Replay_838_A_Christmas_Carol_by_Charles

00:00:00.000 | Welcome to Radical Personal Finance, a show dedicated to providing you with the knowledge,

00:00:03.220 | skills, insight, and encouragement you need to live a rich and meaningful life now while

00:00:09.540 | building a plan for financial freedom in 10 years or less.

00:00:14.460 | My name is Joshua Sheets.

00:00:15.460 | I'm your host today.

00:00:16.460 | You'll notice that my emphasis is on living a rich life now, a meaningful life now, and

00:00:27.700 | on the word insight.

00:00:30.700 | You'll understand that today I want to talk about what it means to live a rich and meaningful

00:00:35.640 | life and then I want to use a classic resource to draw some of the lessons.

00:00:40.420 | As I record this, it is Tuesday, December 21, 2021 for all the number aficionados, 12,

00:00:48.020 | 21, 21, which is of course a fun number.

00:00:50.500 | And I want to share with you today a classic tale of what it means to balance money with

00:00:57.700 | other aspects of your life.

00:01:00.300 | The tale is A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens, a very well-known story.

00:01:06.500 | But in my experience, for those who are aware of The Christmas Carol, it's much more likely

00:01:11.900 | that your exposure to this story will have come from a theatrical production.

00:01:17.300 | It's a very commonly performed play.

00:01:19.920 | Last year my wife and I went and enjoyed a stage production of A Christmas Carol.

00:01:24.940 | But although I've seen a number of stage productions and enjoyed them all, and I think they work

00:01:29.720 | hard to convey the truths, the meaning behind this particular story, as is quite common,

00:01:37.020 | those stage productions can't, by virtue of the way that they're presented, they simply

00:01:42.480 | cannot articulate all of the original intent of the author.

00:01:46.820 | And when Charles Dickens wrote this particular story, he was writing about money and about

00:01:52.240 | life.

00:01:53.880 | And as I was rereading this story this year with my children, we were going through and

00:01:57.920 | reading it to them, I was just struck by how perfect it was as a useful parable for us

00:02:05.480 | here at Radical Personal Finance.

00:02:06.920 | And so in today's episode, I want to read to you this story.

00:02:11.560 | I want to encourage you, if you've read it recently, great, or read the story, listen

00:02:16.860 | to it again.

00:02:17.860 | But I want to encourage you, many of you may find this difficult, but I will do my best

00:02:22.060 | to read it in a way that is engaging.

00:02:23.900 | If my young children can engage with it, even though the words may be unfamiliar at times,

00:02:29.260 | or the sentence construction a little bit different than what we're accustomed to, then

00:02:33.660 | I am quite confident that you would enjoy it.

00:02:36.260 | And I want you to listen for the commentary on money and think about, as we consider the

00:02:42.200 | experiences that Scrooge himself goes through, I want you to think about the meaning and

00:02:47.960 | how you can apply these lessons to your own life.

00:02:51.520 | Especially as is normal with a book, we get to interact with the thoughts and the feelings

00:02:56.360 | of the protagonist.

00:02:57.640 | I think this is such a valuable parable for us to consider, both now in the Christmas

00:03:02.160 | season and later.

00:03:05.080 | So enjoy my particular reading of A Christmas Carol in Prose, being A Ghost Story of Christmas

00:03:13.220 | by Charles Dickens.

00:03:19.100 | Stave one, Marley's Ghost.

00:03:22.780 | Marley was dead, to begin with.

00:03:26.800 | There is no doubt whatever about that.

00:03:29.060 | The register of his burial was signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker, and

00:03:33.740 | the chief mourner.

00:03:35.500 | Scrooge signed it.

00:03:36.660 | And Scrooge's name was good upon change for anything he chose to put his hand to.

00:03:41.220 | Old Marley was as dead as a doornail.

00:03:45.100 | Mind, I don't mean to say that I know of my own knowledge what there is particularly

00:03:49.540 | dead about a doornail.

00:03:51.300 | I might have been inclined myself to regard a coffin nail as the deadest piece of iron

00:03:56.580 | mongery in the trade.

00:03:58.360 | But the wisdom of our ancestors is in the simile, and my unhallowed hands shall not

00:04:04.660 | disturb it, or the country's done for.

00:04:07.400 | You will therefore permit me to repeat emphatically that Marley was as dead as a doornail.

00:04:16.400 | Scrooge knew he was dead?

00:04:17.400 | Of course he did.

00:04:18.920 | How could it be otherwise?

00:04:20.680 | Scrooge and he were partners for I don't know how many years.

00:04:24.340 | Scrooge was his sole executor, his sole administrator, his sole assign, his sole residuary legatee,

00:04:34.000 | his sole friend, and sole mourner.

00:04:38.520 | And even Scrooge was not so dreadfully cut up by the sad event, but that he was an excellent

00:04:44.040 | man of business on the very day of the funeral, and solemnized it with an undoubted bargain.

00:04:51.040 | The mention of Marley's funeral brings me back to the point I started from.

00:04:54.600 | There is no doubt that Marley was dead.

00:04:59.080 | This must be distinctly understood, or nothing wonderful can come of the story I am going

00:05:03.420 | to relate.

00:05:04.560 | If we were not perfectly convinced that Hamlet's father died before the play began, there would

00:05:09.560 | be nothing more remarkable in his taking a stroll at night, in an easterly wind, upon

00:05:14.020 | his own ramparts, than there would be in any other middle-aged gentleman rashly turning

00:05:19.400 | out after dark in a breezy spot, say St. Paul's churchyard for instance, literally to astonish

00:05:24.560 | his son's weak mind.

00:05:26.840 | Scrooge never painted out old Marley's name.

00:05:29.340 | There it stood, years afterwards, above the warehouse door.

00:05:33.280 | Scrooge and Marley.

00:05:35.420 | The firm was known as Scrooge and Marley.

00:05:39.800 | Sometimes people knew to the business called Scrooge Scrooge, and sometimes Marley, but

00:05:43.960 | he answered to both names.

00:05:45.280 | It was all the same to him.

00:05:47.000 | Oh, but he was a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone, Scrooge.

00:05:51.000 | A squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous old sinner.

00:05:57.560 | Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire.

00:06:02.880 | Secret and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster.

00:06:07.320 | The cold within him froze his old features, nipped his pointed nose, shriveled his cheek,

00:06:14.040 | stiffened his gait, made his eyes red, his thin lips blue, and spoke out shrewdly in

00:06:20.920 | his grating voice.

00:06:23.040 | A frosty rhyme was on his head, and on his eyebrows, and his wiry chin.

00:06:28.560 | He carried his own low temperature always about with him.

00:06:32.680 | He iced his office in the dog days, and didn't thaw at one degree at Christmas.

00:06:39.200 | External heat and cold had little influence on Scrooge.

00:06:42.840 | No warmth could warm, no wintry weather chill him.

00:06:46.880 | No wind that blew was bitterer than he.

00:06:49.980 | No falling snow was more intent upon its purpose.

00:06:52.860 | No pelting rain less open to entreaty.

00:06:56.480 | Foul weather didn't know where to have him.

00:06:59.000 | The heaviest rain, and snow, and hail, and sleet could boast of the advantage over him

00:07:03.660 | in only one respect.

00:07:05.580 | They often came down handsomely, and Scrooge never did.

00:07:12.160 | Nobody ever stopped him in the street to say, with gladsome looks, "My dear Scrooge,

00:07:16.160 | how are you?

00:07:17.160 | When will you come to see me?"

00:07:18.880 | No beggars implored him to bestow a trifle.

00:07:22.280 | No children asked him what it was o'clock.

00:07:25.600 | No man or woman ever once in all his life inquired the way to such and such a place

00:07:30.200 | of Scrooge.

00:07:32.040 | Even the blind men's dogs appeared to know him, and when they saw him coming on, would

00:07:36.960 | tug their owners into doorways and up courts, and then would wag their tails as though they

00:07:42.960 | said, "No eye at all is better than an evil eye, Dark Master."

00:07:47.720 | But what did Scrooge care?

00:07:49.560 | It was the very thing he liked.

00:07:52.580 | To edge his way along the crowded paths of life, warning all human sympathy to keep its

00:07:58.720 | distance was what the Knowing Ones called "nuts" to Scrooge.

00:08:05.240 | Once upon a time, of all the good days in the year, on Christmas Eve, old Scrooge sat

00:08:11.480 | busy in his counting house.

00:08:14.000 | It was cold, bleak, biting weather, foggy with all, and he could hear the people in

00:08:21.000 | the court outside go wheezing up and down, beating their hands upon their breasts and

00:08:26.040 | stamping their feet upon the pavement stones to warm them.

00:08:29.600 | The city clocks had only just gone three, but it was quite dark already.

00:08:34.320 | It had not been light all day, and candles were flaring in the windows of the neighboring

00:08:38.480 | offices like ruddy smears upon the palpable brown air.

00:08:43.500 | The fog came pouring in at every chink and keyhole, and was so dense without that, although

00:08:49.520 | the court was of the narrowest, the houses opposite were mere phantoms.

00:08:55.500 | To see the dingy cloud come drooping down, obscuring everything, one might have thought

00:09:00.680 | that nature lived hard by and was brewing on a large scale.

00:09:05.680 | The door of Scrooge's counting house was open that he might keep his eye upon his clerk,

00:09:10.400 | who in a dismal little cell beyond, a sort of tank, was copying letters.

00:09:17.640 | Scrooge had a very small fire, but the clerk's fire was so very much smaller that it looked

00:09:23.800 | like one coal, but he couldn't replenish it, for Scrooge kept the coal box in his own

00:09:29.000 | room, and so surely as the clerk came in with a shovel, the master predicted that it would

00:09:33.880 | be necessary for them to part.

00:09:36.600 | Wherefore the clerk put on his white comforter and tried to imagine himself at the candle,

00:09:41.600 | in which effort, not being a man of strong imagination, he failed.

00:09:46.400 | "A Merry Christmas, Uncle, God save you!" cried a cheerful voice.

00:09:51.300 | It was the voice of Scrooge's nephew, who came upon him so quickly that this was the

00:09:55.520 | first intimation he had of his approach.

00:09:58.920 | "Bah!" said Scrooge.

00:10:00.920 | "Humbug!"

00:10:02.040 | He had so heated himself with rapid walking in the fog and frost, this nephew of Scrooge's,

00:10:07.160 | that he was all in a glow.

00:10:08.960 | His face was ruddy and handsome, his eyes sparkled, and his breath smoked again.

00:10:14.800 | "Christmas, a humbug, Uncle," said Scrooge's nephew.

00:10:18.000 | "You don't mean that, I'm sure."

00:10:20.800 | "I do," said Scrooge.

00:10:22.720 | "Merry Christmas.

00:10:24.320 | What right have you to be merry?

00:10:26.760 | What reason have you to be merry?

00:10:30.280 | You're poor enough."

00:10:31.280 | "Come then," returned the nephew gaily.

00:10:34.200 | "What right have you to be dismal?

00:10:36.960 | What right have you to be morose?

00:10:39.480 | You're rich enough."

00:10:41.680 | Scrooge having no better answer ready on the spur of the moment said, "Bah!" again, and

00:10:47.720 | followed it up with, "Humbug!"

00:10:49.760 | "Don't be cross, Uncle," said the nephew.

00:10:52.800 | "What else can I be," returned the uncle, "when I live in such a world of fools as

00:10:58.360 | this?

00:10:59.360 | Merry Christmas, out upon merry Christmas.

00:11:03.600 | What's Christmas time to you but a time for paying bills without money?

00:11:08.160 | A time for finding yourself a year older but not an hour richer?

00:11:12.280 | A time for balancing your books and having every item in 'em through a round dozen of

00:11:17.720 | months presented dead against you?

00:11:20.520 | If I could work my will," said Scrooge indignantly, "every idiot who goes about with Merry Christmas

00:11:28.120 | on his lips should be boiled with his own pudding and buried with a stake of holly through

00:11:33.720 | his heart, he should."

00:11:35.640 | "Uncle," pleaded the nephew.

00:11:38.280 | "Nephew," returned the uncle sternly, "keep Christmas in your own way and let me keep

00:11:44.680 | it in mine."

00:11:45.680 | "Keep it," repeated Scrooge's nephew, "but you don't keep it."

00:11:50.440 | "Let me leave it alone then," said Scrooge.

00:11:53.600 | "Much good may it do you, much good it has ever done you."

