Classic Audiobook Collection - A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens ~ Full Audiobook [drama]

Episode Date: October 10, 2024

A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens audiobook. Genre: drama On a bitter Christmas Eve in Victorian London, the hard-fisted moneylender Ebenezer Scrooge insists that warmth and generosity are foolish luxuries. He snaps at his cheerful nephew, refuses charity for the poor, and grudgingly gives his overworked clerk, Bob Cratchit, only the barest holiday allowance. But when night falls, Scrooge's locked-in habits and long-buried memories are shaken by an eerie visitation that forces him to confront what he has become. Guided through vivid scenes that span his earlier years, his present relationships, and the human consequences of his indifference, Scrooge faces a mounting moral reckoning: will he continue to live in isolation, measuring life only in profit, or will he choose connection, compassion, and responsibility while there is still time? Rich with atmosphere, sharp social observation, and flashes of humor, A Christmas Carol weaves ghost story suspense with a deeply human portrait of regret, conscience, and the possibility of change - all set against the music, light, and longing of the Christmas season. For ad-free listening try our premium subscription Chapters (Approximate) (00:00:00) Chapter 1 (00:38:41) Chapter 2 (01:13:58) Chapter 3 (02:00:07) Chapter 4 (02:31:33) Chapter 5 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A Christmas Carol in prose, being a ghost story of Christmas by Charles Dickens. Preface. I have endeavored in this ghostly little book to raise the ghost of an idea, which shall not put my readers out of humor with themselves, with each other, with the season, or with me. May it haunt their houses pleasantly, and no one wish to lay it. Your faithful friend and servant, CD, December 1843. Stave 1. Marley's Ghost

Marley was dead to begin with. There is no doubt whatsoever about that. The register of his burial was signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker, and the chief mourner. Scrooge signed it, and Scrooge's name was good upon change for anything he chose to put his hand to. Old Marley was as dead as a doorknail. Mind, I don't mean to say that I know of my own knowledge, what there is particularly dead about a doornail. I might have been inclined myself to regard a coffer nail as the deadest piece of ironmongery in the time. trade. But the wisdom of our ancestors is in the simile, and my unhallowed hand shall not disturb it or the country is done for. You will therefore permit me to repeat, emphatically, that Marley was as

dead as a doorknail. 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 so mourner. And even Scrooge was not so dreadfully cut up by the sad event, but that he was an excellent man of business in the very day of the funeral, and solemnized it with an undoubted parkin. The mention of Marley's funeral brings me back to the point I started from. There is no doubt that Marley was dead. This should be distinctly understood, or nothing wonderful can come of the story I am going to relate. If we were not perfectly convinced that Hamlet's father died before

the play began, there would be nothing more remarkable in his taking a stroll. at night, in an east of the wind, upon his own ramparts, than there would be of any other middle-aged gentleman rashly turning out after dark in a breezy spot, say St. Paul's Churchyard, for instance, literally to astonish his son's weak mind. Scrooge never painted out old Marley's name. There it stood years afterwards above the warehouse door Scrooge and Marley. The firm was known as Scrooge and Marley. Sometimes people knew to the business called Scrooge Scrooge and sometimes Marley, but he answered to both not. 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 ever struck our generous fire. Secret and self-contained in solitary as an oyster. The cold within him froze his old features, nipped his pointed nose, shriveled his cheek, stiffened his gait, made his eyes red, his thin nips blue, and spoke out shrewdly in his grating voice. A frosty rhyme was on his head and on his eyebrows and his wiry chin. He carried his own low temperature always about with him. He iced his office in the dark days and didn't thought 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. open to entreaty. Farweather didn't know where to have him. The heaviest rain and snow and hail and sleet could boast one advantage over him in only one respect. They often came down handsomely and Scrooge never did. Nobody ever stopped him on the street to say, with gladsome looks, my dear Scrooge, how are you? When will you come to see me? No beggars implored him to bestow a trifle, no children asked him what it was o'clock, no man or woman ever ever once in all his life inquired to the way to such and such a place of Scrooge. Even the blind men's dogs appeared to know him, and when they saw him coming on would tug

their owners into hallways and up courts, and then would wag their tails as though they said, No eye at all is better than an evil-eyed, dark master. But what did Scrooge care? It was the very thing he liked. To etch his way along the crowded paths of life, warning all human sympathy to keep its distance, what the knowing ones called nuts to Scrooge. Once upon a time, of all the good days in the year on Christmas Eve, old Scrooge sat busy in his counting-house. It was cold, bleak, biting weather, foggy 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 toward them. The city clocks had just gone three, but it was quite dark already. It had not been light all day, and candles were flaring in windows of the neighboring offices like ruddy smears upon the palpable brown air. The fog came pouring in at every chink and keyhole and was so dense without that although the court was of the narrowest, the houses opposite were mere phantoms. To see the dingy cloud come drooping down, obscuring everything, one might have thought nature lived hard by and was brewing on a larger scale. The door of Scrooge's counting-house was open, that he might keep an eye upon his clerk, when a dismal little

Selbeon sort of tank was copying letters. Scrooge had a very small fire, but the Clark's fire was so much smaller that it looked like one coal. But he couldn't replenish it, for Scrooge kept the coal-box in his own room, and so surely as the clerk came in with a 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 with the candle in which effort not being a man of strong imagination he failed. A merry Christmas uncle! God save you! cried a cheerful voice. It was the voice of Scrooge's nephew, who had come upon him so quickly that this was the first intimation he had of his approach.

Bah! said Scrooge. Humbug! He had so heated himself with rapid walking in the fog and frost, this nephew of Scrooge's, that he was all in a glum of gruagued. He had so heated himself with rapid walking in the fog and frost, this nephew of Scrooge's, that he was all in glow. His face was ruddy and handsome. His eyes sparkled and his breath smoked again. "'Christmas a humbug, uncle,' said Scrooge's nephew. "'You don't mean that, I'm sure.' "'I do,' said Scrooge. Merry Christmas. "'What right have you to be merry? What reason have you to be merry? You're poor enough.' "'Come, then,' 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 at the

spur of the moment, said, bah, again, and followed it up with humbug. Don't be cross, uncle, said the nephew. What else can I be, returned the uncle, when I live in such a world of fools as this. Merry Christmas, out upon Merry Christmas. What's Christmas time to you, but a time for paying bills without money, a time for finding yourself a year older, but not an hour richer, time for balancing your books and having every item in them through a round dozen of months presented dead against you. "'If I could work my will,' said Scrooge indignantly,

"'every idiot who goes about with Merry Christmas on his lips "'should be boiled in his own pudding, "'bearing with a stink of Holly through its 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. good it may do you, much good it has ever done you. There are many things from which I have derived good, by which I have not profited, I dare say, returned the nephew, Christmas among the rest. But I am sure I have always thought of Christmas time when it has come round, apart from the veneration to its sacred name and origin, if anything belonging to it, can be apart from that, as a good time, a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time, the only time I know of in the long calendar of the year when men and women seemed, by one consent, to open the shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow passengers to the grave.

And not another race of creatures bound on other journeys, and therefore, uncle, though it has never put a scrap of gold and 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 forever. "'Let me hear another sound out of you,' said Scrooge, "'and you'll keep your Christmas by losing your situation.' "'You're quite a powerful speaker, sir,' he said, turning to his nephew.

"'I wonder you don't go into Parliament. "'Don't be angry, Uncle, come dine with us tomorrow.' Scrooge said he would see him. "'Yes, indeed he would. "'He went up the whole length of expression "'and said that he would see him in that extremity. But why? cried Scrooge's nephew. Why? Why did you get married? said Scrooge. Because I fell in love. Because you fell in love, growled Scrooge, as if it were the only thing in the world more ridiculous

than a Merry Christmas. Good afternoon. Nay, uncle, but you never came to see me before that happened. Why give it 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! I am sorry, with all my heart that I find you so resolute. We have never had any quarrel for which I had been a party, but I have made the trial an homage to Christmas, and I'll keep my Christmas humour to the last. So a merry Christmas, uncle! Good afternoon, said Scrooge, and a happy New Year. But afternoon, said Scrooge. His nephew left the room without an name. angry word, notwithstanding. He stopped at the outer door to bestow his 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 or retire to bedlam. This lunatic in letting Scrooge's nephew out had led two other people in. They were portly, gentlemen, pleasant to behold, and now stood with their hats off in Scrooge's office. They had books and papers in their hands and bowed to him. Scrooge and Marley, I believe, said one of the gentlemen, referring to his list. Have I had the pleasure of dressing Mr. Scrooge or Mr. Marley. And Mr. Marley has been dead these seven years, Scrooge replied. He died seven years ago this

very night. Well, we have no doubt his liberality is well represented by his surviving partner, said the gentleman, presenting his credentials. It certainly was, for there had been two kinded spirits. At the ominous word liberality, Scrooge frowned and shook his head and handed the credentials back. "'This festive season of the year, Mr. Scrooge,' said this gentleman, taking up a pen, "'it is more than usually desirable that we should make some slight provision for the poor and destitute, who suffer greatly at this present time. Many thousands are in want of common necessaries. Hundreds of thousands are in want of common comfort, sir.' "'Are there no prisons?' said Scrooge.

"'Blety prisons,' said the gentleman, laying down his 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 vigor, then?' said Scrooge. "'They're both very busy, sir.' "'Oh, I was afraid from what you said at first

"'that something had occurred to stop them in their useful course,' said Scrooge. "'I'm very glad to hear it.' "'Under the impression that they scarcely furnished Christian chair of minded body to the multitude,' returned the gentleman. "'A few of us are endeavouring to raise a fond, to buy the pors of 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 hope 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 Scrooos, they'd better do it to 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 peoples. Mine occupies me constantly. Good afternoon, gentlemen. Seeing clearly that this would be useless to pursue the point, the gentleman withdrew. Scrooge resumed his labours with an improved opinion of himself, and in a more facetious temper than usual with him. Meanwhile, the fog and darkness thickened so, that people ran about with flaring links

offering their services to go before horses and carriages and conduct them on their way. The ancient tower of the church, whose gruff old bell, was always peeping sly down at Scrooge out of a Gothic window in the wall, became invisible and struck the hours and quarters in the clouds, with tremendous vibrations afterwards as if its teeth were shattering and its frozen head up there. The cold became intense. In the main street at the corner of the court some labors were repairing the gas pipes, and it lighted a great fire and a brazier, round which a party of ragged men and boys were gathered, warming their hands and winking their eyes before the blaze and rapture. The water-plug being left in solitude,

its overflowing sullenly congealed and turned to misanthropic ice. The brightness of the shops where holly sprigs and berries crackled in the lamp-heat of the windows made pale-faced as ruddy as they passed. Peltos and Gross's trades became splendid joke, a glorious pageant in which it was next to impossible to believe that such dull principles as bargain in 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 Christmases as Lord Mayor's household should, and even the little tailor, whom he had fined five shillings in the previous Monday for being drunk and bloodthirsty in the streets, stirred up to-morrow's pudding in his garret

while his lean wife and the babies sailed out to buy the beef. Fogier 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 cruelly. Christmas Carol, but at the first sound of God bless you, merry gentlemen, and 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 congenre 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. want all day tomorrow, I suppose, said Scrooge. If it's quite convenient, sir. It's not convenient, said Scrooge, and it's not fair. If I were to stop half a crown for it, you'd think yourself ill-used I'll be bound. The clerk smiled faintly, and yet, said Scrooge, you don't think me ill-used,

what 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 25th of December, said Scrooge, buttoning his great coat to his chin, but I suppose he must have the whole day. I'll be here all the earlier the 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 blow his ways, for he boasted no great coat, went down a slide on

Cornhill, at the end of the lane of boys twenty times, in honor of its being Christmas Eve, and then ran home to Campton Town as whole. hard as he could pelt to play at Blind Man's Bluff. Scrooge took his melancholy dinner and his usual melancholy tavern at having read all the papers, and beguiled the rest of the evening with his banker's book, went home to bed. He lived in chambers which at once belonged to his deceased partner. There were a gloomy suite of rooms, in a lowering pile of building up a yard where it had so little business to be, and one could scarcely help fancy that it must have run there when it was a young house, playing at hide-and-seek with other houses and forgotten the way out again.

