AC C

C D

P : 1843
S : :// . .

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The combined qualities of the realist and the idealist which Dickens
possessed to a remarkable degree, together with his naturally jovial
attitude toward life in general, seem to have given him a remarkably
happy feeling toward Christmas, though the privations and hardships
of his boyhood could have allowed him but little real experience with
this day of days.
Dickens gave his first formal expression to his Christmas thoughts
in his series of small books, the first of which was the famous
"Christmas Carol," the one perfect chrysolite. The success of the
book was immediate. Thackeray wrote of it: "Who can listen to
objections regarding such a book as this? It seems to me a national
benefit, and to every man or woman who reads it, a personal
kindness."
This volume was put forth in a very attractive manner, with
illustrations by John Leech, who was the first artist to make these
characters live, and his drawings were varied and spirited.
There followed upon this four others: "The Chimes," "The Cricket
on the Hearth," "The Battle of Life," and "The Haunted Man," with
illustrations on their first appearance by Doyle, Maclise, and others.
The five are known to-day as the "Christmas Books." Of them all the
"Carol" is the best known and loved, and "The Cricket on the
Hearth," although third in the series, is perhaps next in point of
popularity, and is especially familiar to Americans through Joseph
Jefferson's characterisation of Caleb Plummer.
Dickens seems to have put his whole self into these glowing little
stories. Whoever sees but a clever ghost story in the"Christmas
Carol" misses its chief charm and lesson, for there is a different
meaning in the movements of Scrooge and his attendant spirits. A
new life is brought to Scrooge when he, "running to his window,
opened it and put out his head. No fog, no mist; clear, bright, jovial,
stirring cold; cold, piping for the blood to dance to; Golden sun-light;
Heavenly sky; sweet fresh air; merry bells. Oh, glorious! Glorious!"
All this brightness has its attendant shadow, and deep from the
childish heart comes that true note of pathos, the ever memorable
toast of Tiny Tim, "God bless Us, Every One!" "The Cricket on the
Hearth" strikes a different note. Charmingly, poetically, the sweet
chirping of the little cricket is associated with human feelings and
actions, and at the crisis of the story decides the fate and fortune of
the carrier and his wife.
Dickens's greatest gift was characterization, and no English writer,
save Shakespeare, has drawn so many and so varied characters. It
would be as absurd to interpret all of these as caricatures as to deny
Dickens his great and varied powers of creation. Dickens
exaggerated many of his comic and satirical characters, as was his
right, for caricature and satire are very closely related, while
exaggeration is the very essence of comedy. But there remains a
host of characters marked by humour and pathos. Yet the pictorial
presentation of Dickens's characters has ever tended toward the
grotesque. The interpretations in this volume aim to eliminate the
grosser phases of the caricature in favour of the more human. If the
interpretations seem novel, if Scrooge be not as he has been
pictured, it is because a more human Scrooge was desired—a
Scrooge not wholly bad, a Scrooge of a better heart, a Scrooge to
whom the resurrection described in this story was possible. It has
been the illustrator's whole aim to make these people live in some
form more fully consistent with their types.

George Alfred Williams.

Chatham, N.J.
 C 1M ’ G

Marley was dead, to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about

that. The register of his burial was signed by the clergyman, the
clerk, the undertaker, and the chief mourner. Scrooge signed it. And
Scrooge's name was good upon 'Change for anything he chose to
put his hand to. Old Marley was as dead as a door-nail.
Mind! I don't mean to say that I know, of my own knowledge, what
there is particularly dead about a door-nail. I might have been
inclined, myself, to regard a coffin-nail as the deadest piece of
ironmongery in the trade. But the wisdom of our ancestors is in the
simile; and my unhallowed hands shall not disturb it, or the Country's
done for. You will, therefore, permit me to repeat, emphatically, that
Marley was as dead as a door-nail.
Scrooge knew he was dead? Of course he did. How could it be
otherwise? Scrooge and he were partners for I don't know how many
years. Scrooge was his sole executor, his sole administrator, his sole
assign, his sole residuary legatee, his sole friend, and sole mourner.
And even Scrooge was not so dreadfully cut up by the sad event, but
that he was an excellent man of business on the very day of the
funeral, and solemnised it with an undoubted bargain.
The mention of Marley's funeral brings me back to the point I
started from. There is no doubt that Marley was dead. This must be
distinctly understood, or nothing wonderful can come of the story I
am going to relate. If we were not perfectly convinced that Hamlet's
Father died before the play began, there would be nothing more
remarkable in his taking a stroll at night, in an easterly wind, upon his
own ramparts, than there would be in any other middle-aged
gentleman rashly turning out after dark in a breezy spot—say St.
Paul's Church-yard, for instance—literally to astonish his son's weak
mind.
Scrooge never painted out Old Marley's name. There it stood,
years afterwards, above the warehouse door: Scrooge and Marley.
The firm was known as Scrooge and Marley. Sometimes people new
to the business called Scrooge Scrooge, and sometimes Marley, but
he answered to both names. It was all the same to him.
Oh! but he was a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone, Scrooge! a
squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old
sinner! Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck
out generous fire; secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an
oyster. The cold within him froze his old features, nipped his pointed
nose, shrivelled his cheek, stiffened his gait; made his eyes red, his
thin lips blue; and spoke out shrewdly in his grating voice. A frosty
rime was on his head, and on his eyebrows, and his wiry chin. He
carried his own low temperature always about with him; he iced his
office in the dog-days; and didn't thaw it one degree at Christmas.
External heat and cold had little influence on Scrooge. No warmth
could warm, no wintry weather chill him. No wind that blew was
bitterer than he, no falling snow was more intent upon its purpose,
no pelting rain less open to entreaty. Foul weather didn't know where
to have him. The heaviest rain, and snow, and hail, and sleet could
boast of the advantage over him in only one respect. They often
"came down" handsomely and Scrooge never did.
Nobody ever stopped him in the street to say, with gladsome
looks, "My dear Scrooge, how are you? When will you come to see
me?" No beggars implored him to bestow a trifle, no children asked
him what it was o'clock, no man or woman ever once in all his life
inquired the way to such and such a place, of Scrooge. Even the
blind men's dogs appeared to know him; and, when they saw him
coming on, would tug their owners into doorways and up courts; and
then would wag their tails as though they said, "No eye at all is better
than an evil eye, dark master!"
But what did Scrooge care? It was the very thing he liked. To edge
his way along the crowded paths of life, warning all human sympathy
to keep its distance, was what the knowing ones call "nuts" to
Scrooge.
 Once upon a time—of all the good days in the year, on Christmas
Eve—old Scrooge sat busy in his counting-house. It was cold, bleak,
biting weather: foggy withal: and he could hear the people in the
court outside go wheezing up and down, beating their hands upon
their breasts, and stamping their feet upon the pavement stones to
warm them. The City clocks had only just gone three, but it was quite
dark already—it had not been light all day—and candles were flaring
in the windows of the neighbouring offices, like ruddy smears upon
the palpable brown air. The fog came pouring in at every chink and
keyhole, and was so dense without, that, although the court was of
the narrowest, the houses opposite were mere phantoms. To see the
dingy cloud come drooping down, obscuring everything, one might
have thought that nature lived hard by and was brewing on a large
scale.
The door of Scrooge's counting-house was open, that he might
keep his eye upon his clerk, who in a dismal little cell beyond, a sort
of tank, was copying letters. Scrooge had a very small fire, but the
clerk's fire was so very much smaller that it looked like one coal. But
he couldn't replenish it, for Scrooge kept the coal-box in his own
room; and so surely as the clerk came in with the shovel, the master
predicted that it would be necessary for them to part. Wherefore the
clerk put on his white comforter, and tried to warm himself at the
candle; in which effort, not being a man of strong imagination, he
failed.
"A merry Christmas, uncle! God save you!" cried a cheerful voice.
It was the voice of Scrooge's nephew, who came upon him so
quickly that this was the first intimation he had of his approach.
"Bah!" said Scrooge. "Humbug!"
He had so heated himself with rapid walking in the fog and frost,
this nephew of Scrooge's, that he was all in a glow; his face was
ruddy and handsome; his eyes sparkled, and his breath smoked
again.
"Christmas a humbug, uncle!" said Scrooge's nephew. "You don't
mean that, I am sure?"
"I do," said Scrooge. "Merry Christmas! What right have you to be
merry? What reason have you to be merry? You're poor enough."
 "Come, then," returned the nephew gaily. "What right have you to
be dismal? What reason have you to be morose? You're rich
enough."
Scrooge, having no better answer ready on the spur of the
moment, said, "Bah!" again; and followed it up with "Humbug!"
"Don't be cross, uncle!" said the nephew.
"A Merry Christmas, uncle! God save you!" cried a cheerful voice.
"What else can I be," returned the uncle, "when I live in such a
world of fools as this? Merry Christmas! Out upon merry Christmas!
What's Christmas-time to you but a time for paying bills without
money; a time for finding yourself a year older, and not an hour
richer; a time for balancing your books, and having every item in 'em
through a round dozen of months presented dead against you? If I
could work my will," said Scrooge indignantly, "every idiot who goes
about with 'Merry Christmas' on his lips should be boiled with his
own pudding, and buried with a stake of holly through his heart. He
should!"
"Uncle!" pleaded the nephew.
"Nephew!" returned the uncle sternly, "keep Christmas in your own
way, and let me keep it in mine."
"Keep it!" repeated Scrooge's nephew. "But you don't keep it."
"Let me leave it alone, then," said Scrooge. "Much good may it do
you! Much good it has ever done you!"
"There are many things from which I might have derived good, by
which I have not profited, I dare say," returned the nephew;
"Christmas among the rest. But I am sure I have always thought of
Christmas-time, when it has come round—apart from the veneration
due to its sacred name and origin, if anything belonging to it can be
apart from that—as a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable,
pleasant time; the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the
year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their
shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they
really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of
creatures bound on other journeys. And therefore, uncle, though it
has never put a scrap of gold or silver in my pocket, I believe that
it has done me good, and will do me good; and I say, God bless it!"
 The clerk in the tank involuntarily applauded. Becoming
immediately sensible of the impropriety, he poked the fire, and
extinguished the last frail spark for ever.
"Let me hear another sound from you," said Scrooge, "and you'll
keep your Christmas by losing your situation! You're quite a powerful
speaker, sir," he added, turning to his nephew. "I wonder you don't
go into Parliament."
"Don't be angry, uncle. Come! Dine with us to-morrow."
Scrooge said that he would see him——Yes, indeed he did. He
went the whole length of the expression, and said that he would see
him in that extremity first.
"But why?" cried Scrooge's nephew. "Why?"
"Why did you get married?" said Scrooge.
"Because I fell in love."
"Because you fell in love!" growled Scrooge, as if that were the
only one thing in the world more ridiculous than a merry Christmas.
"Good afternoon!"
"Nay, uncle, but you never came to see me before that happened.
Why give it as a reason for not coming now?"
"Good afternoon," said Scrooge.
"I want nothing from you; I ask nothing of you; why cannot we be
friends?"
"Good afternoon!" said Scrooge.
"I am sorry, with all my heart, to find you so resolute. We have
never had any quarrel to which I have been a party. But I have made
the trial in homage to Christmas, and I'll keep my Christmas humour
to the last. So A Merry Christmas, uncle!"
"Good afternoon," said Scrooge.
"And A Happy New Year!"
"Good afternoon!" said Scrooge.
His nephew left the room without an angry word, notwithstanding.
He stopped at the outer door to bestow the greetings of the season
on the clerk, who, cold as he was, was warmer than Scrooge; for he
returned them cordially.
"There's another fellow," muttered Scrooge, who overheard him:
"my clerk, with fifteen shillings a week, and a wife and family, talking
about a merry Christmas. I'll retire to Bedlam."
 This lunatic, in letting Scrooge's nephew out, had let two other
people in. They were portly gentlemen, pleasant to behold, and now
stood, with their hats off, in Scrooge's office. They had books and
papers in their hands, and bowed to him.
"Scrooge and Marley's, I believe," said one of the gentlemen,
referring to his list. "Have I the pleasure of addressing Mr. Scrooge,
or Mr. Marley?"
"Mr. Marley has been dead these seven years," Scrooge replied.
"He died seven years ago, this very night."
"We have no doubt his liberality is well represented by his
surviving partner," said the gentleman, presenting his credentials.
It certainly was; for they had been two kindred spirits. At the
ominous word "liberality" Scrooge frowned, and shook his head, and
handed the credentials back.
"At this festive season of the year, Mr. Scrooge," said the
gentleman, taking up a pen, "it is more than usually desirable that we
should make some slight provision for the poor and destitute, who
suffer greatly at the present time. Many thousands are in want of
common necessaries; hundreds of thousands are in want of
common comforts, sir."
"Are there no prisons?" asked Scrooge.
"Plenty of prisons," said the gentleman, laying down the pen
again.
"And the Union workhouses?" demanded Scrooge. "Are they still
in operation?"
"They are. Still," returned the gentleman, "I wish I could say they
were not."
"The Treadmill and the Poor Law are in full vigour, then?" said
Scrooge.
"Both very busy, sir."
"Oh! I was afraid, from what you said at first, that something had
occurred to stop them in their useful course," said Scrooge. "I am
very glad to hear it."
"Under the impression that they scarcely furnish Christian cheer of
mind or body to the multitude," returned the gentleman, "a few of us
are endeavouring to raise a fund to buy the Poor some meat and
drink, and means of warmth. We choose this time, because it is a
time, of all others, when Want is keenly felt, and Abundance rejoices.
What shall I put you down for?"
"Nothing!" Scrooge replied.
"You wish to be anonymous?"
"I wish to be left alone," said Scrooge. "Since you ask me what I
wish, gentlemen, that is my answer. I don't make merry myself at
Christmas, and I can't afford to make idle people merry. I help to
support the establishments I have mentioned—they cost enough;
and those who are badly off must go there."
"Many can't go there; and many would rather die."
"If they would rather die," said Scrooge, "they had better do it, and
decrease the surplus population. Besides—excuse me—I don't know
that."
"But you might know it," observed the gentleman.
"It's not my business," Scrooge returned. "It's enough for a man to
understand his own business, and not to interfere with other
people's. Mine occupies me constantly. Good afternoon, gentlemen!"
Seeing clearly that it would be useless to pursue their point, the
gentlemen withdrew. Scrooge resumed his labours with an improved
opinion of himself, and in a more facetious temper than was usual
with him.
Meanwhile the fog and darkness thickened so, that people ran
about with flaring links, proffering their services to go before horses
in carriages, and conduct them on their way. The ancient tower of a
church, whose gruff old bell was always peeping slily down at
Scrooge out of a Gothic window in the wall, became invisible, and
struck the hours and quarters in the clouds, with tremulous vibrations
afterwards, as if its teeth were chattering in its frozen head up there.
The cold became intense. In the main street, at the corner of the
court, some labourers were repairing the gas-pipes, and had lighted
a great fire in a brazier, round which a party of ragged men and boys
were gathered: warming their hands and winking their eyes before
the blaze in rapture. The water-plug being left in solitude, its
overflowings suddenly congealed, and turned to misanthropic ice.
The brightness of the shops, where holly sprigs and berries crackled
in the lamp heat of the windows, made pale faces ruddy as they
passed. Poulterers' and grocers' trades became a splendid joke: a
glorious pageant, with which it was next to impossible to believe that
such dull principles as bargain and sale had anything to do. The Lord
Mayor, in the stronghold of the mighty Mansion House, gave orders
to his fifty cooks and butlers to keep Christmas as a Lord Mayor's
household should; and even the little tailor, whom he had fined five
shillings on the previous Monday for being drunk and blood-thirsty in
the streets, stirred up to-morrow's pudding in his garret, while his
lean wife and the baby sallied out to buy the beef.
Foggier yet, and colder! Piercing, searching, biting cold. If the
good St. Dunstan had but nipped the Evil Spirit's nose with a touch
of such weather as that, instead of using his familiar weapons, then
indeed he would have roared to lusty purpose. The owner of one
scant young nose, gnawed and mumbled by the hungry cold as
bones are gnawed by dogs, stooped down at Scrooge's keyhole to
regale him with a Christmas carol; but, at the first sound of

"God bless you, merry gentleman,

May nothing you dismay!"

