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own; and basking in luxurious thoughts of sage and onion,
these young Cratchits danced about the table, and exalted
Master Peter Cratchit to the skies, while he (not proud,
although his collars nearly choked him) blew the fire, until
the slow potatoes bubbling up, knocked loudly at the
saucepan-lid to be let out and peeled.
‘What has ever got your precious father then.’ said Mrs
Cratchit. ‘And your brother, Tiny Tim. And Martha
warn’t as late last Christmas Day by half-an-hour.’
‘Here’s Martha, mother.’ said a girl, appearing as she
spoke.
‘Here’s Martha, mother.’ cried the two young
Cratchits. ‘Hurrah. There’s such a goose, Martha.’
‘Why, bless your heart alive, my dear, how late you
are.’ said Mrs Cratchit, kissing her a dozen times, and
taking off her shawl and bonnet for her with officious zeal.
‘We’d a deal of work to finish up last night,’ replied the
girl,’ and had to clear away this morning, mother.’
‘Well. Never mind so long as you are come,’ said Mrs
Cratchit. ‘Sit ye down before the fire, my dear, and have a
warm, Lord bless ye.’
‘No, no. There’s father coming,’ cried the two young
Cratchits, who were everywhere at once. ‘Hide, Martha,
hide.’
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So Martha hid herself, and in came little Bob, the
father, with at least three feet of comforter exclusive of the
fringe, hanging down before him; and his threadbare
clothes darned up and brushed, to look seasonable; and
Tiny Tim upon his shoulder. Alas for Tiny Tim, he bore a
little crutch, and had his limbs supported by an iron frame.
‘Why, where’s our Martha.’ cried Bob Cratchit,
looking round.
‘Not coming,’ said Mrs Cratchit.
‘Not coming.’ said Bob, with a sudden declension in
his high spirits; for he had been Tim’s blood horse all the
way from church, and had come home rampant. ‘Not
coming upon Christmas Day.’
Martha didn’t like to see him disappointed, if it were
only in joke; so she came out prematurely from behind
the closet door, and ran into his arms, while the two
young Cratchits hustled Tiny Tim, and bore him off into
the wash-house, that he might hear the pudding singing in
the copper.
‘And how did little Tim behave. asked Mrs Cratchit,
when she had rallied Bob on his credulity, and Bob had
hugged his daughter to his heart’s content.
‘As good as gold,’ said Bob,’ and better. Somehow he
gets thoughtful, sitting by himself so much, and thinks the
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strangest things you ever heard. He told me, coming
home, that he hoped the people saw him in the church,
because he was a cripple, and it might be pleasant to them
to remember upon Christmas Day, who made lame
beggars walk, and blind men see.’
Bob’s voice was tremulous when he told them this, and
trembled more when he said that Tiny Tim was growing
strong and hearty.
His active little crutch was heard upon the floor, and
back came Tiny Tim before another word was spoken,
escorted by his brother and sister to his stool before the
fire; and while Bob, turning up his cuffs — as if, poor
fellow, they were capable of being made more shabby —
compounded some hot mixture in a jug with gin and
lemons, and stirred it round and round and put it on the
hob to simmer; Master Peter, and the two ubiquitous
young Cratchits went to fetch the goose, with which they
soon returned in high procession.
Such a bustle ensued that you might have thought a
goose the rarest of all birds; a feathered phenomenon, to
which a black swan was a matter of course — and in truth
it was something very like it in that house. Mrs Cratchit
made the gravy (ready beforehand in a little saucepan)
hissing hot; Master Peter mashed the potatoes with
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incredible vigour; Miss Belinda sweetened up the applesauce;
Martha dusted the hot plates; Bob took Tiny Tim
beside him in a tiny corner at the table; the two young
Cratchits set chairs for everybody, not forgetting
themselves, and mounting guard upon their posts,
crammed spoons into their mouths, lest they should shriek
for goose before their turn came to be helped. At last the
dishes were set on, and grace was said. It was succeeded by
a breathless pause, as Mrs Cratchit, looking slowly all
along the carving-knife, prepared to plunge it in the
breast; but when she did, and when the long expected
gush of stuffing issued forth, one murmur of delight arose
all round the board, and even Tiny Tim, excited by the
two young Cratchits, beat on the table with the handle of
his knife, and feebly cried Hurrah.