It was old enough now and dreary enough, but nobody lived in it with Scrooge, the other rooms being all let out his offices. The yard was so dark that even Scrooge, who knew its every stone, was feigned to grope with his hands. The fog and frost so hung about the black old gateway of the house that it seemed as if the genius of the weather sat in mournful meditation on the threshold. Now, it is a fact that there was nothing in the house. 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 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, alderman, 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-year-old 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 shadows the other objects in the yard were, but in a dismal light about it, like a bad lobster in a dark cellar. It was not angry or ferocious, but looked at Scrooge, as Marley used to look with ghostly spectacles turned up on its ghostly forehead. The hair was curiously stirred as if by a breath of hot air, and though the eyes were wide open, they were perfectly motionless. That and its livid color made it horrible, but his horror seemed to be in spite of the face and beyond its control rather than a part of his own expression. As Scrooge looked fixedly in this phenomenon, it was a knocker again.

To say that he was not startled, or that his blood was not conscious of a terrible sensation to which it had been a stranger from infancy would be untrue, but he put his hand upon the key he had relinquished, turned it steadily, walked in, and lighted his candle. He did pause, with a moment's irresolution before the shut door, and he did look cautiously behind his first as if I have expected to be terrified. with the sight of Mali's pigtails sticking out into the hole. But there was nothing in the back of the door except the screws and nuts that held the knocker on,

so he said pooh-poo and closed it with a bang. The sound resounded through the house like thunder. Every room above and every cask in the wine merchant cellars below appeared to have a separate peal of echoes of its own. Scrooge was not a man to be frightened by echoes. He fastened the door and walked across the hall. of the stairs slowly, too, trimming the candle as he went. You may talk vaguely about driving a coach and six up a good old flight of stairs, or through

a bad young act of Parliament, but I mean to say that you might have got a hearse up that staircase and taken it broadwise, with the splinter bar toward the wall and the door towards the balustrades, and done it easy. There was plenty of width for that, and room despair, which is perhaps the reason why Scrooge thought he saw a locomotive hearse going on before him in the gloom. Half a dozen gas lamps out in the street wouldn't have lighted the entry too well, so he may suppose it was pretty dark with Scrooge's dip. Up Scrooge went, not carrying a button for that.

Darkness is cheap, and Scrooge liked it. But before he shut his heavy door, he walked through his rooms to see that all was right. He had just enough recollection of the, face to desire to do that. Sitting room, bedroom, lumber room, all as he should be. Nobody under the table, nobody under the sofa, a small fire in the grave, spoon and basin ready, and the little saucepan of gruel, Scrooge had a coat in his head upon the hop. Nobody under the bed, nobody in the closet, nobody in his dressing-gown, which was hanging up in a suspicious attitude against the wall.

Lumber room, as usual, old fire-guard, two 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 in slippers, in his nightcap, and sat down before the fire to take his gruel. It was a very low fire, and need nothing on such a bitter night. He was obliged to sit close to it and brood over it, before he could extract the least sensation of warmth from such a handful of fuel. The fireplace was an old one built by some Dutch merchant long ago, and paved all around

with quaint Dutch tiles designed to illustrate the scriptures. There were Cain's and Abel's, Pharaoh's daughters, queens of Sheba, angelic messengers descending through the air on clouds like feather beds, Abraham's belt as ours apostles putting off to sea in butterboats, hundreds of figures to attract his thoughts, and yet that face Marley, seven years dead, came like the ancient prophet's rod and swallowed up the hole. If each smooth tile had been a blanket first, with power to shape some picture on its surface from the disjointed fragments of his thoughts, there would have been a copy of old Marley's head on everyone.

"'Humpbug!' said Scrooge and walked across the room. After several turns he sat down again. As he drew his head back in the chair, his glance happened to rest. upon a bell, a disused bell that hung in the room and communicated for some purpose, now forgotten with the chamber, in the highest story of the building. It was with great astonishment, and with a strange, inexplicable dread, that as he looked he saw this bell began to swing. It swung so softly in the outset that it scarcely made a sound, but soon it rang loudly, and so did every bell in the house. This might have lasted half a minute or a minute, but it seemed

an hour. The bells ceased as they had begun together. They were succeeded by a clanking noise deep down below, as if some person were dragging a heavy chain over the casks of the wine-merchant cellar. Scrooge then remembered to have heard that ghosts in halted houses were described as dragging chains. The celladroft flew up with a booming sound, and then he heard the noise much louder on the floors below, then coming up the stairs, then coming straight towards the door. It's humbug still, said Scrooge. I won't believe it. His color changed, though, went without a pause. It came on through the heavy door and passed into the room before his eyes. Porn it coming in the dying flame, leapt up as though it cried, I know him, Marley's ghost, and fell again.

The same face. The very same. Marley and his pigtail usual waistcoat tights and boots, the tassels on the latter bristling like his pigtail, and his coat skirts and the hair upon his head. The chain he drew was clasped about the middle. It was long and wound about him like a tail, and it was made, for Scrooge observed 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 that Marley had no bowels, but he had never believed it until now, nor did he believe it even now, although he looked the phantom through and through and saw it standing before him, though he felt the chilling influence of its death-cold eyes, and marked the very texture of the folded kerchief, "'bound round its head and chin,

"'which rapper he had not observed before, "'he was still incredulous, "'and fought against his sentences. "'How now?' said Scrooge, cost a conced as ever. "'What do you want of me?' "'Much,' Molly'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 substitute this as more appropriate. In life, I was your partner, Jacob Marley. Can you sit down? Ask Scrooge looking doubtful at him. I can.

Do it then! Scrooge asked the question because he didn't know whether a ghost so transparent might find himself in a condition to take a chair and felt that in the event of its being possible, it might involve the necessity of an embarrassing explanation. But the ghost sat down the opposite. side of the fireplace, as if you were quite used to it. You don't believe me, observed the ghost.

I don't, said Scrooge. What evidence would you have on my reality beyond that of your senses? I don't know, said Scrooge. Why do you doubt your senses? Because, said Scrooge, a little thing affects them. A slight disorder of the stomach makes them cheats. You may be an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of an undone potato. There's more of gravy that are 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, and the spectres being provided with an infernal atmosphere of its own. Scrooge could not feel it himself, but it was clearly the case,

for though the ghosts sat perfectly motionless, its hair and skirts and tassels, was still agitated as if 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, only gaze from himself. I do, replied the ghost. You are not looking at it, said Scrooge. But I see it, said the ghost, notwithstanding.

Well, said Scrooge, I have but to swallow this and be for the rest of my days persecuted by a legion of goblins all of my own creation. Humbug, I tell you, humbug! This! The spirit raised a frightful cry and shook its chain with such a dismal and appalling noise that Scrooge held tight to his chair to save himself from falling in a swoon. But how much greater was his horror when the phantom, taking off bandage round its head, as if it were too warm to wear indoors, his lower jaw dropped down upon his 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. believe in me or not?" I do," said Grouch. I must. But why do spirits walk the earth, and why do they come to me? It is required of every man, the ghost returned, that the spirit within him should walk abroad among his fellow men 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, and girded it on of my mind. 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 coral you bear yourself. It was as full as heavy and as long as this seven Christmas eaves ago. You have labored on it since it is a ponderous chain." Scrooge glanced about him on the floor, in the expectation of finding himself surrounded by some fifty or sixty fathoms of iron cable, but he could see nothing. Jacob, he said imploringly.

Oh, Jacob Marley, tell me more. Speak comfort to me, Jacob. I have none to give, the ghost replied. It comes from other regions, Ebeneza Scrooge, and is conveyed by other ministers to other kinds of men. Nor can I tell you what I would. Very little more is all permitted to me. I cannot rest, I cannot stay, I cannot linger,

anywhere. My spirit never walked beyond our counting-house. Mark me! In life my spirit never rode beyond the narrow limits of our money-changing hole, and weary journeys lie before me. It was a habit of 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 traveling all the time. "'The whole time,' said the ghost. "'No rest, no peace, incessant torture and remorse.' "'You travel fast?' said Scrooge. "'Of the wings of the wind,' replied the ghost. "'You might have got a lot. 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 iron, cried the phantom. Not to know the ages of incessant labor by immortal creatures, for this earth must pass into eternity before the good which is susceptible is all developed. not to know that any christian spirit walking kindly in its little spear whatever it may be will find its moral life too short for its vast means of usefulness not to know that no space of regret can make amends for one's life's opportunity misuse yet such was i oh such was i But you were always a good man of business, Jacob, faltered Scrooge, who now began to apply this to himself.

Business! cried the ghost, wringing his hands again. Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business. Charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence were all my business. The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business. He held up the chain at arm's length as if it 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 the crowds of fellow beings with my eyes turned down and never raised them to that blessed star which led the wise men to a poor abode, where 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, said the ghost.

My time is nearly gone. I will, said Scrooge. But don't be heart apart me. Don't be flowery, Jacob, pray. How is it that I appear before you in a shape that you can see I may not tell? I have sat invisible beside you many and many a day. This was not an agreeable idea. Scrooge shivered and wiped the perspiration from his brow.

That is no light part in my penance, pursued the ghost. I am here tonight to warn you that you have yet a chance and hope of escaping my fate. A chance and hope of my procuring Ebenezer. You are always a good friend to me, said Scrooge. Thank you. You will be haunted, resumed the ghost, by three spirits. Scrooge's countenance fell almost as low as the ghosts had done.

Is that the chance and hope you mentioned, Jacob? He demanded in a faltering voice. It is. I think I'd rather not, said Scrooge. Without their visits, said the ghost, you cannot hope to shone the path I tread. Expect the first to-morrow when the bell tolls won. Couldn't I take them all at once and have it over, Jacob? Hitted Scrooge.

Expect the second on the next night at the same hour. The third upon the next night when the last stroke of twelve has ceased to vibrate. Look to see me no more, and look that for your own sake. You remember what has passed between us. And when he said these words, the spectre took its wrapper from the table and bounded around its head as before. Scrooge knew this by the smart sound its teeth made, when the jaws were brought together by the bandage.