00:11:58.840 | "There are many things from which I might have derived good, by which I have not profited,

00:12:04.600 | I dare say," returned the nephew, "Christmas among the rest, but I am sure I have always

00:12:10.160 | thought of Christmas time when it has come round, apart from the veneration due its sacred

00:12:14.700 | name and origin, if anything belonging to it can be apart from that, as a good time,

00:12:19.840 | a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time, the only time I know of in the long calendar

00:12:27.320 | of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut up hearts freely

00:12:33.600 | and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow passengers to the grave,

00:12:38.160 | and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys.

00:12:41.720 | And therefore, uncle, though it has never put a scrap of gold or silver in my pocket,

00:12:47.040 | I believe that it has done me good and will do me good, and I say God bless it."

00:12:55.400 | The clerk in the tank involuntarily applauded.

00:12:58.160 | Becoming immediately sensible of the impropriety, he poked the fire and extinguished the last

00:13:01.880 | frail spark forever.

00:13:03.880 | "Let me hear another sound from you," said Scrooge, "and you'll keep your Christmas

00:13:11.880 | by losing your situation."

00:13:13.840 | "You're quite a powerful speaker, sir," he added, turning to his nephew.

00:13:20.560 | "I wonder you don't go into Parliament."

00:13:23.760 | "Don't be angry, uncle.

00:13:26.160 | Come dine with us tomorrow."

00:13:28.560 | Scrooge said that he would see him.

00:13:31.200 | Yes, indeed he did.

00:13:33.040 | He went the whole length of the expression and said that he would see him in that extremity

00:13:38.680 | first.

00:13:39.680 | "But why?" cried Scrooge's nephew.

00:13:43.600 | "Why?"

00:13:44.600 | "Why did you get married?" said Scrooge.

00:13:47.840 | "Because I fell in love."

00:13:50.080 | "Because you fell in love?"

00:13:53.280 | growled Scrooge, as if that were the only thing in the world more ridiculous than a

00:13:57.760 | Merry Christmas.

00:13:59.240 | "Good afternoon."

00:14:00.920 | "Nay, uncle, but you never came to see me before that happened.

00:14:05.680 | Why give it as a reason for not coming now?"

00:14:09.280 | "Good afternoon," said Scrooge.

00:14:12.360 | "I want nothing from you.

00:14:14.320 | I ask nothing of you.

00:14:17.520 | Why cannot we be friends?"

00:14:20.120 | "Good afternoon," said Scrooge.

00:14:23.640 | "I am sorry with all my heart to find you so resolute.

00:14:28.500 | We have never had any quarrel, to which I have been a party, but I have made the trial

00:14:33.320 | in homage to Christmas, and I'll keep my Christmas humor to the last.

00:14:38.400 | So a Merry Christmas, uncle."

00:14:41.320 | "Good afternoon," said Scrooge.

00:14:44.120 | "And a Happy New Year."

00:14:45.720 | "Good afternoon," said Scrooge.

00:14:48.600 | His nephew left the room without an angry word notwithstanding.

00:14:53.200 | He stopped at the outer door to bestow the greetings of the season on the clerk, who,

00:14:56.680 | cold as he was, was warmer than Scrooge, for he returned them cordially.

00:15:01.120 | "There is another fellow," muttered Scrooge, who overheard him.

00:15:05.320 | "My clerk, with fifteen shillings a week, and a wife and family, talking about a Merry

00:15:11.360 | Christmas.

00:15:12.360 | I'll retire to bedlam."

00:15:15.360 | This lunatic in letting Scrooge's nephew out had let two other people in.

00:15:19.200 | They were a portly gentleman, pleasant to behold, and now stood, with their hats off,

00:15:23.800 | in Scrooge's office.

00:15:24.800 | They had books and papers in their hands, and bowed to him.

00:15:28.360 | "Scrooge and Marley's, I believe," said one of the gentlemen, referring to his list.

00:15:31.840 | "Have I the pleasure of addressing Mr. Scrooge or Mr. Marley?"

00:15:35.800 | "Mr. Marley has been dead these seven years," Scrooge replied.

00:15:40.320 | "He died seven years ago, this very night."

00:15:43.720 | "We have no doubt his liberality is well represented by his surviving partner," said

00:15:49.360 | the gentleman, presenting his credentials.

00:15:51.280 | It certainly was, for they had been two kindred spirits.

00:15:56.160 | At the ominous word "liberality," Scrooge frowned, shook his head, and handed the credentials

00:16:04.920 | back.

00:16:05.920 | "At this festive season of the year, Mr. Scrooge," said the gentleman, taking up a

00:16:09.840 | pen, "it is more than usually desirable that we should make some slight provision

00:16:13.600 | for the poor and destitute, who suffer greatly at the present time.

00:16:17.880 | Many thousands are in want of common necessaries.

00:16:21.080 | Hundreds of thousands are in want of common comfort, sir."

00:16:24.000 | "Are there no prisons?" asked Scrooge.

00:16:27.600 | "Plenty of prisons," said the gentleman, laying down the pen again.

00:16:30.960 | "And the union workhouses?" demanded Scrooge.

00:16:34.200 | "Are they still in operation?"

00:16:36.360 | "They are still," returned the gentleman.

00:16:38.880 | "I wish I could say they were not."

00:16:41.320 | "The treadmill and the poor law are in full vigour, then?" said Scrooge.

00:16:46.520 | "Both very busy, sir."

00:16:48.880 | "Oh, I was afraid, from what you said at first, that something had occurred to stop

00:16:54.000 | them in their useful course," said Scrooge.

00:16:56.880 | "I am very glad to hear it."

00:16:59.840 | "Under the impression that they scarcely furnish Christian cheer of mind or body to

00:17:04.560 | the multitude," returned the gentleman, "a few of us are endeavouring to raise a

00:17:09.160 | fund to buy the poor some meat and drink and means of warmth.

00:17:14.440 | We choose this time because it is a time of all others when want is keenly felt and abundance

00:17:20.760 | rejoices.

00:17:21.800 | What shall I put you down for?"

00:17:24.160 | "Nothing," Scrooge replied.

00:17:26.440 | "You wish to be anonymous?"

00:17:28.360 | "I wish to be left alone," said Scrooge.

00:17:32.400 | "Since you ask me what I wish, gentlemen, that is my answer.

00:17:36.000 | I don't make merry myself at Christmas, and I can't afford to make idle people merry.

00:17:41.920 | I help to support the establishments I have mentioned.

00:17:45.560 | They cost enough, and those who are badly off must go there.

00:17:50.520 | Many can't go there, and many would rather die."

00:17:54.200 | "If they would rather die," said Scrooge, "they had better do it and decrease the surplus

00:18:01.640 | population.

00:18:02.640 | Besides, excuse me, I don't know that."

00:18:05.960 | "But you might know it," observed the gentleman.

00:18:08.640 | "It's not my business," Scrooge returned.

00:18:12.000 | "It's enough for a man to understand his own business and not to interfere with other

00:18:17.320 | people's.

00:18:18.320 | Mine occupies me constantly.

00:18:21.040 | Good afternoon, gentlemen."

00:18:23.680 | Seeing clearly that it would be useless to pursue their point, the gentleman withdrew.

00:18:29.440 | Scrooge resumed his labors with an improved opinion of himself and in a more facetious

00:18:34.840 | temper than was usual with him.

00:18:37.880 | Meanwhile, the fog and darkness thickened so that people ran about with flaring links,

00:18:44.720 | proffering their services to go before horses in carriages and conduct them on their way.

00:18:50.760 | The ancient tower of a church, whose gruff old bell was always peeping slyly down at

00:18:56.640 | Scrooge out of a Gothic window in the wall, became invisible and struck the hours and

00:19:02.480 | quarters in the clouds with tremulous vibrations afterwards as if its teeth were chattering

00:19:07.800 | in its frozen head up there.

00:19:10.120 | The cold became intense.

00:19:12.960 | In the main street, at the corner of the court, some laborers were repairing the gas pipes

00:19:17.480 | and had lighted a great fire in a brazier round which a party of ragged men and boys

00:19:21.680 | were gathered, warming their hands and winking their eyes before the blaze in rapture.

00:19:27.640 | The water plug, being left in solitude, its overflowings sullenly congealed and turned

00:19:32.880 | to misanthropic ice.

00:19:35.640 | The brightness of the shops where holly sprigs and berries crackled in the lamp heat of the

00:19:39.680 | windows made pale faces ruddy as they passed.

00:19:43.840 | Poulterers' and grocers' trades became a splendid joke, a glorious pageant, with

00:19:48.880 | which it was next to impossible to believe that such dull principles as bargain and sale

00:19:55.160 | had anything to do.

00:19:56.800 | The Lord Mayor in the stronghold of the mighty mansion house gave orders to his fifty cooks

00:20:01.520 | and butlers to keep Christmas as a Lord Mayor's household should, and even the little tailor

00:20:06.560 | whom he had fined five shillings on the previous Monday for being drunk and bloodthirsty in

00:20:12.080 | the streets stirred up tomorrow's pudding in his garret while his lean wife and the

00:20:16.400 | baby sallied out to buy the beef.

00:20:19.240 | Foggier yet and colder, piercing, searching, biting cold.

00:20:27.680 | If the good Saint Dunstan had but nipped the evil spirit's nose with a touch of such

00:20:32.380 | weather as that, instead of using his familiar weapons, then indeed he would have roared

00:20:37.920 | to lusty purpose.

00:20:39.520 | The owner of one's scant young nose, gnawed and mumbled by the hungry cold as bones are

00:20:44.920 | gnawed by dogs, stooped down at Scrooge's keyhole to regale him with a Christmas carol,

00:20:50.800 | but at the first sound of "God bless you, merry gentlemen, may nothing you dismay,"

00:20:56.280 | Scrooge seized the ruler with such energy of action that the singer fled in terror,

00:21:00.960 | leaving the keyhole to the fog and even more congenial frost.

00:21:05.640 | At length the hour of shutting up the counting house arrived.

00:21:10.440 | With an ill will, Scrooge dismounted from his stool and tacitly admitted the fact to

00:21:17.680 | the expectant clerk in the tank, who instantly snuffed his candle out and put on his hat.

00:21:22.600 | "You'll want all day tomorrow, I suppose," said Scrooge.

00:21:27.400 | "If quite convenient, sir."

00:21:29.400 | "It's not convenient," said Scrooge.

00:21:31.560 | "And it's not fair.

00:21:33.360 | If I was to stop half a crown for it, you'd think yourself ill-used, I'll be bound."

00:21:38.720 | The clerk smiled faintly.

00:21:40.800 | "And yet," said Scrooge, "you don't think me ill-used when I pay a day's wages for no

00:21:48.320 | work?"

00:21:49.760 | The clerk observed that it was only once a year.

00:21:52.040 | "A poor excuse for picking a man's pocket every 25th of December," said Scrooge, buttoning

00:21:57.840 | his greatcoat to the chin.

00:21:59.200 | "But I suppose you must have the whole day.

00:22:02.000 | Be here all the earlier next morning."

00:22:04.720 | The clerk promised that he would, and Scrooge walked out with a growl.

00:22:10.360 | The office was closed in a twinkling, and the clerk, with the long ends of his white

00:22:14.280 | comforter dangling below his waist, for he boasted no greatcoat, went down a slide on

00:22:19.160 | Corn Hill at the end of a lane of boys, 20 times in honor of its being Christmas Eve,

00:22:24.040 | and then ran home to Camden Town as hard as he could pelt to play at Blindman's Buff.

00:22:29.400 | Scrooge took his melancholy dinner in his usual melancholy tavern, and having read all

00:22:36.360 | the newspapers and beguiled the rest of the evening with his banker's book, went home

00:22:41.160 | to bed.

00:22:42.480 | He lived in chambers which had once belonged to his deceased partner.

00:22:48.040 | They were a gloomy suite of rooms, in a lowering pile of building-up-a-yard, where it had so

00:22:54.280 | little business to be that one could scarcely help fancying it must have run there when

00:22:59.280 | it was a young house, playing at hide-and-seek with other houses and forgotten the way out

00:23:03.560 | again.

00:23:04.560 | It was old enough now, and dreary enough, for nobody lived in it but Scrooge, the other

00:23:10.160 | rooms being all let out as offices.

00:23:12.800 | The yard was so dark that even Scrooge, who knew its every stone, was fain to grope with

00:23:17.920 | his hands.