There never was such a goose. Bob said he didn’t
believe there ever was such a goose cooked. Its tenderness
and flavour, size and cheapness, were the themes of
universal admiration. Eked out by apple-sauce and mashed
potatoes, it was a sufficient dinner for the whole family;
indeed, as Mrs Cratchit said with great delight (surveying
one small atom of a bone upon the dish), they hadn’t ate it
all at last. Yet every one had had enough, and the
youngest Cratchits in particular, were steeped in sage and
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onion to the eyebrows. But now, the plates being changed
by Miss Belinda, Mrs Cratchit left the room alone — too
nervous to bear witnesses — to take the pudding up and
bring it in.
Suppose it should not be done enough. Suppose it
should break in turning out. Suppose somebody should
have got over the wall of the back-yard, and stolen it,
while they were merry with the goose — a supposition at
which the two young Cratchits became livid. All sorts of
horrors were supposed.
Hallo. A great deal of steam. The pudding was out of
the copper. A smell like a washing-day. That was the
cloth. A smell like an eating-house and a pastrycook’s next
door to each other, with a laundress’s next door to that.
That was the pudding. In half a minute Mrs Cratchit
entered — flushed, but smiling proudly — with the
pudding, like a speckled cannon-ball, so hard and firm,
blazing in half of half-a-quartern of ignited brandy, and
bedight with Christmas holly stuck into the top.
Oh, a wonderful pudding. Bob Cratchit said, and
calmly too, that he regarded it as the greatest success
achieved by Mrs Cratchit since their marriage. Mrs
Cratchit said that now the weight was off her mind, she
would confess she had had her doubts about the quantity
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of flour. Everybody had something to say about it, but
nobody said or thought it was at all a small pudding for a
large family. It would have been flat heresy to do so. Any
Cratchit would have blushed to hint at such a thing.
At last the dinner was all done, the cloth was cleared,
the hearth swept, and the fire made up. The compound in
the jug being tasted, and considered perfect, apples and
oranges were put upon the table, and a shovel-full of
chestnuts on the fire. Then all the Cratchit family drew
round the hearth, in what Bob Cratchit called a circle,
meaning half a one; and at Bob Cratchit’s elbow stood the
family display of glass. Two tumblers, and a custard-cup
without a handle.
These held the hot stuff from the jug, however, as well
as golden goblets would have done; and Bob served it out
with beaming looks, while the chestnuts on the fire
sputtered and cracked noisily. Then Bob proposed:
‘A Merry Christmas to us all, my dears. God bless us.’
Which all the family re-echoed.
‘God bless us every one.’ said Tiny Tim, the last of all.
He sat very close to his father’s side upon his little stool.
Bob held his withered little hand in his, as if he loved the
child, and wished to keep him by his side, and dreaded
that he might be taken from him.
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‘Spirit,’ said Scrooge, with an interest he had never felt
before, ‘tell me if Tiny Tim will live.’
‘I see a vacant seat,’ replied the Ghost, ‘in the poor
chimney-corner, and a crutch without an owner, carefully
preserved. If these shadows remain unaltered by the
Future, the child will die.’
‘No, no,’ said Scrooge. ‘Oh, no, kind Spirit. say he will
be spared.’
‘If these shadows remain unaltered by the Future, none
other of my race,’ returned the Ghost, ‘will find him here.
What then. If he be like to die, he had better do it, and
decrease the surplus population.’
Scrooge hung his head to hear his own words quoted
by the Spirit, and was overcome with penitence and grief.
‘Man,’ said the Ghost, ‘if man you be in heart, not
adamant, forbear that wicked cant until you have
discovered What the surplus is, and Where it is. Will you
decide what men shall live, what men shall die. It may be,
that in the sight of Heaven, you are more worthless and
less fit to live than millions like this poor man’s child. Oh
God. to hear the Insect on the leaf pronouncing on the
too much life among his hungry brothers in the dust.’
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Scrooge bent before the Ghost’s rebuke, and trembling
cast his eyes upon the ground. But he raised them
speedily, on hearing his own name.
‘Mr Scrooge.’ said Bob; ‘I’ll give you Mr Scrooge, the
Founder of the Feast.’