He ventured to raise his eyes again and found his supernatural visitor confronting him in an erect attitude. With its chain wound over and about its arm, the apparition walked backward from him, and with every step it took, the window raised itself. a little, so that when the spectre reached it, it was wide open. It beckoned Scrooge to approach, which he did. When there were 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, wailing's inexpressibly sorrowful and self-acusory. The spectre, after listening for a moment, joined in the mournful dirge and floated out upon the bleak, dark night. Scrooge followed to the window, desperate in his curiosity. He looked out. The air was filled with phantoms wandering hither and tither in restless haste, and moaning

as they went. Every one of the more chains like Marley's ghost, some few there might be guilty governments were linked together, none were free. 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 pitiously at being unable to assist a wretched woman with an infant, who had saw below upon a doorstep. The misery within them all was clearly that they sought to interfere for good, inhuman matters, and had lost the power forever. 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. He was double-locked, as he had locked it with his own hands, and the boats were undisturbed. He tried to say humbug, but stopped at the first syllable, and being from the emotion he had undergone of the fatigues of the day, or his glimpse of the invisible world, or the dull conversation of the ghost, or the lateness upon the hour much in need of repose, went straight to bed without undressing, and fell asleep upon the instant. The end of Stave One of the Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens.

A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens, Stave two, the first of the three spirits. When Scrooge awoke it was so dark that looking out of bed he could scarcely distinguish the transparent window from the opaque walls of his chamber. He was endeavoring to pierce the darkness with his ferret eyes when the chimes of a neighboring church struck the four quarters, so he listened for the hour. To his great astonishment, the heavy bell went from six to seven and from seven to eight and regularly up to twelve, then stopped. Twelve! It was past two when he went to bed. The clock was wrong, an icicle must have gotten to the works. Twelve. He touched the spring of his repeater to correct the most preposterous clock. It's its rapid little pulse beat twelve, and stopped.

"'Why, it isn't possible,' said Scrooge, "'that I can have slept through the whole day and far into the night. "'It isn't possible that anything has happened to the sun, "'and this is twelve at noon. "'The idea being an alarming one, he scrambled out of bed, "'and groped his way to the window. "'He was obliged to rub the frost off "'with the sleeve of his dressing-ground

"'before he could see anything, "'and he could see very little then. "'All he could make out was that it was still very foggy, and extremely cold, and that there was no noise of people running to and fro, and making a great stir, as there unquestionably would have been, if Knight had beaten off bright day and taken possession of the world. This was a great relief, because three days after sight of the first exchange you pay of Mr. Everde's Scrooge or his order and so forth would have become a mere United States security if there were no days to count by. Scrooge went to bed again,

and thought, and thought, and thought it over and over and over, and could make nothing of it. The more he thought, the more perplexed he was, and the more he endeavoured not to think, the more he thought. Molly's ghost bothered him exceedingly. Every time he resolved within himself after a mature inquiry that it was all a dream, his mind flew back again, like a strong spring released to its first position and presented the same problem to be worked all through. Was it a dream or not? Scrooge lay in this state until the chime had gone three-quarters more, when he remembered, on a sudden, that the ghost had warned him of a visitation when the bell-told won. He resolved to lie awake until the hour had passed, and, considering that he could no more go

to sleep than go to heaven, this was perhaps the wisest resolution in his power. The quarter was so long that he was more than once convinced that he must have sunk into a dose unconsciously and missed the clock. At length it broke upon his listening ear. Ding dong. A quarter passed, said Scrooge counting. Ding dong. Half past, said Scrooge. Ding dong.

A quarter to it, said Scrooge. Ding dong. There itself, said Scrooge triumphantly, and nothing else. He spoke before the hour bell has sounded, which it now did with a deep, dull, hollow, melancholy, one! Light flashed up in the room upon an instant, and the curtains of his bed were drawn. The curtains of his bed were drawn aside, I tell you, by a hand. Not the curtains at his feet, nor the curtains at his back, but those to which his face was addressed. The curtains of his bed were drawn aside, and Scrooge, starting up into a half-recombed attitude,

found himself face to face with the unearthly visitor who drew them, as close to it as I am now to you, and I am standing in the spirit at your elbow. It was a strange figure. Like a child, yet not so like a child, is like an old man, viewed through some supernatural medium, which gave him the appearance of having receded from the view when being diminished to a child's proportions. Its hair, which hung about its neck and down its back, was white, as if with age. and yet the face had not a wrinkle on it and the tenderest bloom was on the skin the arms were very long and muscular the hands the same as if its hold were of uncommon strength its legs and feet most delicately formed were like those upper members bare it wore a tunic of the purest white and round the waist was bound a lustrous belt the sheen of which was beautiful it had 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 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 the strangest quality for as its bell spark and glittered now in one part and now in another and what was light one instant at another time was dark so the figure itself fluctuated in its distinctness being now a thing with one arm now with one leg, now with twenty legs, now a pair of legs without head, now a head without a body, of which dissolving parts no outline would be visible in the dense gloom wherein they melted away, and in the very wonder of this it would be itself again, distinct and clear as ever. Are you the spirit, sir, whose coming was foretold to 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.

Oh, and what are you? Scrooge demanded. I am the ghost of Christmas past. Long past, inquired Scrooge, observant of its dwarfish stature. No, your past. Perhaps Scrooge could not have told anybody why, if anybody could have asked them, but he had a special desire to see the spirit in his cap and begged him to be covered. "'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 forced me through the whole trains of years "'to wear it low upon my brow?' "'Srewd reverently disclaimed all intention to offend, "'any knowledge of having willfully bonneted the spirit "'of any period in his life, "'then he made bold to inquire

"'what business brought him here. "'Your welfare.' said the ghost. Scrooge expressed himself much obliged, but could not help thinking that a night of unbroken rest would have been more conductive to that end. The spirit must have heard him thinking, for it said immediately, Your reclamation then. Take heed. It put out his hand as it spoke, and clasped him gently by the arm. Rise, and walk with me. It would have been in vain for Scrooge to plead the weather and the hour were not adapted to pedestrian purposes, that The bed was warm in the thermometer long way below freezing, that he was clad but lightly

in his slippers dressing-gown in nightcap, and that he had a cold upon him at the time. The grasp, though gentle as a woman's hand, was not to be resisted. He rose, but finding that the spirit made towards the window clasped his robe in supplication, I am mortal," Scrooge remonstrated, and 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, wintery day, with snow upon the ground. Good heaven! said Scrooge, clasping his hands together as he looked about him. I was bred in this place. I was a boy here! The spirit gazed upon him, mildly. Its gentle touch, though it had been light and instantaneous, appeared still present to the old man's sense of feeling. He was conscious of a thousand odors 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 fervor. "'I could walk it blindfolded!' "'Strange to have forgotten it for so many years, observed the ghost.

"'Let us go on.' "'They walked along the road, Scrooge recognizing every gate, every post, every tree, "'until a little market-town appeared in the distance "'with its bridge, its church, and winding river. "'Some shaggy ponies were now seen trotting towards him "'with boys upon their backs, who called to other boys in country gigs and carts driven by farmers all these boys were in great spirits and shouted to each other until the broad fields were so full of merry music that the crisp air laughed to hear it these are but shadows of things that have been said the ghost they have no consciousness of us the jocelyn travelers came on as they came scrooge knew and named them every one why was he filled with gladness when he heard them give each other merry christmas as they parted at cross-yards and byways for several homes what was merry christmas to scrooge out upon merry christmas what good it had 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-cocks surmounted Coppola 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. We were entering the dreary hall and glancing through the open doors of many rooms.

They found them poorly furnished, cold and vast. There was an earthly savor in the air, a chilly barreness in the place, which associated itself somehow, with too much getting up by candlelight 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, disclosed a long, bare melancholy room made bearer still by lines of plain deal forms and desks at one of these a lonely boy was reading near a feeble fire and scroote sat down upon a form and wept to see his poor forgotten self as he used to be not a latent echo in the house not a squeak and scuffle from the mice behind the panelling not a drip from the hearthought-water spout in the dull yard behind not a sigh among the leafless bowels

of one despondent poplar, not the idle swing of an empty stone-house door, no, not a clicking of the fire, but fell upon the heart of Scrooge with a softening influence, and gave a freer passage to his tears. The spirit touched him on the arm and pointed to his younger self, had ten upon his reading. Suddenly a man in foreign garments, wonderfully real and distinct to look out, stood outside the window with an axe struck in his belt, and leading by his the bridle and ass laden with wood. Why, it's Hallibaba, Scrooge exclaimed in ecstasy.

Dear old honest Ali Baba, yes, yes, I know. One Christmas time when young 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 grude turned upside down by the genie.

There he is upon his head. I'm glad of it. What business had he to be married to the princess? To hear Scrooge expanding, on all the earnestness of the nature of such subjects, in a most extraordinary voice between laughing and crying, and to see his heightened and excited face, would have been a surprise to his business friends in the city indeed.

That's the parrot! cried Scrooge, green body and yellow tail, with a thing like lettuce growing out of the top of his head. There he is. "'Poor Robinson Crusoe, he called him when he came home again after sailing round the island. "'Poor Robinson Crusoe, where have you bit, Robinson Crusoe?' "'The man thought he was dreaming, but he wasn't. "'He was the parrot, you know.

"'There goes Friday, running for his life in the little creek. "'Hullo! Hop-ho! "'Then, with the rapidity of transition, very foreign to his usual character,' he said, "'in a pity of his former self. "'Poor boy!' and cried again. I wish, Scrooge muttered, putting his hand in his pocket and looking about him after drying his eyes with his cuff. But it's too late now. What is the matter? asked the spit it.

Nothing, said Scrooge. Nothing. There was a boy singing a Christmas carol in my door last night. I should like to have given him something, that's all. The ghost smiled thoughtfully and waved its hand, saying as it did some. So, let us see another Christmas." Scrooge's former self grew large, heard the words, and the room became a little dark and more dirty.

The panel shrunk, the windows cracked, fragments of plaster fell out the ceiling, and the naked lathes were shown instead. But how all this was bought about, Scrooge knew no more than you do. He only knew that it was quite correct, that everything had happened so that there he was. alone again, when all the other boys had gone home for the jolly holidays. It 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, putting her arms about his neck, and often kissing him dressed him as her dear, dear brother. I have come to bring you home, dear brother," said the child, clapping her tiny hands, and bending down to laugh. To bring you home, home, home, home, little a fan, returned the boy. Yes, said the child brimford with glee. Home for good and all. Home for ever and ever. Father is so much kinder than he used to be that homes 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 he sent me in a coach to bring you, and you're to be a man, said the child,

opening her eyes, and never come back here, but first we'll be together all Christmas long, and have the merriest time in the world. You're 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. She then 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 condensation, and threw him into a dreadful state of mind by shaking hands with him. He then conveyed him and his sister into the various old well of a shivering best parlour that he ever was seen, where the maps upon the wall, and the celestial and terrestrial globes in the window were waxy with cold.

Here he produced a decanter of curiously light wine in a block of curiously heavy cake, and administered installments to 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 chase, the children bade the schoolmaster goodbye willingly, and getting into it drove gaily down the garden sweep, the quick wheels dashing the whore-frost and snow from the old dark leaves of the evergreens-like spray.

Always a delicate creature whom a breath might have withered, said the ghost. But she had large heart. So she had, cried Scrooge. You're right. I will not gain say it, spare it, God forbid. She died a woman, said the ghost, and had, as I think children. One child, Scrooge returned. True, said the ghost.