Scrooge seized the ruler with such energy of action, that the
singer fled in terror, leaving the keyhole to the fog, and even more
congenial frost.
At length the hour of shutting up the counting-house arrived. With
an ill-will Scrooge dismounted from his stool, and tacitly admitted the
fact to the expectant clerk in the tank, who instantly snuffed his
candle out, and put on his hat.
"You'll want all day to-morrow, I suppose?" said Scrooge.
"If quite convenient, sir."
"It's not convenient," said Scrooge, "and it's not fair. If I was to stop
half-a-crown for it, you'd think yourself ill used, I'll be bound?"
The clerk smiled faintly.
"And yet," said Scrooge, "you don't think me ill used when I pay a
day's wages for no work."
The clerk observed that it was only once a year.
"A poor excuse for picking a man's pocket every twenty-fifth of
December!" said Scrooge, buttoning his great-coat to the chin. "But I
suppose you must have the whole day. Be here all the earlier next
morning."
The clerk promised that he would; and Scrooge walked out with a
growl. The office was closed in a twinkling, and the clerk, with the
long ends of his white comforter dangling below his waist (for he
boasted no great-coat), went down a slide on Cornhill, at the end of
a lane of boys, twenty times, in honour of its being Christmas-eve,
and then ran home to Camden Town as hard as he could pelt, to
play at blindman's buff.
Scrooge took his melancholy dinner in his usual melancholy
tavern; and having read all the newspapers, and beguiled the rest of
the evening with his banker's book, went home to bed. He lived in
chambers which had once belonged to his deceased partner. They
were a gloomy suite of rooms, in a lowering pile of building up a
yard, where it had so little business to be, that one could scarcely
help fancying it must have run there when it was a young house,
playing at hide-and-seek with other houses, and have forgotten the
way out again. It was old enough now, and dreary enough; for
nobody lived in it but Scrooge, the other rooms being all let out as
offices. The yard was so dark that even Scrooge, who knew its every
stone, was fain to grope with his hands. The fog and frost so hung
about the black old gateway of the house, that it seemed as if the
Genius of the Weather sat in mournful meditation on the threshold.
Now, it is a fact that there was nothing at all particular about the
knocker on the door, except that it was very large. It is also a fact
that Scrooge had seen it, night and morning, during his whole
residence in that place; also that Scrooge had as little of what is
called fancy about him as any man in the City of London, even
including—which is a bold word—the corporation, aldermen, and
livery. Let it also be borne in mind that Scrooge had not bestowed
one thought on Marley since his last mention of his seven-years'-
dead partner that afternoon. And then let any man explain to me, if
he can, how it happened that Scrooge, having his key in the lock of
the door, saw in the knocker, without its undergoing any intermediate
process of change—not a knocker, but Marley's face.
Marley's face. It was not in impenetrable shadow, as the other
objects in the yard were, but had a dismal light about it, like a bad
lobster in a dark cellar. It was not angry or ferocious, but looked at
Scrooge as Marley used to look: with ghostly spectacles turned up
on its ghostly forehead. The hair was curiously stirred, as if by breath
of hot air; and, though the eyes were wide open, they were perfectly
motionless. That, and its livid colour, made it horrible; but its horror
seemed to be in spite of the face, and beyond its control, rather than
a part of its own expression.
As Scrooge looked fixedly at this phenomenon, it was a knocker
again.
To say that he was not startled, or that his blood was not
conscious of a terrible sensation to which it had been a stranger from
infancy, would be untrue. But he put his hand upon the key he had
relinquished, turned it sturdily, walked in, and lighted his candle.
He did pause, with a moment's irresolution, before he shut the
door; and he did look cautiously behind it first, as if he half expected
to be terrified with the sight of Marley's pigtail sticking out into the
hall. But there was nothing on the back of the door, except the
screws and nuts that held the knocker on, so he said, "Pooh, pooh!"
and closed it with a bang.
The sound resounded through the house like thunder. Every room
above, and every cask in the wine merchant's cellars below,
appeared to have a separate peal of echoes of its own. Scrooge was
not a man to be frightened by echoes. He fastened the door, and
walked across the hall, and up the stairs: slowly, too: trimming his
candle as he went.
You may talk vaguely about driving a coach and six up a good old
flight of stairs, or through a bad young Act of Parliament; but I mean
to say you might have got a hearse up that staircase, and taken it
broadwise, with the splinter-bar towards the wall, and the door
towards the balustrades: and done it easy. There was plenty of width
for that, and room to spare; which is perhaps the reason why
Scrooge thought he saw a locomotive hearse going on before him in
the gloom. Half-a-dozen gas-lamps out of the street wouldn't have
lighted the entry too well, so you may suppose that it was pretty dark
with Scrooge's dip.
Up Scrooge went, not caring a button for that. Darkness is cheap,
and Scrooge liked it. But, before he shut his heavy door, he walked
through his rooms to see that all was right. He had just enough
recollection of the face to desire to do that.
Sitting-room, bedroom, lumber-room. All as they should be.
Nobody under the table, nobody under the sofa; a small fire in the
grate; spoon and basin ready; and the little saucepan of gruel
(Scrooge had a cold in his head) upon the hob. Nobody under the
bed; nobody in the closet; nobody in his dressing-gown, which was
hanging up in a suspicious attitude against the wall. Lumber-room as
usual. Old fire-guard, old shoes, two fish baskets, washing-stand on
three legs, and a poker.
Quite satisfied, he closed his door, and locked himself in; double
locked himself in, which was not his custom. Thus secured against
surprise, he took off his cravat; put on his dressing-gown and
slippers, and his nightcap; and sat down before the fire to take his
gruel.
It was a very low fire indeed; nothing on such a bitter night. He
was obliged to sit close to it, and brood over it, before he could
extract the least sensation of warmth from such a handful of fuel.
The fire-place was an old one, built by some Dutch merchant long
ago, and paved all round with quaint Dutch tiles, designed to
illustrate the Scriptures. There were Cains and Abels, Pharaoh's
daughters, Queens of Sheba, Angelic messengers descending
through the air on clouds like feather beds, Abrahams, Belshazzars,
Apostles putting off to sea in butter-boats, hundreds of figures to
attract his thoughts; and yet that face of Marley, seven years dead,
came like the ancient Prophet's rod, and swallowed up the whole. If
each smooth tile had been a blank at first, with power to shape some
picture on its surface from the disjointed fragments of his thoughts,
there would have been a copy of old Marley's head on every one.
"Humbug!" said Scrooge; and walked across the room.
After several turns he sat down again. As he threw his head back
in the chair, his glance happened to rest upon a bell, a disused bell,
that hung in the room, and communicated, for some purpose now
forgotten, with a chamber in the highest story of the building. It was
with great astonishment, and with a strange, inexplicable dread, that,
as he looked, he saw this bell begin to swing. It swung so softly in
the outset that it scarcely made a sound; but soon it rang out loudly,
and so did every bell in the house.
This might have lasted half a minute, or a minute, but it seemed an
hour. The bells ceased, as they had begun, together. They were
succeeded by a clanking noise, deep down below, as if some person
were dragging a heavy chain over the casks in the wine merchant's
cellar. Scrooge then remembered to have heard that ghosts in
haunted houses were described as dragging chains.
The cellar door flew open with a booming sound, and then he
heard the noise much louder on the floors below; then coming up the
stairs; then coming straight towards his door.
"It's humbug still!" said Scrooge. "I won't believe it."
His colour changed, though, when, without a pause, it came on
through the heavy door, and passed into the room before his eyes.
Upon its coming in, the dying flame leaped up, as though it cried, "I
know him! Marley's Ghost!" and fell again.
The same face: the very same. Marley in his pigtail, usual
waistcoat, tights, and boots; the tassels on the latter bristling, like his
pigtail, and his coat-skirts, and the hair upon his head. The chain he
drew was clasped about his middle. It was long, and wound about
him like a tail; and it was made (for Scrooge observed it closely) of
cash-boxes, keys, padlocks, ledgers, deeds, and heavy purses
wrought in steel. His body was transparent; so that Scrooge,
observing him, and looking through his waistcoat, could see the two
buttons on his coat behind.
Scrooge had often heard it said that Marley had no bowels, but he
had never believed it until now.
No, nor did he believe it even now. Though he looked the phantom
through and through, and saw it standing before him; though he felt
the chilling influence of its death-cold eyes; and marked the very
texture of the folded kerchief bound about its head and chin, which
wrapper he had not observed before; he was still incredulous, and
fought against his senses.
"How now!" said Scrooge, caustic and cold as ever. "What do you
want with me?"
"Much!"—Marley's voice, no doubt about it.
"Who are you?"
 "Ask me who I was."
"Who were you, then?" said Scrooge, raising his voice. "You're
particular, for a shade." He was going to say "to a shade," but
substituted this, as more appropriate.
"In life I was your partner, Jacob Marley."
"Can you—can you sit down?" asked Scrooge, looking doubtfully
at him.
"I can."
"Do it, then."
Scrooge asked the question, because he didn't know whether a
ghost so transparent might find himself in a condition to take a chair;
and felt that, in the event of its being impossible, it might involve the
necessity of an embarrassing explanation. But the Ghost sat down
on the opposite side of the fire-place, as if he were quite used to it.
"You don't believe in me," observed the Ghost.
"I don't," said Scrooge.
"What evidence would you have of my reality beyond that of your
own senses?"
"I don't know," said Scrooge.
"Why do you doubt your senses?"
"Because," said Scrooge, "a little thing affects them. A slight
disorder of the stomach makes them cheats. You may be an
undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a
fragment of an underdone potato. There's more of gravy than of
grave about you, whatever you are!"
Scrooge was not much in the habit of cracking jokes, nor did he
feel in his heart by any means waggish then. The truth is, that he
tried to be smart, as a means of distracting his own attention, and
keeping down his terror; for the spectre's voice disturbed the very
marrow in his bones.
To sit staring at those fixed glazed eyes in silence, for a moment,
would play, Scrooge felt, the very deuce with him. There was
something very awful, too, in the spectre's being provided with an
infernal atmosphere of his own. Scrooge could not feel it himself, but
this was clearly the case; for though the Ghost sat perfectly
motionless, its hair, and skirts, and tassels were still agitated as by
the hot vapour from an oven.
 "You see this toothpick?" said Scrooge, returning quickly to the
charge, for the reason just assigned; and wishing, though it were
only for a second, to divert the vision's stony gaze from himself.
"I do," replied the Ghost.
"You are not looking at it," said Scrooge.
"But I see it," said the Ghost, "notwithstanding."
"Well!" returned Scrooge, "I have but to swallow this, and be for
the rest of my days persecuted by a legion of goblins, all of my own
creation. Humbug, I tell you; humbug!"
At this the spirit raised a frightful cry, and shook its chain with such
a dismal and appalling noise, that Scrooge held on tight to his chair,
to save himself from falling in a swoon. But how much greater was
his horror when the phantom, taking off the bandage round his head,
as if it were too warm to wear indoors, its lower jaw dropped down
upon its breast!
Scrooge fell upon his knees, and clasped his hands before his
face.
"Mercy!" he said. "Dreadful apparition, why do you trouble me?"
"Man of the worldly mind!" replied the Ghost, "do you believe in me
or not?"
"I do," said Scrooge. "I must. But why do spirits walk the earth, and
why do they come to me?"
To sit staring at those fixed glazed eyes in silence, for a moment,
would play, Scrooge felt, the very deuce with him.
"It is required of every man," the Ghost returned, "that the spirit
within him should walk abroad among his fellow-men, and travel far
and wide; and, if that spirit goes not forth in life, it is condemned to
do so after death. It is doomed to wander through the world—oh,
woe is me!—and witness what it cannot share, but might have
shared on earth, and turned to happiness!"
Again the spectre raised a cry, and shook its chain and wrung its
shadowy hands.
"You are fettered," said Scrooge, trembling. "Tell me why?"
"I wear the chain I forged in life," replied the Ghost. "I made it link
by link, and yard by yard; I girded it on of my own free-will, and of my
own free-will I wore it. Is its pattern strange to you?"
Scrooge trembled more and more.
 "Or would you know," pursued the Ghost, "the weight and length of
the strong coil you bear yourself? It was full as heavy and as long as
this, seven Christmas-eves ago. You have laboured on it since. It is a
ponderous chain!"
Scrooge glanced about him on the floor, in the expectation of
finding himself surrounded by some fifty or sixty fathoms of iron
cable, but he could see nothing.
"Jacob!" he said imploringly. "Old Jacob Marley, tell me more!
Speak comfort to me, Jacob!"
"I have none to give," the Ghost replied. "It comes from other
regions, Ebenezer Scrooge, and is conveyed by other ministers, to
other kinds of men. Nor can I tell you what I would. A very little more
is all permitted to me. I cannot rest, I cannot stay, I cannot linger
anywhere. My spirit never walked beyond our counting-house—mark
me;—in life my spirit never roved beyond the narrow limits of our
money-changing hole; and weary journeys lie before me!"
It was a habit with Scrooge, whenever he became thoughtful, to
put his hands in his breeches pockets. Pondering on what the Ghost
had said, he did so now, but without lifting up his eyes, or getting off
his knees.
"You must have been very slow about it, Jacob,"
Scrooge observed in a business-like manner, though with humility
and deference.
"Slow!" the Ghost repeated.
"Seven years dead," mused Scrooge. "And travelling all the time?"
"The whole time," said the Ghost. "No rest, no peace. Incessant
torture of remorse."
"You travel fast?" said Scrooge.
"On the wings of the wind," replied the Ghost.
"You might have got over a great quantity of ground in seven
years," said Scrooge.
The Ghost, on hearing this, set up another cry, and clanked its
chain so hideously in the dead silence of the night, that the Ward
would have been justified in indicting it for a nuisance.
"Oh! captive, bound, and double-ironed," cried the phantom, "not
to know that ages of incessant labour, by immortal creatures, for this
earth must pass into eternity before the good of which it is
susceptible is all developed! Not to know that any Christian spirit
working kindly in its little sphere, whatever it may be, will find its
mortal life too short for its vast means of usefulness! Not to know
that no space of regret can make amends for one life's opportunities
misused! Yet such was I! Oh, such was I!"
"But you were always a good man of business, Jacob," faltered
Scrooge, who now began to apply this to himself.
"Business!" cried the Ghost, wringing its hands again. "Mankind
was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity,
mercy, forbearance, and benevolence were, all, my business. The
dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive
ocean of my business!"
It held up its chain at arm's length, as if that were the cause of all
its unavailing grief, and flung it heavily upon the ground again.
"At this time of the rolling year," the spectre said, "I suffer most.
Why did I walk through crowds of fellow-beings with my eyes turned
down, and never raise them to that blessed Star which led the Wise
Men to a poor abode? Were there no poor homes to which its light
would have conducted me?"
Scrooge was very much dismayed to hear the spectre going on at
this rate, and began to quake exceedingly.
"Hear me!" cried the Ghost. "My time is nearly gone."
"I will," said Scrooge. "But don't be hard upon me! Don't be
flowery, Jacob! Pray!"
"How it is that I appear before you in a shape that you can see, I
may not tell. I have sat invisible beside you many and many a day."
It was not an agreeable idea. Scrooge shivered, and wiped the
perspiration from his brow.
"That is no light part of my penance," pursued the Ghost. "I am
here to-night to warn you that you have yet a chance and hope of
escaping my fate. A chance and hope of my procuring, Ebenezer."
"You were always a good friend to me," said Scrooge. "Thankee!"
"You will be haunted," resumed the Ghost, "by Three Spirits."
Scrooge's countenance fell almost as low as the Ghost's had
done.
"Is that the chance and hope you mentioned, Jacob?" he
demanded in a faltering voice.
 "It is."
"I—I think I'd rather not," said Scrooge.
"Without their visits," said the Ghost, "you cannot hope to shun the
path I tread. Expect the first to-morrow when the bell tolls One."
"Couldn't I take 'em all at once, and have it over, Jacob?" hinted
Scrooge.
"Expect the second on the next night at the same hour. The third,
upon the next night when the last stroke of Twelve has ceased to
vibrate. Look to see me no more; and look that, for your own sake,
you remember what has passed between us!"
When it had said these words, the spectre took its wrapper from
the table, and bound it round its head as before. Scrooge knew this
by the smart sound its teeth made when the jaws were brought
together by the bandage. He ventured to raise his eyes again, and
found his supernatural visitor confronting him in an erect attitude,
with its chain wound over and about its arm.
The apparition walked backward from him; and, at every step it
took, the window raised itself a little, so that, when the spectre
reached it, it was wide open. It beckoned Scrooge to approach,
which he did. When they were within two paces of each other,
Marley's Ghost held up its hand, warning him to come no nearer.
Scrooge stopped.
Not so much in obedience as in surprise and fear; for, on the
raising of the hand, he became sensible of confused noises in the
air; incoherent sounds of lamentation and regret; wailings
inexpressibly sorrowful and self-accusatory. The spectre, after
listening for a moment, joined in the mournful dirge; and floated out
upon the bleak, dark night.
Scrooge followed to the window: desperate in his curiosity. He
looked out.
The air was filled with phantoms, wandering hither and thither in
restless haste, and moaning as they went. Every one of them wore
chains like Marley's Ghost; some few (they might be guilty
governments) were linked together; none were free. Many had been
personally known to Scrooge in their lives. He had been quite
familiar with one old ghost in a white waistcoat, with a monstrous
iron safe attached to its ankle, who cried piteously at being unable to
assist a wretched woman with an infant, whom it saw below upon a
doorstep. The misery with them all was, clearly, that they sought to
interfere, for good, in human matters, and had lost the power for
ever.
Whether these creatures faded into mist, or mist enshrouded
them, he could not tell. But they and their spirit voices faded
together; and the night became as it had been when he walked
home.
Scrooge closed the window, and examined the door by which the
Ghost had entered. It was double locked, as he had locked it with his
own hands, and the bolts were undisturbed. He tried to say
"Humbug!" but stopped at the first syllable. And being, from the
emotion he had undergone, or the fatigues of the day, or his glimpse
of the Invisible World, or the dull conversation of the Ghost, or the
lateness of the hour, much in need of repose, went straight to bed
without undressing, and fell asleep upon the instant.
 C 2T F O T T
S

