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‘She died a woman,’ said the Ghost, ‘and had, as I
think, children.’
‘One child,’ Scrooge returned.
‘True,’ said the Ghost. ‘Your nephew.’
Scrooge seemed uneasy in his mind; and answered
briefly, ‘Yes.’
Although they had but that moment left the school
behind them, they were now in the busy thoroughfares of
a city, where shadowy passengers passed and repassed;
where shadowy carts and coaches battle for the way, and
all the strife and tumult of a real city were. It was made
plain enough, by the dressing of the shops, that here too it
was Christmas time again; but it was evening, and the
streets were lighted up.
The Ghost stopped at a certain warehouse door, and
asked Scrooge if he knew it.
‘Know it.’ said Scrooge. ‘I was apprenticed here.’
They went in. At sight of an old gentleman in a Welsh
wig, sitting behind such a high desk, that if he had been
two inches taller he must have knocked his head against
the ceiling, Scrooge cried in great excitement:
‘Why, it’s old Fezziwig. Bless his heart; it’s Fezziwig
alive again.’
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Old Fezziwig laid down his pen, and looked up at the
clock, which pointed to the hour of seven. He rubbed his
hands; adjusted his capacious waistcoat; laughed all over
himself, from his shows to his organ of benevolence; and
called out in a comfortable, oily, rich, fat, jovial voice:
‘Yo ho, there. Ebenezer. Dick.’
Scrooge’s former self, now grown a young man, came
briskly in, accompanied by his fellow-prentice.
‘Dick Wilkins, to be sure.’ said Scrooge to the Ghost.
‘Bless me, yes. There he is. He was very much attached to
me, was Dick. Poor Dick. Dear, dear.’
‘Yo ho, my boys.’ said Fezziwig. ‘No more work tonight.
Christmas Eve, Dick. Christmas, Ebenezer. Let’s
have the shutters up,’ cried old Fezziwig, with a sharp clap
of his hands,’ before a man can say Jack Robinson.’
You wouldn’t believe how those two fellows went at
it. They charged into the street with the shutters — one,
two, three — had them up in their places — four, five, six
— barred them and pinned then — seven, eight, nine —
and came back before you could have got to twelve,
panting like race-horses.
‘Hilli-ho!’ cried old Fezziwig, skipping down from the
high desk, with wonderful agility. ‘Clear away, my lads,
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and let’s have lots of room here. Hilli-ho, Dick. Chirrup,
Ebenezer.’
Clear away. There was nothing they wouldn’t have
cleared away, or couldn’t have cleared away, with old
Fezziwig looking on. It was done in a minute. Every
movable was packed off, as if it were dismissed from
public life for evermore; the floor was swept and watered,
the lamps were trimmed, fuel was heaped upon the fire;
and the warehouse was as snug, and warm, and dry, and
bright a ball-room, as you would desire to see upon a
winter’s night.
In came a fiddler with a music-book, and went up to
the lofty desk, and made an orchestra of it, and tuned like
fifty stomach-aches. In came Mrs Fezziwig, one vast
substantial smile. In came the three Miss Fezziwigs,
beaming and lovable. In came the six young followers
whose hearts they broke. In came all the young men and
women employed in the business. In came the housemaid,
with her cousin, the baker. In came the cook, with her
brother’s particular friend, the milkman. In came the boy
from over the way, who was suspected of not having
board enough from his master; trying to hide himself
behind the girl from next door but one, who was proved
to have had her ears pulled by her mistress. In they all
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came, one after another; some shyly, some boldly, some
gracefully, some awkwardly, some pushing, some pulling;
in they all came, anyhow and everyhow. Away they all
went, twenty couples at once; hands half round and back
again the other way; down the middle and up again;
round and round in various stages of affectionate grouping;
old top couple always turning up in the wrong place; new
top couple starting off again, as soon as they got there; all
top couples at last, and not a bottom one to help them.
When this result was brought about, old Fezziwig,
clapping his hands to stop the dance, cried out,’ Well
done.’ and the fiddler plunged his hot face into a pot of
porter, especially provided for that purpose. But scorning
rest, upon his reappearance, he instantly began again,
though there were no dancers yet, as if the other fiddler
had been carried home, exhausted, on a shutter, and he
were a bran-new man resolved to beat him out of sight, or
perish.