‘The Founder of the Feast indeed.’ cried Mrs Cratchit,
reddening. ‘I wish I had him here. I’d give him a piece of
my mind to feast upon, and I hope he’d have a good
appetite for it.’
‘My dear,’ said Bob, ‘the children. Christmas Day.’
‘It should be Christmas Day, I am sure,’ said she, ‘on
which one drinks the health of such an odious, stingy,
hard, unfeeling man as Mr Scrooge. You know he is,
Robert. Nobody knows it better than you do, poor
fellow.’
‘My dear,’ was Bob’s mild answer, ‘Christmas Day.’
‘I’ll drink his health for your sake and the Day’s,’ said
Mrs Cratchit, ‘not for his. Long life to him. A merry
Christmas and a happy new year. He’ll be very merry and
very happy, I have no doubt.’
The children drank the toast after her. It was the first of
their proceedings which had no heartiness. Tiny Tim
drank it last of all, but he didn’t care twopence for it.
Scrooge was the Ogre of the family. The mention of his
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name cast a dark shadow on the party, which was not
dispelled for full five minutes.
After it had passed away, they were ten times merrier
than before, from the mere relief of Scrooge the Baleful
being done with. Bob Cratchit told them how he had a
situation in his eye for Master Peter, which would bring
in, if obtained, full five-and-sixpence weekly. The two
young Cratchits laughed tremendously at the idea of
Peter’s being a man of business; and Peter himself looked
thoughtfully at the fire from between his collars, as if he
were deliberating what particular investments he should
favour when he came into the receipt of that bewildering
income. Martha, who was a poor apprentice at a
milliner’s, then told them what kind of work she had to
do, and how many hours she worked at a stretch, and how
she meant to lie abed to-morrow morning for a good long
rest; to-morrow being a holiday she passed at home. Also
how she had seen a countess and a lord some days before,
and how the lord was much about as tall as Peter; at which
Peter pulled up his collars so high that you couldn’t have
seen his head if you had been there. All this time the
chestnuts and the jug went round and round; and by-andbye
they had a song, about a lost child travelling in the
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snow, from Tiny Tim, who had a plaintive little voice,
and sang it very well indeed.
There was nothing of high mark in this. They were not
a handsome family; they were not well dressed; their shoes
were far from being water-proof; their clothes were
scanty; and Peter might have known, and very likely did,
the inside of a pawnbroker’s. But, they were happy,
grateful, pleased with one another, and contented with the
time; and when they faded, and looked happier yet in the
bright sprinklings of the Spirit’s torch at parting, Scrooge
had his eye upon them, and especially on Tiny Tim, until
the last.
By this time it was getting dark, and snowing pretty
heavily; and as Scrooge and the Spirit went along the
streets, the brightness of the roaring fires in kitchens,
parlours, and all sorts of rooms, was wonderful. Here, the
flickering of the blaze showed preparations for a cosy
dinner, with hot plates baking through and through before
the fire, and deep red curtains, ready to be drawn to shut
out cold and darkness. There all the children of the house
were running out into the snow to meet their married
sisters, brothers, cousins, uncles, aunts, and be the first to
greet them. Here, again, were shadows on the windowblind
of guests assembling; and there a group of handsome
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girls, all hooded and fur-booted, and all chattering at once,
tripped lightly off to some near neighbour’s house; where,
woe upon the single man who saw them enter — artful
witches, well they knew it — in a glow.
But, if you had judged from the numbers of people on
their way to friendly gatherings, you might have thought
that no one was at home to give them welcome when
they got there, instead of every house expecting company,
and piling up its fires half-chimney high. Blessings on it,
how the Ghost exulted. How it bared its breadth of breast,
and opened its capacious palm, and floated on,
outpouring, with a generous hand, its bright and harmless
mirth on everything within its reach. The very
lamplighter, who ran on before, dotting the dusky street
with specks of light, and who was dressed to spend the
evening somewhere, laughed out loudly as the Spirit
passed, though little kenned the lamplighter that he had
any company but Christmas.
And now, without a word of warning from the Ghost,
they stood upon a bleak and desert moor, where
monstrous masses of rude stone were cast about, as though
it were the burial-place of giants; and water spread itself
wheresoever it listed, or would have done so, but for the
frost that held it prisoner; and nothing grew but moss and
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furze, and coarse rank grass. Down in the west the setting
sun had left a streak of fiery red, which glared upon the
desolation for an instant, like a sullen eye, and frowning
lower, lower, lower yet, was lost in the thick gloom of
darkest night.