When Scrooge awoke it was so dark, that, looking out of bed, he

could scarcely distinguish the transparent window from the opaque
walls of his chamber. He was endeavouring to pierce the darkness
with his ferret eyes, when the chimes of a neighbouring church
struck the four quarters. So he listened for the hour.
To his great astonishment, the heavy bell went on from six to
seven, and from seven to eight, and regularly up to twelve; then
stopped. Twelve! It was past two when he went to bed. The clock
was wrong. An icicle must have got into the works. Twelve!
He touched the spring of his repeater, to correct this most
preposterous clock. Its rapid little pulse beat twelve, and stopped.
"Why, it isn't possible," said Scrooge, "that I can have slept
through a whole day and far into another night. It isn't possible that
anything has happened to the sun, and this is twelve at noon!"
The idea being an alarming one, he scrambled out of bed, and
groped his way to the window. He was obliged to rub the frost off
with the sleeve of his dressing-gown before he could see anything;
and could see very little then. All he could make out was, that it was
still very foggy and extremely cold, and that there was no noise of
people running to and fro, and making a great stir, as there
unquestionably would have been if night had beaten off bright day,
and taken possession of the world. This was a great relief, because
"Three days after sight of this First of Exchange pay to Mr. Ebenezer
Scrooge or his order," and so forth, would have become a mere
United States security if there were no days to count by.
 Scrooge went to bed again, and thought, and thought, and thought
it over and over, and could make nothing of it. The more he thought,
the more perplexed he was; and, the more he endeavoured not to
think, the more he thought.
Marley's Ghost bothered him exceedingly. Every time he resolved
within himself, after mature inquiry, that it was all a dream, his mind
flew back again, like a strong spring released, to its first position, and
presented the same problem to be worked all through, "Was it a
dream or not?"
Scrooge lay in this state until the chime had gone three quarters
more, when he remembered, on a sudden, that the Ghost had
warned him of a visitation when the bell tolled one. He resolved to lie
awake until the hour was passed; and, considering that he could no
more go to sleep than go to Heaven, this was, perhaps, the wisest
resolution in his power.
The quarter was so long, that he was more than once convinced
he must have sunk into a doze unconsciously, and missed the clock.
At length it broke upon his listening ear.
"Ding, dong!"
"A quarter past," said Scrooge, counting.
"Ding, dong!"
"Half past," said Scrooge.
"Ding, dong!"
"A quarter to it," said Scrooge.
"Ding, dong!"
"The hour itself," said Scrooge triumphantly, "and nothing else!"
He spoke before the hour bell sounded, which it now did with a
deep, dull, hollow, melancholy One. Light flashed up in the room
upon the instant, and the curtains of his bed were drawn.
The curtains of his bed were drawn aside, I tell you, by a hand.
Not the curtains at his feet, nor the curtains at his back, but those to
which his face was addressed. The curtains of his bed were drawn
aside; and Scrooge, starting up into a half-recumbent attitude, found
himself face to face with the unearthly visitor who drew them: as
close to it as I am now to you, and I am standing in the spirit at your
elbow.
 It was a strange figure—like a child: yet not so like a child as like
an old man, viewed through some supernatural medium, which gave
him the appearance of having receded from the view, and being
diminished to a child's proportions. Its hair, which hung about its
neck and down its back, was white, as if with age; and yet the face
had not a wrinkle in it, and the tenderest bloom was on the skin. The
arms were very long and muscular; the hands the same, as if its hold
were of uncommon strength. Its legs and feet, most delicately
formed, were, like those upper members, bare. It wore a tunic of the
purest white; and round its waist was bound a lustrous belt, the
sheen of which was beautiful. It held a branch of fresh green holly in
its hand: and, in singular contradiction of that wintry emblem, had its
dress trimmed with summer flowers. But the strangest thing about it
was, that from the crown of its head there sprung a bright clear jet of
light, by which all this was visible; and which was doubtless the
occasion of its using, in its duller moments, a great extinguisher for a
cap, which it now held under its arm.
Even this, though, when Scrooge looked at it with increasing
steadiness, was not its strangest quality. For, as its belt sparkled and
glittered, now in one part and now in another, and what was light one
instant at another time was dark, so the figure itself fluctuated in its
distinctness: being now a thing with one arm, now with one leg, now
with twenty legs, now a pair of legs without a head, now a head
without a body: of which dissolving parts no outline would be visible
in the dense gloom wherein they melted away. And, in the very
wonder of this, it would be itself again; distinct and clear as ever.
"Are you the Spirit, sir, whose coming was foretold to me?" asked
Scrooge.
"I am!"
The voice was soft and gentle. Singularly low, as if, instead of
being so close beside him, it were at a distance.
"Who and what are you?" Scrooge demanded.
"I am the Ghost of Christmas Past."
"Long Past?" inquired Scrooge; observant of its dwarfish stature.
"No. Your past."
Perhaps Scrooge could not have told anybody why, if anybody
could have asked him; but he had a special desire to see the Spirit in
his cap; and begged him to be covered.
"What!" exclaimed the Ghost, "would you so soon put out, with
worldly hands, the light I give? Is it not enough that you are one of
those whose passions made this cap, and force me through whole
trains of years to wear it low upon my brow?"
Scrooge reverently disclaimed all intention to offend or any
knowledge of having wilfully "bonneted" the Spirit at any period of his
life. He then made bold to inquire what business brought him there.
"Your welfare!" said the Ghost.
Scrooge expressed himself much obliged, but could not help
thinking that a night of unbroken rest would have been more
conducive to that end. The Spirit must have heard him thinking, for it
said immediately:
"Your reclamation, then. Take heed!"
It put out its strong hand as it spoke, and clasped him gently by
the arm.
"Rise! and walk with me!"
It would have been in vain for Scrooge to plead that the weather
and the hour were not adapted to pedestrian purposes; that bed was
warm, and the thermometer a long way below freezing; that he was
clad but lightly in his slippers, dressing-gown, and nightcap; and that
he had a cold upon him at that time. The grasp, though gentle as a
woman's hand, was not to be resisted. He rose: but, finding that the
Spirit made towards the window, clasped its robe in supplication.
"I am a mortal," Scrooge remonstrated, "and liable to fall."
"Bear but a touch of my hand there," said the Spirit, laying it upon
his heart, "and you shall be upheld in more than this!"
As the words were spoken, they passed through the wall, and
stood upon an open country road, with fields on either hand. The city
had entirely vanished. Not a vestige of it was to be seen. The
darkness and the mist had vanished with it, for it was a clear, cold,
winter day, with the snow upon the ground.
"Good Heaven!" said Scrooge, clasping his hands together as he
looked about him. "I was bred in this place. I was a boy here!"
The Spirit gazed upon him mildly. Its gentle touch, though it had
been light and instantaneous, appeared still present to the old man's
sense of feeling. He was conscious of a thousand odours floating in
the air, each one connected with a thousand thoughts, and hopes,
and joys, and cares long, long forgotten!
"Your lip is trembling," said the Ghost. "And what is that upon your
cheek?"
Scrooge muttered, with an unusual catching in his voice, that it
was a pimple; and begged the Ghost to lead him where he would.
"You recollect the way?" inquired the Spirit.
"Remember it!" cried Scrooge with fervour; "I could walk it
blindfold."
"Strange to have forgotten it for so many years!" observed the
Ghost. "Let us go on."
They walked along the road, Scrooge recognising every gate, and
post, and tree, until a little market-town appeared in the distance,
with its bridge, its church, and winding river. Some shaggy ponies
now were seen trotting towards them with boys upon their backs,
who called to other boys in country gigs and carts, driven by farmers.
All these boys were in great spirits, and shouted to each other, until
the broad fields were so full of merry music, that the crisp air laughed
to hear it.
"These are but shadows of the things that have been," said the
Ghost. "They have no consciousness of us."
The jocund travellers came on; and as they came, Scrooge knew
and named them every one. Why was he rejoiced beyond all bounds
to see them? Why did his cold eye glisten, and his heart leap up as
they went past? Why was he filled with gladness when he heard
them give each other Merry Christmas, as they parted at cross-roads
and by-ways for their several homes? What was merry Christmas to
Scrooge? Out upon merry Christmas! What good had it ever done to
him?
"The school is not quite deserted," said the Ghost. "A solitary child,
neglected by his friends, is left there still."
Scrooge said he knew it. And he sobbed.
They left the high-road by a well-remembered lane, and soon
approached a mansion of dull red brick, with a little weather-cock
surmounted cupola on the roof and a bell hanging in it. It was a large
house, but one of broken fortunes: for the spacious offices were little
used, their walls were damp and mossy, their windows broken, and
their gates decayed. Fowls clucked and strutted in the stables; and
the coach-houses and sheds were overrun with grass. Nor was it
more retentive of its ancient state within; for, entering the dreary hall,
and glancing through the open doors of many rooms, they found
them poorly furnished, cold, and vast. There was an earthly savour
in the air, a chilly bareness in the place, which associated itself
somehow with too much getting up by candle-light, and not too much
to eat.
They went, the Ghost and Scrooge, across the hall, to a door at
the back of the house. It opened before them, and disclosed a long,
bare, melancholy room, made barer still by lines of plain deal forms
and desks. At one of these a lonely boy was reading near a feeble
fire; and Scrooge sat down upon a form, and wept to see his poor
forgotten self as he had used to be.
Not a latent echo in the house, not a squeak and scuffle from the
mice behind the panelling, not a drip from the half-thawed water-
spout in the dull yard behind, not a sigh among the leafless boughs
of one despondent poplar, not the idle swinging of an empty
storehouse door, no, not a clicking in the fire, but fell upon the heart
of Scrooge with softening influence, and gave a freer passage to his
tears.
The Spirit touched him on the arm, and pointed to his younger self,
intent upon his reading. Suddenly a man in foreign garments:
wonderfully real and distinct to look at: stood outside the window,
with an axe stuck in his belt, and leading by the bridle an ass laden
with wood.
"Why, it's Ali Baba!" Scrooge exclaimed in ecstasy. "It's dear old
honest Ali Baba! Yes, yes, I know. One Christmas-time when yonder
solitary child was left here all alone, he did come, for the first time,
just like that. Poor boy! And Valentine," said Scrooge, "and his wild
brother, Orson; there they go! And what's his name, who was put
down in his drawers, asleep, at the gate of Damascus; don't you see
him? And the Sultan's Groom turned upside down by the Genii: there
he is upon his head! Serve him right! I'm glad of it. What business
had he to be married to the Princess?"
To hear Scrooge expending all the earnestness of his nature on
such subjects, in a most extraordinary voice between laughing and
crying; and to see his heightened and excited face; would have been
a surprise to his business friends in the City, indeed.
"There's the Parrot!" cried Scrooge. "Green body and yellow tail,
with a thing like a lettuce growing out of the top of his head; there he
is! Poor Robin Crusoe he called him, when he came home again
after sailing round the island. 'Poor Robin Crusoe, where have you
been, Robin Crusoe?' The man thought he was dreaming, but he
wasn't. It was the Parrot, you know. There goes Friday, running for
his life to the little creek! Halloa! Hoop! Halloo!"
Then, with a rapidity of transition very foreign to his usual
character, he said, in pity for his former self, "Poor boy!" and cried
again.
"I wish," Scrooge muttered, putting his hand in his pocket, and
looking about him, after drying his eyes with his cuff: "but it's too late
now."
"What is the matter?" asked the Spirit.
"Nothing," said Scrooge. "Nothing. There was a boy singing a
Christmas Carol at my door last night. I should like to have given him
something: that's all."
The Ghost smiled thoughtfully, and waved its hand: saying, as it
did so, "Let us see another Christmas!"
Scrooge's former self grew larger at the words, and the room
became a little darker and more dirty. The panels shrunk, the
windows cracked; fragments of plaster fell out of the ceiling, and the
naked laths were shown instead; but how all this was brought about
Scrooge knew no more than you do. He only knew that it was quite
correct: that everything had happened so; that there he was, alone
again, when all the other boys had gone home for the jolly holidays.
He was not reading now, but walking up and down despairingly.
Scrooge looked at the Ghost, and, with a mournful shaking of his
head, glanced anxiously towards the door.
It opened; and a little girl, much younger than the boy, came
darting in, and, putting her arms about his neck, and often kissing
him, addressed him as her "dear, dear brother."
"I have come to bring you home, dear brother!" said the child,
clapping her tiny hands, and bending down to laugh. "To bring you
home, home, home!"
 "Home, little Fan?" returned the boy.
"Yes!" said the child, brimful of glee. "Home for good and all.
Home for ever and ever. Father is so much kinder than he used to
be, that home's like Heaven! He spoke so gently to me one dear
night when I was going to bed, that I was not afraid to ask him once
more if you might come home; and he said Yes, you should; and
sent me in a coach to bring you. And you're to be a man!" said the
child, opening her eyes; "and are never to come back here; but first
we're to be together all the Christmas long, and have the merriest
time in all the world."
"You are quite a woman, little Fan!" exclaimed the boy.
She clapped her hands and laughed, and tried to touch his head;
but, being too little, laughed again, and stood on tiptoe to embrace
him. Then she began to drag him, in her childish eagerness, towards
the door; and he, nothing loath to go, accompanied her.
A terrible voice in the hall cried, "Bring down Master Scrooge's
box, there!" and in the hall appeared the schoolmaster himself, who
glared on Master Scrooge with a ferocious condescension, and
threw him into a dreadful state of mind by shaking hands with him.
He then conveyed him and his sister into the veriest old well of a
shivering best parlour that ever was seen, where the maps upon the
wall, and the celestial and terrestrial globes in the windows, were
waxy with cold. Here he produced a decanter of curiously light wine,
and a block of curiously heavy cake, and administered instalments of
those dainties to the young people: at the same time sending out a
meagre servant to offer a glass of "something" to the postboy who
answered that he thanked the gentleman, but, if it was the same tap
as he had tasted before, he had rather not. Master Scrooge's trunk
being by this time tied on to the top of the chaise, the children bade
the schoolmaster good-bye right willingly; and, getting into it, drove
gaily down the garden sweep; the quick wheels dashing the hoar
frost and snow from off the dark leaves of the evergreens like spray.
"Always a delicate creature, whom a breath might have withered,"
said the Ghost. "But she had a large heart!"
"So she had," cried Scrooge. "You're right. I will not gainsay it,
Spirit. God forbid!"
 "She died a woman," said the Ghost, "and had, as I think,
children."
"One child," Scrooge returned.
"True," said the Ghost. "Your nephew!"
Scrooge seemed uneasy in his mind; and answered briefly, "Yes."
Although they had but that moment left the school behind them,
they were now in the busy thoroughfares of a city, where shadowy