There were more dances, and there were forfeits, and
more dances, and there was cake, and there was negus,
and there was a great piece of Cold Roast, and there was a
great piece of Cold Boiled, and there were mince-pies,
and plenty of beer. But the great effect of the evening
came after the Roast and Boiled, when the fiddler (an
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artful dog, mind. The sort of man who knew his business
better than you or I could have told it him.) struck up Sir
Roger de Coverley.’ Then old Fezziwig stood out to
dance with Mrs Fezziwig. Top couple, too; with a good
stiff piece of work cut out for them; three or four and
twenty pair of partners; people who were not to be trifled
with; people who would dance, and had no notion of
walking.
But if they had been twice as many — ah, four times
— old Fezziwig would have been a match for them, and
so would Mrs Fezziwig. As to her, she was worthy to be
his partner in every sense of the term. If that’s not high
praise, tell me higher, and I’ll use it. A positive light
appeared to issue from Fezziwig’s calves. They shone in
every part of the dance like moons. You couldn’t have
predicted, at any given time, what would have become of
them next. And when old Fezziwig and Mrs Fezziwig had
gone all through the dance; advance and retire, both hands
to your partner, bow and curtsey, corkscrew, thread-theneedle,
and back again to your place; Fezziwig cut — cut
so deftly, that he appeared to wink with his legs, and came
upon his feet again without a stagger.
When the clock struck eleven, this domestic ball broke
up. Mr and Mrs Fezziwig took their stations, one on
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either side of the door, and shaking hands with every
person individually as he or she went out, wished him or
her a Merry Christmas. When everybody had retired but
the two prentices, they did the same to them; and thus the
cheerful voices died away, and the lads were left to their
beds; which were under a counter in the back-shop.
During the whole of this time, Scrooge had acted like a
man out of his wits. His heart and soul were in the scene,
and with his former self. He corroborated everything,
remembered everything, enjoyed everything, and
underwent the strangest agitation. It was not until now,
when the bright faces of his former self and Dick were
turned from them, that he remembered the Ghost, and
became conscious that it was looking full upon him, while
the light upon its head burnt very clear.
‘A small matter,’ said the Ghost, ‘to make these silly
folks so full of gratitude.’
‘Small.’ echoed Scrooge.
The Spirit signed to him to listen to the two
apprentices, who were pouring out their hearts in praise of
Fezziwig: and when he had done so, said,
‘Why. Is it not. He has spent but a few pounds of your
mortal money: three or four perhaps. Is that so much that
he deserves this praise.’
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‘It isn’t that,’ said Scrooge, heated by the remark, and
speaking unconsciously like his former, not his latter, self.
‘It isn’t that, Spirit. He has the power to render us happy
or unhappy; to make our service light or burdensome; a
pleasure or a toil. Say that his power lies in words and
looks; in things so slight and insignificant that it is
impossible to add and count them up: what then. The
happiness he gives, is quite as great as if it cost a fortune.’
He felt the Spirit’s glance, and stopped.
‘What is the matter.’ asked the Ghost.
‘Nothing in particular,’ said Scrooge.
‘Something, I think.’ the Ghost insisted.
‘No,’ said Scrooge,’ No. I should like to be able to say
a word or two to my clerk just now. That’s all.’
His former self turned down the lamps as he gave
utterance to the wish; and Scrooge and the Ghost again
stood side by side in the open air.
‘My time grows short,’ observed the Spirit. ‘Quick.’
This was not addressed to Scrooge, or to any one
whom he could see, but it produced an immediate effect.
For again Scrooge saw himself. He was older now; a man
in the prime of life. His face had not the harsh and rigid
lines of later years; but it had begun to wear the signs of
care and avarice. There was an eager, greedy, restless
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motion in the eye, which showed the passion that had
taken root, and where the shadow of the growing tree
would fall.
He was not alone, but sat by the side of a fair young
girl in a mourning-dress: in whose eyes there were tears,
which sparkled in the light that shone out of the Ghost of
Christmas Past.
‘It matters little,’ she said, softly. ‘To you, very little.
