let the charwoman alone to be the first.’ cried she
who had entered first. ‘Let the laundress alone to be the
second; and let the undertaker’s man alone to be the third.
Look here, old Joe, here’s a chance. If we haven’t all three
met here without meaning it.’
‘You couldn’t have met in a better place,’ said old Joe,
removing his pipe from his mouth. ‘Come into the
parlour. You were made free of it long ago, you know;
and the other two an’t strangers. Stop till I shut the door
of the shop. Ah. How it skreeks. There an’t such a rusty
bit of metal in the place as its own hinges, I believe; and
I’m sure there’s no such old bones here, as mine. Ha, ha.
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We’re all suitable to our calling, we’re well matched.
Come into the parlour. Come into the parlour.’
The parlour was the space behind the screen of rags.
The old man raked the fire together with an old stair-rod,
and having trimmed his smoky lamp (for it was night),
with the stem of his pipe, put it in his mouth again.
While he did this, the woman who had already spoken
threw her bundle on the floor, and sat down in a flaunting
manner on a stool; crossing her elbows on her knees, and
looking with a bold defiance at the other two.
‘What odds then. What odds, Mrs Dilber.’ said the
woman. ‘Every person has a right to take care of
themselves. He always did.’
‘That’s true, indeed.’ said the laundress. ‘No man more
so.’
‘Why then, don’t stand staring as if you was afraid,
woman; who’s the wiser. We’re not going to pick holes in
each other’s coats, I suppose.’
‘No, indeed.’ said Mrs Dilber and the man together.
‘We should hope not.’
‘Very well, then.’ cried the woman. ‘That’s enough.
Who’s the worse for the loss of a few things like these.
Not a dead man, I suppose.’
‘No, indeed,’ said Mrs Dilber, laughing.
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‘If he wanted to keep them after he was dead, a wicked
old screw,’ pursued the woman,’ why wasn’t he natural in
his lifetime. If he had been, he’d have had somebody to
look after him when he was struck with Death, instead of
lying gasping out his last there, alone by himself.’
‘It’s the truest word that ever was spoke,’ said Mrs
Dilber. ‘It’s a judgment on him.’
‘I wish it was a little heavier judgment,’ replied the
woman;’ and it should have been, you may depend upon
it, if I could have laid my hands on anything else. Open
that bundle, old Joe, and let me know the value of it.
Speak out plain. I’m not afraid to be the first, nor afraid
for them to see it. We know pretty well that we were
helping ourselves, before we met here, I believe. It’s no
sin. Open the bundle, Joe.’
But the gallantry of her friends would not allow of this;
and the man in faded black, mounting the breach first,
produced his plunder. It was not extensive. A seal or two,
a pencil-case, a pair of sleeve-buttons, and a brooch of no
great value, were all. They were severally examined and
appraised by old Joe, who chalked the sums he was
disposed to give for each, upon the wall, and added them
up into a total when he found there was nothing more to
come.
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‘That’s your account,’ said Joe,’ and I wouldn’t give
another sixpence, if I was to be boiled for not doing it.
Who’s next.’
Mrs Dilber was next. Sheets and towels, a little wearing
apparel, two old-fashioned silver teaspoons, a pair of
sugar-tongs, and a few boots. Her account was stated on
the wall in the same manner.
‘I always give too much to ladies. It’s a weakness of
mine, and that’s the way I ruin myself,’ said old Joe.
‘That’s your account. If you asked me for another penny,
and made it an open question, I’d repent of being so
liberal and knock off half-a-crown.’
‘And now undo my bundle, Joe,’ said the first woman.
Joe went down on his knees for the greater
convenience of opening it, and having unfastened a great
many knots, dragged out a large and heavy roll of some
dark stuff.
‘What do you call this.’ said Joe. ‘Bed-curtains.’
‘Ah.’ returned the woman, laughing and leaning
forward on her crossed arms. ‘Bed-curtains.’
‘You don’t mean to say you took them down, rings
and all, with him lying there.’ said Joe.