passengers passed and repassed; where shadowy carts and
coaches battled for the way, and all the strife and tumult of a real city
were. It was made plain enough, by the dressing of the shops, that
here, too, it was Christmas-time again; but it was evening, and the
streets were lighted up.
The Ghost stopped at a certain warehouse door, and asked
Scrooge if he knew it.
"Know it!" said Scrooge. "Was I apprenticed here?"
They went in. At sight of an old gentleman in a Welsh wig, sitting
behind such a high desk, that if he had been two inches taller, he
must have knocked his head against the ceiling, Scrooge cried in
great excitement:
"Why, it's old Fezziwig! Bless his heart, it's Fezziwig alive again!"
Old Fezziwig laid down his pen, and looked up at the clock, which
pointed to the hour of seven. He rubbed his hands; adjusted his
capacious waistcoat; laughed all over himself, from his shoes to his
organ of benevolence; and called out, in a comfortable, oily, rich, fat,
jovial voice:
"Yo ho, there! Ebenezer! Dick!"
Scrooge's former self, now grown a young man, came briskly in,
accompanied by his fellow-'prentice.
"Dick Wilkins, to be sure!" said Scrooge to the Ghost. "Bless me,
yes. There he is. He was very much attached to me, was Dick. Poor
Dick! Dear, dear!"
"Yo ho, my boys!" said Fezziwig. "No more work to-night.
Christmas-eve, Dick. Christmas, Ebenezer! Let's have the shutters
up," cried old Fezziwig with a sharp clap of his hands, "before a man
can say Jack Robinson!"
You wouldn't believe how those two fellows went at it! They
charged into the street with the shutters—one, two, three—had 'em
up in their places—four, five, six—barred 'em and pinned 'em—
seven, eight, nine—and came back before you could have got to
twelve, panting like race-horses.
"Hilli-ho!" cried old Fezziwig, skipping down from the high desk
with wonderful agility. "Clear away, my lads, and let's have lots of
room here! Hilli-ho, Dick! Chirrup, Ebenezer!"
Clear away! There was nothing they wouldn't have cleared away,
or couldn't have cleared away, with old Fezziwig looking on. It was
done in a minute. Every movable was packed off, as if it were
dismissed from public life for evermore; the floor was swept and
watered, the lamps were trimmed, fuel was heaped upon the fire;
and the warehouse was as snug, and warm, and dry, and bright a
ball-room as you would desire to see upon a winter's night.
In came a fiddler with a music-book, and went up to the lofty desk,
and made an orchestra of it, and tuned like fifty stomachaches. In
came Mrs. Fezziwig, one vast substantial smile. In came the three
Miss Fezziwigs, beaming and lovable. In came the six young
followers whose hearts they broke. In came all the young men and
women employed in the business. In came the housemaid, with her
cousin the baker. In came the cook, with her brother's particular
friend the milkman. In came the boy from over the way, who was
suspected of not having board enough from his master; trying to hide
himself behind the girl from next door but one, who was proved to
have had her ears pulled by her mistress. In they all came, one after
another; some shyly, some boldly, some gracefully, some awkwardly,
some pushing, some pulling; in they all came, any how and every
how. Away they all went, twenty couple at once; hands half round
and back again the other way; down the middle and up again; round
and round in various stages of affectionate grouping; old top couple
always turning up in the wrong place; new top couple starting off
again as soon as they got there; all top couples at last, and not a
bottom one to help them! When this result was brought about, old
Fezziwig, clapping his hands to stop the dance, cried out, "Well
done!" and the fiddler plunged his hot face into a pot of porter,
especially provided for that purpose. But, scorning rest upon his
reappearance, he instantly began again, though there were no
dancers yet, as if the other fiddler had been carried home,
exhausted, on a shutter, and he were a bran-new man resolved to
beat him out of sight, or perish.
There were more dances, and there were forfeits, and more
dances, and there was cake, and there was negus, and there was a
great piece of Cold Roast, and there was a great piece of Cold
Boiled, and there were mince-pies, and plenty of beer. But the great
effect of the evening came after the Roast and Boiled, when the
fiddler (an artful dog, mind! The sort of man who knew his business
better than you or I could have told it him!) struck up "Sir Roger de
Coverley." Then old Fezziwig stood out to dance with Mrs. Fezziwig.
Top couple, too; with a good stiff piece of work cut out for them; three
or four and twenty pair of partners; people who were not to be trifled
with; people who would dance, and had no notion of walking.
But if they had been twice as many—ah! four times—old Fezziwig
would have been a match for them, and so would Mrs. Fezziwig. As
to her, she was worthy to be his partner in every sense of the term. If
that's not high praise, tell me higher, and I'll use it. A positive light
appeared to issue from Fezziwig's calves. They shone in every part
of the dance like moons. You couldn't have predicted, at any given
time, what would become of them next. And when old Fezziwig and
Mrs. Fezziwig had gone all through the dance; advance and retire,
both hands to your partner, bow and curtsy, cork-screw, thread-the-
needle, and back again to your place; Fezziwig "cut"—cut so deftly,
that he appeared to wink with his legs, and came upon his feet again
without a stagger.
When the clock struck eleven, this domestic ball broke up. Mr. and
Mrs. Fezziwig took their stations, one on either side the door, and,
shaking hands with every person individually as he or she went out,
wished him or her a Merry Christmas. When everybody had retired
but the two 'prentices, they did the same to them; and thus the
cheerful voices died away, and the lads were left to their beds; which
were under a counter in the back-shop.
During the whole of this time Scrooge had acted like a man out of
his wits. His heart and soul were in the scene, and with his former
self. He corroborated everything, remembered everything, enjoyed
everything, and underwent the strangest agitation. It was not until
now, when the bright faces of his former self and Dick were turned
from them, that he remembered the Ghost, and became conscious
that it was looking full upon him, while the light upon its head burnt
very clear.
"A small matter," said the Ghost, "to make these silly folks so full of
gratitude."
"Small!" echoed Scrooge.
The Spirit signed to him to listen to the two apprentices, who were
pouring out their hearts in praise of Fezziwig; and, when he had
done so, said:
"Why! Is it not? He has spent but a few pounds of your mortal
money: three or four, perhaps. Is that so much that he deserves this
praise?"
"It isn't that," said Scrooge, heated by the remark, and speaking
unconsciously like his former, not his latter self. "It isn't that, Spirit.
He has the power to render us happy or unhappy; to make our
service light or burdensome; a pleasure or a toil. Say that his power
lies in words and looks; in things so slight and insignificant that it is
impossible to add and count 'em up: what then? The happiness he
gives is quite as great as if it cost a fortune."
He felt the Spirit's glance, and stopped.
"What is the matter?" asked the Ghost.
"Nothing particular," said Scrooge.
"Something, I think?" the Ghost insisted.
"No," said Scrooge, "no. I should like to be able to say a word or
two to my clerk just now. That's all."
His former self turned down the lamps as he gave utterance to the
wish; and Scrooge and the Ghost again stood side by side in the
open air.
"My time grows short," observed the Spirit. "Quick!"
This was not addressed to Scrooge, or to any one whom he could
see, but it produced an immediate effect. For again Scrooge saw
himself. He was older now; a man in the prime of life. His face had
not the harsh and rigid lines of later years; but it had begun to wear
the signs of care and avarice. There was an eager, greedy, restless
motion in the eye, which showed the passion that had taken root,
and where the shadow of the growing tree would fall.
 He was not alone, but sat by the side of a fair young girl in a
mourning dress: in whose eyes there were tears, which sparkled in
the light that shone out of the Ghost of Christmas Past.
"It matters little," she said softly. "To you, very little. Another idol
has displaced me; and, if it can cheer and comfort you in time to
come as I would have tried to do, I have no just cause to grieve."
"What Idol has displaced you?" he rejoined.
"A golden one."
"This is the even-handed dealing of the world!" he said. "There is
nothing on which it is so hard as poverty; and there is nothing it
professes to condemn with such severity as the pursuit of wealth!"
"You fear the world too much," she answered gently. "All your
other hopes have merged into the hope of being beyond the chance
of its sordid reproach. I have seen your nobler aspirations fall off one
by one, until the master passion, Gain, engrosses you. Have I not?"
"What then?" he retorted. "Even if I have grown so much wiser,
what then? I am not changed towards you."
She shook her head.
"Am I?"
"Our contract is an old one. It was made when we were both poor,
and content to be so, until, in good season, we could improve our
worldly fortune by our patient industry. You are changed. When it
was made you were another man."
"I was a boy," he said impatiently.
"Your own feeling tells you that you were not what you are," she
returned. "I am. That which promised happiness when we were one
in heart is fraught with misery now that we are two. How often and
how keenly I have thought of this I will not say. It is enough that
I have thought of it, and can release you."
"Have I ever sought release?"
"In words. No. Never."
"In what, then?"
"In a changed nature; in an altered spirit; in another atmosphere of
life; another Hope as its great end. In everything that made my love
of any worth or value in your sight. If this had never been between
us," said the girl, looking mildly, but with steadiness, upon him, "tell
me, would you seek me out and try to win me now? Ah, no!"
 He seemed to yield to the justice of this supposition in spite of
himself. But he said, with a struggle, "You think not."
"I would gladly think otherwise if I could," she answered. "Heaven
knows! When I have learned a Truth like this, I know how strong and
irresistible it must be. But if you were free to-day, to-morrow,
yesterday, can even I believe that you would choose a dowerless girl
—you who, in your very confidence with her, weigh everything by
Gain: or, choosing her, if for a moment you were false enough to
your one guiding principle to do so, do I not know that your
repentance and regret would surely follow? I do; and I release you.
With a full heart, for the love of him you once were."
He was about to speak; but, with her head turned from him, she
resumed.
"You may—the memory of what is past half makes me hope you
will—have pain in this. A very, very brief time, and you will dismiss
the recollection of it gladly, as an unprofitable dream, from which it
happened well that you awoke. May you be happy in the life you
have chosen!"
She left him, and they parted.
"Spirit!" said Scrooge, "show me no more! Conduct me home. Why
do you delight to torture me?"
"One shadow more!" exclaimed the Ghost.
"No more!" cried Scrooge. "No more! I don't wish to see it. Show
me no more!"
But the relentless Ghost pinioned him in both his arms, and forced
him to observe what happened next.
They were in another scene and place; a room, not very large or
handsome, but full of comfort. Near to the winter fire sat a beautiful
young girl, so like that last that Scrooge believed it was the same,
until he saw her, now a comely matron, sitting opposite her daughter.
The noise in this room was perfectly tumultuous, for there were more
children there than Scrooge in his agitated state of mind could count;
and, unlike the celebrated herd in the poem, they were not forty
children conducting themselves like one, but every child was
conducting itself like forty. The consequences were uproarious
beyond belief; but no one seemed to care; on the contrary, the
mother and daughter laughed heartily, and enjoyed it very much; and
the latter, soon beginning to mingle in the sports, got pillaged by the
young brigands most ruthlessly. What would I not have given to be
one of them! Though I never could have been so rude, no, no! I
wouldn't for the wealth of all the world have crushed that braided
hair, and torn it down; and, for the precious little shoe, I wouldn't
have plucked it off, God bless my soul! to save my life. As to
measuring her waist in sport, as they did, bold young brood, I
couldn't have done it; I should have expected my arm to have grown
round it for a punishment, and never come straight again. And yet I
should have dearly liked, I own, to have touched her lips; to have
questioned her, that she might have opened them; to have looked
upon the lashes of her downcast eyes, and never raised a blush; to
have let loose waves of hair, an inch of which would be a keepsake
beyond price: in short, I should have liked, I do confess, to have had
the lightest licence of a child, and yet to have been man enough to
know its value.
But now a knocking at the door was heard, and such a rush
immediately ensued that she, with laughing face and plundered
dress, was borne towards it in the centre of a flushed and boisterous
group, just in time to greet the father, who came home attended by a
man laden with Christmas toys and presents. Then the shouting and
the struggling, and the onslaught that was made on the defenceless
porter! The scaling him, with chairs for ladders, to dive into his
pockets, despoil him of brown-paper parcels, hold on tight by his
cravat, hug him round the neck, pummel his back, and kick his legs
in irrepressible affection! The shouts of wonder and delight with
which the development of every package was received! The terrible
announcement that the baby had been taken in the act of putting a
doll's frying-pan into his mouth, and was more than suspected of
having swallowed a fictitious turkey, glued on a wooden platter! The
immense relief of finding this a false alarm! The joy, and gratitude,
and ecstasy! They are all indescribable alike. It is enough that by
degrees, the children and their emotions got out of the parlour, and,
by one stair at a time, up to the top of the house, where they went to
bed, and so subsided.
And now Scrooge looked on more attentively than ever, when the
master of the house, having his daughter leaning fondly on him, sat
down with her and her mother at his own fireside; and when he
thought that such another creature, quite as graceful and as full of
promise, might have called him father, and been a spring-time in the
haggard winter of his life, his sight grew very dim indeed.
"Belle," said the husband, turning to his wife with a smile, "I saw
an old friend of yours this afternoon."
"Who was it?"
"Guess!"
"How can I? Tut, don't I know?" she added in the same breath,
laughing as he laughed. "Mr. Scrooge."
"Mr. Scrooge it was. I passed his office window; and as it was not
shut up, and he had a candle inside, I could scarcely help seeing
him. His partner lies upon the point of death, I hear; and there he sat
alone. Quite alone in the world, I do believe."
"Spirit!" said Scrooge in a broken voice, "remove me from this
place."
"I told you these were shadows of the things that have been," said
the Ghost. "That they are what they are, do not blame me!"
"Remove me!" Scrooge exclaimed. "I cannot bear it!"
He turned upon the Ghost, and seeing that it looked upon him with
a face in which in some strange way there were fragments of all the
faces it had shown him, wrestled with it.
"Leave me! Take me back! Haunt me no longer!"
In the struggle—if that can be called a struggle in which the Ghost,
with no visible resistance on its own part, was undisturbed by any
effort of its adversary—Scrooge observed that its light was burning
high and bright; and dimly connecting that with its influence over him,
he seized the extinguisher cap, and by a sudden action pressed it
down upon its head.
The Spirit dropped beneath it, so that the extinguisher covered its
whole form; but, though Scrooge pressed it down with all his force,
he could not hide the light, which streamed from under it in an
unbroken flood upon the ground.
He was conscious of being exhausted, and overcome by an
irresistible drowsiness; and, further, of being in his own bedroom. He
gave the cap a parting squeeze, in which his hand relaxed; and had
barely time to reel to bed before he sank into a heavy sleep.
C 3T S O T T
S