Another idol has displaced me; and if it can cheer and
comfort you in time to come, as I would have tried to do,
I have no just cause to grieve.’
‘What Idol has displaced you.’ he rejoined.
‘A golden one.’
‘This is the even-handed dealing of the world.’ he said.
‘There is nothing on which it is so hard as poverty; and
there is nothing it professes to condemn with such severity
as the pursuit of wealth.’
‘You fear the world too much,’ she answered, gently.
‘All your other hopes have merged into the hope of being
beyond the chance of its sordid reproach. I have seen your
nobler aspirations fall off one by one, until the masterpassion,
Gain, engrosses you. Have I not.’
‘What then.’ he retorted. ‘Even if I have grown so
much wiser, what then. I am not changed towards you.’
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She shook her head.
‘Am I.’
‘Our contract is an old one. It was made when we
were both poor and content to be so, until, in good
season, we could improve our worldly fortune by our
patient industry. You are changed. When it was made,
you were another man.’
‘I was a boy,’ he said impatiently.
‘Your own feeling tells you that you were not what
you are,’ she returned. ‘I am. That which promised
happiness when we were one in heart, is fraught with
misery now that we are two. How often and how keenly I
have thought of this, I will not say. It is enough that I
have thought of it, and can release you.’
‘Have I ever sought release.’
‘In words. No. Never.’
‘In what, then.’
‘In a changed nature; in an altered spirit; in another
atmosphere of life; another Hope as its great end. In
everything that made my love of any worth or value in
your sight. If this had never been between us,’ said the
girl, looking mildly, but with steadiness, upon him;’ tell
me, would you seek me out and try to win me now. Ah,
no.’
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He seemed to yield to the justice of this supposition, in
spite of himself. But he said with a struggle,’ You think
not.’
‘I would gladly think otherwise if I could,’ she
answered, ‘Heaven knows. When I have learned a Truth
like this, I know how strong and irresistible it must be.
But if you were free to-day, to-morrow, yesterday, can
even I believe that you would choose a dowerless girl —
you who, in your very confidence with her, weigh
everything by Gain: or, choosing her, if for a moment you
were false enough to your one guiding principle to do so,
do I not know that your repentance and regret would
surely follow. I do; and I release you. With a full heart, for
the love of him you once were.’
He was about to speak; but with her head turned from
him, she resumed.
‘You may — the memory of what is past half makes me
hope you will — have pain in this. A very, very brief
time, and you will dismiss the recollection of it, gladly, as
an unprofitable dream, from which it happened well that
you awoke. May you be happy in the life you have
chosen.’
She left him, and they parted.
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‘Spirit.’ said Scrooge,’ show me no more. Conduct me
home. Why do you delight to torture me.’
‘One shadow more.’ exclaimed the Ghost.
‘No more.’ cried Scrooge. ‘No more, I don’t wish to
see it. Show me no more.’
But the relentless Ghost pinioned him in both his arms,
and forced him to observe what happened next.
They were in another scene and place; a room, not
very large or handsome, but full of comfort. Near to the
winter fire sat a beautiful young girl, so like that last that
Scrooge believed it was the same, until he saw her, now a
comely matron, sitting opposite her daughter. The noise
in this room was perfectly tumultuous, for there were
more children there, than Scrooge in his agitated state of
mind could count; and, unlike the celebrated herd in the
poem, they were not forty children conducting themselves
like one, but every child was conducting itself like forty.
The consequences were uproarious beyond belief; but no
one seemed to care; on the contrary, the mother and
daughter laughed heartily, and enjoyed it very much; and
the latter, soon beginning to mingle in the sports, got
pillaged by the young brigands most ruthlessly. What
would I not have given to one of them. Though I never
could have been so rude, no, no. I wouldn’t for the
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wealth of all the world have crushed that braided hair, and
torn it down; and for the precious little shoe, I wouldn’t
have plucked it off, God bless my soul. to save my life. As
to measuring her waist in sport, as they did, bold young
brood, I couldn’t have done it; I should have expected my
arm to have grown round it for a punishment, and never
come straight again. And yet I should have dearly liked, I
own, to have touched her lips; to have questioned her,
that she might have opened them; to have looked upon
the lashes of her downcast eyes, and never raised a blush;
to have let loose waves of hair, an inch of which would be
a keepsake beyond price: in short, I should have liked, I
do confess, to have had the lightest licence of a child, and
yet to have been man enough to know its value.