‘Yes I do,’ replied the woman. ‘Why not.’
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‘You were born to make your fortune,’ said Joe,’ and
you’ll certainly do it.’
‘I certainly shan’t hold my hand, when I can get
anything in it by reaching it out, for the sake of such a
man as he was, I promise you, Joe,’ returned the woman
coolly. ‘Don’t drop that oil upon the blankets, now.’
‘His blankets.’ asked Joe.
‘Whose else’s do you think.’ replied the woman. ‘He
isn’t likely to take cold without them, I dare say.’
‘I hope he didn’t die of any thing catching. Eh.’ said
old Joe, stopping in his work, and looking up.
‘Don’t you be afraid of that,’ returned the woman. ‘I
an’t so fond of his company that I’d loiter about him for
such things, if he did. Ah. you may look through that shirt
till your eyes ache; but you won’t find a hole in it, nor a
threadbare place. It’s the best he had, and a fine one too.
They’d have wasted it, if it hadn’t been for me.’
‘What do you call wasting of it.’ asked old Joe.
‘Putting it on him to be buried in, to be sure,’ replied
the woman with a laugh. ‘Somebody was fool enough to
do it, but I took it off again. If calico an’t good enough for
such a purpose, it isn’t good enough for anything. It’s
quite as becoming to the body. He can’t look uglier than
he did in that one.’
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Scrooge listened to this dialogue in horror. As they sat
grouped about their spoil, in the scanty light afforded by
the old man’s lamp, he viewed them with a detestation
and disgust, which could hardly have been greater, though
the demons, marketing the corpse itself.
‘Ha, ha.’ laughed the same woman, when old Joe,
producing a flannel bag with money in it, told out their
several gains upon the ground. ‘This is the end of it, you
see. He frightened every one away from him when he was
alive, to profit us when he was dead. Ha, ha, ha.’
‘Spirit.’ said Scrooge, shuddering from head to foot. ‘I
see, I see. The case of this unhappy man might be my
own. My life tends that way, now. Merciful Heaven, what
is this.’
He recoiled in terror, for the scene had changed, and
now he almost touched a bed: a bare, uncurtained bed: on
which, beneath a ragged sheet, there lay a something
covered up, which, though it was dumb, announced itself
in awful language.
The room was very dark, too dark to be observed with
any accuracy, though Scrooge glanced round it in
obedience to a secret impulse, anxious to know what kind
of room it was. A pale light, rising in the outer air, fell
straight upon the bed; and on it, plundered and bereft,
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unwatched, unwept, uncared for, was the body of this
man.
Scrooge glanced towards the Phantom. Its steady hand
was pointed to the head. The cover was so carelessly
adjusted that the slightest raising of it, the motion of a
finger upon Scrooge’s part, would have disclosed the face.
He thought of it, felt how easy it would be to do, and
longed to do it; but had no more power to withdraw the
veil than to dismiss the spectre at his side.
Oh cold, cold, rigid, dreadful Death, set up thine altar
here, and dress it with such terrors as thou hast at thy
command: for this is thy dominion. But of the loved,
revered, and honoured head, thou canst not turn one hair
to thy dread purposes, or make one feature odious. It is
not that the hand is heavy and will fall down when
released; it is not that the heart and pulse are still; but that
the hand was open, generous, and true; the heart brave,
warm, and tender; and the pulse a man’s. Strike, Shadow,
strike. And see his good deeds springing from the wound,
to sow the world with life immortal.
No voice pronounced these words in Scrooge’s ears,
and yet he heard them when he looked upon the bed. He
thought, if this man could be raised up now, what would
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be his foremost thoughts. Avarice, hard-dealing, griping
cares. They have brought him to a rich end, truly.
He lay, in the dark empty house, with not a man, a
woman, or a child, to say that he was kind to me in this or
that, and for the memory of one kind word I will be kind
to him. A cat was tearing at the door, and there was a
sound of gnawing rats beneath the hearth-stone. What
they wanted in the room of death, and why they were so
restless and disturbed, Scrooge did not dare to think.