Awaking in the middle of a prodigiously tough snore, and sitting up in

bed to get his thoughts together, Scrooge had no occasion to be told
that the bell was again upon the stroke of One. He felt that he was
restored to consciousness in the right nick of time, for the especial
purpose of holding a conference with the second messenger
dispatched to him through Jacob Marley's intervention. But, finding
that he turned uncomfortably cold when he began to wonder which
of his curtains this new spectre would draw back, he put them every
one aside with his own hands, and, lying down again, established a
sharp look-out all round the bed. For he wished to challenge the
Spirit on the moment of its appearance, and did not wish to be taken
by surprise and made nervous.
Gentlemen of the free-and-easy sort, who plume themselves on
being acquainted with a move or two, and being usually equal to the
time of day, express the wide range of their capacity for adventure by
observing that they are good for anything from pitch-and-toss to
manslaughter; between which opposite extremes, no doubt, there
lies a tolerably wide and comprehensive range of subjects. Without
venturing for Scrooge quite as hardily as this, I don't mind calling on
you to believe that he was ready for a good broad field of strange
appearances, and that nothing between a baby and a rhinoceros
would have astonished him very much.
Now, being prepared for almost anything, he was not by any
means prepared for nothing; and consequently, when the bell struck
One, and no shape appeared, he was taken with a violent fit of
trembling. Five minutes, ten minutes, a quarter of an hour went by,
yet nothing came. All this time he lay upon his bed, the very core and
centre of a blaze of ruddy light, which streamed upon it when the
clock proclaimed the hour; and which, being only light, was more
alarming than a dozen ghosts, as he was powerless to make out
what it meant, or would be at; and was sometimes apprehensive that
he might be at that very moment an interesting case of spontaneous
combustion, without having the consolation of knowing it. At last,
however, he began to think—as you or I would have thought at first;
for it is always the person not in the predicament who knows what
ought to have been done in it, and would unquestionably have done
it too—at last, I say, he began to think that the source and secret of
this ghostly light might be in the adjoining room, from whence, on
further tracing it, it seemed to shine. This idea taking full possession
of his mind, he got up softly, and shuffled in his slippers to the door.
The moment Scrooge's hand was on the lock, a strange voice
called him by his name, and bade him enter. He obeyed.
It was his own room. There was no doubt about that. But it had
undergone a surprising transformation. The walls and ceiling were so
hung with living green, that it looked a perfect grove; from every part
of which bright gleaming berries glistened. The crisp leaves of holly,
mistletoe, and ivy reflected back the light, as if so many little mirrors
had been scattered there; and such a mighty blaze went roaring up
the chimney as that dull petrifaction of a hearth had never known in
Scrooge's time, or Marley's, or for many and many a winter season
gone. Heaped up on the floor, to form a kind of throne, were turkeys,
geese, game, poultry, brawn, great joints of meat, sucking-pigs, long
wreaths of sausages, mince-pies, plum-puddings, barrels of oysters,
red-hot chestnuts, cherry-cheeked apples, juicy oranges, luscious
pears, immense twelfth-cakes, and seething bowls of punch, that
made the chamber dim with their delicious steam. In easy state upon
this couch there sat a jolly Giant, glorious to see; who bore a glowing
torch, in shape not unlike Plenty's horn, and held it up, high up, to
shed its light on Scrooge as he came peeping round the door.
"Come in!" exclaimed the Ghost. "Come in! and know me better,
man!"
 Scrooge entered timidly, and hung his head before this Spirit. He
was not the dogged Scrooge he had been; and, though the Spirit's
eyes were clear and kind, he did not like to meet them.
"I am the Ghost of Christmas Present," said the Spirit. "Look upon
me!"
Scrooge reverently did so. It was clothed in one simple deep green
robe, or mantle, bordered with white fur. This garment hung so
loosely on the figure, that its capacious breast was bare, as if
disdaining to be warded or concealed by any artifice. Its feet,
observable beneath the ample folds of the garment, were also bare;
and on its head it wore no other covering than a holly wreath, set
here and there with shining icicles. Its dark brown curls were long
and free; free as its genial face, its sparkling eye, its open hand, its
cheery voice, its unconstrained demeanour, and its joyful air. Girded
round its middle was an antique scabbard; but no sword was in it,
and the ancient sheath was eaten up with rust.
"You have never seen the like of me before!" exclaimed the Spirit.
"Never," Scrooge made answer to it.
"Have never walked forth with the younger members of my family;
meaning (for I am very young) my elder brothers born in these later
years?" pursued the Phantom.
"I don't think I have," said Scrooge. "I am afraid I have not. Have
you had many brothers, Spirit?"
"More than eighteen hundred," said the Ghost.
"A tremendous family to provide for," muttered Scrooge.
The Ghost of Christmas Present rose.
"Spirit," said Scrooge submissively, "conduct me where you will. I
went forth last night on compulsion, and I learnt a lesson which is
working now. To-night, if you have aught to teach me, let me profit by
it."
"Touch my robe!"
Scrooge did as he was told, and held it fast.
Holly, mistletoe, red berries, ivy, turkeys, geese, game, poultry,
brawn, meat, pigs, sausages, oysters, pies, puddings, fruit, and
punch, all vanished instantly. So did the room, the fire, the ruddy
glow, the hour of night, and they stood in the city streets on
Christmas morning, where (for the weather was severe) the people
made a rough, but brisk and not unpleasant kind of music, in
scraping the snow from the pavement in front of their dwellings, and
from the tops of their houses, whence it was mad delight to the boys
to see it come plumping down into the road below, and splitting into
artificial little snow-storms.
The house-fronts looked black enough, and the windows blacker,
contrasting with the smooth white sheet of snow upon the roofs, and
with the dirtier snow upon the ground; which last deposit had been
ploughed up in deep furrows by the heavy wheels of carts and
waggons; furrows that crossed and recrossed each other hundreds
of times where the great streets branched off; and made intricate
channels, hard to trace, in the thick yellow mud and icy water. The
sky was gloomy, and the shortest streets were choked up with a
dingy mist, half thawed, half frozen, whose heavier particles
descended in a shower of sooty atoms, as if all the chimneys in
Great Britain had, by one consent, caught fire, and were blazing
away to their dear hearts' content. There was nothing very cheerful
in the climate or the town, and yet was there an air of cheerfulness
abroad that the clearest summer air and brightest summer sun might
have endeavoured to diffuse in vain.
For, the people who were shovelling away on the housetops were
jovial and full of glee; calling out to one another from the parapets,
and now and then exchanging a facetious snowball—better-natured
missile far than many a wordy jest—laughing heartily if it went right,
and not less heartily if it went wrong. The poulterers' shops were still
half open, and the fruiterers' were radiant in their glory. There were
great, round, pot-bellied baskets of chestnuts, shaped like the
waistcoats of jolly old gentlemen, lolling at the doors, and tumbling
out into the street in their apoplectic opulence. There were ruddy,
brown-faced, broad-girthed Spanish onions, shining in the fatness of
their growth like Spanish Friars, and winking from their shelves in
wanton slyness at the girls as they went by, and glanced demurely at
the hung-up mistletoe. There were pears and apples clustered high
in blooming pyramids; there were bunches of grapes, made, in the
shopkeepers' benevolence, to dangle from conspicuous hooks that
people's mouths might water gratis as they passed; there were piles
of filberts, mossy and brown, recalling, in their fragrance, ancient
walks among the woods, and pleasant shufflings ankle deep through
withered leaves; there were Norfolk Biffins, squab and swarthy,
setting off the yellow of the oranges and lemons, and, in the great
compactness of their juicy persons, urgently entreating and
beseeching to be carried home in paper bags, and eaten after
dinner. The very gold and silver fish, set forth among these choice
fruits in a bowl, though members of a dull and stagnant-blooded
race, appeared to know that there was something going on; and, to a
fish, went gasping round and round their little world in slow and
passionless excitement.
The Grocers'! oh, the Grocers'! nearly closed, with perhaps two
shutters down, or one; but through those gaps such glimpses! It was
not alone that the scales descending on the counter made a merry
sound, or that the twine and roller parted company so briskly, or that
the canisters were rattled up and down like juggling tricks, or even
that the blended scents of tea and coffee were so grateful to the
nose, or even that the raisins were so plentiful and rare, the almonds
so extremely white, the sticks of cinnamon so long and straight, the
other spices so delicious, the candied fruits so caked and spotted
with molten sugar as to make the coldest lookers-on feel faint, and
subsequently bilious. Nor was it that the figs were moist and pulpy,
or that the French plums blushed in modest tartness from their
highly-decorated boxes, or that everything was good to eat and in its
Christmas dress; but the customers were all so hurried and so eager
in the hopeful promise of the day, that they tumbled up against each
other at the door, crashing their wicker baskets wildly, and left their
purchases upon the counter, and came running back to fetch them,
and committed hundreds of the like mistakes, in the best humour
possible; while the Grocer and his people were so frank and fresh,
that the polished hearts with which they fastened their aprons behind
might have been their own, worn outside for general inspection, and
for Christmas daws to peck at if they chose.
But soon the steeples called good people all to church and chapel,
and away they came, flocking through the streets in their best
clothes, and with their gayest faces. And at the same time there
emerged, from scores of by-streets, lanes, and nameless turnings,
innumerable people, carrying their dinners to the bakers' shops. The
sight of these poor revellers appeared to interest the Spirit very
much, for he stood with Scrooge beside him in a baker's doorway,
and, taking off the covers as their bearers passed, sprinkled incense
on their dinners from his torch. And it was a very uncommon kind of
torch, for once or twice, when there were angry words between
some dinner-carriers who had jostled each other, he shed a few
drops of water on them from it, and their good-humour was restored
directly. For they said, it was a shame to quarrel upon Christmas-
day. And so it was! God love it, so it was!
In time the bells ceased, and the bakers were shut up; and yet
there was a genial shadowing forth of all these dinners, and the
progress of their cooking, in the thawed blotch of wet above each
baker's oven; where the pavement smoked as if its stones were
cooking too.
"Is there a peculiar flavour in what you sprinkle from your torch?"
asked Scrooge.
"There is. My own."
"Would it apply to any kind of dinner on this day?" asked Scrooge.
"To any kindly given. To a poor one most."
"Why to a poor one most?" asked Scrooge.
"Because it needs it most."
"Spirit!" said Scrooge after a moment's thought. "I wonder you, of
all the beings in the many worlds about us, should desire to cramp
these people's opportunities of innocent enjoyment."
"I!" cried the Spirit.
"You would deprive them of their means of dining every seventh
day, often the only day on which they can be said to dine at all," said
Scrooge; "wouldn't you?"
"I!" cried the Spirit.
"You seek to close these places on the Seventh Day," said
Scrooge. "And it comes to the same thing."
"I seek!" exclaimed the Spirit.
"Forgive me if I am wrong. It has been done in your name, or at
least in that of your family," said Scrooge.
"There are some upon this earth of yours," returned the Spirit,
"who lay claim to know us, and who do their deeds of passion, pride,
ill-will, hatred, envy, bigotry, and selfishness in our name, who are as
strange to us, and all our kith and kin, as if they had never lived.
Remember that, and charge their doings on themselves, not us."
Scrooge promised that he would; and they went on, invisible, as
they had been before, into the suburbs of the town. It was a
remarkable quality of the Ghost (which Scrooge had observed at the
baker's), that, notwithstanding his gigantic size, he could
accommodate himself to any place with ease; and that he stood
beneath a low roof quite as gracefully and like a supernatural
creature as it was possible he could have done in any lofty hall.
And perhaps it was the pleasure the good Spirit had in showing off
this power of his, or else it was his own kind, generous, hearty
nature, and his sympathy with all poor men, that led him straight to
Scrooge's clerk's; for there he went, and took Scrooge with him,
holding to his robe; and, on the threshold of the door, the Spirit
smiled, and stopped to bless Bob Cratchit's dwelling with the
sprinklings of his torch. Think of that! Bob had but fifteen "Bob" a
week himself; he pocketed on Saturdays but fifteen copies of his
Christian name; and yet the Ghost of Christmas Present blessed his
four-roomed house!
Then up rose Mrs. Cratchit, Cratchit's wife, dressed out but poorly
in a twice-turned gown, but brave in ribbons, which are cheap, and
make a goodly show for sixpence; and she laid the cloth, assisted by
Belinda Cratchit, second of her daughters, also brave in ribbons;
while Master Peter Cratchit plunged a fork into the saucepan of
potatoes, and, getting the corners of his monstrous shirt collar (Bob's
private property, conferred upon his son and heir in honour of the
day) into his mouth, rejoiced to find himself so gallantly attired, and
yearned to show his linen in the fashionable Parks. And now two
smaller Cratchits, boy and girl, came tearing in, screaming that
outside the baker's they had smelt the goose, and known it for their
own; and, basking in luxurious thoughts of sage and onion, these
young Cratchits danced about the table, and exalted Master Peter
Cratchit to the skies, while he (not proud, although his collars nearly
choked him) blew the fire, until the slow potatoes, bubbling up,
knocked loudly at the saucepan lid to be let out and peeled.
"What has ever got your precious father, then?" said Mrs. Cratchit.
"And your brother, Tiny Tim? And Martha warn't as late last
Christmas-day by half an hour!"
"Here's Martha, mother!" said a girl, appearing as she spoke.
"Here's Martha, mother!" cried the two young Cratchits. "Hurrah!
There's such a goose, Martha!"
"Why, bless your heart alive, my dear, how late you are!" said Mrs.
Cratchit, kissing her a dozen times, and taking off her shawl and
bonnet for her with officious zeal.
"We'd a deal of work to finish up last night," replied the girl, "and
had to clear away this morning, mother!"
"Well! never mind so long as you are come," said Mrs. Cratchit.
"Sit ye down before the fire, my dear, and have a warm, Lord bless
ye!"
"No, no! There's father coming," cried the two young Cratchits,
who were everywhere at once. "Hide, Martha, hide!"
So Martha hid herself, and in came little Bob, the father, with at
least three feet of comforter, exclusive of the fringe, hanging down
before him; and his threadbare clothes darned up and brushed to
look seasonable; and Tiny Tim upon his shoulder. Alas for Tiny Tim,
he bore a little crutch, and had his limbs supported by an iron frame!
"Why, where's our Martha?" cried Bob Cratchit, looking round.
"Not coming," said Mrs. Cratchit.
"Not coming!" said Bob with a sudden declension in his high
spirits; for he had been Tim's blood horse all the way from church,
and had come home rampant. "Not coming upon Christmas-day!"
Martha didn't like to see him disappointed, if it were only in joke;
so she came out prematurely from behind the closet door, and ran
into his arms, while the two young Cratchits hustled Tiny Tim, and
bore him off into the wash-house, that he might hear the pudding
singing in the copper.
"And how did little Tim behave?" asked Mrs. Cratchit when she
had rallied Bob on his credulity, and Bob had hugged his daughter to
his heart's content.
"As good as gold," said Bob, "and better. Somehow, he gets
thoughtful, sitting by himself so much, and thinks the strangest things
you ever heard. He told me, coming home, that he hoped the people
saw him in the church, because he was a cripple, and it might be
pleasant to them to remember upon Christmas-day who made lame
beggars walk and blind men see."
Bob's voice was tremulous when he told them this, and trembled
more when he said that Tiny Tim was growing strong and hearty.
His active little crutch was heard upon the floor, and back came
Tiny Tim before another word was spoken, escorted by his brother
and sister to his stool beside the fire; and while Bob, turning up his
cuffs—as if, poor fellow, they were capable of being made more
shabby—compounded some hot mixture in a jug with gin and
lemons, and stirred it round and round, and put it on the hob to
simmer, Master Peter and the two ubiquitous young Cratchits went to
fetch the goose, with which they soon returned in high procession.
Such a bustle ensued that you might have thought a goose the
rarest of all birds; a feathered phenomenon, to which a black swan
was a matter of course—and, in truth, it was something very like it in
that house. Mrs. Cratchit made the gravy (ready beforehand in a little
saucepan) hissing hot; Master Peter mashed the potatoes with
incredible vigour; Miss Belinda sweetened up the apple sauce;
Martha dusted the hot plates; Bob took Tiny Tim beside him in a tiny
corner at the table; the two young Cratchits set chairs for everybody,
not forgetting themselves, and, mounting guard upon their posts,
crammed spoons into their mouths, lest they should shriek for goose
before their turn came to be helped. At last the dishes were set on,
and grace was said. It was succeeded by a breathless pause, as
Mrs. Cratchit, looking slowly all along the carving-knife, prepared to
plunge it in the breast; but when she did, and when the long-
expected gush of stuffing issued forth, one murmur of delight arose
all round the board, and even Tiny Tim, excited by the two young
Cratchits, beat on the table with the handle of his knife, and feebly
cried Hurrah!
There never was such a goose. Bob said he didn't believe there
ever was such a goose cooked. Its tenderness and flavour, size and
cheapness, were the themes of universal admiration. Eked out by
apple sauce and mashed potatoes, it was a sufficient dinner for the
whole family; indeed, as Mrs. Cratchit said with great delight
(surveying one small atom of a bone upon the dish), they hadn't ate
it all at last! Yet every one had had enough, and the youngest
Cratchits, in particular, were steeped in sage and onion to the
eyebrows! But now, the plates being changed by Miss Belinda, Mrs.
Cratchit left the room alone—too nervous to bear witnesses—to take
the pudding up, and bring it in.
Suppose it should not be done enough! Suppose it should break in
turning out! Suppose somebody should have got over the wall of the
back-yard and stolen it, while they were merry with the goose—a
supposition at which the two young Cratchits became livid! All sorts
of horrors were supposed.
Hallo! A great deal of steam! The pudding was out of the copper. A
smell like a washing-day! That was the cloth. A smell like an eating-
house and a pastrycook's next door to each other, with a laundress's
next door to that! That was the pudding! In half a minute Mrs.
Cratchit entered—flushed, but smiling proudly—with the pudding,
like a speckled cannon-ball, so hard and firm, blazing in half of half-
a-quartern of ignited brandy, and bedight with Christmas holly stuck
into the top.
Oh, a wonderful pudding! Bob Cratchit said, and calmly too, that
he regarded it as the greatest success achieved by Mrs. Cratchit
since their marriage. Mrs. Cratchit said that, now the weight was off
her mind, she would confess she had her doubts about the quantity
of flour. Everybody had something to say about it, but nobody said or
thought it was at all a small pudding for a large family. It would have
been flat heresy to do so. Any Cratchit would have blushed to hint at
such a thing.
At last the dinner was all done, the cloth was cleared, the hearth
swept, and the fire made up. The compound in the jug being tasted,
and considered perfect, apples and oranges were put upon the table,
and a shovel full of chestnuts on the fire. Then all the Cratchit family
drew round the hearth in what Bob Cratchit called a circle, meaning
half a one; and at Bob Cratchit's elbow stood the family display of
glass. Two tumblers and a custard cup without a handle.
These held the hot stuff from the jug, however, as well as golden
goblets would have done; and Bob served it out with beaming looks,
while the chestnuts on the fire sputtered and cracked noisily. Then
Bob proposed:
"A merry Christmas to us all, my dears. God bless us!"
 Which all the family re-echoed.
"God bless us every one!" said Tiny Tim, the last of all.
He sat very close to his father's side, upon his little stool. Bob held
his withered little hand in his, as if he loved the child, and wished to
keep him by his side, and dreaded that he might be taken from him.
"Spirit," said Scrooge with an interest he had never felt before, "tell
me if Tiny Tim will live."
"I see a vacant seat," replied the Ghost, "in the poor chimney-
corner, and a crutch without an owner, carefully preserved. If these
shadows remain unaltered by the Future, the child will die."
"No, no," said Scrooge. "Oh, no, kind Spirit! say he will be spared."
"If these shadows remain unaltered by the Future, none other of
my race," returned the Ghost, "will find him here. What then? If he be
like to die, he had better do it, and decrease the surplus population."
Scrooge hung his head to hear his own words quoted by the Spirit,
and was overcome with penitence and grief.
"Man," said the Ghost, "if man you be in heart, not adamant,
forbear that wicked cant until you have discovered What the surplus
is, and Where it is. Will you decide what men shall live, what men