Your nephew. Scrooge seemed uneasy in his mind and eyes. answered briefly. Yes. Although they had but at that moment left the school behind them, they were now in the busy thoroughfares of the city, where shadowy passengers passed and repassed, where shadowy carts and coaches battled for the way, and all the strife and tumultive a real city were. It was made plain enough by the dressing of the shops that there, too, it was Christmas time again, but it was evening and the streets were lighted up. The ghost stopped at a certain warehouse door, and asked Scrooge if he knew it.

"'Know it!' said Scrooge. "'I was apprenticed here.' They went in. At the sight of an old gentleman in a Welsh wig, sitting behind such a high desk that if he had been two inches tall, he must have knocked his head against the ceiling. Scrooge cried in great excitement. "'Why, it's old Fizzywig! Bless his heart!

It's Fessiewig alive again!' Old Fizzywig laid down his pen and looked up at the clock, which pointed to the hour of seven. He rubbed his hands, adjusted his capricious waistcoat, laughed all over himself, from his shoes to his organ of benevolence, and called out in a comfortable, oily, rich, fat, jovial voice, "'Yo-ho, there, Ebenezer, Dick!' Scrooge's former self, now a grown young man, came briskly and accompanied by his fellow-printeress. "'Dick Wilkins, to be sure,' said Scrooge to the ghost. "'Bless me, eyes, there he is! He was very much attached to me, was Dick. Poor Dick, dear, dear.' "'Yo-ho, my boy!' said Fessie-big. "'No, ho! My boy!' said Fessie-big.

more work tonight. Christmas Eve, Dick, Christmas ever, Easer. Let's have the shutters up, cried old Fuzzywig 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, add them up in their places. Four, five, six, barred him in Pindum, seven, eight, nine, and came back before you could got to twelve, panting like racehorses. "'Hallahoe!' cried old Fezzie-Wing, "'skipping down from the high desk, with wonderful agility. "'Clear away, my lads, and let's have lots of room here.

"'Halli-ho, Dick Chirup, Ebenezer!' "'Clear away. There was nothing they wouldn't have cleared away, "'or couldn't have cleared away with the old Fezzi-Wing looking on. "'It was done in a minute. "'Every movable was packed off, as if it were dismissed from public life forevermore. "'The floor swept and watered. "'The lamps were trimmed, fuel was heaped upon the fire, and the warehouse was as snug as warm and dry and bright as a ballroom as you would desire to see upon a winter's night.

In came the fiddler with a music book and went up to the lofty desk, and made an orchestra of it and tuned like fifty stomach-aches. In came Mrs. 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 bored enough from his master,

trying to hide himself behind the girl from next door, but one who was proved to have had her ears pulled by her mistress. In the old came one after another, some shyly, some boldly, some gracefully, some awkwardly, some pushing, some pulling, in they all came, anyhow and every how. Away they all went, twenty couple at once, danced half round and back again the other way, down the middle and up again, round and round in various stages of affectionate grouping, old top couple always turning up in the wrong place, new top couple starting off again, as soon as they got there, all top couples at last, another but I want to help him.

When this result was brought about, old Fezziewig, clapping his hands to stop the dance, cried out, Well done! And the fiddler plunged his hot face into a tub of porter, especially provided for that purpose. But scorning rest, upon his reappears, he instantly began again, though there were no dancers yet, as if the fiddler had been carried home, exhausted in a shutter, and he were a brand-new man resolved to beat them out of sight or perish. There were more dances. There were more forfeits, and more dancers.

and there was cake, and there was niggis, 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 mined, a sort of man who knew his business better than you were high and could have told him, struck up Sir Roger de Covary. That old Feziewiczwig stood out to dance with Mrs. Feziewick, top couple, two, and 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, four times, old Feziwig would have been a match for them, and so would Mrs. Feziewig. 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 Feziewick's calves. They shone in every part of the dance-like moons. You wouldn't have predicted at any time what would have become of him.

next. And then old Feziwig and Mrs. Fezziwig had gone all through the dance, advance and retire, both hands to your partner, bow and curtsy, corkscrew, thread the needle, and back again your place. Feziewick cut, cut so deftly, he appeared to wink with his legs and came upon his feet again without a stacker. When the clock struck eleven, the domestic ball broke up. Mr. and Mrs. Feziewig took their stations, one on either side of the door, with shaking hands with every person individually as he or she went out to wish him or her a Merry Christmas. When everybody had retired but the two parentheses, they did the same to them, and thus the cheerful voices died away and the lads were left to their beds,

which were under the counter in the back shop. During this whole time, Scrooge acted like a man out of his wits. His heart and soul were in the scene, and with his former self, he corroborated everything, remembered everything, enjoyed everything, underwent the strangest agitation. It wasn't until now when the bright faces of his former self and Dick were turned from him, 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 him to listen to the two princesses who were pouring out their hearts in praise of Fezziwig, and when he had done so said, Why, is it not? He had 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, heeded by the remark, and speaking unconsciously like his former, not his latter self. It isn't that, spirit!

He has the power to render us happy or unhappy, to make our service light a burdensome, a pleasure or a toil, say that his power lies in words and looks, in things so slight and insignificant that it is impossible to add or count them up. What then? The happiness he gives is quite as great as if it costs 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 clock just now.

That's all.' His former self turned down the lamps as he gave. of utterance to the wish, and Scrooge and the ghost again stood side by side in the open air. My time grew short, observed the spit. Quick. This was not addressed to Scrooge or to anyone whom he could see, but it produced an immediate effect. For again Scrooge saw himself. He was older now, a man in the prime of life. His face had not the harsh and rigid lines of later years, but had begun to 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 woman in a mourning dress, in whose eyes there were tears which sparkled in the light that shone out of the ghost in Christmas past. It matters little, she said softly. To you very little, another idol has displaced me, and if I can cheer and comfort you in time

to come, as I would have tried to do, I have no just caused to. to grieve. What idol has displaced you, he rejoined? A golden one. This is an even-handed dealing of the world, he said. There is nothing on which it is so hard as poverty, and there is nothing it professes to condemn with such severity as the pursuit of wealth. You fear the world too much, she answered gently. All your other hopes emerge into the hope of being beyond the chance of its sort of reproach. I have seen your nobler aspirations fall off one by one, until the master passion gained 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 fortunes 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 have I 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 has its great end, in everything that made my love of any worth of value in your sight, if this had never been between us, said the girl looking mildly, but with steadiness upon him, tell me, would you seek me out now and try to win me now? Ah, no.

He seemed to yield the justice of its supposition in spite of himself, but said, with the struggle. You think not. I would gladly think otherwise, if I could, she answered. Heaven knows. When I have learned a truth like this, I know how strong and irresistible it must be. But if you are free today, tomorrow, yesterday, can even believe that you would choose a dowerless girl, you who, in your very confidence with her, weigh everything by gain, or choosing her, if for a moment you are false enough to your one guiding principle to do so, do I not know that your repentance and regret would surely follow? I do, and I release you, with a full heart, for the love of him you once were. He was about to speak, 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 is an unprofitable dream, from which it has happened well that you awoke. May you be happy in the life that you have chosen. She left him, and they parted. Spirit, said Scrooge, show me no more. Conduct me home. Why do you delight to torture me?

One shadow more, exclaimed the ghost. No more, cried Scrooge. No more. I do not wish to see it. Show me no more. but the relentless ghost pinioned him in both arms and forced him to observe what happened next they were in another scene in place a room not very large a hansom but full of comfort near to the winter fire sat up 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 the room was perfectly tumultuous for there were more children there than scrooge in his agitated state of mind could count and unlike the celebrated herd in the poet in the poet There 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 hardly 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 would never 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,

there's they did. Bold young brood, I couldn't have done it. I should have expected my arm to have grown round for the punishment and never come straight again. And yet I should have dearly liked 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 have never raised a blush to have let loose waves of hair, an inch of which would be a keepsake beyond price. In short, I should have liked, I do confess, to have the lightest license of a child, and yet have been man enough to know its value. But now a knocking on the door was heard, in such a rush immediately ensued, that with a laughing face and plundered dress was borne towards the centre, flushed in boisterous group,

just in time to greet the father, who had come home attended by a man laden with Christmas toys and presents. Then the shouting and struggling, and the onslaught that was made on the defenseless porter, the scaling him with chairs for ladders to drive into his pockets, despoil him with brown paper parcels, hold on tight by his cravat, hug him round the neck, pbble his back, and kick his legs in irrepressible affection. The shouts of wonder and delight with which the development of every package was received. the terrible announcement that the baby had taken in the act of putting a doll's frying-pad into his mouth and was warned unsuspective having swallowed a fictitious turkey glued on a wooden platter the immense relief of finding this a false alarm the joy the gratitude and ecstasy they were all indescribable alike it is enough that by degrees the children and their emotions had got out of the parlour and by one stare at a time up to the top of the house when they went to bed and so subsided

And now Scrooge looked on more attentively than ever when the master of the house, having his daughter leaning fondly on him, sat down with her and her mother at his own fireside, and when he thought that such another creature quite as graceful and is full of promise, might have called him father, and had been a springtime in the haggard winter of his life, his sight grew very dim indeed. "'Bell,' said the husband, turning to his wife with a smile, "'I saw an old friend of yours this afternoon. "'Who was it?' "'How can I, Tut? "'I don't know,' she added in the same breath, laughing as he laughed. "'Mr. Scrooge! "'Mr. Scrooge, it was.

"'I passed his office window, and it was not shut up, "'and he had a candle inside. "'I could scarcely help seeing him. "'His partner lies upon the point of death, I hear, "'and there he sat alone. "'Quite alone in the world, I do believe. "'Spirit,' said Scrooge in a broken voice. "'Remove me from this place.'

"'I have shown you the shadows of things that have been,' said the ghost. "'That they are what they are, do not blame me.' "'Remove me!' Scrooge exclaimed. "'I cannot bear it!' He turned upon the ghost and seen that it looked upon him with a face in which some strange way there were fragments of all faces that had shown him, wrestled with it. "'Leave me, take me back, haught me!

no longer. In the struggle, if it can be called a struggle in which the ghost, with no visible resistance on its own part, was 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 his extinguisher cap, and by a sudden action pressed it down upon his head. The spirit dropped beneath it so that the extinguisher covered its whole form, but though Scrooge pressed it down with all its force.