‘Spirit.’ he said,’ this is a fearful place. In leaving it, I
shall not leave its lesson, trust me. Let us go.’
Still the Ghost pointed with an unmoved finger to the
head.
‘I understand you,’ Scrooge returned,’ and I would do
it, if I could. But I have not the power, Spirit. I have not
the power.’
Again it seemed to look upon him.
‘If there is any person in the town, who feels emotion
caused by this man’s death,’ said Scrooge quite agonised,
‘show that person to me, Spirit, I beseech you.’
The Phantom spread its dark robe before him for a
moment, like a wing; and withdrawing it, revealed a room
by daylight, where a mother and her children were.
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She was expecting some one, and with anxious
eagerness; for she walked up and down the room; started
at every sound; looked out from the window; glanced at
the clock; tried, but in vain, to work with her needle; and
could hardly bear the voices of the children in their play.
At length the long-expected knock was heard. She
hurried to the door, and met her husband; a man whose
face was careworn and depressed, though he was young.
There was a remarkable expression in it now; a kind of
serious delight of which he felt ashamed, and which he
struggled to repress.
He sat down to the dinner that had been boarding for
him by the fire; and when she asked him faintly what
news (which was not until after a long silence), he
appeared embarrassed how to answer.
‘Is it good.’ she said, ‘or bad?’ — to help him.
‘Bad,’ he answered.
‘We are quite ruined.’
‘No. There is hope yet, Caroline.’
‘If he relents,’ she said, amazed, ‘there is. Nothing is
past hope, if such a miracle has happened.’
‘He is past relenting,’ said her husband. ‘He is dead.’
She was a mild and patient creature if her face spoke
truth; but she was thankful in her soul to hear it, and she
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said so, with clasped hands. She prayed forgiveness the
next moment, and was sorry; but the first was the emotion
of her heart.
‘What the half-drunken woman whom I told you of
last night, said to me, when I tried to see him and obtain a
week’s delay; and what I thought was a mere excuse to
avoid me; turns out to have been quite true. He was not
only very ill, but dying, then.’
‘To whom will our debt be transferred.’
‘I don’t know. But before that time we shall be ready
with the money; and even though we were not, it would
be a bad fortune indeed to find so merciless a creditor in
his successor. We may sleep to-night with light hearts,
Caroline.’
Yes. Soften it as they would, their hearts were lighter.
The children’s faces, hushed and clustered round to hear
what they so little understood, were brighter; and it was a
happier house for this man’s death. The only emotion that
the Ghost could show him, caused by the event, was one
of pleasure.
‘Let me see some tenderness connected with a death,’
said Scrooge;’ or that dark chamber, Spirit, which we left
just now, will be for ever present to me.’
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The Ghost conducted him through several streets
familiar to his feet; and as they went along, Scrooge
looked here and there to find himself, but nowhere was he
to be seen. They entered poor Bob Cratchit’s house; the
dwelling he had visited before; and found the mother and
the children seated round the fire.
Quiet. Very quiet. The noisy little Cratchits were as
still as statues in one corner, and sat looking up at Peter,
who had a book before him. The mother and her
daughters were engaged in sewing. But surely they were
very quiet.
‘And he took a child, and set him in the midst of
them.’
Where had Scrooge heard those words. He had not
dreamed them. The boy must have read them out, as he
and the Spirit crossed the threshold. Why did he not go
on.
The mother laid her work upon the table, and put her
hand up to her face.
‘The colour hurts my eyes,’ she said.
The colour. Ah, poor Tiny Tim.
‘They’re better now again,’ said Cratchit’s wife. ‘It
makes them weak by candle-light; and I wouldn’t show
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weak eyes to your father when he comes home, for the
world. It must be near his time.’
‘Past it rather,’ Peter answered, shutting up his book.
‘But I think he has walked a little slower than he used,
these few last evenings, mother.’