00:23:19.320 | The fog and frost so hung about the black old gateway of the house that it seemed as

00:23:24.120 | if the genius of the weather sat in mournful meditation on the threshold.

00:23:29.120 | Now it is a fact that there was nothing at all particular about the knocker on the door

00:23:34.400 | except that it was very large.

00:23:37.480 | It is also a fact that Scrooge had seen it night and morning during his whole residence

00:23:42.500 | in that place.

00:23:44.140 | Also that Scrooge had as little of what is called fancy about him as any man in the City

00:23:49.520 | of London, even including, which is a bold word, the corporation alderman and livery.

00:23:58.120 | Let it also be borne in mind that Scrooge had not bestowed one thought on Marley since

00:24:03.640 | his last mention of his seven years dead partner that afternoon.

00:24:08.320 | And then let any man explain to me, if he can, how it happened that Scrooge, having

00:24:12.880 | his key in the lock of the door, saw in the knocker, without its undergoing any intermediate

00:24:19.340 | process of change, not a knocker but Marley's face.

00:24:27.240 | Marley's face.

00:24:28.240 | It was not an impenetrable shadow as the other objects in the yard were, but had a dismal

00:24:33.400 | light about it, like a bad lobster in a dark cellar.

00:24:37.200 | It was not angry or ferocious, but looked at Scrooge as Marley used to look, with ghostly

00:24:42.300 | spectacles turned up on its ghostly forehead.

00:24:45.800 | The hair was curiously stirred, as if by breath or hot air, and though the eyes were wide

00:24:51.760 | open they were perfectly motionless.

00:24:55.600 | That and its livid color made it horrible, but its horror seemed to be in spite of the

00:24:59.880 | face and beyond its control, rather than a part of its own expression.

00:25:04.780 | As Scrooge looked fixedly at this phenomenon, it was a knocker again.

00:25:09.560 | To say that he was not startled or that his blood was not conscious of a terrible sensation

00:25:14.060 | to which it had been a stranger from infancy would be untrue, but he put his hand upon

00:25:20.240 | the key he had relinquished, turned it sturdily, walked in and lighted the candle.

00:25:24.920 | He did pause with a moment's ear-resolution before he shut the door, and he did look cautiously

00:25:32.340 | behind it first, as if he half expected to be terrified with the sight of Marley's

00:25:38.040 | pigtail sticking out into the hall.

00:25:40.640 | But there was nothing on the back of the door, except the screws and nuts that held the knocker

00:25:44.560 | on, so he said "Poo-poo" and closed it with a bang.

00:25:49.320 | The sound resounded through the house like thunder.

00:25:53.280 | Every room above and every cask in the wine merchant's cellars below appeared to have

00:25:57.080 | a separate peal of echoes of its own.

00:26:00.720 | Scrooge was not a man to be frightened by echoes.

00:26:03.560 | He fastened the door and walked across the hall and up the stairs, slowly too, trimming

00:26:08.180 | his candle as he went.

00:26:10.800 | You may talk vaguely about driving a coach and six up a good old flight of stairs, or

00:26:16.360 | through a bad young act of parliament, but I mean to say you might have got a hearse

00:26:21.320 | up that staircase and taken it broadwise, with a splinter bar towards the wall and the

00:26:26.160 | door towards the balustrades, and done it easy.

00:26:30.040 | There was plenty of width for that and room to spare, which is perhaps the reason why

00:26:34.240 | Scrooge thought he saw a locomotive hearse going on before him in the gloom.

00:26:39.320 | Half a dozen gas lamps out of the street wouldn't have lighted the entry too well, so you may

00:26:43.800 | suppose that it was pretty dark with Scrooge's dip.

00:26:48.040 | Up Scrooge went, not carrying a button for that.

00:26:50.960 | "Darkness is cheap," and Scrooge liked it.

00:26:54.400 | But before he shut his heavy door, he walked through his rooms to see that all was right.

00:26:59.580 | He had just enough recollection of the face to desire to do that.

00:27:04.840 | Sitting room, bedroom, lumber room, all as they should be.

00:27:10.760 | Nobody under the table, nobody under the sofa, a small fire in the grate, spoon and basin

00:27:14.640 | ready, and the little saucepan of gruel, Scrooge had a cold in his head, upon the hob.

00:27:20.720 | Nobody under the bed, nobody in the closet, nobody in his dressing gown, which was hanging

00:27:24.200 | up in a suspicious attitude against the wall.

00:27:26.960 | Lumber room as usual, old fire guard, old shoes, two fish baskets, washing stand on

00:27:32.640 | three legs, and a poker.

00:27:35.800 | Quite satisfied, he closed his door and locked himself in, double locked himself in, which

00:27:40.120 | was not his custom.

00:27:41.920 | Thus secured against surprise, he took off his cravat, put on his dressing gown and slippers

00:27:47.120 | and his nightcap, and sat down before the fire to take his gruel.

00:27:52.000 | It was a very low fire indeed, nothing on such a bitter night.

00:27:56.040 | He was obliged to sit close to it and brood over it before he could extract the least

00:28:02.480 | sensation of warmth from such a handful of fuel.

00:28:06.400 | The fireplace was an old one, built by some Dutch merchant long ago, and paved all round

00:28:12.000 | with quaint Dutch tiles designed to illustrate the scriptures.

00:28:17.020 | There were Cain's and Abel's, Pharaoh's daughters, Queens of Sheba, angelic messengers

00:28:22.840 | descending through the air on clouds like feather beds, Abraham's, Belshazzar's,

00:28:28.840 | apostles putting off to sea in butter boats, hundreds of figures to attract his thoughts.

00:28:35.000 | And yet, that face of Marley, seven years dead, came like the ancient prophet's rod

00:28:41.960 | and swallowed up the whole.

00:28:44.040 | If each smooth tile had been a blanket first, with power to shape some picture on its surface

00:28:48.800 | from the disjointed fragments of his thoughts, there would have been a copy of old Marley's

00:28:53.560 | head on every one.

00:28:55.320 | "Humbug!" said Scrooge and walked across the room.

00:28:58.920 | After several turns he sat down again.

00:29:00.920 | As he threw his head back in the chair, his glance happened to rest upon a bell, a disused

00:29:06.680 | bell that hung in the room and communicated, for some purpose now forgotten, with a chamber

00:29:11.960 | in the highest story of the building.

00:29:14.720 | It was with great astonishment and with a strange, inexplicable dread that, as he looked,

00:29:23.120 | he saw this bell begin to swing.

00:29:26.600 | It swung so softly in the outset that it scarcely made a sound, but soon it rang out loudly

00:29:32.640 | and so did every bell in the house.

00:29:35.560 | This might have lasted half a minute or a minute, but it seemed an hour.

00:29:39.520 | The bells ceased as they had begun, together.

00:29:44.600 | They were succeeded by a clanking noise deep down below, as if some person were dragging

00:29:53.760 | a heavy chain over the casks in the wine merchant's cellar.

00:29:59.360 | Scrooge then remembered to have heard that ghosts in haunted houses were described as

00:30:05.480 | dragging chains.

00:30:08.480 | The cellar door flew open with a booming sound, and then he heard the noise much louder on

00:30:12.520 | the floors below, then coming up the stairs, then coming straight towards his door.

00:30:16.640 | "It's humbug still," said Scrooge.

00:30:18.400 | "I won't believe it."

00:30:20.040 | His color changed, though, when, without a pause, it came on through the heavy door and

00:30:24.680 | passed into the room before his eyes.

00:30:27.520 | Upon its coming in, the dying flame leaped up as though it cried, "I know him, Marley's

00:30:33.040 | ghost," and fell again.

00:30:37.760 | Marley's ghost.

00:30:39.720 | The same face, the very same.

00:30:43.240 | Marley in his pigtail, usual waistcoat, tights and boots, the tassels on the ladder bristling

00:30:49.000 | like his pigtail, and his coat skirts, and the hair upon his head.

00:30:52.760 | The chain he drew was clasped about his middle.

00:30:55.900 | It was long and wound about him like a tail, and it was made, for Scrooge observed it closely,

00:31:02.200 | of cash boxes, keys, padlocks, ledgers, deeds, and heavy purses wrought in steel.

00:31:10.120 | His body was transparent so that Scrooge, observing him and looking through his waistcoat,

00:31:15.120 | could see the two buttons on his coat behind.

00:31:19.000 | Scrooge had often heard it said that Marley had no bowels, but he had never believed it

00:31:23.600 | until now.

00:31:24.600 | No, nor did he believe it even now, though he looked the phantom through and through

00:31:28.240 | and saw it standing before him, though he felt the chilling influence of its death-cold

00:31:32.680 | eyes and marked the very texture of the folded kerchief bound around its head and chin, which

00:31:37.960 | wrapper he had not observed before.

00:31:39.560 | He was still incredulous and fought against his senses.

00:31:43.240 | "How now," said Scrooge, caustic and cold as ever.

00:31:46.600 | "What do you want with me?

00:31:48.400 | Much?"

00:31:49.400 | Marley's voice, no doubt about it.

00:31:51.000 | "Who are you?

00:31:52.560 | Ask me who I was."

00:31:54.160 | "Who were you then?" said Scrooge, raising his voice.

00:31:57.840 | "You're particular for a shade," he was going to say to a shade, but substituted

00:32:02.280 | this is more appropriate.

00:32:03.520 | "In life I was your partner, Jacob Marley."

00:32:06.800 | "Can you… can you sit down?" asked Scrooge, looking doubtfully at him.

00:32:13.960 | "I can."

00:32:14.960 | "Do it then."

00:32:17.520 | Scrooge asked the question because he didn't know whether a ghost so transparent might

00:32:21.880 | find himself in a condition to take a chair and felt that in the event of its being impossible,

00:32:27.720 | it might involve the necessity of an embarrassing explanation.

00:32:31.600 | But the ghost sat down on the opposite side of the fireplace as if he were quite used

00:32:35.960 | to it.

00:32:36.960 | "You don't believe in me," observed the ghost.

00:32:40.240 | "I don't," said Scrooge.

00:32:42.760 | "What evidence would you have of my reality beyond that of your senses?"

00:32:47.160 | "I don't know," said Scrooge.

00:32:50.200 | "Why do you doubt your senses?"

00:32:52.520 | "Because," said Scrooge, "a little thing affects them.

00:32:56.080 | A slight disorder of the stomach makes them cheats.

00:32:59.520 | You may be an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment

00:33:06.920 | of an underdone potato.

00:33:08.440 | There's more of gravy than of grave about you, whatever you are."

00:33:14.760 | Scrooge was not much in the habit of cracking jokes, nor did he feel in his heart by any

00:33:19.240 | means waggish then.

00:33:21.520 | The truth is that he tried to be smart as a means of distracting his own attention and

00:33:27.760 | keeping down his terror, for the specter's voice disturbed the very marrow in his bones.

00:33:35.720 | To sit, staring at those fixed, glazed eyes in silence for a moment would play, Scrooge

00:33:43.560 | felt, the very deuce with him.

00:33:45.520 | There was something very awful, too, in the specter's being provided with an infernal

00:33:50.960 | atmosphere of its own.

00:33:53.200 | Scrooge could not feel it himself, but this was clearly the case, for though the ghost

00:33:57.280 | sat perfectly motionless, its hair and skirts and tassels were still agitated as by the

00:34:04.680 | hot vapor from an oven.

00:34:06.560 | "You see this toothpick," said Scrooge, returning quickly to the charge, for the reason

00:34:11.040 | just assigned and wishing, though it were only for a second, to divert the vision's

00:34:14.520 | stony gaze from himself.

00:34:15.920 | "I do," replied the ghost.

00:34:18.320 | "You're not looking at it," said Scrooge.

00:34:20.640 | "But I see it," said the ghost, "notwithstanding."

00:34:23.240 | "Well," returned Scrooge, "I have but to swallow this and be, for the rest of my

00:34:29.720 | days, persecuted by a legion of goblins, all of my own creation.

00:34:34.720 | Humbug, I tell you, humbug!"

00:34:37.800 | At this the spirit raised a frightful cry and shook its chain with such a dismal and

00:34:43.020 | appalling noise that Scrooge held on tight to his chair to save himself from falling

00:34:48.080 | in a swoon.

00:34:49.200 | But how much greater was his horror when the phantom, taking off the bandage round its

00:34:53.320 | head as if it were too warm to wear indoors, its lower jaw dropped down upon its breast.