He could not hide the light, which streamed from under it, in an unbroken flood upon the ground. He was conscious of being exhausted and overcome 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. The end of Stave Two of A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. Charles Dickens. Stave three, the second of the three spirits. Awakening in the middle of a prodigiously tough snore and sitting up in bed to get his thoughts together, Scrooge had no occasion to be told what Bell it was again upon the

stroke of one. He felt he was restored to consciousness in the right nick of time for the 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 the new spectre would drop back. He put them everyone aside with his own hands, and lying down again, established a sharp lookout all round the bed. For he wished to challenge the spirit in the moment of its appearance, 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, expressed the wide range of their capacity for adventure by observing that they are good for anything from pitch and toss to manslaughter, between which opposite extremes no doubt there lies a tolerably wide and comprehensive range of subjects. Without venturing for Scrooge quite as handily as this, I don't mind in calling 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 and ruddy light, which streamed upon it when the clock proclaimed the hour, at which, being only light, was more alarming than a dozen ghosts, as he was powerless to make out what it meant, or would be at, and was sometimes apprehensive that he might be at the very moment an interesting case of spontaneous combustion, without having the consolation of knowing it. At last, however, he began to think, as you and I would have thought at first, for it is always the person not in the predicament, who knows what ought to have been done in it, and would unquestionably have

done it, too, at last, I say, he began to think that the source and secret of his ghostly light might be in the adjoining room, from whence on further tracing it, it seemed to shine. This idea, taking full possession of his mind, he got up softly and shuffled in his slippers to the door. The moment Scrooge's hand was on the lock, a strange voice called him by his name, and bade him enter. He obeyed. It was his own room. There was no doubt about that, but it had undergone a surprising transformation. The walls and ceiling was so hung with living green that it looked a perfect grove, from every part of which bright, gleaming berries glistened, the crisp leaves of holly, mistletoe, and ivy, reflected back the light

as if so many little mirrors had been scattered there. And such a mighty blaze went roaring up the chimney, as that dull petrification of a heart that never known in Scruton's time, or Marley's, all formed 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, suckling 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, glories 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. It was not the dog in Scrooge he had been, and though the spirit's eyes were clear and kind. He did not like to meet them. I have the ghost of Christmas present, said the spirit. Look upon me! Scrooge reverently did so. It was clothed in one simple green robe or mantle bordered with white fur. This garment hung so loosely on the figure that its capricious breast was bare as if disdaining to be awarded or concealed by any art of us. Its feet, observable beneath the ample folds of the garment were also bare, and on its head it wore no other covering

than a holly wreath, set here and there with shining icicles. Its dark brown curls were long and free, free as its genial face, its sparkling eyes, its open hand, its cheery voice, its unconstrained demeanor, and its joyful air. Girded around its middle was an antique scaven, 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, "'meeting 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'm afraid I have not. "'Have you had many brothers' spirit?' "'More than 1800,' said the ghost. tremendous family to provide for, muttered Scrooge. The ghost of Christmas present rose. Spirit, said Scrooge submissively.

Induck me where you will. I went forth last night on compulsion, and I learned a lesson which is working now. Tonight, if you have ought to teach me, let me profit by it. Touch my robe! Scrooge did as he was told and held it fast. Holly, mistletoe, red berries, ivy, turkey, ski, skeam, poultry, brawn, meat, pig, 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 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 and splitting into artificial little snowstorms. The house fronts look 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 deposited had been plowed up in deep furrows by the heavy wheels of carts and wagons.

Furrows that crossed and recrossed each other hundreds of times, where the great streets branched off and made intricate channels, hard to trace in the thick yellow mud 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 but one consent caught fire, and were blazing away to their dear heart's content. There was nothing very cheerful in the climate or the town, and yet there was an air of cheerfulness abroad,

that the clearer summer air and brighter summer sun might have endeavored to diffuse. in vain. For the people who were shoveling away on the house-tops were jovial and full of glee, calling out to one another from the parapets, and now and then exchanging a facetious snowball, better nature and missile far than many a worldly jest, laughing heartily as it went right or lessened hardly if it went wrong. The poultryers' shops were still half open, and the fruters were radiant in their glory. There were great, round, pot-bellied baskets of chest. chestnuts, shaped like the waist-kets of jolly old gentleman, 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 winging from their shelves in wanton slyness at the girls as they went by, and glanced demurely at the hung-up mistletoe. There were pairs and apples clustered high in blooming pyramids. There were bunches of grapes made in the shopkeeper's benevolence to dangle from conspicuous hooks that people's mouths might water gratis as they passed. There were piles of filberts, mossy and brown, recalling in their fragrance, ancient walks among the woods, and pleasant shufflings ankle-deep through withered leaves. There were Norfolk biffins squat and swarthy, setting off the yellow of the oranges and lemons, and in the great compactness of their juicy persons,

urgently entreating and beseeching to be carried home in brown paper bags and eaten after dinner. The very gold and silver fish set forth among these choice fruits in a bowl, though members of a dull and stagnant-blooded race appeared to know there was something going on and to a fish went gasping round and round in their little world in slow and passionless excitement. The grossest, oh, the grossest, nearly closed, were perhaps two shutters down, or one, but through those gaps such glimpses. It was not alone that the scales descending on the counter made a merry sound, or that the twine in roller-departed company so briskly, or that the canisters were rattled up and down like juggling tricks, or even that the blended sense of tea and coffee

were so grateful to the nose, or even the raisins were so plentiful and rare, the almonds so extremely white, the sticks of cinnamon so long and straight, the other spice is so delicious, the candied fruit so caked and spotted with molten sugar as to make the coldest lookers-on feel faint and subsequently bilious. 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 their hopeful promise of the day that they tumbled up against each other at the door, crashing their wicker

baskets wildly and left their purchases upon the counter, and came running back to fetch them, and committed hundreds of the like mistakes in the best humor possible, while the grocer and his people were so frank and fresh that the polished hearts at which they fastened their aprons behind might have been their own, worn outside for general inspection and for Christmas doors to peck at if they choose. But soon the steeple's called good people altered church and chapel, and away they came, flocking through the streets in their best clothes and with their gayest faces. And at the time they emerged from scores of by streets, lanes, and nameless turnings, innumerable people carrying their dinners to the baker's shops. The

sight of these poor revelers appeared to interest the spirit very much, for he stood with Scrooge beside him in a baker's doorway, and taking off the covers, as their bearers passed, sprinkled incense on the dinners from his torch. And it was a very uncommon kind of torch, for once or twice, when there were angry words between some dinner carriers who had jostled each other, he shed a few drops of water on them from it, and the good humor was restored directly, for they said it was a shame to quarrel upon Christmas Day, and so it was God love it, so it was. In time the bells ceased, and the bakers were shut up, and yet there was a general shadowing forth of all these dinners in the progress of their cooking in the thawed blotch of wet

each baker's oven, where the pavement smoked as if its stones were cooking, too. Is there a peculiar flavor in which 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 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 and the many words about us,

"'should desire to cramp these people's opportunities of innocent enjoyment.' "'I,' cried the spirit, "'you would deprive them of all their means of dining every seventh day, "'often the only day in which they can be said to dine at all,' said Scrooge, wouldn't you? I? cried the spirit. You seek to choose these places

on the severed 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 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 self-righteousness, and our name, who are estranged to us and all our kith and kin, as if they had never lived. Remember that, and charge the doings on themselves, not us!' Scrooge promised that he would, and they went all invisible, as they had been before, into the suburbs of the town. It was a remarkable quality of the ghost which Scrooge had observed at the bakers,

that, notwithstanding his gigantic size, he could accommodate himself to any place with ease, and that he stood beneath the lower of quite as gracefully and like a supernatural creature as it was possible that he could have done in any lofty hall. And perhaps it was the pleasure the good spirit had in showing off this power of his, or else it was his own kind, generous, hearty nature, and his sympathy with all poor men that let him straight to Scrooge's clerks. 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 Cratchett's dwelling with the twinkling of his torture. Think of that. Bob had but fifteen Bob a week himself. He pocketed on Saturdays, but 15 copies of his Christian name, and yet the ghost of Christmas present blessed his four-room house. Then up rose Mrs. Cratchett, Cratchett's wife, dressed out but poorly in a twice-turned gown, but braven ribbons which are cheap and make a goodly show for six-pence,

and she laid the cloths assisted by Belinda Cratchit, second of her daughter, also braven ribbons, while Master Peter Cratchett 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 honor 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 bakers they had smelt the goose and known it for their own, and basking in luxurious thoughts of sage and onion these young cratchets danced about the table,

and exalted Master Peter Cratchett to the skies, while he, not proud, though his colours nearly choked him, blew the fire until the slow potatoes bubbling up knocked loudly in the saucepan lid to be let out and peeled. What has ever got your precious father, then, said Mrs. Cratchit, had your brother, tiny Tim, and Martha weren't as late last Christmas Day by half an hour. Here's Martha, Mother, said a girl. hearing as she spoke. Here's Martha, Mother, cried the two young Cratchit.

Hurrah, there's such a goose, Martha! Why, bless your heart, lie, 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 had a deal of work to finish up last night, replied the girl, and had to clear away this morning, Mother. Well, never mind, so long as you've come, said Mrs. Cratchit. Sit she down by the fire, my dear, and have a warm Lord bless you.

"'No, no, Father's coming,' cried the two young Cratchits, "'who are everywhere at once. "'Hide, Martha! Hide!' "'So Martha hit herself, and in came little Bob the father, "'with at least three feet of comforter exclusive to the fringe, "'hanging down before him, "'and his threadbare clothes donned 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 Cratchett, "'looking round. "'Not coming,' said Mrs. Cratchett. "'Not coming,' said Mrs. Cratchett. said Bob, with a sudden declension of his high spirits, for he had been Tim's blood-horse all the way from church, and he 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, and Bob had hugged his daughter to his heart's content. As good as gold, said Bob, and better. Somehow he gets thoughtful, sitting by himself so much, and thinks the strangest things you ever heard. He told me coming home that he had hoped people saw him in the church because he was a cripple, and it might be pleasant to them

to remember upon Christmas Day who made lame beggars walk and blind men see. Bob's voice was tremulous when he told them this and trembled more when he said the tiny team was growing strong and hearty. His active crutch was heard upon the floor, and back came Tiny Tim before another word was spoken, escorted by his brother and sister to his stool before the fire, and while Bob, turning up his cuffs, as if poor fellow they were capable of being made more shabby, compounded some hot mixture in a jug with gin and lemons, and stirred it round and round and put it on the harb to simmer. Master Peter and the two ubiquitous young cratches went to fetch the goose, which they soon returned in high procession. Such a bustle ensued that you might have thought

A goose was the rarest of all birds, a feathered phenomenon, of which a black swan was a matter of course, and in truth it was something very like it in that house. Mrs. Cratchett made the gravy already beforehand in a little saucepaned hissing hot. Master Peter mashed the potatoes with an incredible vigor. Miss Belinda sweetened up the apple sauce. Martha dusted the hot plates. Bob took tiny Tim beside him in a tiny corner at the table. The two young Cratchit set chairs for everybody, not forgetting themselves, and mounting guard upon their post, crammed spools. into their mouths lest they should shriek for goose before their turn came to be held.

At last the dishes were set on, and Grace was set. It was succeeded by her breathless pause as Mrs. Cratchett, looking slowly along the carving-knife, prepared to plunge it in the breast. But when she did, and when the long, expected gush of stuffing issued forth, one murmur of delight arose all round the board, an even tiny Tim excited by the two young 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 that ever was such a goose cooked. Its tenderness and flavor, size and cheapness were the themes of universal admiration.