But now a knocking at the door was heard, and such a
rush immediately ensued that she with laughing face and
plundered dress was borne towards it the centre of a
flushed and boisterous group, just in time to greet the
father, who came home attended by a man laden with
Christmas toys and presents. Then the shouting and the
struggling, and the onslaught that was made on the
defenceless porter. The scaling him with chairs for ladders
to dive into his pockets, despoil him of brown-paper
parcels, hold on tight by his cravat, hug him round his
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neck, pommel his back, and kick his legs in irrepressible
affection. The shouts of wonder and delight with which
the development of every package was received. The
terrible announcement that the baby had been taken in the
act of putting a doll’s frying-pan into his mouth, and was
more than suspected of having swallowed a fictitious
turkey, glued on a wooden platter. The immense relief of
finding this a false alarm. The joy, and gratitude, and
ecstasy. They are all indescribable alike. It is enough that
by degrees the children and their emotions got out of the
parlour, and by one stair at a time, up to the top of the
house; where they went to bed, and so subsided.
And now Scrooge looked on more attentively than
ever, when the master of the house, having his daughter
leaning fondly on him, sat down with her and her mother
at his own fireside; and when he thought that such
another creature, quite as graceful and as full of promise,
might have called him father, and been a spring-time in
the haggard winter of his life, his sight grew very dim
indeed.
‘Belle,’ said the husband, turning to his wife with a
smile,’ I saw an old friend of yours this afternoon.’
‘Who was it.’
‘Guess.’
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‘How can I. Tut, don’t I know.’ she added in the same
breath, laughing as he laughed. ‘Mr Scrooge.’
‘Mr Scrooge it was. I passed his office window; and as
it was not shut up, and he had a candle inside, I could
scarcely help seeing him. His partner lies upon the point of
death, I hear; and there he sat alone. Quite alone in the
world, I do believe.’
‘Spirit.’ said Scrooge in a broken voice,’ remove me
from this place.’
‘I told you these were shadows of the things that have
been,’ said the Ghost. ‘That they are what they are, do not
blame me.’
‘Remove me.’ Scrooge exclaimed,’ I cannot bear it.’
He turned upon the Ghost, and seeing that it looked
upon him with a face, in which in some strange way there
were fragments of all the faces it had shown him, wrestled
with it.
‘Leave me. Take me back. Haunt me no longer.’
In the struggle, if that can be called a struggle in which
the Ghost with no visible resistance on its own part was
undisturbed by any effort of its adversary, Scrooge
observed that its light was burning high and bright; and
dimly connecting that with its influence over him, he
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seized the extinguisher-cap, and by a sudden action
pressed it down upon its head.
The Spirit dropped beneath it, so that the extinguisher
covered its whole form; but though Scrooge pressed it
down with all his force, he could not hide the light, which
streamed from under it, in an unbroken flood upon the
ground.
He was conscious of being exhausted, and overcome by
an irresistible drowsiness; and, further, of being in his own
bedroom. He gave the cap a parting squeeze, in which his
hand relaxed; and had barely time to reel to bed, before he
sank into a heavy sleep.
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Stave 3: The Second of the Three Spirits
Awaking in the middle of a prodigiously tough snore,
and sitting up in bed to get his thoughts together, Scrooge
had no occasion to be told that the bell was again upon
the stroke of One. He felt that he was restored to
consciousness in the right nick of time, for the especial
purpose of holding a conference with the second
messenger despatched to him through Jacob Marley’s
intervention. But, finding that he turned uncomfortably
cold when he began to wonder which of his curtains this
new spectre would draw back, he put them every one
aside with his own hands, and lying down again,
established a sharp look-out all round the bed. For, he
wished to challenge the Spirit on the moment of its
appearance, and did not wish to be taken by surprise, and
made nervous.