00:35:00.200 | Scrooge fell upon his knees and clasped his hands before his face.

00:35:03.280 | "Mercy," he said, "dreadful apparition, why do you trouble me?"

00:35:06.880 | "Man of the worldly mind," replied the ghost, "do you believe in me or not?"

00:35:11.520 | "I do," said Scrooge, "I must.

00:35:13.840 | But why do spirits walk the earth and why do they come to me?"

00:35:17.040 | "It is required of every man," the ghost returned, "that the spirit within him should

00:35:23.280 | walk abroad among his fellow men and travel far and wide.

00:35:27.960 | And if that spirit goes not forth in life, it is condemned to do so after death.

00:35:32.720 | It is doomed to wander through the world, oh, woe is me, and witness what it cannot

00:35:39.280 | share but might have shared on earth and turned to happiness."

00:35:45.960 | Then the specter raised a cry and shook its chain and wrung its shadowy hands.

00:35:51.640 | "You are fettered," said Scrooge, trembling.

00:35:55.280 | "Tell me why."

00:35:57.080 | "I wear the chain I forged in life," replied the ghost.

00:36:01.280 | "I made it link by link and yard by yard.

00:36:06.880 | I girded it on of my own free will, and of my own free will I wore it.

00:36:13.480 | Is its pattern strange to you?"

00:36:17.560 | Scrooge trembled more and more.

00:36:20.440 | "Or would you know," pursued the ghost, "the weight and length of the strong coil

00:36:25.880 | you bear yourself?

00:36:28.080 | It was full as heavy and as long as this seven Christmas eves ago.

00:36:33.680 | You have labored on it since.

00:36:36.280 | It is a ponderous chain."

00:36:41.680 | Scrooge glanced about him on the floor in the expectation of finding himself surrounded

00:36:46.920 | by some fifty or sixty fathoms of iron cable, but he could see nothing.

00:36:53.640 | "Jacob," he said imploringly, "oh, Jacob Marley, tell me more.

00:36:58.560 | Speak comfort to me, Jacob."

00:37:00.120 | "I have none to give," the ghost replied.

00:37:02.960 | "It comes from other regions," Ebenezer Scrooge, "and is conveyed by other ministers

00:37:10.280 | to other kinds of men.

00:37:13.200 | Nor can I tell you what I would.

00:37:15.840 | A very little more is all permitted to me.

00:37:18.760 | I cannot rest.

00:37:20.240 | I cannot stay.

00:37:21.320 | I cannot linger anywhere.

00:37:23.840 | My spirit never walked beyond our counting house, mark me.

00:37:28.320 | In life my spirit never roved beyond the narrow limits of our money-changing hole, and weary

00:37:36.000 | journeys lie before me."

00:37:39.000 | It was a habit with Scrooge, whenever he became thoughtful, to put his hands in his breeches'

00:37:45.200 | pocket.

00:37:46.200 | Pondering on what the ghost had said, he did so now, but without lifting up his eyes or

00:37:52.240 | getting off his knees.

00:37:54.080 | "You must have been very slow about it, Jacob," Scrooge observed in a businesslike

00:38:00.040 | manner, though with humility and deference.

00:38:03.640 | "Slow?" the ghost repeated.

00:38:06.000 | "Seven years dead," mused Scrooge, "and traveling all the time."

00:38:10.360 | "The whole time," said the ghost.

00:38:13.600 | "No rest.

00:38:15.240 | No peace.

00:38:16.880 | Incessant torture of remorse."

00:38:19.840 | "You travel fast?" said Scrooge.

00:38:24.240 | "On the wings of the wind," replied the ghost.

00:38:27.960 | "You might have got over a great quantity of ground in seven years," said Scrooge.

00:38:34.400 | The ghost, on hearing this, set up another cry and clanked its chain so hideously in

00:38:39.440 | the dead silence of the night that the ward would have been justified in indicting it

00:38:44.120 | for a nuisance.

00:38:46.040 | "Oh, captive, bound, and double-ironed," cried the phantom, "not to know that ages

00:38:53.640 | of incessant labor by immortal creatures for this earth must pass into eternity before

00:39:00.520 | the good of which it is susceptible is all developed.

00:39:03.740 | Not to know that any Christian spirit, working kindly in its little sphere, whatever it may

00:39:11.040 | be, will find its mortal life too short for its vast means of usefulness.

00:39:18.040 | Not to know that no space of regret can make amends for one life's opportunity misused.

00:39:25.960 | Yet such was I. Oh, such was I."

00:39:30.400 | "But you were always a good man of business, Jacob," faltered Scrooge, who now began

00:39:35.480 | to apply this to himself.

00:39:38.080 | "Business!" cried the ghost, wringing its hands again.

00:39:41.920 | "Mankind was my business.

00:39:44.520 | The common welfare was my business.

00:39:47.600 | Charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence were all my business.

00:39:55.520 | The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business."

00:40:02.800 | It held up its chain at arm's length, as if that were the cause of all its unavailing

00:40:08.920 | grief, and flung it heavily upon the ground again.

00:40:12.320 | "At this time of the rolling year," the specter said, "I suffer most.

00:40:18.680 | Why did I walk through crowds of fellow beings with my eyes turned down, and never raise

00:40:24.520 | them to that blessed star which led the wise men to a poor abode?

00:40:30.520 | Were there no poor homes to which its light would have conducted me?"

00:40:36.000 | Scrooge was very much dismayed to hear the specter going on at this rate, and began to

00:40:41.360 | quake exceedingly.

00:40:42.360 | "Hear me!" cried the ghost.

00:40:45.360 | "My time is nearly gone!"

00:40:47.280 | "I will," said Scrooge.

00:40:49.480 | "But don't be hard upon me.

00:40:51.400 | Don't be flowery, Jacob.

00:40:53.400 | Pray."

00:40:54.400 | "How is it that I appear before you in a shape that you can see I may not tell?

00:40:59.400 | I have sat invisible beside you many and many a day."

00:41:05.880 | It was not an agreeable idea.

00:41:09.840 | Scrooge shivered, and wiped the perspiration from his brow.

00:41:14.040 | "That is no light part of my penance," pursued the ghost.

00:41:18.400 | "I am here tonight to warn you that you have yet a chance and hope of escaping my

00:41:25.840 | fate.

00:41:26.840 | A chance and hope of my procuring, Ebenezer."

00:41:30.800 | "You were always a good friend to me," said Scrooge.

00:41:34.840 | "Thank ye."

00:41:35.840 | "You will be haunted," resumed the ghost, "by three spirits."

00:41:41.840 | Scrooge's countenance fell almost as low as the ghost's had done.

00:41:46.560 | "Is that the chance and hope you mentioned, Jacob?" he demanded in a faltering voice.

00:41:52.720 | "It is."

00:41:54.400 | "I think I'd rather not," said Scrooge.

00:41:58.320 | "Without their visits," said the ghost, "you cannot hope to shun the path I tread.

00:42:04.840 | Expect the first tomorrow, when the bell tolls one."

00:42:08.920 | "Good night.

00:42:09.920 | Take 'em all at once and have it over, Jacob," hinted Scrooge.

00:42:13.880 | "Expect the second on the next night, at the same hour.

00:42:18.280 | The third upon the next night, when the last stroke of twelve has ceased to vibrate.

00:42:24.800 | Look to see me no more.

00:42:26.880 | And look that, for your own sake.

00:42:29.320 | You remember what has passed between us."

00:42:33.080 | When it had said these words, the spectre took its wrapper from the table and bound

00:42:38.640 | it round its head as before.

00:42:41.400 | Scrooge knew this by the smart sound its teeth made when the jaws were brought together by

00:42:46.200 | the bandage.

00:42:47.560 | He ventured to raise his eyes again and found his supernatural visitor confronting him

00:42:53.880 | in an erect attitude, with its chain wound over and about its arm.

00:43:00.840 | The apparition walked backward from him, and at every step it took, the window raised itself

00:43:06.840 | a little, so that when the spectre reached it, it was wide open.

00:43:12.520 | It beckoned Scrooge to approach, which he did.

00:43:15.320 | When they were within two paces of each other, Marley's ghost held up its hand, warning

00:43:19.440 | him to come no nearer.

00:43:22.200 | Scrooge stopped, not so much in obedience as in surprise and fear, for on the raising

00:43:28.320 | of the hand he became sensible of confused noises in the air, incoherent sounds of lamentation

00:43:35.040 | and regret, wailings inexpressibly sorrowful and self-accusatory.

00:43:40.480 | The spectre, after listening for a moment, joined in the mournful dirge and floated out

00:43:45.320 | upon the bleak, dark night.

00:43:49.680 | Scrooge followed to the window, desperate in his curiosity.

00:43:52.600 | He looked out.

00:43:54.060 | The air was filled with phantoms, wandering hither and thither in restless haste and moaning

00:43:59.780 | as they went.

00:44:01.160 | Every one of them wore chains like Marley's ghost.

00:44:04.400 | Some few, they might be guilty governments, were linked together.

00:44:08.880 | None were free.

00:44:10.960 | Many had been personally known to Scrooge in their lives.

00:44:13.900 | He had been quite familiar with one old ghost in a white waistcoat with a monstrous iron

00:44:19.960 | safe attached to its ankle, who cried piteously at being unable to assist a wretched woman

00:44:26.560 | with an infant whom it saw below upon a doorstep.

00:44:30.320 | The misery with them all was, clearly, that they sought to interfere for good in human

00:44:38.240 | matters and had lost the power forever.

00:44:45.680 | Whether these creatures faded into mist or mist enshrouded them, he could not tell.

00:44:52.360 | But they and their spirit voices faded together, and the night became as it had been when he

00:44:57.800 | walked home.

00:44:59.960 | Scrooge closed the window and examined the door by which the ghost had entered.

00:45:04.520 | It was double-locked, as he had locked it with his own hands, and the bolts were undisturbed.

00:45:11.440 | He tried to say "Humbug," but stopped at the first syllable.

00:45:15.960 | And being from the emotion he had undergone, or the fatigues of the day, or his glimpse

00:45:24.380 | of the invisible world, or the dull conversation of the ghost, or the lateness of the hour

00:45:30.440 | much in need of repose, went straight to bed without undressing, and fell asleep upon the

00:45:39.120 | instant.

00:45:44.000 | Stave II, The First of the Three Spirits

00:45:50.160 | When Scrooge awoke, it was so dark that, looking out of bed, he could scarcely distinguish

00:45:55.640 | the transparent window from the opaque walls of his chamber.

00:46:00.380 | He was endeavoring to pierce the darkness with his ferret eyes when the chimes of a

00:46:05.820 | neighboring church struck the four quarters.

00:46:09.120 | So he listened for the hour.

00:46:11.020 | To his great astonishment, the heavy bell went on from six to seven, and from seven

00:46:16.700 | to eight, and regularly up to twelve, then stopped.

00:46:21.020 | Twelve!

00:46:22.060 | It was past two when he went to bed.

00:46:23.820 | The clock was wrong.

00:46:24.820 | An icicle must have gotten into the works.

00:46:26.860 | Twelve!

00:46:27.860 | He touched the spring of his repeater to correct this most preposterous clock.

00:46:32.140 | Its rapid little pulse beat twelve, and stopped.

00:46:36.540 | "Why, it is impossible," said Scrooge, "that I can have slept through a whole day

00:46:40.580 | and far into another night.

00:46:41.780 | It isn't possible that anything has happened to the sun, and this is twelve at noon."

00:46:45.560 | The idea being an alarming one, he scrambled out of bed and groped his way to the window.

00:46:50.060 | He was obliged to rub the frost off with the sleeve of his dressing gown before he could

00:46:53.580 | see anything, and could see very little then.

00:46:57.060 | All he could make out was that it was still very foggy and extremely cold, and that there

00:47:02.540 | was no noise of people running to and fro and making a great stir as there unquestionably

00:47:07.820 | would have been if night had beaten off bright day and taken possession of the world.

00:47:13.180 | This was a great relief, because three days after sight of this first to have exchange

00:47:16.880 | paid to Mr. Ebenezer Scrooge or his order and so forth would have become a mere United

00:47:20.840 | States security if there were no days to count by.

00:47:24.400 | Scrooge went to bed again, and thought and thought and thought it over and over and over

00:47:28.240 | and could make nothing of it.