‘What place is this.’ asked Scrooge.
‘A place where Miners live, who labour in the bowels
of the earth,’ returned the Spirit. ‘But they know me.
See.’
A light shone from the window of a hut, and swiftly
they advanced towards it. Passing through the wall of mud
and stone, they found a cheerful company assembled
round a glowing fire. An old, old man and woman, with
their children and their children’s children, and another
generation beyond that, all decked out gaily in their
holiday attire. The old man, in a voice that seldom rose
above the howling of the wind upon the barren waste,
was singing them a Christmas song — it had been a very
old song when he was a boy — and from time to time
they all joined in the chorus. So surely as they raised their
voices, the old man got quite blithe and loud; and so
surely as they stopped, his vigour sank again.
The Spirit did not tarry here, but bade Scrooge hold his
robe, and passing on above the moor, sped — whither.
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Not to sea. To sea. To Scrooge’s horror, looking back, he
saw the last of the land, a frightful range of rocks, behind
them; and his ears were deafened by the thundering of
water, as it rolled and roared, and raged among the
dreadful caverns it had worn, and fiercely tried to
undermine the earth.
Built upon a dismal reef of sunken rocks, some league
or so from shore, on which the waters chafed and dashed,
the wild year through, there stood a solitary lighthouse.
Great heaps of sea-weed clung to its base, and storm-birds
— born of the wind one might suppose, as sea-weed of
the water — rose and fell about it, like the waves they
skimmed.
But even here, two men who watched the light had
made a fire, that through the loophole in the thick stone
wall shed out a ray of brightness on the awful sea. Joining
their horny hands over the rough table at which they sat,
they wished each other Merry Christmas in their can of
grog; and one of them: the elder, too, with his face all
damaged and scarred with hard weather, as the figure-head
of an old ship might be: struck up a sturdy song that was
like a Gale in itself.
Again the Ghost sped on, above the black and heaving
sea — on, on — until, being far away, as he told Scrooge,
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from any shore, they lighted on a ship. They stood beside
the helmsman at the wheel, the look-out in the bow, the
officers who had the watch; dark, ghostly figures in their
several stations; but every man among them hummed a
Christmas tune, or had a Christmas thought, or spoke
below his breath to his companion of some bygone
Christmas Day, with homeward hopes belonging to it.
And every man on board, waking or sleeping, good or
bad, had had a kinder word for another on that day than
on any day in the year; and had shared to some extent in
its festivities; and had remembered those he cared for at a
distance, and had known that they delighted to remember
him.
It was a great surprise to Scrooge, while listening to the
moaning of the wind, and thinking what a solemn thing it
was to move on through the lonely darkness over an
unknown abyss, whose depths were secrets as profound as
Death: it was a great surprise to Scrooge, while thus
engaged, to hear a hearty laugh. It was a much greater
surprise to Scrooge to recognise it as his own nephew’s
and to find himself in a bright, dry, gleaming room, with
the Spirit standing smiling by his side, and looking at that
same nephew with approving affability.
‘Ha, ha.’ laughed Scrooge’s nephew. ‘Ha, ha, ha.’
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If you should happen, by any unlikely chance, to know
a man more blest in a laugh than Scrooge’s nephew, all I
can say is, I should like to know him too. Introduce him
to me, and I’ll cultivate his acquaintance.
It is a fair, even-handed, noble adjustment of things,
that while there is infection in disease and sorrow, there is
nothing in the world so irresistibly contagious as laughter
and good-humour. When Scrooge’s nephew laughed in
this way: holding his sides, rolling his head, and twisting
his face into the most extravagant contortions: Scrooge’s
niece, by marriage, laughed as heartily as he. And their
assembled friends being not a bit behindhand, roared out
lustily.
‘Ha, ha. Ha, ha, ha, ha.’
‘He said that Christmas was a humbug, as I live.’ cried
Scrooge’s nephew. ‘He believed it too.’
‘More shame for him, Fred.’ said Scrooge’s niece,
indignantly. Bless those women; they never do anything
by halves. They are always in earnest.