Gentlemen of the free-and-easy sort, who plume
themselves on being acquainted with a move or two, and
being usually equal to the time-of-day, express the wide
range of their capacity for adventure by observing that
they are good for anything from pitch-and-toss to
manslaughter; between which opposite extremes, no
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doubt, there lies a tolerably wide and comprehensive range
of subjects. Without venturing for Scrooge quite as hardily
as this, I don’t mind calling on you to believe that he was
ready for a good broad field of strange appearances, and
that nothing between a baby and rhinoceros would have
astonished him very much.
Now, being prepared for almost anything, he was not
by any means prepared for nothing; and, consequently,
when the Bell struck One, and no shape appeared, he was
taken with a violent fit of trembling. Five minutes, ten
minutes, a quarter of an hour went by, yet nothing came.
All this time, he lay upon his bed, the very core and centre
of a blaze of ruddy light, which streamed upon it when
the clock proclaimed the hour; and which, being only
light, was more alarming than a dozen ghosts, as he was
powerless to make out what it meant, or would be at; and
was sometimes apprehensive that he might be at that very
moment an interesting case of spontaneous combustion,
without having the consolation of knowing it. At last,
however, he began to think — as you or I would have
thought at first; for it is always the person not in the
predicament who knows what ought to have been done in
it, and would unquestionably have done it too — at last, I
say, he began to think that the source and secret of this
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ghostly light might be in the adjoining room, from
whence, on further tracing it, it seemed to shine. This idea
taking full possession of his mind, he got up softly and
shuffled in his slippers to the door.
The moment Scrooge’s hand was on the lock, a strange
voice called him by his name, and bade him enter. He
obeyed.
It was his own room. There was no doubt about that.
But it had undergone a surprising transformation. The
walls and ceiling were so hung with living green, that it
looked a perfect grove; from every part of which, bright
gleaming berries glistened. The crisp leaves of holly,
mistletoe, and ivy reflected back the light, as if so many
little mirrors had been scattered there; and such a mighty
blaze went roaring up the chimney, as that dull
petrification of a hearth had never known in Scrooge’s
time, or Marley’s, or for many and many a winter season
gone. Heaped up on the floor, to form a kind of throne,
were turkeys, geese, game, poultry, brawn, great joints of
meat, sucking-pigs, long wreaths of sausages, mince-pies,
plum-puddings, barrels of oysters, red-hot chestnuts,
cherry-cheeked apples, juicy oranges, luscious pears,
immense twelfth-cakes, and seething bowls of punch, that
made the chamber dim with their delicious steam. In easy
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state upon this couch, there sat a jolly Giant, glorious to
see, who bore a glowing torch, in shape not unlike
Plenty’s horn, and held it up, high up, to shed its light on
Scrooge, as he came peeping round the door.
‘Come in.’ exclaimed the Ghost. ‘Come in, and know
me better, man.’
Scrooge entered timidly, and hung his head before this
Spirit. He was not the dogged Scrooge he had been; and
though the Spirit’s eyes were clear and kind, he did not
like to meet them.
‘I am the Ghost of Christmas Present,’ said the Spirit.
‘Look upon me.’
Scrooge reverently did so. It was clothed in one simple
green robe, or mantle, bordered with white fur. This
garment hung so loosely on the figure, that its capacious
breast was bare, as if disdaining to be warded or concealed
by any artifice. Its feet, observable beneath the ample folds
of the garment, were also bare; and on its head it wore no
other covering than a holly wreath, set here and there
with shining icicles. Its dark brown curls were long and
free; free as its genial face, its sparkling eye, its open hand,
its cheery voice, its unconstrained demeanour, and its
joyful air. Girded round its middle was an antique
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scabbard; but no sword was in it, and the ancient sheath
was eaten up with rust.
‘You have never seen the like of me before.’ exclaimed
the Spirit.
‘Never,’ Scrooge made answer to it.
‘Have never walked forth with the younger members
of my family; meaning (for I am very young) my elder
brothers born in these later years.’ pursued the Phantom.
‘I don’t think I have,’ said Scrooge. ‘I am afraid I have
not. Have you had many brothers, Spirit.’
‘More than eighteen hundred,’ said the Ghost.
‘A tremendous family to provide for.’ muttered
Scrooge.
The Ghost of Christmas Present rose.
‘Spirit,’ said Scrooge submissively,’ conduct me where
you will. I went forth last night on compulsion, and I
learnt a lesson which is working now. To-night, if you
have aught to teach me, let me profit by it.’