00:47:30.260 | The more he thought, the more perplexed he was, and the more he endeavored not to think,

00:47:33.560 | the more he thought.

00:47:35.320 | Marley's ghost bothered him exceedingly.

00:47:37.620 | Every time he resolved within himself, after mature inquiry, that it was all a dream, his

00:47:42.080 | mind flew back again like a strong spring released to its first position and presented

00:47:47.760 | the same problem to be worked all through.

00:47:49.760 | Was it a dream or not?

00:47:52.920 | Scrooge lay in this state until the chime had gone three quarters more, when he remembered

00:47:57.680 | on a sudden that the ghost had warned him of a visitation when the bell tolled one.

00:48:01.760 | He resolved to lie awake until the hour was past, and considering that he could no more

00:48:07.560 | go to sleep than go to heaven, this was perhaps the wisest resolution in his power.

00:48:14.680 | The quarter was so long that he was more than once convinced he must have sunk into a doze

00:48:21.080 | unconsciously and missed the clock at length that broke upon his listening ear.

00:48:27.720 | "Ding dong!"

00:48:29.280 | "A quarter past," said Scrooge, counting.

00:48:33.560 | "Ding dong!"

00:48:35.000 | "Half past," said Scrooge.

00:48:37.800 | "Ding dong!"

00:48:39.200 | "A quarter to it," said Scrooge.

00:48:42.600 | "Ding dong!"

00:48:44.000 | "The hour itself," said Scrooge triumphantly, "and nothing else!"

00:48:48.240 | He spoke before the hour bell sounded, which it now did with a deep, dull, hollow, melancholy

00:48:56.600 | "One!"

00:49:00.480 | Light flashed up in the room upon the instant, and the curtains of his bed were drawn.

00:49:04.320 | The curtains of his bed were drawn aside, I tell you, by a hand, not the curtains at

00:49:07.600 | his feet nor the curtains at his back, but those to which his face was addressed.

00:49:11.280 | The curtains of his bed were drawn aside, and Scrooge, starting up into a half-recumbent

00:49:15.440 | attitude, found himself face to face with the unearthly visitor who drew them, as close

00:49:19.700 | to it as I am now to you, and I am standing in the spirit at your elbow.

00:49:24.220 | It was a strange figure, like a child, but not so like a child as like an old man, viewed

00:49:29.920 | through some supernatural medium, which gave him the appearance of having receded from

00:49:34.200 | the view and being diminished to a child's proportions.

00:49:37.600 | Its hair, which hung about its neck and down its back, was white as if with age, and yet

00:49:41.880 | the face had not a wrinkle in it, and the tenderest bloom was on the skin.

00:49:45.960 | The arms were very long and muscular, the hands the same, as if its hold were of uncommon

00:49:51.080 | strength.

00:49:52.080 | Its legs and feet, most delicately formed, were like those upper members bare.

00:49:56.480 | It wore a tunic of the purest white, and round its waist was bound a lustrous belt, the sheen

00:50:01.480 | of which was beautiful.

00:50:03.340 | It held a branch of fresh green holly in its hand, and, in singular contradiction of that

00:50:07.860 | wintry emblem, had its dress trimmed with summer flowers.

00:50:12.120 | But the strangest thing about it was that from the crown of its head there sprung a

00:50:15.920 | bright, clear jet of light, by which all this was visible, and which was doubtless the occasion

00:50:23.560 | of its using, in its duller moments, a great extinguisher for a cap which it now held under

00:50:29.360 | its arm.

00:50:30.920 | Even this, though, when Scrooge looked at it with increasing steadiness, was not its

00:50:36.160 | strangest quality.

00:50:38.040 | For as its belt sparkled and glittered, now in one part and now in another, and what was

00:50:43.720 | light one instant, at another time was dark, so the figure itself fluctuated in its distinctness.

00:50:50.860 | Being now a thing with one arm, now with one leg, now with twenty legs, now a pair of legs

00:50:55.740 | without a head, now a head without a body, of which dissolving parts no outline would

00:51:00.080 | be visible in the dense gloom wherein they melted away, and in the very wonder of this

00:51:04.120 | it would be itself again, distinct and clear as ever.

00:51:06.800 | "Are you the spirit, sir, whose coming was foretold to me?" asked Scrooge.

00:51:11.400 | "I am."

00:51:13.280 | The voice was soft and gentle, singularly low as if, instead of being so close beside

00:51:19.600 | him it were at a distance.

00:51:21.280 | "Who and what are you?"

00:51:23.640 | Scrooge demanded.

00:51:24.640 | "I am the ghost of Christmas Past."

00:51:27.080 | "Long past?"

00:51:28.880 | inquired Scrooge, observant of its dwarfish stature.

00:51:32.960 | "No, your past."

00:51:36.440 | Perhaps Scrooge could not have told anybody why, if anybody could have asked him, but

00:51:42.200 | he had a special desire to see the spirit in his cap, and begged him to be covered.

00:51:48.160 | "What!" exclaimed the ghost, "would you so soon put out, with worldly hands, the

00:51:53.160 | light I give?

00:51:54.480 | Is it not enough that you are one of those whose passions made this cap, and forced me

00:51:59.280 | through whole trains of years to wear it low upon my brow?"

00:52:03.640 | Scrooge reverently disclaimed all intention to offend, or any knowledge of having willfully

00:52:08.520 | bonneted the spirit at any period of his life.

00:52:11.680 | He then made bold to inquire what business brought him there.

00:52:14.720 | "Your welfare," said the ghost.

00:52:17.400 | Scrooge expressed himself much obliged, but could not help thinking that a night of unbroken

00:52:20.960 | rest would have been more conducive to that end.

00:52:23.800 | The spirit must have heard him thinking, for it said immediately, "Your reclamation,

00:52:27.440 | then.

00:52:28.440 | Take heed."

00:52:29.440 | It put out its strong hand as it spoke, and clasped him gently by the arm.

00:52:32.920 | "Rise and walk with me."

00:52:35.040 | It would have been in vain for Scrooge to plead that the weather and the hour were not

00:52:38.200 | adapted to pedestrian purposes, that bed was warm and the thermometer a long way below

00:52:42.840 | freezing, that he was clad but lightly in his slippers, dressing-gown, and nightcap,

00:52:46.680 | and that he had a cold upon him at that time.

00:52:49.600 | The grasp, though gentle as a woman's hand, was not to be resisted.

00:52:53.480 | He rose, but, finding that the spirit made towards the window, clasped his robe in supplication.

00:52:59.440 | "I am immortal," Scrooge remonstrated, "and liable to fall."

00:53:03.320 | "Bear but a touch of my hand, there," said the spirit, laying it upon his heart,

00:53:08.280 | "and you shall be upheld in more than this."

00:53:11.120 | As the words were spoken, they passed through the wall, and stood upon an open country road

00:53:15.320 | with fields on either hand.

00:53:17.160 | The city had entirely vanished.

00:53:19.760 | Not a vestige of it was to be seen.

00:53:21.680 | The darkness and the mist had vanished with it, for it was a clear, cold winter day with

00:53:25.840 | snow upon the ground.

00:53:27.200 | "Good heaven," said Scrooge, clasping his hands together as he looked about him.

00:53:31.440 | "I was bred in this place.

00:53:33.520 | I was a boy here."

00:53:35.320 | The spirit gazed upon him mildly.

00:53:38.280 | Its gentle touch, though it had been light and instantaneous, appeared still present

00:53:41.920 | to the old man's sense of feeling.

00:53:43.900 | He was conscious of a thousand odors floating in the air, each one connected with a thousand

00:53:48.400 | thoughts and hopes and joys and cares long, long forgotten.

00:53:52.040 | "Your lip is trembling," said the ghost.

00:53:54.440 | "And what is that upon your cheek?"

00:53:56.760 | Scrooge muttered with an unusual "k" catching in his voice that it was a pimple, and begged

00:54:02.160 | the ghost to lead him where he would.

00:54:04.600 | "You recollect the way?" inquired the spirit.

00:54:07.480 | "Remember it!" cried Scrooge with fervor.

00:54:09.320 | "I could walk it blindfold!"

00:54:10.800 | "Strange to have forgotten it for so many years," observed the ghost.

00:54:15.080 | "Let us go on."

00:54:17.000 | They walked along the road, Scrooge recognizing every gate and post and tree, until a little

00:54:21.920 | market town appeared in the distance, with its bridge, its church, and winding river.

00:54:26.640 | Some shaggy ponies now were seen trotting towards them with boys upon their backs, who

00:54:30.680 | called to other boys in country gigs and carts driven by farmers.

00:54:34.600 | All these boys were in great spirits and shouted to each other until the broadfields were so

00:54:38.440 | full of merry music that the crisp air laughed to hear it.

00:54:42.240 | "These are but shadows of the things that have been," said the ghost.

00:54:45.880 | "They have no consciousness of us."

00:54:48.440 | The jockin' travelers came on, and as they came, Scrooge knew and named them every one.

00:54:53.320 | Why was he rejoiced beyond all bounds to see them?

00:54:55.920 | Why did his cold eye glisten and his heart leap up as they went past?

00:54:59.500 | Why was he filled with gladness when he heard them give each other "Merry Christmas!" as

00:55:03.360 | they sparted at crossroads and byways for their several homes?

00:55:07.200 | What was Merry Christmas to Scrooge?

00:55:09.240 | Out upon Merry Christmas, what good had it ever done to him?

00:55:12.040 | "The school is not quite deserted," said the ghost.

00:55:15.440 | "A solitary child, neglected by his friends, is left there still."

00:55:22.240 | Scrooge said he knew it, and he sobbed.

00:55:27.440 | They left the high road by a well-remembered lane and soon approached a mansion of dull

00:55:31.720 | red brick, with a little weathercock-surmounted cupola on the roof and a bell hanging in

00:55:36.440 | it.

00:55:37.440 | It was a large house, but one of broken fortunes, for the spacious offices were little used,

00:55:43.040 | their walls were damp and mossy, their windows broken and their gates decayed.

00:55:48.000 | Fowls clucked and strutted in the stables, and the coach houses and sheds were overrun

00:55:53.360 | with grass.

00:55:54.920 | Nor was it more retentive of its ancient state within, for entering the dreary hall and glancing

00:56:01.280 | through the open doors of many rooms, they found them poorly furnished, cold and vast.

00:56:08.820 | There was an earthy savour in the air, a chilly barrenness in the place which associated itself

00:56:14.240 | somehow with too much getting up by candlelight and not too much to eat.

00:56:20.480 | They went, the ghost and Scrooge, across the hall to a door at the back of the house.

00:56:25.500 | It opened before them and disclosed a long, bare, melancholy room, made barer still by

00:56:32.120 | lines of plain deal forms and desks.

00:56:36.440 | At one of these a lonely boy was reading near a feeble fire, and Scrooge sat down upon a

00:56:43.360 | form and wept to see his poor forgotten self as he used to be.

00:56:49.520 | Not a latent echo in the house, not a squeak and scuffle from the mice behind the panelling,

00:56:56.220 | not a drip from the half-thawed water spout in the dull yard behind, not a sigh among

00:57:02.140 | the leafless boughs of one despondent poplar, not the idle swinging of an empty storehouse

00:57:08.020 | door, no, not a clicking in the fire but fell upon the heart of Scrooge with a softening

00:57:12.860 | influence and gave a freer passage to his tears.

00:57:18.900 | The spirit touched him on the arm and pointed to his younger self, intent upon his reading.

00:57:25.660 | Suddenly a man in foreign garments, wonderfully real and distinct to look at, stood outside

00:57:30.980 | the window with an axe stuck in his belt and leading by the bridle an ass laden with wood.

00:57:36.020 | "Why, it's Ali Baba!"

00:57:37.660 | Scrooge exclaimed in ecstasy.

00:57:38.660 | "It's dear, old, honest Ali Baba!

00:57:40.900 | Yes, yes, I know!

00:57:42.400 | One Christmas time when yonder solitary child was left here all alone, he did come for the

00:57:47.060 | first time just like that!

00:57:49.580 | Poor boy!

00:57:50.980 | And Valentine," said Scrooge, "and his wild brother Orson, there they go!

00:57:55.100 | And what's his name, who was put down in his drawers asleep at the gate of Damascus?

00:57:58.300 | Don't you see him?

00:57:59.300 | And the Sultan's groom, turned upside down by the genie, there he is upon his head!

00:58:03.140 | Serve him right, I'm glad of it!