She was very pretty: exceedingly pretty. With a
dimpled, surprised-looking, capital face; a ripe little
mouth, that seemed made to be kissed — as no doubt it
was; all kinds of good little dots about her chin, that
melted into one another when she laughed; and the
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sunniest pair of eyes you ever saw in any little creature’s
head. Altogether she was what you would have called
provoking, you know; but satisfactory.
‘He’s a comical old fellow,’ said Scrooge’s nephew,’
that’s the truth: and not so pleasant as he might be.
However, his offences carry their own punishment, and I
have nothing to say against him.’
‘I’m sure he is very rich, Fred,’ hinted Scrooge’s niece.
‘At least you always tell me so.’
‘What of that, my dear.’ said Scrooge’s nephew. ‘His
wealth is of no use to him. He don’t do any good with it.
He don’t make himself comfortable with it. He hasn’t the
satisfaction of thinking — ha, ha, ha. — that he is ever
going to benefit us with it.’
‘I have no patience with him,’ observed Scrooge’s
niece. Scrooge’s niece’s sisters, and all the other ladies,
expressed the same opinion.
‘Oh, I have.’ said Scrooge’s nephew. ‘I am sorry for
him; I couldn’t be angry with him if I tried. Who suffers
by his ill whims. Himself, always. Here, he takes it into his
head to dislike us, and he won’t come and dine with us.
What’s the consequence. He don’t lose much of a dinner.’
‘Indeed, I think he loses a very good dinner,’
interrupted Scrooge’s niece. Everybody else said the same,
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and they must be allowed to have been competent judges,
because they had just had dinner; and, with the dessert
upon the table, were clustered round the fire, by
lamplight.
‘Well. I’m very glad to hear it,’ said Scrooge’s nephew,
‘because I haven’t great faith in these young housekeepers.
What do you say, Topper.’
Topper had clearly got his eye upon one of Scrooge’s
niece’s sisters, for he answered that a bachelor was a
wretched outcast, who had no right to express an opinion
on the subject. Whereat Scrooge’s niece’s sister — the
plump one with the lace tucker: not the one with the
roses — blushed.
‘Do go on, Fred,’ said Scrooge’s niece, clapping her
hands. ‘He never finishes what he begins to say. He is such
a ridiculous fellow.’
Scrooge’s nephew revelled in another laugh, and as it
was impossible to keep the infection off; though the
plump sister tried hard to do it with aromatic vinegar; his
example was unanimously followed.
‘I was only going to say,’ said Scrooge’s nephew,’ that
the consequence of his taking a dislike to us, and not
making merry with us, is, as I think, that he loses some
pleasant moments, which could do him no harm. I am
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sure he loses pleasanter companions than he can find in his
own thoughts, either in his mouldy old office, or his dusty
chambers. I mean to give him the same chance every year,
whether he likes it or not, for I pity him. He may rail at
Christmas till he dies, but he can’t help thinking better of
it — I defy him — if he finds me going there, in good
temper, year after year, and saying Uncle Scrooge, how
are you. If it only puts him in the vein to leave his poor
clerk fifty pounds, that’s something; and I think I shook
him yesterday.’
It was their turn to laugh now at the notion of his
shaking Scrooge. But being thoroughly good-natured, and
not much caring what they laughed at, so that they
laughed at any rate, he encouraged them in their
merriment, and passed the bottle joyously.
After tea. they had some music. For they were a
musical family, and knew what they were about, when
they sung a Glee or Catch, I can assure you: especially
Topper, who could growl away in the bass like a good
one, and never swell the large veins in his forehead, or get
red in the face over it. Scrooge’s niece played well upon
the harp; and played among other tunes a simple little air
(a mere nothing: you might learn to whistle it in two
minutes), which had been familiar to the child who
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fetched Scrooge from the boarding-school, as he had been
reminded by the Ghost of Christmas Past. When this strain
of music sounded, all the things that Ghost had shown
him, came upon his mind; he softened more and more;
and thought that if he could have listened to it often, years
ago, he might have cultivated the kindnesses of life for his
own happiness with his own hands, without resorting to
the sexton’s spade that buried Jacob Marley.
But they didn’t devote the whole evening to music.