They were very quiet again. At last she said, and in a
steady, cheerful voice, that only faltered once:
‘I have known him walk with — I have known him
walk with Tiny Tim upon his shoulder, very fast indeed.’
‘And so have I,’ cried Peter. ‘Often.’
‘And so have I,’ exclaimed another. So had all.
‘But he was very light to carry,’ she resumed, intent
upon her work,’ and his father loved him so, that it was
no trouble: no trouble. And there is your father at the
door.’
She hurried out to meet him; and little Bob in his
comforter — he had need of it, poor fellow — came in.
His tea was ready for him on the hob, and they all tried
who should help him to it most. Then the two young
Cratchits got upon his knees and laid, each child a little
cheek, against his face, as if they said,’ Don’t mind it,
father. Don’t be grieved.’
Bob was very cheerful with them, and spoke pleasantly
to all the family. He looked at the work upon the table,
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and praised the industry and speed of Mrs Cratchit and the
girls. They would be done long before Sunday, he said.
‘Sunday. You went to-day, then, Robert.’ said his wife.
‘Yes, my dear,’ returned Bob. ‘I wish you could have
gone. It would have done you good to see how green a
place it is. But you’ll see it often. I promised him that I
would walk there on a Sunday. My little, little child.’ cried
Bob. ‘My little child.’
He broke down all at once. He couldn’t help it. If he
could have helped it, he and his child would have been
farther apart perhaps than they were.
He left the room, and went up-stairs into the room
above, which was lighted cheerfully, and hung with
Christmas. There was a chair set close beside the child,
and there were signs of some one having been there,
lately. Poor Bob sat down in it, and when he had thought
a little and composed himself, he kissed the little face. He
was reconciled to what had happened, and went down
again quite happy.
They drew about the fire, and talked; the girls and
mother working still. Bob told them of the extraordinary
kindness of Mr Scrooge’s nephew, whom he had scarcely
seen but once, and who, meeting him in the street that
day, and seeing that he looked a little -’ just a little down
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you know,’ said Bob, inquired what had happened to
distress him. ‘On which,’ said Bob,’ for he is the
pleasantest-spoken gentleman you ever heard, I told him.
‘I am heartily sorry for it, Mr Cratchit,’ he said,’ and
heartily sorry for your good wife.’ By the bye, how he
ever knew that, I don’t know.’
‘Knew what, my dear.’
‘Why, that you were a good wife,’ replied Bob.
‘Everybody knows that.’ said Peter.
‘Very well observed, my boy.’ cried Bob. ‘I hope they
do. ‘Heartily sorry,’ he said,’ for your good wife. If I can
be of service to you in any way,’ he said, giving me his
card,’ that’s where I live. Pray come to me.’ Now, it
wasn’t,’ cried Bob,’ for the sake of anything he might be
able to do for us, so much as for his kind way, that this
was quite delightful. It really seemed as if he had known
our Tiny Tim, and felt with us.’
‘I’m sure he’s a good soul.’ said Mrs Cratchit.
‘You would be surer of it, my dear,’ returned Bob,’ if
you saw and spoke to him. I shouldn’t be at all surprised -
mark what I say. — if he got Peter a better situation.’
‘Only hear that, Peter,’ said Mrs Cratchit.
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‘And then,’ cried one of the girls,’ Peter will be
keeping company with some one, and setting up for
himself.’
‘Get along with you.’ retorted Peter, grinning.
‘It’s just as likely as not,’ said Bob,’ one of these days;
though there’s plenty of time for that, my dear. But
however and when ever we part from one another, I am
sure we shall none of us forget poor Tiny Tim — shall we
— or this first parting that there was among us.’
‘Never, father.’ cried they all.
‘And I know,’ said Bob,’ I know, my dears, that when
we recollect how patient and how mild he was; although
he was a little, little child; we shall not quarrel easily
among ourselves, and forget poor Tiny Tim in doing it.’
‘No, never, father.’ they all cried again.