‘Touch my robe.’
Scrooge did as he was told, and held it fast.
Holly, mistletoe, red berries, ivy, turkeys, geese, game,
poultry, brawn, meat, pigs, sausages, oysters, pies,
puddings, fruit, and punch, all vanished instantly. So did
the room, the fire, the ruddy glow, the hour of night, and
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they stood in the city streets on Christmas morning, where
(for the weather was severe) the people made a rough, but
brisk and not unpleasant kind of music, in scraping the
snow from the pavement in front of their dwellings, and
from the tops of their houses, whence it was mad delight
to the boys to see it come plumping down into the road
below, and splitting into artificial little snow-storms.
The house fronts looked black enough, and the
windows blacker, contrasting with the smooth white sheet
of snow upon the roofs, and with the dirtier snow upon
the ground; which last deposit had been ploughed up in
deep furrows by the heavy wheels of carts and waggons;
furrows that crossed and recrossed each other hundreds of
times where the great streets branched off; and made
intricate channels, hard to trace in the thick yellow mud
and icy water. The sky was gloomy, and the shortest
streets were choked up with a dingy mist, half thawed, half
frozen, whose heavier particles descended in shower of
sooty atoms, as if all the chimneys in Great Britain had, by
one consent, caught fire, and were blazing away to their
dear hearts’ content. There was nothing very cheerful in
the climate or the town, and yet was there an air of
cheerfulness abroad that the clearest summer air and
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brightest summer sun might have endeavoured to diffuse
in vain.
For, the people who were shovelling away on the
housetops were jovial and full of glee; calling out to one
another from the parapets, and now and then exchanging
a facetious snowball — better-natured missile far than
many a wordy jest — laughing heartily if it went right and
not less heartily if it went wrong. The poulterers’ shops
were still half open, and the fruiterers’ were radiant in
their glory. There were great, round, round, pot-bellied
baskets of chestnuts, shaped like the waistcoats of jolly old
gentlemen, lolling at the doors, and tumbling out into the
street in their apoplectic opulence. There were ruddy,
brown-faced, broad-girthed Spanish onions, shining in the
fatness of their growth like Spanish Friars, and winking
from their shelves in wanton slyness at the girls as they
went by, and glanced demurely at the hung-up mistletoe.
There were pears and apples, clustered high in blooming
pyramids; there were bunches of grapes, made, in the
shopkeepers’ benevolence to dangle from conspicuous
hooks, that people’s mouths might water gratis as they
passed; there were piles of filberts, mossy and brown,
recalling, in their fragrance, ancient walks among the
woods, and pleasant shufflings ankle deep through
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withered leaves; there were Norfolk Biffins, squab and
swarthy, setting off the yellow of the oranges and lemons,
and, in the great compactness of their juicy persons,
urgently entreating and beseeching to be carried home in
paper bags and eaten after dinner. The very gold and silver
fish, set forth among these choice fruits in a bowl, though
members of a dull and stagnant-blooded race, appeared to
know that there was something going on; and, to a fish,
went gasping round and round their little world in slow
and passionless excitement.
The Grocers’. oh the Grocers’. nearly closed, with
perhaps two shutters down, or one; but through those
gaps such glimpses. It was not alone that the scales
descending on the counter made a merry sound, or that
the twine and roller parted company so briskly, or that the
canisters were rattled up and down like juggling tricks, or
even that the blended scents of tea and coffee were so
grateful to the nose, or even that the raisins were so
plentiful and rare, the almonds so extremely white, the
sticks of cinnamon so long and straight, the other spices so
delicious, the candied fruits so caked and spotted with
molten sugar as to make the coldest lookers-on feel faint
and subsequently bilious. Nor was it that the figs were
moist and pulpy, or that the French plums blushed in
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modest tartness from their highly-decorated boxes, or that
everything was good to eat and in its Christmas dress; but
the customers were all so hurried and so eager in the
hopeful promise of the day, that they tumbled up against
each other at the door, crashing their wicker baskets
wildly, and left their purchases upon the counter, and
came running back to fetch them, and committed
hundreds of the like mistakes, in the best humour possible;
while the Grocer and his people were so frank and fresh
that the polished hearts with which they fastened their
aprons behind might have been their own, worn outside
for general inspection, and for Christmas daws to peck at if
they chose.