After a while they played at forfeits; for it is good to be
children sometimes, and never better than at Christmas,
when its mighty Founder was a child himself. Stop. There
was first a game at blind-man’s buff. Of course there was.
And I no more believe Topper was really blind than I
believe he had eyes in his boots. My opinion is, that it was
a done thing between him and Scrooge’s nephew; and that
the Ghost of Christmas Present knew it. The way he went
after that plump sister in the lace tucker, was an outrage
on the credulity of human nature. Knocking down the
fire-irons, tumbling over the chairs, bumping against the
piano, smothering himself among the curtains, wherever
she went, there went he. He always knew where the
plump sister was. He wouldn’t catch anybody else. If you
had fallen up against him (as some of them did), on
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purpose, he would have made a feint of endeavouring to
seize you, which would have been an affront to your
understanding, and would instantly have sidled off in the
direction of the plump sister. She often cried out that it
wasn’t fair; and it really was not. But when at last, he
caught her; when, in spite of all her silken rustlings, and
her rapid flutterings past him, he got her into a corner
whence there was no escape; then his conduct was the
most execrable. For his pretending not to know her; his
pretending that it was necessary to touch her head-dress,
and further to assure himself of her identity by pressing a
certain ring upon her finger, and a certain chain about her
neck; was vile, monstrous. No doubt she told him her
opinion of it, when, another blind-man being in office,
they were so very confidential together, behind the
curtains.
Scrooge’s niece was not one of the blind-man’s buff
party, but was made comfortable with a large chair and a
footstool, in a snug corner, where the Ghost and Scrooge
were close behind her. But she joined in the forfeits, and
loved her love to admiration with all the letters of the
alphabet. Likewise at the game of How, When, and
Where, she was very great, and to the secret joy of
Scrooge’s nephew, beat her sisters hollow: though they
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were sharp girls too, as could have told you. There might
have been twenty people there, young and old, but they
all played, and so did Scrooge, for, wholly forgetting the
interest he had in what was going on, that his voice made
no sound in their ears, he sometimes came out with his
guess quite loud, and very often guessed quite right, too;
for the sharpest needle, best Whitechapel, warranted not
to cut in the eye, was not sharper than Scrooge; blunt as
he took it in his head to be.
The Ghost was greatly pleased to find him in this
mood, and looked upon him with such favour, that he
begged like a boy to be allowed to stay until the guests
departed. But this the Spirit said could not be done.
‘Here is a new game,’ said Scrooge. ‘One half hour,
Spirit, only one.’
It was a Game called Yes and No, where Scrooge’s
nephew had to think of something, and the rest must find
out what; he only answering to their questions yes or no,
as the case was. The brisk fire of questioning to which he
was exposed, elicited from him that he was thinking of an
animal, a live animal, rather a disagreeable animal, a savage
animal, an animal that growled and grunted sometimes,
and talked sometimes, and lived in London, and walked
about the streets, and wasn’t made a show of, and wasn’t
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led by anybody, and didn’t live in a menagerie, and was
never killed in a market, and was not a horse, or an ass, or
a cow, or a bull, or a tiger, or a dog, or a pig, or a cat, or a
bear. At every fresh question that was put to him, this
nephew burst into a fresh roar of laughter; and was so
inexpressibly tickled, that he was obliged to get up off the
sofa and stamp. At last the plump sister, falling into a
similar state, cried out:
‘I have found it out. I know what it is, Fred. I know
what it is.’
‘What is it.’ cried Fred.
‘It’s your Uncle Scrooge.’
Which it certainly was. Admiration was the universal
sentiment, though some objected that the reply to ‘Is it a
bear.’ ought to have been ‘Yes;’ inasmuch as an answer in
the negative was sufficient to have diverted their thoughts
from Mr Scrooge, supposing they had ever had any
tendency that way.
‘He has given us plenty of merriment, I am sure,’ said
Fred,’ and it would be ungrateful not to drink his health.
Here is a glass of mulled wine ready to our hand at the
moment; and I say, ‘Uncle Scrooge.‘‘
‘Well. Uncle Scrooge.’ they cried.
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‘A Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to the old
man, whatever he is.’ said Scrooge’s nephew. ‘He
wouldn’t take it from me, but may he have it,
nevertheless. Uncle Scrooge.’