‘I am very happy,’ said little Bob,’ I am very happy.’
Mrs Cratchit kissed him, his daughters kissed him, the
two young Cratchits kissed him, and Peter and himself
shook hands. Spirit of Tiny Tim, thy childish essence was
from God.
‘Spectre,’ said Scrooge,’ something informs me that our
parting moment is at hand. I know it, but I know not
how. Tell me what man that was whom we saw lying
dead.’
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The Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come conveyed him,
as before — though at a different time, he thought:
indeed, there seemed no order in these latter visions, save
that they were in the Future — into the resorts of business
men, but showed him not himself. Indeed, the Spirit did
not stay for anything, but went straight on, as to the end
just now desired, until besought by Scrooge to tarry for a
moment.
‘This courts,’ said Scrooge,’ through which we hurry
now, is where my place of occupation is, and has been for
a length of time. I see the house. Let me behold what I
shall be, in days to come.’
The Spirit stopped; the hand was pointed elsewhere.
‘The house is yonder,’ Scrooge exclaimed. ‘Why do
you point away.’
The inexorable finger underwent no change.
Scrooge hastened to the window of his office, and
looked in. It was an office still, but not his. The furniture
was not the same, and the figure in the chair was not
himself. The Phantom pointed as before.
He joined it once again, and wondering why and
whither he had gone, accompanied it until they reached
an iron gate. He paused to look round before entering.
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A churchyard. Here, then, the wretched man whose
name he had now to learn, lay underneath the ground. It
was a worthy place. Walled in by houses; overrun by grass
and weeds, the growth of vegetation’s death, not life;
choked up with too much burying; fat with repleted
appetite. A worthy place.
The Spirit stood among the graves, and pointed down
to One. He advanced towards it trembling. The Phantom
was exactly as it had been, but he dreaded that he saw new
meaning in its solemn shape.
‘Before I draw nearer to that stone to which you
point,’ said Scrooge, ‘answer me one question. Are these
the shadows of the things that Will be, or are they
shadows of things that May be, only.’
Still the Ghost pointed downward to the grave by
which it stood.
‘Men’s courses will foreshadow certain ends, to which,
if persevered in, they must lead,’ said Scrooge. ‘But if the
courses be departed from, the ends will change. Say it is
thus with what you show me.’
The Spirit was immovable as ever.
Scrooge crept towards it, trembling as he went; and
following the finger, read upon the stone of the neglected
grave his own name, Ebenezer Scrooge.
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‘Am I that man who lay upon the bed.’ he cried, upon
his knees.
The finger pointed from the grave to him, and back
again.
‘No, Spirit. Oh no, no.’
The finger still was there.
‘Spirit.’ he cried, tight clutching at its robe,’ hear me. I
am not the man I was. I will not be the man I must have
been but for this intercourse. Why show me this, if I am
past all hope.’
For the first time the hand appeared to shake.
‘Good Spirit,’ he pursued, as down upon the ground he
fell before it:’ Your nature intercedes for me, and pities
me. Assure me that I yet may change these shadows you
have shown me, by an altered life.’
The kind hand trembled.
‘I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it
all the year. I will live in the Past, the Present, and the
Future. The Spirits of all Three shall strive within me. I
will not shut out the lessons that they teach. Oh, tell me I
may sponge away the writing on this stone.’
In his agony, he caught the spectral hand. It sought to
free itself, but he was strong in his entreaty, and detained
it. The Spirit, stronger yet, repulsed him.
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Holding up his hands in a last prayer to have his fate
aye reversed, he saw an alteration in the Phantom’s hood
and dress. It shrunk, collapsed, and dwindled down into a
bedpost.
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Stave 5: The End of It
Yes! and the bedpost was his own. The bed was his
own, the room was his own. Best and happiest of all, the
Time before him was his own, to make amends in!
‘I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future.’
Scrooge repeated, as he scrambled out of bed. ‘The Spirits
of all Three shall strive within me. Oh Jacob Marley.