But soon the steeples called good people all, to church
and chapel, and away they came, flocking through the
streets in their best clothes, and with their gayest faces.
And at the same time there emerged from scores of byestreets,
lanes, and nameless turnings, innumerable people,
carrying their dinners to the baker’ shops. The sight of
these poor revellers appeared to interest the Spirit very
much, for he stood with Scrooge beside him in a baker’s
doorway, and taking off the covers as their bearers passed,
sprinkled incense on their dinners from his torch. And it
was a very uncommon kind of torch, for once or twice
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when there were angry words between some dinnercarriers
who had jostled each other, he shed a few drops of
water on them from it, and their good humour was
restored directly. For they said, it was a shame to quarrel
upon Christmas Day. And so it was. God love it, so it was.
In time the bells ceased, and the bakers were shut up;
and yet there was a genial shadowing forth of all these
dinners and the progress of their cooking, in the thawed
blotch of wet above each baker’s oven; where the
pavement smoked as if its stones were cooking too.
‘Is there a peculiar flavour in what you sprinkle from
your torch.’ asked Scrooge.
‘There is. My own.’
‘Would it apply to any kind of dinner on this day.’
asked Scrooge.
‘To any kindly given. To a poor one most.’
‘Why to a poor one most.’ asked Scrooge.
‘Because it needs it most.’
‘Spirit,’ said Scrooge, after a moment’s thought,’ I
wonder you, of all the beings in the many worlds about
us, should desire to cramp these people’s opportunities of
innocent enjoyment.’
‘I.’ cried the Spirit.
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‘You would deprive them of their means of dining
every seventh day, often the only day on which they can
be said to dine at all,’ said Scrooge. ‘Wouldn’t you.’
‘I.’ cried the Spirit.
‘You seek to close these places on the Seventh Day.’
said Scrooge. ‘And it comes to the same thing.’
‘I seek.’ exclaimed the Spirit.
‘Forgive me if I am wrong. It has been done in your
name, or at least in that of your family,’ said Scrooge.
‘There are some upon this earth of yours,’ returned the
Spirit,’ who lay claim to know us, and who do their deeds
of passion, pride, ill-will, hatred, envy, bigotry, and
selfishness in our name, who are as strange to us and all
our kith and kin, as if they had never lived. Remember
that, and charge their doings on themselves, not us.’
Scrooge promised that he would; and they went on,
invisible, as they had been before, into the suburbs of the
town. It was a remarkable quality of the Ghost (which
Scrooge had observed at the baker’s), that notwithstanding
his gigantic size, he could accommodate himself to any
place with ease; and that he stood beneath a low roof quite
as gracefully and like a supernatural creature, as it was
possible he could have done in any lofty hall.
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And perhaps it was the pleasure the good Spirit had in
showing off this power of his, or else it was his own kind,
generous, hearty nature, and his sympathy with all poor
men, that led him straight to Scrooge’s clerk’s; for there he
went, and took Scrooge with him, holding to his robe;
and on the threshold of the door the Spirit smiled, and
stopped to bless Bob Cratchit’s dwelling with the
sprinkling of his torch. Think of that. Bob had but fifteen
bob a-week himself; he pocketed on Saturdays but fifteen
copies of his Christian name; and yet the Ghost of
Christmas Present blessed his four-roomed house.
Then up rose Mrs Cratchit, Cratchit’s wife, dressed out
but poorly in a twice-turned gown, but brave in ribbons,
which are cheap and make a goodly show for sixpence;
and she laid the cloth, assisted by Belinda Cratchit, second
of her daughters, also brave in ribbons; while Master Peter
Cratchit plunged a fork into the saucepan of potatoes, and
getting the corners of his monstrous shirt collar (Bob’s
private property, conferred upon his son and heir in
honour of the day) into his mouth, rejoiced to find himself
so gallantly attired, and yearned to show his linen in the
fashionable Parks. And now two smaller Cratchits, boy
and girl, came tearing in, screaming that outside the
baker’s they had smelt the goose, and known it for their
A Christmas Carol
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