00:58:04.460 | What business had he to be married to the princess?"

00:58:06.980 | To hear Scrooge expending all the earnestness of his nature on such subjects, in a most

00:58:10.860 | extraordinary voice between laughing and crying, and to see his heightened and excited face

00:58:15.300 | would have been a surprise to his business friends in the city, indeed.

00:58:18.580 | "There's the parrot!"

00:58:19.780 | Cried Scrooge, green body and yellow tail, with a thing like a lettuce growing out of

00:58:23.140 | the top of his head, "There he is!

00:58:24.900 | Poor Robinson Crusoe!" he called him, when he came home again after sailing round the

00:58:28.820 | island.

00:58:29.820 | "Poor Robin Crusoe!

00:58:30.820 | Where have you been, Robin Crusoe?"

00:58:31.820 | The man thought he was dreaming, but he wasn't, "It was the parrot, you know!

00:58:35.260 | There goes Friday, running for his life through the little creek!

00:58:38.460 | Hello!

00:58:39.460 | Hello!"

00:58:40.460 | Then, with a rapidity of transition very foreign to his usual character, he said in

00:58:43.980 | pity before his former self, "Poor boy!" and cried again.

00:58:49.220 | "I wish…"

00:58:51.660 | Scrooge muttered, putting his hands in his pocket, and looking about him after drying

00:58:55.900 | his eyes with his cuff.

00:58:57.980 | "But it's too late now."

00:59:00.060 | "What is the matter?" asked the spirit.

00:59:03.660 | "Nothing," said Scrooge.

00:59:06.260 | "Nothing.

00:59:07.340 | There was a boy singing a Christmas carol at my door last night.

00:59:10.420 | I should like to have given him something, that's all."

00:59:13.500 | The ghost smiled thoughtfully and waved its hand, saying as it did so, "Let us see another

00:59:19.460 | Christmas."

00:59:21.660 | Scrooge's former self grew larger at the words, and the room became a little darker

00:59:27.740 | and more dirty.

00:59:29.580 | The panels shrunk, the windows cracked, fragments of plaster fell out of the ceiling, and the

00:59:37.180 | naked laths were shown instead.

00:59:39.620 | But how all this was brought about Scrooge knew no more than you do.

00:59:43.220 | He only knew that it was quite correct, that everything had happened so, that there he

00:59:47.220 | was, alone, again, when all the other boys had gone home for the jolly holidays.

00:59:54.440 | He was not reading now, but walking up and down despairingly.

01:00:00.700 | Scrooge looked at the ghost, and with a mournful shaking of his head, glanced anxiously towards

01:00:05.300 | the door.

01:00:06.780 | It opened, and a little girl, much younger than the boy, came darting in and putting

01:00:10.320 | her arms about his neck, and often kissing him, addressed him as her "Dear, dear brother,

01:00:14.780 | I have come to bring you home, dear brother," said the child, clapping her tiny hands and

01:00:18.780 | bending down to laugh, "to bring you home, home, home."

01:00:21.780 | "Home, little fan?" returned the boy.

01:00:23.820 | "Yes," said the child, brimful of glee, "home for good and all, home forever and ever.

01:00:29.780 | Father is so much kinder than he used to be.

01:00:31.740 | That home's like heaven.

01:00:33.140 | He spoke so gently to me one dear night when I was going to bed that I was not afraid to

01:00:36.980 | ask him once more if you might come home.

01:00:40.740 | And he said, 'Yes, you should,' and sent me and a coach to bring you.

01:00:44.700 | And you're to be a man!" said the child, opening her eyes, "and are never to come back here.

01:00:49.340 | But first we're to be together all the Christmas long and have the merriest time in all the

01:00:53.140 | world."

01:00:54.140 | "You are quite a woman, little fan!" exclaimed the boy.

01:00:57.580 | She clapped her hands and laughed, and tried to touch his head, but being too little, laughed

01:01:02.100 | again and stood on tiptoe to embrace him.

01:01:04.860 | Then she began to drag him in her childish eagerness towards the door, and he, nothing

01:01:09.260 | loath to go, accompanied her.

01:01:11.300 | A terrible voice in the hall cried, "Bring down Master Scrooge's box there!"

01:01:15.900 | And in the hall appeared the schoolmaster himself, who glared on Master Scrooge with

01:01:19.700 | a ferocious condescension, and threw him into a dreadful state of mind by shaking hands

01:01:24.140 | with him.

01:01:25.140 | He then conveyed him and his sister into the various old well of a shivering best parlor

01:01:29.380 | that ever was seen, where the maps upon the wall and the celestial and terrestrial globes

01:01:34.020 | in the windows were waxy with cold.

01:01:36.700 | Here he produced a decanter of curiously light wine and a block of curiously heavy cake,

01:01:42.900 | and administered installments of those dainties to the young people, at the same time sending

01:01:46.920 | out a meager servant to offer a glass of something to the postboy, who answered that he thanked

01:01:52.140 | the gentleman, but if it was the same tap as he had tasted before, he had rather not.

01:01:58.520 | Master Scrooge's trunk being by this time tied on to the top of the chaise, the children

01:02:03.140 | bade the schoolmaster good-bye right willingly, and getting into it drove gaily down the garden

01:02:07.820 | sweep, the quick wheels dashing the hoar frost and snow from off the dark leaves of the evergreens

01:02:12.840 | like spray.

01:02:14.540 | "Always a delicate creature, whom a breath might have withered," said the ghost, "but

01:02:19.700 | she had a large heart."

01:02:21.100 | "So she had!" cried Scrooge.

01:02:22.980 | "You're right, I will not gainsay its spirit, God forbid!"

01:02:26.180 | "She died a woman," said the ghost, "and had, as I think, children."

01:02:30.100 | "One child," Scrooge returned.

01:02:32.500 | "True," said the ghost, "your nephew."

01:02:36.500 | Scrooge seemed uneasy in his mind, and answered briefly, "Yes."

01:02:42.740 | Although they had but that moment left the school behind them, they were now in the busy

01:02:46.620 | thoroughfares of a city, where shadowy passengers passed and repassed, where shadowy carts and

01:02:52.080 | coaches battled for the way, and all the strife and tumult of a real city were.

01:02:57.100 | It was made plain enough by the dressing of the shops that hereto it was Christmas time

01:03:01.140 | again, but it was evening and the streets were lighted up.

01:03:04.100 | The ghost stopped at a certain warehouse door and asked Scrooge if he knew it.

01:03:08.140 | "Know it," said Scrooge, "was I apprenticed here?"

01:03:11.100 | They went in.

01:03:12.100 | At sight of an old gentleman in a Welsh wig, sitting behind such a high desk, that if he

01:03:15.980 | had been two inches taller he must have knocked his head against the ceiling, Scrooge cried

01:03:19.840 | in great excitement, "Why, it's old Fezziwig!

01:03:22.620 | Bless his heart, it's Fezziwig alive again!"

01:03:25.100 | Old Fezziwig laid down his pen and looked up at the clock, which pointed to the hour

01:03:28.460 | of seven.

01:03:29.460 | He rubbed his hands, adjusted his capacious waistcoat, laughed all over himself from his

01:03:33.780 | shoes to his organ of benevolence, and called out in a comfortable, oily, rich, fat, jovial

01:03:39.380 | voice, "Yo-ho there!

01:03:41.620 | Ebenezer!

01:03:42.620 | Dick!"

01:03:43.620 | Scrooge's former self, now grown a young man, came briskly in, accompanied by his fellow

01:03:47.780 | apprentice.

01:03:48.780 | "Dick Wilkins to be sure," said Scrooge to the ghost.

01:03:51.060 | "Bless me, yes, there he is!

01:03:52.620 | He was very much attached to me, was Dick.

01:03:54.820 | Poor Dick, dear, dear."

01:03:56.420 | "Yo-ho, my boys," said Fezziwig.

01:03:58.260 | "No more work tonight, Christmas Eve.

01:04:00.580 | Dick, Christmas, Ebenezer, let's have the shutters up," cried old Fezziwig with a sharp

01:04:05.140 | clap of his hands, "before a man can say Jack Robinson!"

01:04:08.580 | You wouldn't believe how those two fellows went at it.

01:04:11.220 | They charged into the street with the shutters.

01:04:12.940 | "One, two, three," had 'em up in their places.

01:04:15.140 | "Four, five, six," barred 'em and pinned 'em.

01:04:17.300 | "Seven, eight, nine," and came back before you could have got to twelve, panting like

01:04:20.620 | racehorses.

01:04:21.620 | "Hee-lee-ho!" cried old Fezziwig, skipping down from the high desk with wonderful agility.

01:04:25.740 | "Clear away, my lads, and let's have lots of room here.

01:04:28.300 | Hee-lee-ho, Dick, drop it, Ebenezer."

01:04:30.420 | Clear away.

01:04:31.420 | There was nothing they wouldn't have cleared away or couldn't have cleared away with old

01:04:33.500 | Fezziwig looking on.

01:04:34.820 | It was done in a minute.

01:04:35.980 | Every movable was packed off, as if it were dismissed from public life forevermore.

01:04:39.580 | The floor was swept in water, the lamps were trimmed, fuel was heaped upon the fire, and

01:04:42.780 | the warehouse was as snug and warm and dry and bright a ballroom as you would desire

01:04:47.540 | to see upon a winter's night.

01:04:49.340 | In came a fiddler with a music book and went up to the lofty desk and made an orchestra

01:04:52.620 | of it and tuned like fifty stomachaches.

01:04:55.420 | In came Mrs. Fezziwig, one vast, substantial smile.

01:04:59.260 | In came the three Miss Fezziwigs, beaming and lovable.

01:05:02.860 | In came the six young followers, whose hearts they broke.

01:05:05.900 | In came all the young men and women employed in the business.

01:05:08.780 | In came the housemaid with her cousin, the baker.

01:05:11.580 | In came the cook with her brother's particular friend, the milkman.

01:05:14.820 | In came the boy from over the way, who was suspected of not having bored enough from

01:05:18.180 | his master, trying to hide himself behind the girl from next door, but one who was proved

01:05:23.020 | to have had her ears pulled by her mistress.

01:05:25.420 | And they all came, one after another, some shyly, some boldly, some gracefully, some

01:05:30.220 | awkwardly, some pushing, some pooling.

01:05:32.820 | In they all came, any how and every how.

01:05:36.180 | Away they all went, twenty couple at once, hands half round and back again the other

01:05:39.780 | way, down the middle and up again, round and round in various stages of affectionate grouping.

01:05:44.820 | Old top couple always turning up in the wrong place, new top couple starting off again as

01:05:48.420 | soon as they got there, all top couples at last and not a bottom one to help them.

01:05:52.820 | When this result was brought about, old Fezziwig, clapping his hands to stop the dance, cried

01:05:56.940 | out, "Well done!"

01:05:57.940 | And the fiddler plunged his hot face into a pot of porter, especially provided for that

01:06:02.140 | purpose.

01:06:03.140 | But scorning rest upon his reappearance, he instantly began again, though there were no

01:06:08.380 | dancers yet, as if the other fiddler had been carried home, exhausted on the shutter, and

01:06:13.140 | he were a brand new man, resolved to beat him out of sight or perish.

01:06:17.860 | There were more dances, and there were forfeits, and more dances, and there was cake, and there

01:06:22.220 | was negus, and there was a great piece of cold roast, and there was a great piece of

01:06:25.940 | cold boiled, and there were mince pies and plenty of beer.

01:06:29.220 | But the great effect of the evening came after the roast and boiled, when the fiddler, an

01:06:32.980 | artful dog, mine, the sort of man who knew his business better than you or I could have

01:06:36.660 | told it him, struck up Sir Roger de Coverley.

01:06:39.700 | Then old Fezziwig stood out to dance with Mrs. Fezziwig, top couple too, with a good

01:06:43.420 | stiff piece of work cut out for them, three or four and twenty pair of partners, people

01:06:47.220 | who were not to be trifled with, people who would dance and had no notion of walking.

01:06:51.540 | But if they had been twice as many, ah, four times, old Fezziwig would have been a match

01:06:55.020 | for them, and so would Mrs. Fezziwig.

01:06:57.460 | As to her, she was worthy to be his partner in every sense of the term.

01:07:02.300 | If that's not high praise, tell me higher and I'll use it.

01:07:05.140 | A positive light appeared to issue from Fezziwig's calves.