Heaven, and the Christmas Time be praised for this. I say
it on my knees, old Jacob, on my knees.’
He was so fluttered and so glowing with his good
intentions, that his broken voice would scarcely answer to
his call. He had been sobbing violently in his conflict with
the Spirit, and his face was wet with tears.
‘They are not torn down.’ cried Scrooge, folding one
of his bed-curtains in his arms,’ they are not torn down,
rings and all. They are here — I am here — the shadows
of the things that would have been, may be dispelled.
They will be. I know they will.’
His hands were busy with his garments all this time;
turning them inside out, putting them on upside down,
tearing them, mislaying them, making them parties to
every kind of extravagance.
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‘I don’t know what to do.’ cried Scrooge, laughing and
crying in the same breath; and making a perfect Laocoon
of himself with his stockings. ‘I am as light as a feather, I
am as happy as an angel, I am as merry as a schoolboy. I
am as giddy as a drunken man. A merry Christmas to
everybody. A happy New Year to all the world. Hallo
here. Whoop. Hallo.’
He had frisked into the sitting-room, and was now
standing there: perfectly winded.
‘There’s the saucepan that the gruel was in.’ cried
Scrooge, starting off again, and going round the fireplace.
‘There’s the door, by which the Ghost of Jacob Marley
entered. There’s the corner where the Ghost of Christmas
Present, sat. There’s the window where I saw the
wandering Spirits. It’s all right, it’s all true, it all happened.
Ha ha ha.’
Really, for a man who had been out of practice for so
many years, it was a splendid laugh, a most illustrious
laugh. The father of a long, long line of brilliant laughs.
‘I don’t know what day of the month it is.’ said
Scrooge. ‘I don’t know how long I’ve been among the
Spirits. I don’t know anything. I’m quite a baby. Never
mind. I don’t care. I’d rather be a baby. Hallo. Whoop.
Hallo here.’
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He was checked in his transports by the churches
ringing out the lustiest peals he had ever heard. Clash,
clang, hammer; ding, dong, bell. Bell, dong, ding;
hammer, clang, clash. Oh, glorious, glorious.
Running to the window, he opened it, and put out his
head. No fog, no mist; clear, bright, jovial, stirring, cold;
cold, piping for the blood to dance to; Golden sunlight;
Heavenly sky; sweet fresh air; merry bells. Oh, glorious.
Glorious.
‘What’s to-day.’ cried Scrooge, calling downward to a
boy in Sunday clothes, who perhaps had loitered in to
look about him.
‘Eh.’ returned the boy, with all his might of wonder.
‘What’s to-day, my fine fellow.’ said Scrooge.
‘To-day.’ replied the boy. ‘Why, Christmas Day.’
‘It’s Christmas Day.’ said Scrooge to himself. ‘I haven’t
missed it. The Spirits have done it all in one night. They
can do anything they like. Of course they can. Of course
they can. Hallo, my fine fellow.’
‘Hallo.’ returned the boy.
‘Do you know the Poulterer’s, in the next street but
one, at the corner.’ Scrooge inquired.
‘I should hope I did,’ replied the lad.
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‘An intelligent boy.’ said Scrooge. ‘A remarkable boy.
Do you know whether they’ve sold the prize Turkey that
was hanging up there — Not the little prize Turkey: the
big one.’
‘What, the one as big as me.’ returned the boy.
‘What a delightful boy.’ said Scrooge. ‘It’s a pleasure to
talk to him. Yes, my buck.’
‘It’s hanging there now,’ replied the boy.
‘Is it.’ said Scrooge. ‘Go and buy it.’
‘Walk-er.’ exclaimed the boy.
‘No, no,’ said Scrooge, ‘I am in earnest. Go and buy it,
and tell them to bring it here, that I may give them the
direction where to take it. Come back with the man, and
I’ll give you a shilling. Come back with him in less than
five minutes and I’ll give you half-a-crown.’
The boy was off like a shot. He must have had a steady
hand at a trigger who could have got a shot off half so fast.