shall die? It may be that, in the sight of Heaven, you are more
worthless and less fit to live than millions like this poor man's child.
Oh God! to hear the Insect on the leaf pronouncing on the too much
life among his hungry brothers in the dust!"
Scrooge bent before the Ghost's rebuke, and, trembling, cast his
eyes upon the ground. But he raised them speedily on hearing his
own name.
"Mr. Scrooge!" said Bob. "I'll give you Mr. Scrooge, the Founder of
the Feast!"
"The Founder of the Feast, indeed!" cried Mrs. Cratchit, reddening.
"I wish I had him here. I'd give him a piece of my mind to feast upon,
and I hope he'd have a good appetite for it."
"My dear," said Bob, "the children! Christmas-day."
"It should be Christmas-day, I am sure," said she, "on which one
drinks the health of such an odious, stingy, hard, unfeeling man as
Mr. Scrooge. You know he is, Robert! Nobody knows it better than
you do, poor fellow!"
"My dear!" was Bob's mild answer. "Christmas-day."
 "I'll drink his health for your sake and the Day's," said Mrs.
Cratchit, "not for his. Long life to him! A merry Christmas and a
happy New Year! He'll be very merry and very happy, I have no
doubt!"
The children drank the toast after her. It was the first of their
proceedings which had no heartiness in it. Tiny Tim drank it last of
all, but he didn't care twopence for it. Scrooge was the Ogre of the
family. The mention of his name cast a dark shadow on the party,
which was not dispelled for full five minutes.
After it had passed away they were ten times merrier than before,
from the mere relief of Scrooge the Baleful being done with. Bob
Cratchit told them how he had a situation in his eye for Master Peter,
which would bring in, if obtained, full five-and-sixpence weekly. The
two young Cratchits laughed tremendously at the idea of Peter's
being a man of business; and Peter himself looked thoughtfully at
the fire from between his collars, as if he were deliberating what
particular investments he should favour when he came into the
receipt of that bewildering income. Martha, who was a poor
apprentice at a milliner's, then told them what kind of work she had
to do, and how many hours she worked at a stretch, and how she
meant to lie abed to-morrow morning for a good long rest; to-morrow
being a holiday she passed at home. Also how she had seen a
countess and a lord some days before, and how the lord "was much
about as tall as Peter"; at which Peter pulled up his collars so high,
that you couldn't have seen his head if you had been there. All this
time the chestnuts and the jug went round and round; and by-and-by
they had a song, about a lost child travelling in the snow, from Tiny
Tim, who had a plaintive little voice, and sang it very well indeed.
There was nothing of high mark in this. They were not a
handsome family; they were not well dressed; their shoes were far
from being waterproof; their clothes were scanty; and Peter might
have known, and very likely did, the inside of a pawn-broker's. But
they were happy, grateful, pleased with one another, and contented
with the time; and when they faded, and looked happier yet in the
bright sprinklings of the Spirit's torch at parting, Scrooge had his eye
upon them, and especially on Tiny Tim, until the last.
 By this time it was getting dark, and snowing pretty heavily; and as
Scrooge and the Spirit went along the streets, the brightness of the
roaring fires in kitchens, parlours, and all sorts of rooms was
wonderful. Here, the flickering of the blaze showed preparations for a
cosy dinner, with hot plates baking through and through before the
fire, and deep red curtains, ready to be drawn to shut out cold and
darkness. There, all the children of the house were running out into
the snow to meet their married sisters, brothers, cousins, uncles,
aunts, and be the first to greet them. Here, again, were shadows on
the window blinds of guests assembling; and there a group of
handsome girls, all hooded and fur-booted, and all chattering at
once, tripped lightly off to some near neighbour's house; where, woe
upon the single man who saw them enter—artful witches, well they
knew it—in a glow!
But, if you had judged from the numbers of people on their way to
friendly gatherings, you might have thought that no one was at home
to give them welcome when they got there, instead of every house
expecting company, and piling up its fires half-chimney high.
Blessings on it, how the Ghost exulted! How it bared its breadth of
breast, and opened its capacious palm, and floated on, outpouring,
with a generous hand, its bright and harmless mirth on everything
within its reach! The very lamp-lighter, who ran on before, dotting the
dusky street with specks of light, and who was dressed to spend the
evening somewhere, laughed out loudly as the Spirit passed, though
little kenned the lamp-lighter that he had any company but
Christmas.
And now, without a word of warning from the Ghost, they stood
upon a bleak and desert moor, where monstrous masses of rude
stone were cast about, as though it were the burial-place or giants;
and water spread itself wheresoever it listed; or would have done so,
but for the frost that held it prisoner; and nothing grew but moss and
furze, and coarse, rank grass. Down in the west the setting sun had
left a streak of fiery red, which glared upon the desolation for an
instant, like a sullen eye, and, frowning lower, lower, lower yet, was
lost in the thick gloom of darkest night.
"What place is this?" asked Scrooge.
 "A place where Miners live, who labour in the bowels of the earth,"
returned the Spirit. "But they know me. See!"
A light shone from the window of a hut, and swiftly they advanced
towards it. Passing through the wall of mud and stone, they found a
cheerful company assembled round a glowing fire. An old, old man
and woman, with their children and their children's children, and
another generation beyond that, all decked out gaily in their holiday
attire. The old man, in a voice that seldom rose above the howling of
the wind upon the barren waste, was singing them a Christmas
song; it had been a very old song when he was a boy; and from time
to time they all joined in the chorus. So surely as they raised their
voices, the old man got quite blithe and loud; and, so surely as they
stopped, his vigour sank again.
The Spirit did not tarry here, but bade Scrooge hold his robe, and,
passing on above the moor, sped whither? Not to sea? To sea. To
Scrooge's horror, looking back, he saw the last of the land, a frightful
range of rocks, behind them; and his ears were deafened by the
thundering of water, as it rolled and roared, and raged among the
dreadful caverns it had worn, and fiercely tried to undermine the
earth.
Built upon a dismal reef of sunken rocks, some league or so from
shore, on which the waters chafed and dashed, the wild year
through, there stood a solitary lighthouse. Great heaps of seaweed
clung to its base, and storm-birds—born of the wind, one might
suppose, as seaweed of the water—rose and fell about it, like the
waves they skimmed.
But, even here, two men who watched the light had made a fire
that through the loophole in the thick stone wall shed out a ray of
brightness on the awful sea. Joining their horny hands over the
rough table at which they sat, they wished each other Merry
Christmas in their can of grog; and one of them, the elder too, with
his face all damaged and scarred with hard weather, as the figure-
head of an old ship might be, struck up a sturdy song that was like a
gale in itself.
Again the Ghost sped on, above the black and heaving sea—on,
on—until, being far away, as he told Scrooge, from any shore, they
lighted on a ship. They stood beside the helmsman at the wheel, the
look-out in the bow, the officers who had the watch; dark, ghostly
figures in their several stations; but every man among them hummed
a Christmas tune, or had a Christmas thought, or spoke below his
breath to his companion of some bygone Christmas-day, with
homeward hopes belonging to it. And every man on board, waking or
sleeping, good or bad, had had a kinder word for one another on that
day than on any day in the year; and had shared to some extent in
its festivities; and had remembered those he cared for at a distance,
and had known that they delighted to remember him.
It was a great surprise to Scrooge, while listening to the moaning
of the wind, and thinking what a solemn thing it was to move on
through the lonely darkness over an unknown abyss, whose depths
were secrets as profound as death: it was a great surprise to
Scrooge, while thus engaged, to hear a hearty laugh. It was a much
greater surprise to Scrooge to recognise it as his own nephew's, and
to find himself in a bright, dry, gleaming room, with the Spirit standing
smiling by his side, and looking at that same nephew with approving
affability!
"Ha, ha!" laughed Scrooge's nephew. "Ha, ha, ha!"
If you should happen, by any unlikely chance, to know a man more
blessed in a laugh than Scrooge's nephew, all I can say is, I should
like to know him too. Introduce him to me, and I'll cultivate his
acquaintance.
It is a fair, even-handed, noble adjustment of things, that, while
there is infection in disease and sorrow, there is nothing in the world
so irresistibly contagious as laughter and good-humour. When
Scrooge's nephew laughed in this way, holding his sides, rolling his
head, and twisting his face into the most extravagant contortions,
Scrooge's niece, by marriage, laughed as heartily as he. And their
assembled friends, being not a bit behindhand, roared out lustily.
"Ha, ha! Ha, ha, ha, ha!"
"He said that Christmas was a humbug, as I live!" cried Scrooge's
nephew. "He believed it, too!"
"More shame for him, Fred!" said Scrooge's niece indignantly.
Bless those women! they never do anything by halves. They are
always in earnest.
 She was very pretty; exceedingly pretty. With a dimpled, surprised-
looking, capital face; a ripe little mouth, that seemed made to be
kissed—as no doubt it was; all kinds of good little dots about her
chin, that melted into one another when she laughed; and the
sunniest pair of eyes you ever saw in any little creature's head.
Altogether she was what you would have called provoking, you
know; but satisfactory, too. Oh, perfectly satisfactory!
"He's a comical old fellow," said Scrooge's nephew, "that's the
truth; and not so pleasant as he might be. However, his offences
carry their own punishment, and I have nothing to say against him."
"I'm sure he is very rich, Fred," hinted Scrooge's niece. "At least,
you always tell me so."
"What of that, my dear?" said Scrooge's nephew. "His wealth is of
no use to him. He don't do any good with it. He don't make himself
comfortable with it. He hasn't the satisfaction of thinking—ha, ha, ha!
—that he is ever going to benefit Us with it."
"I have no patience with him," observed Scrooge's
niece. Scrooge's niece's sisters, and all the other ladies, expressed
the same opinion.
"Oh, I have!" said Scrooge's nephew. "I am sorry for him; I couldn't
be angry with him if I tried. Who suffers by his ill whims? Himself
always. Here he takes it into his head to dislike us, and he won't
come and dine with us. What's the consequence? He don't lose
much of a dinner."
"Indeed, I think he loses a very good dinner," interrupted Scrooge's
niece. Everybody else said the same, and they must be allowed to
have been competent judges, because they had just had dinner;
and, with the dessert upon the table, were clustered round the fire,
by lamp-light.
"Well! I am very glad to hear it," said Scrooge's nephew, "because
I haven't any great faith in these young housekeepers. What
do you say, Topper?"
Topper had clearly got his eye upon one of Scrooge's niece's
sisters, for he answered that a bachelor was a wretched outcast,
who had no right to express an opinion on the subject. Whereat
Scrooge's niece's sister—the plump one with the lace tucker, not the
one with the roses—blushed.
 "Do go on, Fred," said Scrooge's niece, clapping her hands. "He
never finishes what he begins to say! He is such a ridiculous fellow!"
Scrooge's nephew revelled in another laugh, and, as it was
impossible to keep the infection off, though the plump sister tried
hard to do it with aromatic vinegar, his example was unanimously
followed.
"I was only going to say," said Scrooge's nephew, "that the
consequence of his taking a dislike to us, and not making merry with
us, is, as I think, that he loses some pleasant moments, which could
do him no harm. I am sure he loses pleasanter companions than he
can find in his own thoughts, either in his mouldy old office or his
dusty chambers. I mean to give him the same chance every year,
whether he likes it or not, for I pity him. He may rail at Christmas till
he dies, but he can't help thinking better of it—I defy him—if he finds
me going there in good temper, year after year, and saying, 'Uncle
Scrooge, how are you?' If it only puts him in the vein to leave his
poor clerk fifty pounds, that's something; and I think I shook him
yesterday."
It was their turn to laugh, now, at the notion of his shaking
Scrooge. But, being thoroughly good-natured, and not much caring
what they laughed at, so that they laughed at any rate, he
encouraged them in their merriment, and passed the bottle, joyously.
After tea they had some music. For they were a musical family,
and knew what they were about when they sung a Glee or Catch, I
can assure you: especially Topper, who could growl away in the bass
like a good one, and never swell the large veins in his forehead, or
get red in the face over it. Scrooge's niece played well upon the
harp; and played, among other tunes, a simple little air (a mere
nothing: you might learn to whistle it in two minutes), which had been
familiar to the child who fetched Scrooge from the boarding-school,
as he had been reminded by the Ghost of Christmas Past. When this
strain of music sounded, all the things that Ghost had shown him
came upon his mind; he softened more and more; and thought that if
he could have listened to it often, years ago, he might have
cultivated the kindnesses of life for his own happiness with his own
hands, without resorting to the sexton's spade that buried Jacob
Marley.
 But they didn't devote the whole evening to music. After awhile
they played at forfeits; for it is good to be children sometimes, and
never better than at Christmas, when its mighty Founder was a child
himself. Stop! There was first a game at blindman's buff. Of course
there was. And I no more believe Topper was really blind than I
believe he had eyes in his boots. My opinion is, that it was a done
thing between him and Scrooge's nephew; and that the Ghost of
Christmas Present knew it. The way he went after that plump sister
in the lace tucker was an outrage on the credulity of human nature.
Knocking down the fire-irons, tumbling over the chairs, bumping up
against the piano, smothering himself amongst the curtains,
wherever she went, there went he! He always knew where the plump
sister was. He wouldn't catch anybody else. If you had fallen up
against him (as some of them did) on purpose, he would have made
a feint of endeavouring to seize you, which would have been an
affront to your understanding, and would instantly have sidled off in
the direction of the plump sister. She often cried out that it wasn't
fair; and it really was not. But when, at last, he caught her; when, in
spite of all her silken rustlings, and her rapid flutterings past him, he
got her into a corner whence there was no escape, then his conduct
was the most execrable. For his pretending not to know her; his
pretending that it was necessary to touch her head-dress, and
further to assure himself of her identity by pressing a certain ring
upon her finger, and a certain chain about her neck, was vile,
monstrous! No doubt she told him her opinion of it when, another
blind man being in office, they were so very confidential together
behind the curtains.
Scrooge's niece was not one of the blindman's buff party, but was
made comfortable with a large chair and a footstool, in a snug corner
where the Ghost and Scrooge were close behind her. But she joined
in the forfeits, and loved her love to admiration with all the letters of
the alphabet. Likewise at the game of How, When, and Where, she
was very great, and, to the secret joy of Scrooge's nephew, beat her
sisters hollow: though they were sharp girls too, as Topper could
have told you. There might have been twenty people there, young
and old, but they all played, and so did Scrooge; for, wholly
forgetting, in the interest he had in what was going on, that his voice
made no sound in their ears, he sometimes came out with his
guess quite loud, and very often guessed right, too, for the sharpest
needle, best Whitechapel, warranted not to cut in the eye, was not
sharper than Scrooge; blunt as he took it in his head to be.
The Ghost was greatly pleased to find him in this mood, and
looked upon him with such favour, that he begged like a boy to be
allowed to stay until the guests departed. But this the Spirit said
could not be done.
"Here is a new game," said Scrooge. "One half-hour, Spirit, only
one!"
It was a game called Yes and No, where Scrooge's nephew had to
think of something, and the rest must find out what; he only
answering to their questions yes or no, as the case was. The brisk
fire of questioning to which he was exposed elicited from him that he
was thinking of an animal, a live animal, rather a disagreeable
animal, a savage animal, an animal that growled and grunted
sometimes, and talked sometimes, and lived in London, and walked
about the streets, and wasn't made a show of, and wasn't led by
anybody, and didn't live in a menagerie, and was never killed in a
market, and was not a horse, or an ass, or a cow, or a bull, or a tiger,
or a dog, or a pig, or a cat, or a bear. At every fresh question that
was put to him, this nephew burst into a fresh roar of laughter; and
was so inexpressibly tickled, that he was obliged to get up off the
sofa, and stamp. At last the plump sister, falling into a similar state,
cried out:
"I have found it out! I know what it is, Fred! I know what it is!"
"What is it?" cried Fred.
"It's your uncle Scro-o-o-o-oge!"
Which it certainly was. Admiration was the universal sentiment,
though some objected that the reply to "Is it a bear?" ought to have
been "Yes": inasmuch as an answer in the negative was sufficient to
have diverted their thoughts from Mr. Scrooge, supposing they had
ever had any tendency that way.
"He has given us plenty of merriment, I am sure," said Fred, "and it
would be ungrateful not to drink his health. Here is a glass of mulled
wine ready to our hand at the moment; and I say, 'Uncle Scrooge!'"
"Well! Uncle Scrooge!" they cried.
 "A merry Christmas and a happy New Year to the old man,
whatever he is!" said Scrooge's nephew. "He wouldn't take it from
me, but may he have it nevertheless. Uncle Scrooge!"
Uncle Scrooge had imperceptibly become so gay and light of
heart, that he would have pledged the unconscious company in
return, and thanked them in an inaudible speech, if the Ghost had
given him time. But the whole scene passed off in the breath of the
last word spoken by his nephew; and he and the Spirit were again
upon their travels.
Much they saw, and far they went, and many homes they visited,
but always with a happy end. The Spirit stood beside sick-beds, and
they were cheerful; on foreign lands, and they were close at home;
by struggling men, and they were patient in their greater hope; by
poverty, and it was rich. In almshouse, hospital, and gaol, in misery's
every refuge, where vain man in his little brief authority had not
made fast the door, and barred the Spirit out, he left his blessing,
and taught Scrooge his precepts.
It was a long night, if it were only a night; but Scrooge had his
doubts of this, because the Christmas holidays appeared to be
condensed into the space of time they passed together. It was
strange, too, that, while Scrooge remained unaltered in his outward
form, the Ghost grew older, clearly older. Scrooge had observed this
change, but never spoke of it, until they left a children's Twelfth-Night
party, when, looking at the Spirit as they stood together in an open
place, he noticed that its hair was grey.
"Are spirits' lives so short?" asked Scrooge.
"My life upon this globe is very brief," replied the Ghost. "It ends
to-night."
"To-night!" cried Scrooge.
"To-night at midnight. Hark! The time is drawing near."
The chimes were ringing the three-quarters past eleven at that
moment.
"Forgive me if I am not justified in what I ask," said Scrooge,
looking intently at the Spirit's robe, "but I see something strange, and
not belonging to yourself, protruding from your skirts. Is it a foot or a
claw?"
 "It might be a claw, for the flesh there is upon it," was the Spirit's
sorrowful reply. "Look here."
From the foldings of its robe it brought two children; wretched,
abject, frightful, hideous, miserable. They knelt down at its feet, and
clung upon the outside of its garment.
"Oh, Man! look here! Look, look, down here!" exclaimed the Ghost.
They were a boy and girl. Yellow, meagre, ragged, scowling,
wolfish; but prostrate, too, in their humility. Where graceful youth
should have filled their features out, and touched them with its
freshest tints, a stale and shrivelled hand, like that of age, had
pinched, and twisted them, and pulled them into shreds. Where
angels might have sat enthroned, devils lurked, and glared out
menacing. No change, no degradation, no perversion of humanity, in
any grade, through all the mysteries of wonderful creation, has
monsters half so horrible and dread.
Scrooge started back, appalled. Having them shown to him in this
way, he tried to say they were fine children, but the words choked
themselves, rather than be parties to a lie of such enormous
magnitude.
"Spirit! are they yours?" Scrooge could say no more.
"They are Man's," said the Spirit, looking down upon them. "And
they cling to me, appealing from their fathers. This boy is Ignorance.
This girl is Want. Beware of them both, and all of their degree, but
most of all beware this boy, for on his brow I see that written which is
Doom, unless the writing be erased. Deny it!" cried the Spirit,
stretching out its hand towards the city. "Slander those who tell it ye!
Admit it for your factious purposes, and make it worse! And bide the
end!"
"Have they no refuge or resource?" cried Scrooge.
"Are there no prisons?" said the Spirit, turning on him for the last
time with his own words. "Are there no workhouses?"
The bell struck Twelve.
Scrooge looked about him for the Ghost, and saw it not. As the
last stroke ceased to vibrate, he remembered the prediction of old
Jacob Marley, and, lifting up his eyes, beheld a solemn Phantom,
draped and hooded, coming like a mist along the ground towards
him.
 C 4T L O T S