01:07:08.880 | They shone in every part of the dance like moons.

01:07:12.260 | You couldn't have predicted at any given time what would have become of them next.

01:07:15.780 | And when old Fezziwig and Mrs. Fezziwig had gone all through the dance, advance and retire,

01:07:19.660 | both hands to your partner, bow and curtsy, corkscrew, thread the needle, and back again

01:07:22.780 | to your place, Fezziwig cut, cut so deftly that he appeared to wink with his legs and

01:07:27.460 | came upon his feet again without a stagger.

01:07:30.740 | When the clock struck eleven, this domestic ball broke up.

01:07:34.740 | Mr. and Mrs. Fezziwig took their stations, one on either side of the door, and shaking

01:07:38.160 | hands with every person individually as he or she went out, wished him or her a Merry

01:07:42.700 | Christmas.

01:07:43.780 | When everybody had retired but the two prentices, they did the same to them, and thus the cheerful

01:07:48.140 | voices died away and the lads were left to their beds, which were under a counter in

01:07:51.740 | the back shop.

01:07:53.480 | During the whole of this time, Scrooge had acted like a man out of his wits.

01:07:58.580 | His heart and soul were in the scene and with his former self.

01:08:01.940 | He corroborated everything, remembered everything, enjoyed everything, and underwent the strangest

01:08:07.980 | agitation.

01:08:09.060 | It was not until now, when the bright faces of his former self and Dick returned from

01:08:12.900 | them, that he remembered the ghost and became conscious that it was looking full upon him,

01:08:16.940 | while the light upon its head burnt very clear.

01:08:19.220 | "A small matter," said the ghost, "to make these silly folks so full of gratitude."

01:08:24.180 | "Small!" echoed Scrooge.

01:08:26.740 | The spirit signed to him to listen to the two apprentices, who were pouring out their

01:08:30.140 | hearts in praise of Fezziwig, and when he had done so said, "Why, is it not?

01:08:35.800 | He has spent but a few pounds of your mortal money, three or four perhaps.

01:08:40.300 | Is that so much that he deserves this praise?"

01:08:42.540 | "It isn't that," said Scrooge, heated by the remark, and speaking unconsciously like

01:08:46.240 | his former, not his latter self.

01:08:47.900 | "It isn't that, spirit.

01:08:49.500 | He has the power to render us happy or unhappy, to make our service light or burdensome, a

01:08:56.340 | pleasure or a toil.

01:08:58.540 | Say that his power lies in words and looks, in things so slight and insignificant that

01:09:05.380 | it is impossible to add and count them up.

01:09:07.420 | What then?

01:09:08.420 | The happiness he gives is quite as great as if it cost a fortune."

01:09:13.580 | He felt the spirit's glance and stopped.

01:09:16.500 | "What is the matter?" asked the ghost.

01:09:20.140 | "Nothing particular," said Scrooge.

01:09:22.780 | "Something, I think?"

01:09:24.980 | "No," said Scrooge.

01:09:27.580 | "No.

01:09:28.740 | I should like to be able to say a word or two to my clerk just now.

01:09:32.980 | That's all."

01:09:34.620 | His former self turned down the lamps as he gave utterance to the wish, and Scrooge and

01:09:39.220 | the ghost again stood side by side in the open air.

01:09:42.500 | "My time grows short," observed the spirit.

01:09:46.220 | "Quick!"

01:09:47.220 | This was not addressed to Scrooge or to anyone whom he could see, but it produced an immediate

01:09:50.940 | effect, for again Scrooge saw himself.

01:09:54.300 | He was older now, a man in the prime of life.

01:09:58.120 | His face had not the harsh and rigid lines of later years, but it had begun to wear the

01:10:03.620 | signs of care and avarice.

01:10:06.920 | There was an eager, greedy, restless motion in the eye, which showed the passion that

01:10:13.860 | had taken root and where the shadow of the growing tree would fall.

01:10:18.880 | He was not alone, but sat by the side of a fair young girl in a morning dress, in whose

01:10:25.200 | eyes there were tears which sparkled in the light that shone out of the ghost of Christmas

01:10:30.020 | past.

01:10:31.020 | "It matters little," she said softly.

01:10:34.220 | "To you, very little.

01:10:36.560 | Your idol has displaced me, and if it can cheer and comfort you in time to come, as

01:10:41.380 | I would have tried to do, I have no just cause to grieve."

01:10:45.200 | "What idol has displaced you?" he rejoined.

01:10:48.880 | "A golden one."

01:10:50.760 | "This is the even-handed dealing of the world," he said.

01:10:54.240 | "There is nothing on which it is so hard as poverty, and there is nothing it professes

01:10:58.720 | to condemn with such severity as the pursuit of wealth."

01:11:01.640 | "You fear the world too much," she answered gently.

01:11:06.160 | "All your other hopes have merged into the hope of being beyond the chance of its sordid

01:11:11.960 | reproach.

01:11:12.960 | I have seen your nobler aspirations fall off, one by one, until the master-passion, gain,

01:11:22.600 | engrosses you, have I not?"

01:11:24.960 | "What then?" he retorted.

01:11:26.480 | "Even if I have grown so much wiser, what then?

01:11:29.040 | I am not changed towards you."

01:11:31.720 | She shook her head.

01:11:33.720 | "Am I?"

01:11:35.480 | "Your contract is an old one.

01:11:37.960 | It was made when we were both poor, and content to be so, until in good season we could improve

01:11:44.180 | our worldly fortune by our patient industry.

01:11:48.120 | You are changed.

01:11:50.080 | When it was made, you were another man."

01:11:53.280 | "I was a boy," he said impatiently.

01:11:56.160 | "Your own feeling tells you that you were not what you are," she returned.

01:12:01.560 | "I am."

01:12:03.160 | "That which promised happiness when we were one in heart is fraught with misery now that

01:12:09.840 | we are two.

01:12:11.720 | How often and how keenly I have thought of this, I will not say.

01:12:15.580 | It is enough that I have thought of it, and can release you."

01:12:20.560 | "Have I ever sought release?"

01:12:22.840 | "In words, no.

01:12:25.040 | Never."

01:12:26.040 | "In what, then?"

01:12:27.040 | "In a changed nature, in an altered spirit, in another atmosphere of life, another hope

01:12:35.340 | as its great end, in everything that made my love of any worth or value in your sight.

01:12:41.900 | If this had never been between us," said the girl, looking mildly but with steadiness upon

01:12:48.240 | him, "tell me, would you seek me out and try to win me now?"

01:12:54.120 | "Ah, no."

01:12:55.960 | He seemed to yield to the justice of this supposition in spite of himself.

01:13:00.160 | But he said with a struggle, "You think not."

01:13:03.160 | "I would gladly think otherwise if I could," she answered.

01:13:06.640 | "Heaven knows!

01:13:07.840 | When I have learned a truth like this I know how strong and irresistible it must be.

01:13:12.760 | But if you were free today, tomorrow, yesterday, can even I believe that you would choose a

01:13:18.160 | dowerless girl, you who in your very confidence with her weigh everything by gain, or choosing

01:13:26.880 | her if for a moment you were false enough to your one guiding principle to do so, do

01:13:32.240 | I not know that your repentance and regret would surely follow?

01:13:37.560 | I do, and I release you, with a full heart, for the love of him you once were."

01:13:46.160 | She was about to speak, but with her head turned away from him she resumed, "You may,

01:13:51.880 | the memory of what is past half makes me hope you will, have pain in this, a very, very

01:13:59.120 | brief time, and you will dismiss the recollection of it gladly as an unprofitable dream, from

01:14:06.960 | which it happened well that you awoke.

01:14:09.560 | May you be happy in the life you have chosen."

01:14:13.200 | She left him and they parted.

01:14:15.880 | "Spirit," said Scrooge, "show me no more, conduct me home, why do you delight

01:14:20.760 | to torture me?"

01:14:22.000 | "One shadow more," exclaimed the ghost.

01:14:24.720 | "No more!" cried Scrooge, "no more, I don't wish to see it, show me no more!"

01:14:29.960 | But the relentless ghost pinioned him in both his arms and forced him to observe what happened

01:14:35.080 | next.

01:14:36.080 | They were in another scene and place, a room not very large or handsome, but full of comfort,

01:14:43.160 | near to the winter fire sat a beautiful young girl, so like that last that Scrooge believed

01:14:49.160 | it was the same until he saw her, now a comely matron sitting opposite her daughter.

01:14:56.160 | The noise in this room was perfectly tumultuous, for there were more children there than Scrooge

01:15:02.600 | in his agitated state of mind could count, and unlike the celebrated herd in the poem,

01:15:07.500 | they were not forty children conducting themselves like one, but every child was conducting itself

01:15:13.840 | like forty.

01:15:15.560 | The consequences were uproarious beyond belief, but no one seemed to care, on the contrary,

01:15:21.000 | the mother and daughter laughed heartily and enjoyed it very much, and the latter, soon

01:15:25.720 | beginning to mingle in the sports, got pillaged by the young brigands most ruthlessly.

01:15:31.300 | What would I not have given to be one of them?

01:15:33.580 | Though I never could have been so rude, no, no, I wouldn't for the wealth of all the

01:15:37.720 | world have crushed that braided hair and torn it down, and for the precious little shoe

01:15:42.560 | I wouldn't have plucked it off, God bless my soul, to save my life.

01:15:46.460 | As to measuring her waist in sport, as they did, bold young brood, I couldn't have done

01:15:51.240 | it, I should have expected my arm to have grown round it for a punishment and never

01:15:55.160 | come straight again, and yet I should have dearly liked Ione to have touched her lips,

01:16:01.940 | to have questioned her that she might have opened them, to have looked upon the lashes

01:16:06.000 | of her downcast eyes and never raised a blush, to have let loose waves of hair, an inch of

01:16:11.740 | which would be a keepsake beyond price.

01:16:14.460 | In short, I should have liked, I do confess, to have had the lightest license of a child,

01:16:20.960 | and yet to have been man enough to know its value.

01:16:23.680 | But now a knocking at the door was heard, and such a rush immediately ensued that she,

01:16:27.900 | with laughing face and plundered dress, was borne towards it, the center of a flushed

01:16:32.980 | and boisterous group, just in time to greet the father, who came home attended by a man

01:16:37.820 | laden with Christmas toys and presents.

01:16:40.980 | Then the shouting and the struggling and the onslaught that was made on the defenseless

01:16:45.220 | porter, the scaling him with chairs for ladders to dive into his pockets, despoil him of brown

01:16:51.540 | paper parcels, hold on tight by his cravat, hug him round his neck, pummel his back and

01:16:56.740 | kick his legs in irrepressible affection, the shouts of wonder and delight with which

01:17:01.540 | the development of every package was received, the terrible announcement that the baby had

01:17:06.380 | been taken in the act of putting a doll's frying pan into his mouth and was more than

01:17:10.340 | suspected of having swallowed a fictitious turkey glued on a wooden platter, the immense

01:17:15.180 | relief of finding this a false alarm, the joy and gratitude and ecstasy, they are all

01:17:22.380 | indescribable alike.

01:17:24.660 | It is enough that by degrees the children and their emotions got out of the parlor and

01:17:29.140 | by one stare at a time up to the top of the house where they went to bed, and so subsided.

01:17:36.220 | And now Scrooge looked on more attentively than ever, when the master of the house, having

01:17:42.300 | his daughter leaning fondly on him, sat down with her and her mother at his own fireside,

01:17:48.260 | and when he thought that such another creature quite as graceful and as full of promise might

01:17:52.740 | have called him father, and been a springtime in the haggard winter of his life, his sight

01:18:00.860 | grew very dim indeed.

01:18:02.860 | "Belle," said the husband, turning to his wife with a smile, "I saw an old friend of

01:18:06.980 | yours this afternoon."

01:18:07.980 | "Who was it?"

01:18:09.780 | "Guess."

01:18:10.780 | "How can I?

01:18:11.780 | Tut, don't I know?" she added in the same breath, laughing as he laughed.

01:18:15.140 | "Mr. Scrooge."

01:18:16.140 | "Mr. Scrooge it was.

01:18:17.660 | I passed his office window, and as it was not shut up and he had a candle inside, I

01:18:21.980 | could scarcely help seeing him.

01:18:23.860 | His partner lies upon the point of death, I hear, and there he sat alone, quite alone

01:18:29.780 | in the world, I do believe."