Uncle Scrooge had imperceptibly become so gay and
light of heart, that he would have pledged the unconscious
company in return, and thanked them in an inaudible
speech, if the Ghost had given him time. But the whole
scene passed off in the breath of the last word spoken by
his nephew; and he and the Spirit were again upon their
travels.
Much they saw, and far they went, and many homes
they visited, but always with a happy end. The Spirit stood
beside sick beds, and they were cheerful; on foreign lands,
and they were close at home; by struggling men, and they
were patient in their greater hope; by poverty, and it was
rich. In almshouse, hospital, and jail, in misery’s every
refuge, where vain man in his little brief authority had not
made fast the door and barred the Spirit out, he left his
blessing, and taught Scrooge his precepts.
It was a long night, if it were only a night; but Scrooge
had his doubts of this, because the Christmas Holidays
appeared to be condensed into the space of time they
passed together. It was strange, too, that while Scrooge
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remained unaltered in his outward form, the Ghost grew
older, clearly older. Scrooge had observed this change, but
never spoke of it, until they left a children’s Twelfth Night
party, when, looking at the Spirit as they stood together in
an open place, he noticed that its hair was grey.
‘Are spirits’ lives so short.’ asked Scrooge.
‘My life upon this globe, is very brief,’ replied the
Ghost. ‘It ends to-night.’
‘To-night.’ cried Scrooge.
‘To-night at midnight. Hark. The time is drawing
near.’
The chimes were ringing the three quarters past eleven
at that moment.
‘Forgive me if I am not justified in what I ask,’ said
Scrooge, looking intently at the Spirit’s robe,’ but I see
something strange, and not belonging to yourself,
protruding from your skirts. Is it a foot or a claw.’
‘It might be a claw, for the flesh there is upon it,’ was
the Spirit’s sorrowful reply. ‘Look here.’
From the foldings of its robe, it brought two children;
wretched, abject, frightful, hideous, miserable. They knelt
down at its feet, and clung upon the outside of its
garment.
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‘Oh, Man. look here. Look, look, down here.’
exclaimed the Ghost.
They were a boy and a girl. Yellow, meagre, ragged,
scowling, wolfish; but prostrate, too, in their humility.
Where graceful youth should have filled their features out,
and touched them with its freshest tints, a stale and
shrivelled hand, like that of age, had pinched, and twisted
them, and pulled them into shreds. Where angels might
have sat enthroned, devils lurked, and glared out
menacing. No change, no degradation, no perversion of
humanity, in any grade, through all the mysteries of
wonderful creation, has monsters half so horrible and
dread.
Scrooge started back, appalled. Having them shown to
him in this way, he tried to say they were fine children,
but the words choked themselves, rather than be parties to
a lie of such enormous magnitude.
‘Spirit. are they yours.’ Scrooge could say no more.
‘They are Man’s,’ said the Spirit, looking down upon
them. ‘And they cling to me, appealing from their fathers.
This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware them
both, and all of their degree, but most of all beware this
boy, for on his brow I see that written which is Doom,
unless the writing be erased. Deny it.’ cried the Spirit,
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stretching out its hand towards the city. ‘Slander those
who tell it ye. Admit it for your factious purposes, and
make it worse. And abide the end.’
‘Have they no refuge or resource.’ cried Scrooge.
‘Are there no prisons.’ said the Spirit, turning on him
for the last time with his own words. ‘Are there no
workhouses.’ The bell struck twelve.
Scrooge looked about him for the Ghost, and saw it
not. As the last stroke ceased to vibrate, he remembered
the prediction of old Jacob Marley, and lifting up his eyes,
beheld a solemn Phantom, draped and hooded, coming,
like a mist along the ground, towards him.
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Stave 4: The Last of the Spirits
The Phantom slowly, gravely, silently approached.
When it came, Scrooge bent down upon his knee; for in
the very air through which this Spirit moved it seemed to
scatter gloom and mystery.
It was shrouded in a deep black garment, which
concealed its head, its face, its form, and left nothing of it
visible save one outstretched hand. But for this it would
have been difficult to detach its figure from the night, and
separate it from the darkness by which it was surrounded.
He felt that it was tall and stately when it came beside
him, and that its mysterious presence filled him with a
solemn dread. He knew no more, for the Spirit neither
spoke nor moved.
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