The Phantom slowly, gravely, silently approached. When it came

near him, Scrooge bent down upon his knee; for in the very air
through which this Spirit moved it seemed to scatter gloom and
mystery.
It was shrouded in a deep black garment, which concealed its
head, its face, its form, and left nothing of it visible, save one
outstretched hand. But for this, it would have been difficult to detach
its figure from the night, and separate it from the darkness by which
it was surrounded.
He felt that it was tall and stately when it came beside him, and
that its mysterious presence filled him with a solemn dread. He knew
no more, for the Spirit neither spoke nor moved.
"I am in the presence of the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come?"
said Scrooge.
The Spirit answered not, but pointed onward with its hand.
"You are about to show me shadows of the things that have not
happened, but will happen in the time before us," Scrooge pursued.
"Is that so, Spirit?"
The upper portion of the garment was contracted for an instant in
its folds, as if the Spirit had inclined its head. That was the only
answer he received.
Although well used to ghostly company by this time, Scrooge
feared the silent shape so much that his legs trembled beneath him,
and he found that he could hardly stand when he prepared to follow
it. The Spirit paused a moment, as observing his condition, and
giving him time to recover.
 But Scrooge was all the worse for this. It thrilled him with a vague
uncertain horror to know that, behind the dusky shroud, there were
ghostly eyes intently fixed upon him, while he, though he stretched
his own to the utmost, could see nothing but a spectral hand and one
great heap of black.
"Ghost of the Future!" he exclaimed, "I fear you more than any
spectre I have seen. But, as I know your purpose is to do me good,
and as I hope to live to be another man from what I was, I am
prepared to bear you company, and do it with a thankful heart. Will
you not speak to me?"
It gave him no reply. The hand was pointed straight before them.
"Lead on!" said Scrooge. "Lead on! The night is waning fast, and it
is precious time to me, I know. Lead on, Spirit!"
The phantom moved away as it had come towards him. Scrooge
followed in the shadow of its dress, which bore him up, he thought,
and carried him along.
They scarcely seemed to enter the City; for the City rather seemed
to spring up about them, and encompass them of its own act. But
there they were in the heart of it; on 'Change, amongst the
merchants; who hurried up and down, and chinked the money in
their pockets, and conversed in groups, and looked at their watches,
and trifled thoughtfully with their great gold seals; and so forth, as
Scrooge had seen them often.
The Spirit stopped beside one little knot of business men.
Observing that the hand was pointed to them, Scrooge advanced to
listen to their talk.
"No," said a great fat man with a monstrous chin, "I don't know
much about it either way. I only know he's dead."
"When did he die?" inquired another.
"Last night, I believe."
"Why, what was the matter with him?" asked a third, taking a vast
quantity of snuff out of a very large snuff-box. "I thought he'd never
die."
"God knows," said the first with a yawn.
"What has he done with his money?" asked a red-faced gentleman
with a pendulous excrescence on the end of his nose, that shook like
the gills of a turkey-cock.
 "I haven't heard," said the man with the large chin, yawning again.
"Left it to his company, perhaps. He hasn't left it to me. That's all I
know."
This pleasantry was received with a general laugh.
"It's likely to be a very cheap funeral," said the same speaker; "for,
upon my life, I don't know of anybody to go to it. Suppose we make
up a party, and volunteer?"
"I don't mind going if a lunch is provided," observed the gentleman
with the excrescence on his nose. "But I must be fed if I make one."
Another laugh.
"Well, I am the most disinterested among you, after all," said the
first speaker, "for I never wear black gloves, and I never eat lunch.
But I'll offer to go if anybody else will. When I come to think of it, I'm
not at all sure that I wasn't his most particular friend; for we used to
stop and speak whenever we met. Bye, bye!"
Speakers and listeners strolled away, and mixed with other
groups. Scrooge knew the men, and looked towards the Spirit for an
explanation.
The Phantom glided on into a street. Its finger pointed to two
persons meeting. Scrooge listened again, thinking that the
explanation might lie here.
He knew these men, also, perfectly. They were men of business:
very wealthy, and of great importance. He had made a point always
of standing well in their esteem: in a business point of view, that is;
strictly in a business point of view.
"How are you?" said one.
"How are you?" returned the other.
"Well!" said the first. "Old Scratch has got his own at last, hey?"
"So I am told," returned the second. "Cold, isn't it?"
"Seasonable for Christmas-time. You are not a skater, I suppose?"
"No. No. Something else to think of. Good morning!"
Not another word. That was their meeting, their conversation, and
their parting.
Scrooge was at first inclined to be surprised that the Spirit should
attach importance to conversations apparently so trivial; but, feeling
assured that they must have some hidden purpose, he set himself to
consider what it was likely to be. They could scarcely be supposed to
have any bearing on the death of Jacob, his old partner, for that was
Past, and this Ghost's province was the Future. Nor could he think of
any one immediately connected with himself, to whom he could
apply them. But nothing doubting that, to whomsoever they applied,
they had some latent moral for his own improvement, he resolved to
treasure up every word he heard, and everything he saw; and
especially to observe the shadow of himself when it appeared. For
he had an expectation that the conduct of his future self would give
him the clue he missed, and would render the solution of these
riddles easy.
He looked about in that very place for his own image, but another
man stood in his accustomed corner, and, though the clock pointed
to his usual time of day for being there, he saw no likeness of himself
among the multitudes that poured in through the Porch. It gave him
little surprise, however; for he had been revolving in his mind a
change of life, and thought and hoped he saw his new-born
resolutions carried out in this.
Quiet and dark, beside him stood the Phantom, with its
outstretched hand. When he roused himself from his thoughtful
quest, he fancied, from the turn of the hand, and its situation in
reference to himself, that the Unseen Eyes were looking at him
keenly. It made him shudder, and feel very cold.
They left the busy scene, and went into an obscure part of the
town, where Scrooge had never penetrated before, although he
recognised its situation and its bad repute. The ways were foul and
narrow; the shops and houses wretched; the people half naked,
drunken, slipshod, ugly. Alleys and archways, like so many
cesspools, disgorged their offences of smell, and dirt, and life upon
the straggling streets; and the whole quarter reeked with crime, with
filth and misery.
Far in this den of infamous resort, there was a low-browed,
beetling shop, below a pent-house roof, where iron, old rags, bottles,
bones, and greasy offal were bought. Upon the floor within were
piled up heaps of rusty keys, nails, chains, hinges, files, scales,
weights, and refuse iron of all kinds. Secrets that few would like to
scrutinise were bred and hidden in mountains of unseemly rags,
masses of corrupted fat, and sepulchres of bones. Sitting in among
the wares he dealt in, by a charcoal stove made of old bricks, was a
grey-haired rascal, nearly seventy years of age, who had screened
himself from the cold air without by a frouzy curtaining of
miscellaneous tatters hung upon a line, and smoked his pipe in all
the luxury of calm retirement.
Scrooge and the Phantom came into the presence of this man,
just as a woman with a heavy bundle slunk into the shop. But she
had scarcely entered, when another woman, similarly laden, came in
too, and she was closely followed by a man in faded black, who was
no less startled by the sight of them than they had been upon the
recognition of each other. After a short period of blank astonishment,
in which the old man with the pipe had joined them, they all three
burst into a laugh.
"Let the charwoman alone to be the first!" cried she who had
entered first. "Let the laundress alone to be the second; and let the
undertaker's man alone to be the third. Look here, old Joe, here's a
chance! If we haven't all three met here without meaning it!"
"You couldn't have met in a better place," said old Joe, removing
his pipe from his mouth. "Come into the parlour. You were made free
of it long ago, you know; and the other two an't strangers. Stop till I
shut the door of the shop. Ah! How it skreeks! There an't such a
rusty bit of metal in the place as its own hinges, I believe; and I'm
sure there's no such old bones here as mine. Ha! ha! We're all
suitable to our calling, we're well matched. Come into the parlour.
Come into the parlour."
The parlour was the space behind the screen of rags. The old man
raked the fire together with an old stair-rod, and, having trimmed his
smoky lamp (for it was night) with the stem of his pipe, put it into his
mouth again.
While he did this, the woman who had already spoken threw her
bundle on the floor, and sat down in a flaunting manner on a stool;
crossing her elbows on her knees, and looking with a bold defiance
at the other two.
"What odds, then? What odds, Mrs. Dilber?" said the woman.
"Every person has a right to take care of themselves. He always
did!"
"That's true, indeed!" said the laundress. "No man more so."
 "Why, then, don't stand staring as if you was afraid, woman! Who's
the wiser? We're not going to pick holes in each other's coats, I
suppose?"
"No, indeed!" said Mrs. Dilber and the man together. "We should
hope not."
"Very well, then!" cried the woman. "That's enough. Who's the
worse for the loss of a few things like these? Not a dead man, I
suppose?"
"No, indeed," said Mrs. Dilber, laughing.
"If he wanted to keep 'em after he was dead, a wicked old screw,"
pursued the woman, "why wasn't he natural in his lifetime? If he had
been, he'd have had somebody to look after him when he was struck
with Death, instead of lying gasping out his last there, alone by
himself."
"It's the truest word that ever was spoke," said Mrs. Dilber, "It's a
judgment on him."
"I wish it was a little heavier judgment," replied the woman; "and it
should have been, you may depend upon it, if I could have laid my
hands on anything else. Open that bundle, old Joe, and let me know
the value of it. Speak out plain. I'm not afraid to be the first, nor
afraid for them to see it. We knew pretty well that we were helping
ourselves before we met here, I believe. It's no sin. Open the bundle,
Joe."
But the gallantry of her friends would not allow of this; and the man
in faded black, mounting the breach first, produced hisplunder. It was
not extensive. A seal or two, a pencil-case, a pair of sleeve-buttons,
and a brooch of no great value, were all. They were severally
examined and appraised by old Joe, who chalked the sums he was
disposed to give for each upon the wall, and added them up into a
total when he found that there was nothing more to come.
"That's your account," said Joe, "and I wouldn't give another
sixpence, if I was to be boiled for not doing it. Who's next?"
Mrs. Dilber was next. Sheets and towels, a little wearing apparel,
two old-fashioned silver tea-spoons, a pair of sugar-tongs, and a few
boots. Her account was stated on the wall in the same manner.
"I always give too much to ladies. It's a weakness of mine, and
that's the way I ruin myself," said old Joe. "That's your account. If
you asked me for another penny, and made it an open question, I'd
repent of being so liberal, and knock off half-a-crown."
"And now undo my bundle, Joe," said the first woman.
Joe went down on his knees for the greater convenience of
opening it, and, having unfastened a great many knots, dragged out
a large heavy roll of some dark stuff.
"What do you call this?" said Joe. "Bed-curtains?"
"Ah!" returned the woman, laughing and leaning forward on her
crossed arms. "Bed-curtains!"
"You don't mean to say you took 'em down, rings and all, with him
lying there?" said Joe.
"Yes, I do," replied the woman. "Why not?"
"You were born to make your fortune," said Joe, "and you'll
certainly do it."
"I certainly shan't hold my hand, when I can get anything in it by
reaching it out, for the sake of such a man as He was, I promise you,
Joe," returned the woman coolly. "Don't drop that oil upon the
blankets, now."
"His blankets?" asked Joe.
"Whose else's do you think?" replied the woman. "He isn't likely to
take cold without 'em, I dare say."
"I hope he didn't die of anything catching? Eh?" said old Joe,
stopping in his work, and looking up.
"Don't you be afraid of that," returned the woman. "I an't so fond of
his company that I'd loiter about him for such things, if he did. Ah!
You may look through that shirt till your eyes ache; but you won't find
a hole in it, nor a threadbare place. It's the best he had, and a fine
one too. They'd have wasted it, if it hadn't been for me."
"What do you call wasting of it?" asked old Joe.
"Putting it on him to be buried in, to be sure," replied the woman
with a laugh. "Somebody was fool enough to do it, but I took it off
again. If calico an't good enough for such a purpose, it isn't good
enough for anything. It's quite as becoming to the body. He can't look
uglier than he did in that one."
Scrooge listened to this dialogue in horror. As they sat grouped
about their spoil, in the scanty light afforded by the old man's lamp,
he viewed them with a detestation and disgust which could hardly
have been greater, though they had been obscene demons,
marketing the corpse itself.
"Ha, ha!" laughed the same woman when old Joe, producing a
flannel bag with money in it, told out their several gains upon the
ground. "This is the end of it, you see! He frightened every one away
from him when he was alive, to profit us when he was dead! Ha, ha,
ha!"
"Spirit!" said Scrooge, shuddering from head to foot. "I see, I see.
The case of this unhappy man might be my own. My life tends that
way now. Merciful Heaven, what is this?"
He recoiled in terror, for the scene had changed, and now he
almost touched a bed: a bare, uncurtained bed: on which, beneath a
ragged sheet, there lay a something covered up, which, though it
was dumb, announced itself in awful language.
The room was very dark, too dark to be observed with any
accuracy, though Scrooge glanced round it in obedience to a secret
impulse, anxious to know what kind of room it was. A pale light,
rising in the outer air, fell straight upon the bed: and on it, plundered
and bereft, unwatched, unwept, uncared for, was the body of this
man.
Scrooge glanced towards the Phantom. Its steady hand was
pointed to the head. The cover was so carelessly adjusted that the
slightest raising of it, the motion of a finger upon Scrooge's part,
would have disclosed the face. He thought of it, felt how easy it
would be to do, and longed to do it; but had no more power to
withdraw the veil than to dismiss the spectre at his side.
Oh, cold, cold, rigid, dreadful Death, set up thine altar here, and
dress it with such terrors as thou hast at thy command: for this is thy
dominion! But of the loved, revered, and honoured head thou canst
not turn one hair to thy dread purposes, or make one feature odious.
It is not that the hand is heavy, and will fall down when released; it is
not that the heart and pulse are still; but that the hand WAS open,
generous, and true; the heart brave, warm, and tender; and the
pulse a man's. Strike, Shadow, strike! And see his good deeds
springing from the wound, to sow the world with life immortal!
No voice pronounced these words in Scrooge's ears, and yet he
heard them when he looked upon the bed. He thought, if this man
could be raised up now, what would be his foremost thoughts?
Avarice, hard dealing, griping cares? They have brought him to a
rich end, truly!
He lay, in the dark, empty house, with not a man, a woman, or a
child to say he was kind to me in this or that, and for the memory of
one kind word I will be kind to him. A cat was tearing at the door, and
there was a sound of gnawing rats beneath the hearth-stone.
What they wanted in the room of death, and why they were so
restless and disturbed, Scrooge did not dare to think.
"Spirit!" he said, "this is a fearful place. In leaving it, I shall not
leave its lesson, trust me. Let us go!"
Still the Ghost pointed with an unmoved finger to the head.
"I understand you," Scrooge returned, "and I would do it if I could.
But I have not the power, Spirit. I have not the power."
Again it seemed to look upon him.
"If there is any person in the town who feels emotion caused by
this man's death," said Scrooge, quite agonised, "show that person
to me, Spirit! I beseech you."
The Phantom spread its dark robe before him for a moment, like a
wing; and, withdrawing it, revealed a room by daylight, where a
mother and her children were.
She was expecting some one, and with anxious eagerness; for
she walked up and down the room; started at every sound; looked
out from the window; glanced at the clock; tried, but in vain, to work
with her needle; and could hardly bear the voices of her children in
their play.
At length the long-expected knock was heard. She hurried to the
door, and met her husband; a man whose face was careworn and
depressed, though he was young. There was a remarkable
expression in it now; a kind of serious delight of which he felt
ashamed, and which he struggled to repress.
He sat down to the dinner that had been hoarding for him by the
fire, and, when she asked him faintly what news (which was not until
after a long silence), he appeared embarrassed how to answer.
"Is it good," she said, "or bad?" to help him.
"Bad," he answered.
"We are quite ruined?"
 "No. There is hope yet, Caroline."
"If he relents," she said, amazed, "there is! Nothing is past hope, if
such a miracle has happened."
"He is past relenting," said her husband. "He is dead."
She was a mild and patient creature, if her face spoke truth; but
she was thankful in her soul to hear it, and she said so with clasped
hands. She prayed forgiveness the next moment, and was sorry; but
the first was the emotion of her heart.
"What the half-drunken woman, whom I told you of last night, said
to me when I tried to see him and obtain a week's delay, and what I
thought was a mere excuse to avoid me, turns out to have been
quite true. He was not only very ill, but dying, then."
"To whom will our debt be transferred?"
"I don't know. But, before that time, we shall be ready with the
money; and, even though we were not, it would be bad fortune
indeed to find so merciless a creditor in his successor. We may sleep
to-night with light hearts, Caroline!"
Yes. Soften it as they would, their hearts were lighter. The
children's faces, hushed and clustered round to hear what they so
little understood, were brighter; and it was a happier house for this
man's death! The only emotion that the Ghost could show him,
caused by the event, was one of pleasure.
"Let me see some tenderness connected with a death," said
Scrooge; "or that dark chamber, Spirit, which we left just now, will be
for ever present to me."
The Ghost conducted him through several streets familiar to his
feet; and, as they went along, Scrooge looked here and there to find
himself, but nowhere was he to be seen. They entered poor Bob
Cratchit's house,—the dwelling he had visited before,—and found
the mother and the children seated round the fire.
Quiet. Very quiet. The noisy little Cratchits were as still as statues
in one corner, and sat looking up at Peter, who had a book before
him. The mother and her daughters were engaged in sewing. But
surely they were very quiet!
"'And he took a child, and set him in the midst of them.'"
Where had Scrooge heard those words? He had not dreamed
them. The boy must have read them out, as he and the Spirit
crossed the threshold. Why did he not go on?
The mother laid her work upon the table, and put her hand up to
her face.
"The colour hurts my eyes," she said.
The colour? Ah, poor Tiny Tim!
"They're better now again," said Cratchit's wife. "It makes them
weak by candle-light; and I wouldn't show weak eyes to your father,
when he comes home, for the world. It must be near his time."
"Past it rather," Peter answered, shutting up his book. "But I think
he has walked a little slower than he used, these few last evenings,
mother."
They were very quiet again. At last she said, and in a steady,
cheerful voice, that only faltered once:
"I have known him walk with—I have known him walk with Tiny
Tim upon his shoulder very fast indeed."
"And so have I," cried Peter. "Often."
"And so have I," exclaimed another. So had all.
"But he was very light to carry," she resumed, intent upon her
work, "and his father loved him so, that it was no trouble: no trouble.
And there is your father at the door!"
She hurried out to meet him; and little Bob in his comforter—he
had need of it, poor fellow—came in. His tea was ready for him on
the hob, and they all tried who should help him to it most. Then the
two young Cratchits got upon his knees, and laid, each child, a little
cheek against his face, as if they said, "Don't mind it, father. Don't be
grieved!"
Bob was very cheerful with them, and spoke pleasantly to all the
family. He looked at the work upon the table, and praised the
industry and speed of Mrs. Cratchit and the girls. They would be
done long before Sunday, he said.
"Sunday! You went to-day, then, Robert?" said his wife.
"Yes, my dear," returned Bob. "I wish you could have gone. It
would have done you good to see how green a place it is. But you'll
see it often. I promised him that I would walk there on a Sunday. My
little, little child!" cried Bob. "My little child!"
He broke down all at once. He couldn't help it. If he could have
helped it, he and his child would have been farther apart, perhaps,
than they were.
He left the room, and went up-stairs into the room above, which
was lighted cheerfully, and hung with Christmas. There was a chair
set close beside the child, and there were signs of some one having
been there lately. Poor Bob sat down in it, and, when he had thought
a little and composed himself, he kissed the little face. He was
reconciled to what had happened, and went down again quite happy.
They drew about the fire, and talked; the girls and mother working
still. Bob told them of the extraordinary kindness of Mr. Scrooge's
nephew, whom he had scarcely seen but once, and who, meeting
him in the street that day, and seeing that he looked a little—"just a
little down, you know," said Bob, inquired what had happened to
distress him. "On which," said Bob, "for he is the pleasantest-spoken
gentleman you ever heard, I told him. 'I am heartily sorry for it, Mr.
Cratchit,' he said, 'and heartily sorry for your good wife.' By-the-bye,
how he ever knew that I don't know."
"Knew what, my dear?"
"Why, that you were a good wife," replied Bob.
"Everybody knows that," said Peter.
"Very well observed, my boy!" cried Bob. "I hope they do. 'Heartily
sorry,' he said, 'for your good wife. If I can be of service to you in any
way,' he said, giving me his card, 'that's where I live. Pray come to
me.' Now, it wasn't," cried Bob, "for the sake of anything he might be
able to do for us, so much as for his kind way, that this was quite
delightful. It really seemed as if he had known our Tiny Tim, and felt
with us."
"I'm sure he's a good soul!" said Mrs. Cratchit.
"You would be sure of it, my dear," returned Bob, "if you saw and
spoke to him. I shouldn't be at all surprised—mark what I say!—if he
got Peter a better situation."
"Only hear that, Peter," said Mrs. Cratchit.
"And then," cried one of the girls, "Peter will be keeping company
with some one, and setting up for himself."
"Get along with you!" retorted Peter, grinning.
"It's just as likely as not," said Bob, "one of these days; though
there's plenty of time for that, my dear. But, however and whenever
we part from one another, I am sure we shall none of us forget poor
Tiny Tim—shall we—or this first parting that there was among us?"
"Never, father!" cried they all.
"And I know," said Bob, "I know, my dears, that when we recollect
how patient and how mild he was, although he was a little, little child,
we shall not quarrel easily among ourselves, and forget poor Tiny
Tim in doing it."
"No, never, father!" they all cried again.
"I am very happy," said little Bob, "I am very happy!"
Mrs. Cratchit kissed him, his daughters kissed him, the two young
Cratchits kissed him, and Peter and himself shook hands. Spirit of
Tiny Tim, thy childish essence was from God!
"Spectre," said Scrooge, "something informs me that our parting
moment is at hand. I know it, but I know not how. Tell me what man
that was whom we saw lying dead?"
The Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come conveyed him, as before—
though at a different time, he thought: indeed, there seemed no
order in these latter visions, save that they were in the Future—into
the resorts of business men, but showed him not himself. Indeed, the
Spirit did not stay for anything, but went straight on, as to the end
just now desired, until besought by Scrooge to tarry for a moment.
"This court," said Scrooge, "through which we hurry now, is where
my place of occupation is, and has been for a length of time. I see
the house. Let me behold what I shall be in days to come."
The Spirit stopped; the hand was pointed elsewhere.
"The house is yonder," Scrooge exclaimed. "Why do you point
away?"
The inexorable finger underwent no change.
Scrooge hastened to the window of his office, and looked in. It was
an office still, but not his. The furniture was not the same, and the
figure in the chair was not himself. The Phantom pointed as before.
He joined it once again, and, wondering why and whither he had
gone, accompanied it until they reached an iron gate. He paused to
look round before entering.
A churchyard. Here, then, the wretched man, whose name he had
now to learn, lay underneath the ground. It was a worthy place.
Walled in by houses; overrun by grass and weeds, the growth of
vegetation's death, not life; choked up with too much burying; fat with
repleted appetite. A worthy place!
The Spirit stood among the graves, and pointed down to One. He
advanced towards it trembling. The Phantom was exactly as it had
been, but he dreaded that he saw new meaning in its solemn shape.
"Before I draw nearer to that stone to which you point," said
Scrooge, "answer me one question. Are these the shadows of the
things that Will be, or are they shadows of the things that May be
only?"
Still the Ghost pointed downward to the grave by which it stood.
"Men's courses will foreshadow certain ends, to which, if
persevered in, they must lead," said Scrooge. "But if the courses be
departed from, the ends will change. Say it is thus with what you
show me!"
The Spirit was immovable as ever.
Scrooge crept towards it, trembling as he went; and, following the
finger, read upon the stone of the neglected grave his own
name, Ebenezer Scrooge.
"Am I that man who lay upon the bed?" he cried upon his knees.
The finger pointed from the grave to him, and back again.
"No, Spirit! Oh no, no!"
The finger still was there.
"Spirit!" he cried, tight clutching at its robe, "hear me! I am not the
man I was. I will not be the man I must have been but for this
intercourse. Why show me this, if I am past all hope?"
For the first time the hand appeared to shake.
"Good Spirit," he pursued, as down upon the ground he fell before
it: "your nature intercedes for me, and pities me. Assure me that I yet
may change these shadows you have shown me by an altered life?"
The kind hand trembled.
"I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year.
I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future. The Spirits of all
Three shall strive within me. I will not shut out the lessons that they
teach. Oh, tell me I may sponge away the writing on this stone!"
In his agony, he caught the spectral hand. It sought to free itself,
but he was strong in his entreaty, and detained it. The Spirit, stronger
yet, repulsed him.
 Holding up his hands in a last prayer to have his fate reversed, he
saw an alteration in the Phantom's hood and dress. It shrunk,
collapsed, and dwindled down into a bedpost.
 C 5T E O I