Eeked out by apple sauce and mashed potatoes, it was a sufficient dinner for the whole family. Indeed, as Mrs. Cratchett said with great delight, surveying one small atom of a bone upon the dish, they hadn't ate it all at last. Yet every one had had enough, and the youngest Cratchit's in particular, was steeped in sage and onion to the eyebrows. But now the plates being changed by Miss Belinda, Mrs. Cratchett left the room alone, too nervous to hear witnesses to take the pudding up and bring it in. Suppose it had not been done enough. Suppose it should break in turning out. Suppose somebody should have gotten over the wall over the backyard and stolen it. While they were merry with the goose, a supposition at which the two young Cratchett's,

became livid. All sorts of horrors were supposed. Hello, a great deal of steam. The pudding was out of the copper. A smell like a washing day. That was the cloth. A smell like an eating house and a pastry cook's neck door to each other, with the laundresses next door to that. That was the pudding. In half a minute, Mrs. Cratchett entered flushed, but smiling proudly with the pudding like a speckled cannonball, so hard and firm, blazing with half of half a quarter of ignited brandy, and bedight with Christmas holly stuck into the top. Oh, what a wonderful pudding, Bob Cratchit said, and calmly too, that he regarded it as the greatest success achieved by Mrs. Cratchett since their marriage.

Mrs. Cratchett said that now the weight was off her mind, she would confess that she hadn't had doubts about the quality of the flour. Everyone had something to say about it, for nobody said or thought it was at all. A small pudding for a large family. It would have been a flat heresy to do so. Any Cratchett would have blushed to hint at such a thing. At last the dinner was all done, the cloth was cleared, the hearth swept and the fire made up. The compound in the jug was being tasted, and considered perfect.

Apples and oranges were put upon the table, and a shovel full of chestnuts on the fire. And then all the Cratchick family drew around the hearth, in what Bob Cratchett called a circle, meaning half a one. And at Bob Cratchett's elbow stood the family display of glass, two tumblers and a custom 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 crackled noisily. Then Bob proposed, A Merry Christmas to us all, my dears, God bless us,

which all the family be echoed. God bless us, everyone, said Tiny Tim the last of all. He sat very close to his father's side upon the stool. Bob held his withered little hand in his as if he loved the child, and he wished to keep him by his side and dreaded that he might be taken from him. 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 would be spared. If these shadows remain unaltered by the future, none other of my race, returned the ghost, will find him here. Oh, what then? If he be like to die. you'd 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 in grief. "'Man,' said the Ghost, "'if man you be at heart, not adamant, forbear that wicked count until you have discovered what the surplus is and where it is.

Will you decide what men shall live and what men shall die? It may be that in the sight of heaven you are more words. of this 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 and the dust! Scrooge bent before the ghost rebuke, and trembling cast his eyes upon the ground, but he raised them speedily upon hearing his own name. Mr. Scrooge, said Bob, I give you Mr. Scrooge the founder of our feast. The founder of our feast indeed, cried Mrs. Cratchett reddening.

I wish I had him here. I'd give him a piece of my mind to feast upon it, and hope he'd have a good appetite for it. My dear, said Bob, the children. Christmas Day? It should be Christmas Day, I'm sure, said she, in which one drinks the help of such an odious, stingy, hard, unfeeling mad as Mr. Scrooge.

You know he is raw, but nobody knows it better than you, poor fellow. My dear, was Bob's mild answer. Christmas Day. I'll drink his health for your sake in the days, said Mrs. Cruege. but not for his long life to him a merry christmas and a happy new year he'd be very merry and very happy i have no doubt the children drank the toast after her it was the first of their proceedings which had no heartiness tiny tim drank last of all but he didn't care twopence for it scrooge was the ogre of the family the mention of his name cast a dark shadow upon the party which was not dispelled for full five minutes after it had passed away they were ten times merry then before, and the mere relief of Scrooge the bail for being done with. Bob Cratchett told him how he had a situation in the desire 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 favor when he came into the receipt of that bewildering income. a poor apprentice at a milliners, 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 a bed, tomorrow morning for a good long rest, tomorrow being a holiday she passed at home, and how she had seen a countess and a lord some days before, and how the Lord was much about as tall as Peter, which Peter

pulled up his collar so high that you couldn't have seen his head if you had been there. All this time the chestnuts and the jug went round and round, and by 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. The shoes were far from being waterproof.

Their clothes were scanty, and Peter might have known, and very likely did the inside of a pawnbrokers. But they were happy, grateful, pleased with one another, and contented with the time, and when they faded they looked happier yet. the bright sprinklings of the spirit's torch at parting. Scrooge had his eye upon them, and especially on Tiny Tim, until the last. By this time it was getting dark and snowing pretty heavily, as Scrooge and the spirit went along the streets. The brightness of the roaring fires and kitchens, parlors, and all sorts of rooms was wonderful. Here the flickering of the blaze showed preparations for a cozy dinner, with hot plates baking through and through before the fire

and deep red curtains, ready to be drawn to shut out the cold and darkness. There are all the children in the house are running out in the snow to meet their married sisters, brothers, cousins, uncles, aunts, and to be the first to greet them. Here again were shadows on the window-blind of guests assembling, and there a group of handsome girls all hooded and fur-booted, and all chattering at once, tripped lightly off to some near neighbor's house, where woe upon the single man who saw them enter artful witches where they knew it in a glow. But if you were judged from the numbers of people on their way to friendly gatherings, you might have thought that no one was home to give them welcome when they got there. Instead of every house expecting company and

piling up its fires half chimney high, blessings on it how the ghost exalted, how it bared its breath of breast, and opened its capricious palm and floated on, outpouring with a generous hand, 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 he had kenned the lamp-laddered than he had any company but Christmas. And now, without a word of warning from the ghost, they stood upon a bleak in desert more, where monstrous masses of rude stone were cast about, as though it were the burial place

of giants, and water spread itself wherever it listed or would have done so, but for the frost that held it prisoner, and nothing grew but moss and furs in 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 labor 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 to the world. towards it, passing through the wall of mudden stone, they found a cheerful company assembled

around a glowing fire. An old, old man and woman, with their children and their children's children, and another generation beyond that, all decked out gaily in their holiday attire. The old man in a voice that seldom rose above the howling wind upon the barren waist 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 vinger sank again. The spirit did not tarry hair, but bade Scrooge hold his robe and passing on above the moor sped whither. Not to sea. To see! To Scrooge's horror, looking back, he saw the last of the land, a frightful rage of rocks behind him, and his ears were deafened by the thundering of waters as it rolled and roared and raged among the dreadful caverns it had it worn, and scarcely 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 ear through, there stood a solitary lighthouse. Great heaps of sea-weed clung to its base and stormbirds, born of the wind one might suppose as sea-wind of the water, rose and fell about it like the waves they skimmed. But even there, two men who watched the light. and made a fire, and through the loophole of the thick stone wall shed out a rare brightness in the awful sea. Drawing their horny hands over a rough table at which they sat, they wished each other Merry Christmas in their can of grog, and one of them, the elder too, with his face all

damaged and scarred with hard weather as a figure 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! till being far away, as he told Scrooge, from any shaw, they lighted on a ship. They stood beside the helmsman at the wheel, the lookout in the bow, the officers who had the watch, dark, ghostly figures in their several stations, but every man among them hummed a Christmas tune, or had a Christmas thought, or spoke below his breath to his companion of some bygone Christmas day,

with homeward hopes belonging to it, and every man on board, waking or sleeping, good or bad, had had a kinder word for another on that day than on any day in the year, and they had shared to some extent in their 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 a 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 recognize it as his own nephews, and to find himself in a bright, dry, gleaming room with a spirit standing smiling by his side, and looking at that same nephew with a proving affability. Ha ha! ha! Laughed Scrooge's nephew! 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,

to, introduce them to me, and I'll cultivate his acquaintance. It is a fair, even-hand, noble adjustment of things, that there is infection in disease and sorrow. There is nothing in the world so irresistibly contagious as laughter and good humor. When Scrooge's nephew laughed in this way, holding his sight, rolling his head, and twisting his face in the most extravagant contortions, Scrooge's niece, by marriage, laughed as hardly as he, and their assembled friends not being a bit behind hand. roared out lustily. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.

He said that Christmas was a humbug as I live, said Scrooge's nephew. He believed it, too. More shame for him, Fred, said Scrooge's niece indignantly. Bless those women, they never do anything by heart, they're always in earnest. She was very pretty, exceedingly pretty, with a dimpled surprise-looking capital face, a ripe little mouth that seemed to be made to be kissed, as no doubt it was,

all kinds of good little dots about her chin that melted into one. one another when she laughed, and the sunniest pair of eyes you ever saw in any little creature's head. Altogether, she was what you would have called provoking, you know, but satisfactory too. Oh, perfectly satisfactory. He's a comical old fellow, said Scrooge's nephew. That's the truth, but not so pleasant as he might be. However, his offenses carry their own punishment, and I have nothing to say against him. I'm sure he's very rich, Fred, hinted Scrooge's niece, at least you always tell me so. What of that, my dear, said Scrooge's nephew? His wealth is of no use to him.

He don't do any good with it. He don't make himself comfortable with it. He hasn't the satisfaction of thinking, 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 and sisters, and all the other ladies expressed the same opinion. Oh, I have, said Scrooge's nephew. I'm sorry for him. I couldn't be angry with him if I tried. Who suffers by his ill 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. Everyone else said the same, and there must be allowed to have been competent judges because they had all just had dinner,

and with the dessert upon the table, were clustered around the fire by lamplight. Well, I'm very glad to hear it, said Scrooge's nephew, because I haven't great faith in these young housekeepers. What do you say, top of? Tava 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, whereas Scrooge's niece's sister, the plump one with the lace tucker, not the one with the roses,

blushed. Do go on, Fred, said Scrooge's niece, clapping her hands. He never finishes what he begins to say. He is such a ridiculous fellow. Scrooge's nephew reveled in another laugh, and as it was impossible to keep the infection off, though the Plumps' sister tried hard to do it with an aromatic vinegar. His example was unanimously followed. I was only going to say, said Scrooge's nephew,

that the consequence of his taking a dislike to us and not making merry with us is, as I think, that he loses some pleasant moments which could do him no harm. I'm sure he loses pleasanter comparisons than he can find in his own thoughts, either in his moldy old office or his dusty chambers. I need to give him the same chance every year, whether he likes it or not, for I pity him.

He may rail at Christmas till he dies, but I can't help thinking better of it. I defy him. If he finds me going there in good temper year after year and saying, Uncle Scrooge, how are you? If it only puts him in the vein to leave his poor Clark fifty pounds, that's something, and I think I shook him yesterday. It was their turn to laugh now of the notion of shaking Scrooge,

but being thoroughly good-natured and not caring much 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 would growl away in the bass like a good one and never swell the large veins in his forehead or get rid in the face over it scrooge's niece played well upon the harp and played among other tunes a simple little air or mere nothing you might learn to whistle it in two minutes which have been familiar to the child who had felt it stretched from the boarding school, as he had been reminded by the Ghost of Christmas past. When this strain of music sounded, all the things the Ghost had shown him came upon his mind. He softened more and more, and thought if he could listen to it often years ago, he might have cultivated the kindness of life for his own happiness with his own hands, without resorting to the Sexton Spade that buried Jacob Marley.