‘I’ll send it to Bon Cratchit’s.’ whispered Scrooge,
rubbing his hands, and splitting with a laugh. ‘He shan’t
know who sends it. It’s twice the size of Tiny Tim. Joe
Miller never made such a joke as sending it to Bob’s will
be.’
The hand in which he wrote the address was not a
steady one, but write it he did, somehow, and went
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down-stairs to open the street door, ready for the coming
of the poulterer’s man. As he stood there, waiting his
arrival, the knocker caught his eye.
‘I shall love it, as long as I live.’ cried Scrooge, patting
it with his hand. ‘I scarcely ever looked at it before. What
an honest expression it has in its face. It’s a wonderful
knocker. — Here’s the Turkey. Hallo. Whoop. How are
you. Merry Christmas.’
It was a Turkey. He never could have stood upon his
legs, that bird. He would have snapped them short off in a
minute, like sticks of sealing-wax.
‘Why, it’s impossible to carry that to Camden Town,’
said Scrooge. ‘You must have a cab.’
The chuckle with which he said this, and the chuckle
with which he paid for the Turkey, and the chuckle with
which he paid for the cab, and the chuckle with which he
recompensed the boy, were only to be exceeded by the
chuckle with which he sat down breathless in his chair
again, and chuckled till he cried.
Shaving was not an easy task, for his hand continued to
shake very much; and shaving requires attention, even
when you don’t dance while you are at it. But if he had
cut the end of his nose off, he would have put a piece of
sticking-plaster over it, and been quite satisfied.
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He dressed himself all in his best, and at last got out
into the streets. The people were by this time pouring
forth, as he had seen them with the Ghost of Christmas
Present; and walking with his hands behind him, Scrooge
regarded every one with a delighted smile. He looked so
irresistibly pleasant, in a word, that three or four good-
humoured fellows said,’ Good morning, sir. A merry
Christmas to you.’ And Scrooge said often afterwards, that
of all the blithe sounds he had ever heard, those were the
blithest in his ears.
He had not gone far, when coming on towards him he
beheld the portly gentleman, who had walked into his
counting-house the day before, and said,’ Scrooge and
Marley’s, I believe.’ It sent a pang across his heart to think
how this old gentleman would look upon him when they
met; but he knew what path lay straight before him, and
he took it.
‘My dear sir,’ said Scrooge, quickening his pace, and
taking the old gentleman by both his hands. ‘How do you
do. I hope you succeeded yesterday. It was very kind of
you. A merry Christmas to you, sir.’
‘Mr Scrooge.’
‘Yes,’ said Scrooge. ‘That is my name, and I fear it may
not be pleasant to you. Allow me to ask your pardon. And
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will you have the goodness’ — here Scrooge whispered in
his ear.
‘Lord bless me.’ cried the gentleman, as if his breath
were taken away. ‘My dear Mr Scrooge, are you serious.’
‘If you please,’ said Scrooge. ‘Not a farthing less. A
great many back-payments are included in it, I assure you.
Will you do me that favour.’
‘My dear sir,’ said the other, shaking hands with him. ‘I
don’t know what to say to such munificence.’
‘Don’t say anything please,’ retorted Scrooge. ‘Come
and see me. Will you come and see me.’
‘I will.’ cried the old gentleman. And it was clear he
meant to do it.
‘Thank you,’ said Scrooge. ‘I am much obliged to you.
I thank you fifty times. Bless you.’
He went to church, and walked about the streets, and
watched the people hurrying to and fro, and patted
children on the head, and questioned beggars, and looked
down into the kitchens of houses, and up to the windows,
and found that everything could yield him pleasure. He
had never dreamed that any walk — that anything —
could give him so much happiness. In the afternoon he
turned his steps towards his nephew’s house.
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He passed the door a dozen times, before he had the
courage to go up and knock. But he made a dash, and did
it:
‘Is your master at home, my dear.’ said Scrooge to the
girl. Nice girl. Very.
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Where is he, my love.’ said Scrooge.