Yes! and the bedpost was his own. The bed was his own, the room
was his own. Best and happiest of all, the Time before him was his
own, to make amends in!
"I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future!" Scrooge
repeated as he scrambled out of bed. "The Spirits of all Three shall
strive within me. Oh, Jacob Marley! Heaven and the Christmas Time
be praised for this! I say it on my knees, old Jacob; on my knees!"
He was so fluttered and so glowing with his good intentions, that
his broken voice would scarcely answer to his call. He had been
sobbing violently in his conflict with the Spirit, and his face was wet
with tears.
"They are not torn down," cried Scrooge, folding one of his bed-
curtains in his arms, "they are not torn down, rings and all. They are
here—I am here—the shadows of the things that would have been
may be dispelled. They will be. I know they will!"
His hands were busy with his garments all this time; turning them
inside out, putting them on upside down, tearing them, mislaying
them, making them parties to every kind of extravagance.
"I don't know what to do!" cried Scrooge, laughing and crying in
the same breath; and making a perfect Laocoön of himself with his
stockings. "I am as light as a feather, I am as happy as an angel, I
am as merry as a school-boy. I am as giddy as a drunken man. A
merry Christmas to everybody! A happy New Year to all the world!
Hallo here! Whoop! Hallo!"
He had frisked into the sitting-room, and was now standing there:
perfectly winded.
 "There's the saucepan that the gruel was in!" cried Scrooge,
starting off again, and going round the fire-place. "There's the door
by which the Ghost of Jacob Marley entered! There's the corner
where the Ghost of Christmas Present sat! There's the window
where I saw the wandering Spirits! It's all right, it's all true, it all
happened. Ha, ha, ha!"
Really, for a man who had been out of practice for so many years,
it was a splendid laugh, a most illustrious laugh. The father of a long,
long line of brilliant laughs!
"I don't know what day of the month it is," said Scrooge. "I don't
know how long I have been among the Spirits. I don't know anything.
I'm quite a baby. Never mind. I don't care. I'd rather be a baby. Hallo!
Whoop! Hallo here!"
He was checked in his transports by the churches ringing out the
lustiest peals he had ever heard. Clash, clash, hammer; ding, dong,
bell! Bell, dong, ding; hammer, clang, clash! Oh, glorious, glorious!
Running to the window, he opened it, and put out his head. No fog,
no mist; clear, bright, jovial, stirring, cold; cold, piping for the blood to
dance to; Golden sun-light; Heavenly sky; sweet fresh air; merry
bells. Oh, glorious! Glorious!
"What's to-day?" cried Scrooge, calling downward to a boy in
Sunday clothes, who perhaps had loitered in to look about him.
"Eh?" returned the boy with all his might of wonder.
"What's to-day, my fine fellow?" said Scrooge.
"To-day!" replied the boy. "Why, Christmas Day."
"It's Christmas Day!" said Scrooge to himself. "I haven't missed it.
The Spirits have done it all in one night. They can do anything they
like. Of course they can. Of course they can. Hallo, my fine fellow!"
"Hallo!" returned the boy.
"Do you know the Poulterer's in the next street but one, at the
corner?" Scrooge inquired.
"I should hope I did," replied the lad.
"An intelligent boy!" said Scrooge. "A remarkable boy! Do you
know whether they've sold the prize Turkey that was hanging up
there?—Not the little prize Turkey: the big one?"
"What! the one as big as me?" returned the boy.
 "What a delightful boy!" said Scrooge. "It's a pleasure to talk to
him. Yes, my buck!"
"It's hanging there now," replied the boy.
"Is it?" said Scrooge. "Go and buy it."
"Walk-ER!" exclaimed the boy.
"No, no," said Scrooge, "I am in earnest. Go and buy it, and tell
'em to bring it here, that I may give them the directions where to take
it. Come back with the man, and I'll give you a shilling. Come back
with him in less than five minutes, and I'll give you half-a-crown!"
The boy was off like a shot. He must have had a steady hand at a
trigger who could have got a shot off half so fast.
"I'll send it to Bob Cratchit's," whispered Scrooge, rubbing his
hands, and splitting with a laugh. "He shan't know who sends it. It's
twice the size of Tiny Tim. Joe Miller never made such a joke as
sending it to Bob's will be!"
The hand in which he wrote the address was not a steady one; but
write it he did, somehow, and went down-stairs to open the street-
door, ready for the coming of the poulterer's man. As he stood there,
waiting his arrival, the knocker caught his eye.
"I shall love it as long as I live!" cried Scrooge, patting it with his
hand. "I scarcely ever looked at it before. What an honest expression
it has in its face! It's a wonderful knocker!—Here's the Turkey. Hallo!
Whoop! How are you? Merry Christmas!"
It was a Turkey! He never could have stood upon his legs, that
bird. He would have snapped 'em short off in a minute, like sticks of
sealing-wax.
"Why, it's impossible to carry that to Camden Town," said Scrooge.
"You must have a cab."
The chuckle with which he said this, and the chuckle with which he
paid for the Turkey, and the chuckle with which he paid for the cab,
and the chuckle with which he recompensed the boy, were only to be
exceeded by the chuckle with which he sat down breathless in his
chair again, and chuckled till he cried.
Shaving was not an easy task, for his hand continued to shake
very much; and shaving requires attention, even when you don't
dance while you are at it. But, if he had cut the end of his nose off,
he would have put a piece of sticking-plaster over it, and been quite
satisfied.
He dressed himself "all in his best," and at last got out into the
streets. The people were by this time pouring forth, as he had seen
them with the Ghost of Christmas Present; and, walking with his
hands behind him, Scrooge regarded every one with a delighted
smile. He looked so irresistibly pleasant, in a word, that three or four
good-humoured fellows said, "Good morning, sir! A merry Christmas
to you!" And Scrooge said often afterwards that, of all the blithe
sounds he had ever heard, those were the blithest in his ears.
He had not gone far when, coming on towards him, he beheld the
portly gentleman who had walked into his counting-house the day
before, and said, "Scrooge and Marley's, I believe?" It sent a pang
across his heart to think how this old gentleman would look upon him
when they met; but he knew what path lay straight before him, and
he took it.
"My dear sir," said Scrooge, quickening his pace, and taking the
old gentleman by both his hands, "how do you do? I hope you
succeeded yesterday. It was very kind of you. A merry Christmas to
you, sir!"
"Mr. Scrooge?"
"Yes," said Scrooge. "That is my name, and I fear it may not be
pleasant to you. Allow me to ask your pardon. And will you have the
goodness——" Here Scrooge whispered in his ear.
"Lord bless me!" cried the gentleman, as if his breath were taken
away. "My dear Mr. Scrooge, are you serious?"
"If you please," said Scrooge. "Not a farthing less. A great many
back-payments are included in it, I assure you. Will you do me that
favour?"
"My dear sir," said the other, shaking hands with him, "I don't know
what to say to such munifi——"
"Don't say anything, please," retorted Scrooge. "Come and see
me. Will you come and see me?"
"I will!" cried the old gentleman. And it was clear he meant to do it.
"Thankee," said Scrooge. "I am much obliged to you. I thank you
fifty times. Bless you!"
 He went to church, and walked about the streets, and watched the
people hurrying to and fro, and patted the children on the head, and
questioned beggars, and looked down into the kitchens of houses,
and up to the windows; and found that everything could yield him
pleasure. He had never dreamed that any walk—that anything—
could give him so much happiness. In the afternoon he turned his
steps towards his nephew's house.
He passed the door a dozen times before he had the courage to
go up and knock. But he made a dash, and did it.
"Is your master at home, my dear?" said Scrooge to the girl. Nice
girl! Very.
"Yes sir."
"Where is he, my love?" said Scrooge.
"He's in the dining-room, sir, along with mistress. I'll show you up-
stairs, if you please."
"Thankee. He knows me," said Scrooge, with his hand already on
the dining-room lock. "I'll go in here, my dear."
He turned it gently, and sidled his face in round the door. They
were looking at the table (which was spread out in great array); for
these young housekeepers are always nervous on such points, and
like to see that everything is right.
"Fred!" said Scrooge.
Dear heart alive, how his niece by marriage started! Scrooge had
forgotten, for the moment, about her sitting in the corner with the
footstool, or he wouldn't have done it on any account.
"Why, bless my soul!" cried Fred, "who's that?"
"It's I. Your uncle Scrooge. I have come to dinner. Will you let me
in, Fred?"
Let him in! It is a mercy he didn't shake his arm off. He was at
home in five minutes. Nothing could be heartier. His niece looked
just the same. So did Topper when he came. So did the plump sister
when she came. So did every one when they came. Wonderful party,
wonderful games, wonderful unanimity, won-der-ful happiness!
But he was early at the office next morning. Oh, he was early
there! If he could only be there first, and catch Bob Cratchit coming
late! That was the thing he had set his heart upon.
 And he did it; yes, he did! The clock struck nine. No Bob. A quarter
past. No Bob. He was full eighteen minutes and a half behind his
time. Scrooge sat with his door wide open, that he might see him
come into the tank.
His hat was off before he opened the door; his comforter too. He
was on his stool in a jiffy; driving away with his pen, as if he were
trying to overtake nine o'clock.
"Hallo!" growled Scrooge in his accustomed voice as near as he
could feign it. "What do you mean by coming here at this time of
day?"
"I am very sorry, sir," said Bob. "I am behind my time."
"You are!" repeated Scrooge. "Yes. I think you are. Step this way,
sir, if you please."
"It's only once a year, sir," pleaded Bob, appearing from the tank.
"It shall not be repeated. I was making rather merry yesterday, sir."
"Now, I'll tell you what, my friend," said Scrooge. "I am not going to
stand this sort of thing any longer. And therefore," he continued,
leaping from his stool, and giving Bob such a dig in the waistcoat
that he staggered back into the tank again: "and therefore I am about
to raise your salary!"
Bob trembled, and got a little nearer to the ruler. He had a
momentary idea of knocking Scrooge down with it, holding him, and
calling to the people in the court for help and a strait-waistcoat.
"A merry Christmas, Bob!" said Scrooge with an earnestness that
could not be mistaken, as he clapped him on the back. "A merrier
Christmas, Bob, my good fellow, than I have given you for many a
year! I'll raise your salary, and endeavour to assist your struggling
family, and we will discuss your affairs this very afternoon, over a
Christmas bowl of smoking bishop, Bob! Make up the fires and buy
another coal-scuttle before you dot another i, Bob Cratchit!"

Scrooge was better than his word. He did it all, and infinitely more;
and to Tiny Tim, who did NOT die, he was a second father. He
became as good a friend, as good a master, and as good a man as
the good old City knew, or any other good old city, town, or borough
in the good old world. Some people laughed to see the alteration in
him, but he let them laugh, and little heeded them; for he was wise
enough to know that nothing ever happened on this globe, for good,
at which some people did not have their fill of laughter in the outset;
and, knowing that such as these would be blind anyway, he thought
it quite as well that they should wrinkle up their eyes in grins as have
the malady in less attractive forms. His own heart laughed: and that
was quite enough for him.
He had no further intercourse with Spirits, but lived upon the Total-
Abstinence Principle ever afterwards; and it was always said of him
that he knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive
possessed the knowledge. May that be truly said of us, and all of us!
And so, as Tiny Tim observed, God bless Us, Every One!

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