But they didn't devote the whole evening to music. After a while they played forfeits, for it's good to be children sometimes, it never better at Christmas when its mighty father was a child himself. Stop. There was first a game at Blind Man's Bluff. Of course there was. And I no more believe Topper was really blind than I believe he had eyes in his boots. My opinion is that it was a dumb thing between him and Scrooge's nephew,

and that the ghost of Christmas present knew it. The way he went out of that plump sister in the lace Tucker was an outrage on the credulity of human nature, knocking down the fire-irons, tumbling over chairs, bobbing against the piano, smothered himself among the curtains wherever she went, there went he. He always knew where the plump sister was. He wouldn't catch anybody else. If you had fallen up against him and 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 it wasn't fair, it really was not. But when it last he caught her, when in spite of all her silken rustlings and rapid flutterings past him, he got her into a corner whence there was no escape. Then his conduct was the most exorable, for his pretending not to know her, his pretending that it was necessary to touch her headdress, and further to assure himself of her identity by pressing a certain ring upon her finger, 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 there were so many confidential them together behind the curtains. Scrooge's niece was not one of the blind men's black party, but made comfortable with the

large chair and a footstool in a snuck 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 sister's hollow, though they were sharp girls too as top of would have told you. There might have been twenty people there, young and old, but they all played, and so did Scrooge, for wholly forgetting in the interest he had in what was going on, that his voice made no sound in their ears, he sometimes came out with his guess quite loud, and very often guessed quite right, too. For the sharpest needle, best whitechapel warranted

not to cut in the eye, was not sharper than Scrooge, blunt as he took it in his head to be. The ghost was greatly pleased to find him in this mood, and looked to upon him with such favor that he begged like a boy to be allowed to stay until the guests departed. But this, the spirit said, could not be done. Here's a new game, said Scrooge. One half-hour spirit, only one! It was a game called Yes or No, where Scrooge's nephew had to think of something and the rest must find out what, he only answering to their questions yes or no, as the case

was. The 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 in streets and wasn't made a show of, and wasn't led by anybody, and didn't live in a menagerie and was never killed in a market, and it was not a horse or an ass, or a cow, or a bull, or a tiger, or a dog, or a pig, or a cat, or a bear. At every fresh question that was put in, him. This nephew burst into a fresh roar of laughter and was so inexpressibly tickled that

he was obliged to get off off the sofa and stamp. At last the plump's sister, falling into a similar state, cried out, I found it, I know what it is. Fred, I know what it is. What is it? said Fred. It's your Uncle Scrooge! Which it certainly was. Ammration was the universal sentiment, though some objected that the reply to, is it a bear, or to have been yes in as much as an answer in the negative was sufficient to have diverted their thoughts from Mr. Scrooge, supposing they had

any tendency that way. He has given us plenty of merriment, I'm sure, said Fred, and it would be ungrateful not to drink his health. Here is a glass of mulled wine ready to our hand at the moment, and I say Uncle Scrooge. Well, Uncle Scrooge, they cried. A Merry Christmas and a happy New Year

to the old man, wherever he is, said. Scrooge's nephew. He wouldn't take it for me, but he may have it nevertheless. Uncle Scrooge. Uncle Scrooge had imperceptibly became so gay in 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 words spoken by his nephew, and he and the spirit were again upon their travels. Much they saw, and far they went, and many homes they visited, but always with a happy end. The spirit stood beside sick beds,

and they were cheerful on foreign lands, and they were close at home, by struggling men, and they were patient with their greater hope, by poverty, and it was rich. In almshouse, hospital and jail, in miseries every refuge, where a vain man and his little briefer thawed he had not made fast the door, and barred the spirit out, he left his blessing and torched it. Scrooge, his precepts. It was a long night, if it were only a night, but Scrooge had his doubts about this, because Christmas holidays appeared to be condensed into a 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 had left a children's twelfth night party when, looking at the spirit as they stood together in an open place, he noticed that his hair was gray. "'Our spirit's life's so short?' asked Scrooge. "'My life upon this globe is very brief,' replied the ghost. "'It ends to-night.' "'To-night!' cried Scrooge.

"'Tonight at midnight. Park! The time is drawing near!' The chimes were ringing three-quarters past eleven at the moment. "'Forgive me if I'm not justified in what I ask,' said Scrooge, looking intently at the spirit's robe. but I see something strange and not belonging to yourself protruding from your skirts. Is that a foot or a claw? It might be a claw, for the flesh there is upon it, was the spirit's sorrowful reply. Look here.

From the foldings of his robe he brought two children. Wretched, abject, frightful, hideous miserable. They knelt down in his feet and clung upon the outside of his garment. Oh man, look here, look, look down here, exclaimed the ghost. They were a boy and girl, yellow, meager, 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 and thrown, devils lurked, and, glared out menacing. No change, no degradation, no perversion of humanity in any grade. Through all the mysteries of wonderful creation, has monsters half so horrible in dread. Scrooge started back appalled. Having them shown to him in this way, he tried to say they were fine children, but the words choke themselves, rather than be parties to a lie of such enormous magnitude. Spirit! Are they yours?

Scrooge could say no more. They are men, said the spirit, looking down upon them. And they cling to me, appealing from their fathers. The boy is ignorance. The girl is wont. Beware them both, and all of their degree, but most of all, beware the boy. For on his brow I see written which is doom,

unless the writing be erased. Deny it! cried the spirit, stretching out. his hand towards the city. Stand to those who tell it, ye, admit it for your facetious purposes, make it worse, and by the end. Have they no refuge or resource?

cried Scrooge. Are there no prisons? said the spirit, turning on him for the last time with his own words. Are there no workhouses? The bell struck twelve. Scrooge looked about him for the ghost and sought not. As the last stroke ceased to vibrate,

He remembered the prediction of old Jacob Barley, and lifting up his eyes. Beheld a solemn phantom draped and hooded, coming like a mist along the ground towards him. End of Stave 3 of A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. Stave 4. The last of the three spittets. The phantom slowly, gravely, silently approached. When it came near him, Scrooge bent down upon his knee, for in the very air through which

the 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 separated 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.

Am I in the presence of the ghost of Christmas yet to come? said Scrooge. The spirit answered not, but pointed onward with its hand. You're about to show me shadows of 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 specter 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. "'Lay don,' said Scrooge. "'Ladon, the night is wading fast, and it is precious time to me, I know.

"'Lay down, 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 encompassed 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 chinkled the money in their pockets, and conversed in groups and looked at their watchers, and trifled thoughtfully with the great old seals, and so forth as

Scrooge had seen them often. The spirit stopped beside one little not a businessman. 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 never leave why what's the matter with him asked the 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 pengeless excretions 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 very 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 lunch is provided,' observed the gentleman "'with the excretions 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 meant. Bye-bye. Speakers and listeners strolled away, and mixed with other groups. Scrooge knew the man, 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 two men also perfectly there 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

oh how are you said one oh how are you returned the other well said the first old scratch has got his own at last hey so i am told returned the second cold isn't it seasonable for christmas time you're not a skater i suppose no no Something else to think of. Good morning! Not another word. That was their meeting, their conversation, and their parting. Scrooge was at first inclined to be surprised, that the spirit should attach importance to conversations apparently so trivial, but feeling assured that they must 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 own partner, for that was past and the ghost province was of the future. nor could he think of anyone immediately connected with himself, to whom he could apply them. But nothing doubting that to whomever 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 in an expectation that the conduct of his future self would give him the clue he missed, and would render the resolution of these riddles easy.

He looked about in the very place for his own image, but another man stood at his accustomed corner, and though the clerk pointed to his usual time of day for being there, he saw no likenesses 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 no-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. It went into an obscure part of town where Scrooge had never penetrated before, although he recognized its situation and bad repute. The ways were foul and narrow, the shops and houses were wretched. The people half-naked, drunken, slipshod, ugly. Allies 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 penthouse roof where iron, old rags, bottles, bones, and greasy oval were brought. 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 scrutinize were bred and hidden in mountains of unseemly rags, masses of corrupted fat, and sepulicas of bones.

Sitting in among the wares he dealt in by a charcoal stove making a brinket of bricks, was a grey-haired rascal, nearly seventy years of age, who had screened himself from the cold air without by a frowsy curtaining and miscellaneous tatters, hug up in 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 slung into the shop, but she had scarcely entered with another woman, similarly laden, came in two, 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 enjoyed them, the all three burst into a laugh. "'Let the child woman alone to be the first,' cried she who had entered first. "'Let the laudress is alone to be the second, and let the undertaker's man alone to be the third. Look, dear old Joe, here's a chance. If we have an all three met, they're without meaning it. You couldn't have met in a better place, said old Joe, removing the pipe from his mouth. Come into the parlour. You were made free for it long ago, you know, and the other two ain't strangers. Stop till they shut the door to shop. Oh, how it streaks.

They ain't such a rusty bit of metal in the place as it's only issues, I believe. And I'm sure there's no such old bones there as mine. We're all suitable for our calling, well matched. Come into the parlour, come into the parlour. Come in to the parlour. 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 nighed with the stem of his pipe, put it in his mouth again. While he did this, the woman who had already spoken, threw her bundle on the floor, and sat down in a flaunting manner on a stool, crossing her elbows on her knees,

and looking with bold defiance at the other two. "'What odds! What odds, Mrs. Dilba,' said the woman. "'Every person had the right to take care of themselves. He always had a lot. always did. Oh, that's true indeed, said the laundress. No more men so. Why, then don't stand staring as if you were afraid, woman, who's the wiser? We're not going to pick holes in each other's coats, I suppose.

No, indeed, said Mrs. Dillibber and the man together. We should hope not. Very well, then, cried the woman. That's enough. Who's the worst for the loss of a few things like these? Not a dead man, I suppose. No, indeed, said Mrs. Dillbert laugh. I wish it was a little heavier judgment, replied the woman, and it shouldn't have been,

you may depend on it. If I could have laid my hands on anything else, open the bundle, old Joe, and let me know the value of it. Speak out plain, I'm not afraid to be the first, not afraid for them to see it. We know pretty well what we're helping our shelves. Before we met here, I believe, it's no sin. Open a bundle, Joe! But the gallantry of her friends would not allow this, and the man in faded black, mounting the breach first, produced his plunder. It was not a bit of it. 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 chucked the sums as he

was supposed to give for each upon the wall, and added them up to a total when he found there was nothing more to come. "'That's your account,' said Joe. "'And I wouldn't give another sixpence if I were to be bought for not doing it. Who's next?' Mrs. Dilber was next. Sheets and towels, a little wearing apparel, too old-fashioned silver tea-stice. 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 the ladies. It's a weakness of morn, and it's the way I ruined myself,' said O Joe. "'That's your account. If you ask me for another penny, and made it an open question, I'd repent of being so liberal and knock off the ground.' "'And now one do more bundle, Joe,' said the first woman. Joe went down on his knees for the greater convenience of opening it, and having unfastened the great many knots dragged out a large and heavy roll of some dark stuff. What do you call rage? said Joe. Beg curtains?

Ah, returned the woman, laughing and leaning forward in her crossed arms. Big curtains! You don't mean to say you took them down rigs at all with him lying there, said Joe. Yes, I do, replied the woman. Why not? You were bored 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.

Don't drop that all upon a blanket's now. It's blankets? asked Joe. Well, who's else do you think? replied the woman. Is it likely you'd take go with that, my 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 ain't so fond of his company had laud or about him for such things if he did.