‘He’s in the dining-room, sir, along with mistress. I’ll
show you up-stairs, if you please.’
‘Thank you. He knows me,’ said Scrooge, with his
hand already on the dining-room lock. ‘I’ll go in here, my
dear.’
He turned it gently, and sidled his face in, round the
door. They were looking at the table (which was spread
out in great array); for these young housekeepers are
always nervous on such points, and like to see that
everything is right.
‘Fred.’ said Scrooge.
Dear heart alive, how his niece by marriage started.
Scrooge had forgotten, for the moment, about her sitting
in the corner with the footstool, or he wouldn’t have
done it, on any account.
‘Why bless my soul.’ cried Fred,’ who’s that.’
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‘It’s I. Your uncle Scrooge. I have come to dinner.
Will you let me in, Fred.’
Let him in. It is a mercy he didn’t shake his arm off. He
was at home in five minutes. Nothing could be heartier.
His niece looked just the same. So did Topper when he
came. So did the plump sister when she came. So did
every one when they came. Wonderful party, wonderful
games, wonderful unanimity, wonderful happiness.
But he was early at the office next morning. Oh, he
was early there. If he could only be there first, and catch
Bob Cratchit coming late. That was the thing he had set
his heart upon.
And he did it; yes, he did. The clock struck nine. No
Bob. A quarter past. No Bob. He was full eighteen
minutes and a half behind his time. Scrooge sat with his
door wide open, that he might see him come into the
Tank.
His hat was off, before he opened the door; his
comforter too. He was on his stool in a jiffy; driving away
with his pen, as if he were trying to overtake nine o’clock.
‘Hallo.’ growled Scrooge, in his accustomed voice, as
near as he could feign it. ‘What do you mean by coming
here at this time of day.’
‘I am very sorry, sir,’ said Bob. ‘I am behind my time.’
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‘You are.’ repeated Scrooge. ‘Yes. I think you are. Step
this way, sir, if you please.’
‘It’s only once a year, sir,’ pleaded Bob, appearing from
the Tank. ‘It shall not be repeated. I was making rather
merry yesterday, sir.’
‘Now, I’ll tell you what, my friend,’ said Scrooge,’ I am
not going to stand this sort of thing any longer. And
therefore,’ he continued, leaping from his stool, and giving
Bob such a dig in the waistcoat that he staggered back into
the Tank again;’ and therefore I am about to raise your
salary.’
Bob trembled, and got a little nearer to the ruler. He
had a momentary idea of knocking Scrooge down with it,
holding him, and calling to the people in the court for
help and a strait-waistcoat.
‘A merry Christmas, Bob,’ said Scrooge, with an
earnestness that could not be mistaken, as he clapped him
on the back. ‘A merrier Christmas, Bob, my good fellow,
than I have given you for many a year. I’ll raise your
salary, and endeavour to assist your struggling family, and
we will discuss your affairs this very afternoon, over a
Christmas bowl of smoking bishop, Bob. Make up the
fires, and buy another coal-scuttle before you dot another
i, Bob Cratchit.’
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Scrooge was better than his word. He did it all, and
infinitely more; and to Tiny Tim, who did not die, he was
a second father. He became as good a friend, as good a
master, and as good a man, as the good old city knew, or
any other good old city, town, or borough, in the good
old world. Some people laughed to see the alteration in
him, but he let them laugh, and little heeded them; for he
was wise enough to know that nothing ever happened on
this globe, for good, at which some people did not have
their fill of laughter in the outset; and knowing that such
as these would be blind anyway, he thought it quite as
well that they should wrinkle up their eyes in grins, as
have the malady in less attractive forms. His own heart
laughed: and that was quite enough for him.
He had no further intercourse with Spirits, but lived
upon the Total Abstinence Principle, ever afterwards; and
it was always said of him, that he knew how to keep
Christmas well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge.
May that be truly said of us, and all of us! And so, as Tiny
Tim observed, God bless Us, Every One!
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