Ah, you may look through that shirt until your eyes, egg, but you won't find a hole in it, not a threadbare place. It's the best he had and a fine one, too. They've wasted if it hadn't been for me. Well, you call wasted it, I stole Joe. Putting it on him to be buried in for sure, replied the old woman with a laugh. Somebody was fool enough to do it, but I took it off again. If Gallego ain't good enough for such a purpose, it isn't good enough for anything.

It's quite as becoming to the body. It can't look ugly than he did in that one. Scrooge listened to this dialogue in horror. As they sat grouped about their spoil In the scanty light Affordered by the own 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! Laugh! The woman, Winnowd Joe, producing a flannel bag With money in it Told out there several gains upon the ground This is the end of it, you see

He frightened everyone away from him When he was alive To profit us when he was dead! Ha ha ha ha! "'Spirit,' said Screws, 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, hell, what is this?' "'He recalled in horror, for the scene had changed, "'and now he almost touched a bed, a bear on curtain bed, "'on which, beneath a ragged sheet, there lay 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 around 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 toward 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 Scroot's part would have disclosed the face. He thought of it, felt how easy it would be to do so, and long 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 tears as thou hast at thy command, for this is thy duty. But of the loved, revered and honored head, thou canst not turn one hair to any dread purposes, or make one feature odious. It is not that the hand is heavy or will fall down when released.

It is not that the heart and pulse are still, but the hand was open, generous and true. The heart brave, warm and tender, and the pulse amends. Strike, shadow strike! And see his good deed 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?

Averous, hard-dealing, griping cares. They have brought him to a rich inn, truly. He lay in the dark empty house with not a man, a woman, or a child, to say that he was kind to me in this or that, and for the memory of one kind word I will be kind to him." A cat was tearing at the door, and there was a sound of gnawing rats beneath the hearthstone. What they wanted in the room of death, and why they were so restless and disturbed! Scrooge did dare not 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 point. with an unmow 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 at him. If there is any person in the town who feels emotion caused by this man's death, said Scrooge quite agonized, show that person to me, spirit, I beseech you. A 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 someone, and with anxious eagerness, for she walked up and down the room, started at every sound, looked out from the window, glanced at the clock, tried but in vain to work with her needle, and could hardly bear the voices of the children in their play. At length, the long-expected knock was heard, she hurried to the door and met her. husband, a man whose face was careworn and depressed, though he was young. There was a remarkable expression in it now, a kind of serious delight of which he felt ashamed, and which he struggled to repress. He sat down to the dinner that had been 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 amaze, 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 the 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 be if been quite true. He was not only very ill, but dying then. To whom will our debt be transferred? I don't know, but before that time we shall be ready with the money, and even though we were not, It would be a bad fortune indeed to find so merciless a creditor and 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 cloister around 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 what a pleasure. Let me see some tenderness connected with the death, said Scrooge. or that dark chamber, spirit, which we left just now, will be 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 Cratchett's house, the dwelling he had visited before, and found the mother and the children seated around 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 color hurts my eyes, she said. The color? Poor tiny Tim. They're better now again, said Cratchett's wife. It makes them weak by candlelight, 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 you walked a little slower than he used to these past few evenings, mother. They were very quiet again. At last she said in a steady, cheerful voice that only faltered once, "'I've known him to walk with—I've known him to walk with Tiny Tim upon his shoulder,

very fast indeed. "'And so have I,' cried Peter, often. "'And so have I!' screamed another. "'So had all. "'But he was very light to carry,' she resumed, intend upon her work, "'and his father loved him so, and 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 harp, and they all tried who should help him to it most. Then the two young cratchets got up on his knees and laid each a child a little cheek against his face, and they said, don't mind it, father, don't be grieved. He 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. Cratchett and the girls. They would be done long before Sunday, he said. Sunday. You went today, then, Robert? asked 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 upstairs 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 someone 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. He told him the extraordinary kindness of Mr. Scrooge's nephew, who we had scarcely seen but once, and who meeting him in the street that day, and seen that he looked a little, just a little doubt, you know, said Bob,

inquired what had happened to distress him. On which, said Bob, for he is the pleasantest spoken gentleman you've ever heard, I told him, I am heartily sorry for him. for Mr. Cratchit, he said, and heartily sorry for your good wife. By the by, 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. Hartly 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. He really seemed as if he had known our tiny Tim and felt with us. I'm sure he's a good soul, said Mrs. Cratchett. 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 someone and setting up for himself.'

"'Get along with your retorted Peter, gritting. "'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'm sure we shall none of us forget, poor Tiny Tim, shall we? "'Or his 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, "'though 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. Cratchett kissed him, his daughter's kissed him, the two young cratches 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 to these latter visions, save that they were of 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 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 had reached an iron gate.

He paused to look round before entering. It was a worthy place, walled in by houses, overrun by grass and weeds, the growth of vegetation's death, not life, choked up but too much burying, fat with repleted appetite, a worthy place. The spirit stood among the graves and pointed down to one. He advanced toward it trembling. The phantom was exactly as it had been. but he dreaded that he saw a new meaning in its solemn shape.

Before I draw nearer to that stone in which you point, said Scrooge, answer me one question, are these the shadows of things that will be or the shadows of things that may be only? Still the ghost pointed downward to the grave by which it stood. Men's courses will foreshadow certain ends to which, if preserved in, they must lead, said Scrooge. But if the courses be departed from the ends would change. Say it is thus with what you show me. The spirit was as 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 the 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 was still there. Spirit! he cried, tight clutching at his robe.

Hear me! I am not the man I was, I will not be the man. I must have been for this intercourse. Why show me this if I'm past all hope? For the first time the hand of the appeared to shake. Good spirit, he pursued, as down on the ground he fell before it, your nature bring the seeds for me. And pities me, assure me that I may yet change these shadows you have shown me by an altered life. The kind hand trembled. I went on a Christmas in my heart and try and keep it all the year. I will live in the past, the present, and the future. The spirits of all three will strive within me. I will not shut out the lessons that they teach. Oh, tell me, I may sponge away the writing out of the stone. In his agony he caught the spectro 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. The end of State 4 of A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens State 5, the end of it Yes, and the bedpost was his own, the bed was his own, the room was his own, best and happiest of all the time before him was his own to make amends in

O'olive 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 did 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 in his good intentions that his broken voice could 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, holding 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 all 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, making a perfect lacrosse in himself with his stockings. I'm as light as a feather. I'm as happy as an angel. I'm as many as a schoolboy. I'm as giddy as a drunken man. A merry Christmas to everybody!

A happy new year to all the world! there, hup-palo! He had frisked into the living room, and he was now standing there, perfectly winded. There's the saucepan that the gruel was in, cried Scrooge, starting off again, and going round the fireplace. There's the door by which the ghost of Gigamali entered. There's the corner where the ghost of Christmas presents sat. There's the window where I saw the wandering spirits. It's all right, it's all true. It all happened. 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 light of brilliant laughs.

I don't know what day of the month it is, said Scrooge. I don't know how long I've been among the spirits. I don't know anything. I'm quite a baby. Never mind. I don't care. I'd rather be a baby. Hello, hello there!

He was checked in his transports by the churches, wringing out the lustiest peals he had ever heard. Clash, clang, hammer, ding, dong. Bell, dong, ding hammer, clang crash. 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 sunnight, heavenly sky, sweet, fresh air, merry bells, oh, glorious, glorious. What's today? cried Scrooge, calling downward to a boy in Sunday clothes who perhaps had loitered in to look about him. I, returned the boy, with all his might of wonder. What's today, my fine fellow, said Scrooge. "'Today?' replied the boy. "'Boy, Christmas Day.' "'It's Christmas Day,' said Scrooge himself. "'I haven't missed it.

"'The spirits have done it all in one night. "'I think you do anything like. "'Of course they can. Of course they can. "'Hello, my fine fellow!' "'Hello, my friend the boy. "'Do you know the poultry's in the next street, "'butt one at the corner?' Scrooge inquired. "'Well, I should help my dear,' replied the lad.

"'An intelligent boy,' said Scrooge. "'R 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 was 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 oh cur exclaimed the boy no no said scrooge i am in earnest go buy it and tell him to bring it here that i may give him the direction where to take it come back with the man and i'll give you a shilling come back with him in less than five minutes and i'll give you half the crown the boy was off like a shot he must have had a steady-handed a trigger who had got a shot off half so fast i sent it to bob cratchets whispered scrooge rubbing his hands and splitting with laugh he shot know who says it it's twice the size of tiny tim Joe Miller never made such a joke as sending it to bombs will be. The hand in which he wrote the address was not a steady one, but right it he did, somehow, and went downstairs to open the street door, ready for the coming

of the polders 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 on its face. It's a wonderful knocker. Here's the turkey. Hello! How are you? Merry Christmas. It was a turkey. He never could have stood upon his legs that bird. He would have snapped him 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 in which he sat down, breathless in his chair again, and chuckled till he. 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're 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 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, and Scrooge regarded everyone with a delighted smile. to be 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 blightest in his ears. In I not gone far, when coming on towards him, he beheld the portly chapman, who had walked into his counting-house the day before, and said, Scrooge and Marlies, 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. "'Will you have the goodness here?' "'Scrooge whispered in his ear. "'Lord, bless me!' cried the gentleman, as his breath were taken away. "'My dear Scrooge, are you serious?' if you please said scrooge and not a farthing less a great many back payments are included in it i assure you will you do be that favour my dear sir said the other shaking hands with him i don't know what to say to such munific don't say anything please retorted scrooge come and see me will you come and see me i will cried the old gentleman and it was clear he meant to do it thank ye said scrooge i am much obliged to you thank you fifty times bless you

He went to church and walked about the streets and watched the people hurrying to and fro, and patted children on the head, and questioned beggars, had looked down into the kitchens of houses and up to the windows, and found that everything could yield him pleasure. He had never dreamed at 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 of 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 her upstairs, if you please. He knows me, said Scrooge with his hand already on the dining room lock. I'll go in there, 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 were always nervous on such points and liked 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 is I, your uncle Scrooge, have come to dinner. Will you let me in, Fred? Let him in.

It is of 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 Plum Sister when she came, so did everyone when they came. Wonderful party, wonderful games, wonderful unanimity, wonderful happiness. But he was early at the office next morning. Oh, he was early there. If he could only be there first and catch Bob Cratchett coming date. That was the thing he had set his heart upon.

And he did it. Yes, he did it. The clock struck nine. No Bob. A quarter passed. No Bob. He was full 18 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 a stool in a jiffy, driving away with his pen as if you were trying to overtake nine o'clock. "'Hello?' growled Scrooge in his accustomed voice as near as he could feign it. "'What do you mean by coming in here at this time of day?' "'I'm 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'm about to raise your salary." Bob trembled, and he 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 a help in a straight waistcoat. "'A Merry Christmas, Bob,' said Scrooge, with an earnestness that could not be mistaken, as he clapped him on the back. "'A merry Christmas, Bob, my good fellow, that I have given you for many a year.

I'll raise your salary, and endeavor to assist your struggling family, and will discuss your affairs this very afternoon over a Christmas bowl of smoking bishopob, make up the fires, and buy another cold scuttle before you dot another, I, Pub, 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 in this globe for good,

at which some people did not have their fill of laughter at 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 and greens, 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 sped, but lived on 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 truly be said of us, and all of us. And so, as Tiny Tim observed, God bless us, everyone. End of State 5 of a Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. End of book.