01:18:30.940 | "Spirit," said Scrooge in a broken voice, "remove me from this place."

01:18:36.780 | "I told you these were shadows of the things that have been," said the ghost, "that

01:18:43.020 | they are what they are.

01:18:44.100 | Do not blame me."

01:18:45.260 | "Remove me!"

01:18:46.540 | Scrooge exclaimed.

01:18:47.540 | "I cannot bear it!"

01:18:48.540 | The light of the candle turned upon the ghost, and seeing that it looked upon him with a

01:18:51.020 | face in which, in some strange way, there were fragments of all the faces it had shown

01:18:56.300 | him, wrestled with it, "Leave me!

01:18:58.780 | Take me back!

01:18:59.780 | Haunt me no longer!"

01:19:01.140 | In the struggle, if that can be called a struggle, in which the ghost, with no visible resistance

01:19:05.580 | on its own part, was undisturbed by any effort of its adversary, Scrooge observed that its

01:19:10.500 | light was burning high and bright, and dimly connecting that with its influence over him,

01:19:15.820 | he seized the extinguisher cap and by a sudden action pressed it down upon its head.

01:19:21.660 | The spirit dropped beneath it, so that the extinguisher covered its whole form, but though

01:19:26.420 | Scrooge pressed it down with all his force, he could not hide the light which streamed

01:19:31.340 | from under it in an unbroken flood upon the ground.

01:19:35.020 | He was conscious of being exhausted and overcome by an irresistible drowsiness, and further

01:19:41.060 | of being in his own bedroom.

01:19:42.980 | He gave the cap a parting squeeze, in which his hand relaxed and had barely time to reel

01:19:49.180 | to bed before he sank into a heavy sleep.

01:19:56.820 | Stave 3, the second of the three spirits.

01:20:00.980 | Awaking in the middle of a prodigiously tough snore, and sitting up in bed to get his thoughts

01:20:06.660 | together, Scrooge had no occasion to be told that the bell was again upon the stroke of

01:20:11.260 | one.

01:20:12.260 | He felt that he was restored to consciousness in the right nick of time for the especial

01:20:16.500 | purpose of holding a conference with a second messenger dispatched to him through Jacob

01:20:21.260 | Marley's intervention.

01:20:23.220 | But finding that he turned uncomfortably cold when he began to wonder which of his curtains

01:20:29.140 | this new specter would draw back, he put them every one aside with his own hands and lying

01:20:35.020 | down again established a sharp lookout all round the bed, for he wished to challenge

01:20:40.420 | the spirit on the moment of its appearance and did not wish to be taken by surprise and

01:20:44.940 | made nervous.

01:20:47.020 | Gentlemen of the free and easy sort, who plume themselves on being acquainted with a move

01:20:52.300 | or two and being usually equal to the time of day, express the wide range of their capacity

01:20:57.840 | for adventure by observing that they are good for anything from pitch and toss to manslaughter,

01:21:04.820 | between which opposite extremes no doubt there lies a tolerably wide and comprehensive range

01:21:09.360 | of subjects.

01:21:10.900 | Without venturing for Scrooge quite as heartily as this, I don't mind calling on you to

01:21:15.700 | believe that he was ready for a good broad field of strange appearances and that nothing

01:21:21.080 | between a baby and rhinoceros would have astonished him very much.

01:21:26.700 | Now being prepared for almost anything, he was not by any means prepared for nothing.

01:21:34.300 | And consequently when the bell struck one and no shape appeared, he was taken with a

01:21:38.540 | violent fit of trembling.

01:21:41.780 | Five minutes, ten minutes, a quarter of an hour went by yet nothing came.

01:21:48.060 | All this time he lay upon his bed, the very core and center of a blaze of ruddy light

01:21:52.940 | which streamed upon it when the clock proclaimed the hour in which being only light was more

01:21:58.180 | alarming than a dozen ghosts, as he was powerless to make out what it meant or would be at and

01:22:04.540 | was sometimes apprehensive that he might be at that very moment an interesting case of

01:22:08.780 | spontaneous combustion without having the consolation of knowing it.

01:22:13.300 | At last, however, he began to think, as you or I would have thought at first, for it is

01:22:17.820 | always the person not in the predicament who knows what ought to have been done in it and

01:22:22.340 | would unquestionably have done it too.

01:22:24.540 | At last, I say, he began to think that the source and secret of this ghostly light might

01:22:28.620 | be in the adjoining room, from whence, on further tracing it, it seemed to shine.

01:22:34.700 | This idea taking full possession of his mind, he got up softly and shuffled in his slippers

01:22:39.220 | to the door.

01:22:40.560 | The moment Scrooge's hand was on the lock, a strange voice called him by his name and

01:22:44.260 | bade him enter.

01:22:46.620 | He obeyed.

01:22:48.420 | It was his own room.

01:22:51.020 | There was no doubt about that, but it had undergone a surprising transformation.

01:22:55.100 | The walls and ceilings were so hung with living green that it looked a perfect grove, from

01:23:01.420 | every part of which bright, gleaming berries glistened.

01:23:05.120 | The crisp leaves of holly, mistletoe, and ivy reflected back the light, as if so many

01:23:10.720 | little mirrors had been scattered there, and such a mighty blaze went roaring up the chimneys

01:23:15.460 | as that dull petrification of a hearth had never known in Scrooge's time, or Marley's,

01:23:20.860 | or for many and many a winter season gone.

01:23:24.580 | Leaped up on the floor to form a kind of throne were turkeys, geese, game, poultry, brawn,

01:23:31.940 | great joints of meat, sucking pigs, long wreaths of sausages, mince pies, plum puddings, barrels

01:23:38.380 | of oysters, red-hot chestnuts, cherry-cheeked apples, juicy oranges, luscious pears, immense

01:23:45.000 | twelfth cakes, and seething bowls of punch that made the chamber dim with their delicious

01:23:51.220 | steam.

01:23:52.220 | In easy state upon this couch there sat a jolly giant, glorious to see, who bore a glowing

01:23:59.260 | torch in shape not unlike plenty's horn, and held it up high up to shed its light on

01:24:04.740 | Scrooge as he came peeping round the door.

01:24:07.100 | "Come in!" exclaimed the ghost.

01:24:09.140 | "Come in and know me better, man!"

01:24:11.860 | Scrooge entered timidly and hung his head before the spirit.

01:24:14.780 | He was not the dogged Scrooge he had been, and though the spirit's eyes were clear and

01:24:19.980 | kind, he did not like to meet them.

01:24:22.820 | "I am the ghost of Christmas present," said the spirit.

01:24:26.340 | "Look upon me!"

01:24:28.380 | Scrooge reverently did so.

01:24:30.140 | It was clothed in one simple green robe, or mantle, bordered with white fur.

01:24:36.500 | This garment hung so loosely on the figure that its capacious breast was bare, as if

01:24:41.420 | disdaining to be warded or concealed by any artifice.

01:24:45.500 | Its feet, observable beneath the ample folds of the garment, were also bare, and on a

01:24:49.820 | head it wore no other covering than a holly wreath, set here and there with shining icicles.

01:24:55.940 | Its dark brown curls were long and free, free as its genial face, its sparkling eye, its

01:25:02.940 | open hand, its cheery voice, its unconstrained demeanor, and its joyful air.

01:25:07.860 | Girded round its middle was an antique scabbard, but no sword was in it, and the ancient sheath

01:25:13.260 | was eaten up with rust.

01:25:14.980 | "You have never seen the like of me before!" exclaimed the spirit.

01:25:19.100 | "Never!"

01:25:20.100 | Scrooge made the answer to it.

01:25:21.500 | "Have never walked forth with the younger members of my family, meaning, for I am very

01:25:26.180 | young, my elder brothers born in these later years," pursued the phantom.

01:25:30.340 | "I don't think I have," said Scrooge.

01:25:32.660 | "I'm afraid I have not.

01:25:34.300 | Have you had many brothers, spirit?"

01:25:36.020 | "More than 1,800," said the ghost.

01:25:39.020 | "A tremendous family to provide for," muttered Scrooge.

01:25:43.340 | The ghost of Christmas present rose.

01:25:45.420 | "Spirit," said Scrooge submissively.

01:25:47.500 | "Conduct me where you will.

01:25:49.460 | I went forth last night on compulsion, and I learnt a lesson which is working now.

01:25:53.780 | Tonight, if you have aught to teach me, let me profit by it."

01:25:57.780 | "Touch my robe!"

01:25:59.820 | Scrooge did as he was told and held it fast.

01:26:02.260 | Holly, mistletoe, red berries, ivy, turkeys, geese, game, poultry, brawn, meat, pigs, sausages,

01:26:08.740 | oysters, pies, puddings, fruit, and punch all vanished instantly.

01:26:13.020 | So did the room, the fire, the ready glow, the hour of night, and they stood in the city

01:26:16.700 | streets on Christmas morning where, for the weather was severe, the people made a rough

01:26:21.660 | but brisk and not unpleasant kind of music, in scraping the snow from the pavement in

01:26:26.420 | front of their dwellings and from the tops of their houses, whence it was mad delight

01:26:30.180 | to the boys to see it come plumping down into the road below and splitting into artificial

01:26:34.800 | little snowstorms.

01:26:37.020 | The house fronts looked black enough and the windows blacker, contrasting with the smooth

01:26:42.500 | white sheet of snow upon the roofs, and with the dirtier snow upon the ground, which last

01:26:47.540 | deposit had been plowed up in deep furrows by the heavy wheels of carts and wagons, furrows

01:26:53.360 | that crossed and recrossed each other hundreds of times where the great streets branched

01:26:58.100 | off and made intricate channels hard to trace in the thick yellow mud and icy water.

01:27:03.980 | The sky was gloomy and the shortest streets were choked up with a dingy mist, half thawed,

01:27:10.940 | half frozen, whose heavier particles descended in a shower of sooty atoms, as if all the

01:27:17.020 | chimneys in Great Britain had by one consent caught fire and were blazing away to their

01:27:21.800 | dear heart's content.

01:27:23.760 | There was nothing very cheerful in the climate or the town, and yet was there an air of cheerfulness

01:27:29.660 | abroad that the clearest summer air and brightest summer sun might have endeavored to diffuse

01:27:35.940 | in vain, for the people who were shoveling away on the housetops were jovial and full

01:27:41.300 | of glee, calling out to one another from the parapets and now and then exchanging a facetious

01:27:46.460 | snowball, better-natured missile far than many a wordy jest, laughing heartily if it

01:27:51.500 | went right and not less heartily if it went wrong.

01:27:54.740 | The poultry shops were still half open and the fruterers were radiant in their glory.

01:27:59.880 | There were great, round, pot-bellied baskets of chestnuts, shaped like the waistcoats of

01:28:04.860 | jolly old gentlemen, lolling at the doors and tumbling out into the street in their

01:28:09.740 | apoplectic opulence.

01:28:11.700 | There were ruddy, brown-faced, broad-girthed Spanish onions, shining in the fatness of

01:28:16.860 | their growth like Spanish friars, and winking from their shelves in wanton slyness at the

01:28:22.700 | girls as they went by, and glanced demurely at the hung-up mistletoe.

01:28:27.600 | There were pears and apples, clustered high in blooming pyramids.

01:28:31.640 | There were bunches of grapes made in the shopkeeper's benevolence to dangle from conspicuous hooks

01:28:37.660 | that people's mouths might water gratis as they passed.

01:28:41.620 | There were piles of filberts, mossy and brown, recalling in their fragrance ancient walks

01:28:47.100 | among the woods and pleasant shufflings ankle-deep through withered leaves.

01:28:51.920 | There were Norfolk biffins, squat and swarthy, setting off the yellow of the oranges and

01:28:56.860 | lemons and, in the great compactness of their juicy persons, urgently entreating and beseeching

01:29:02.860 | to be carried home in paper bags and eaten after dinner.

01:29:06.340 | The very gold and silver fish set forth among these choice fruits in a bowl, though members

01:29:11.880 | of a dull and stagnant-blooded race appeared to know that there was something going on

01:29:16.820 | and to a fish went gasping round and round their little world in slow and passionless

01:29:23.060 | excitement.

01:29:24.060 | The grocers, oh, the grocers, nearly closed with perhaps two shutters down or one, but

01:29:31.180 | through those gaps such glimpses.

01:29:33.820 | It was not alone that the scales descending on the counter made a merry sound, or that

01:29:38.100 | the twine and roller parted company so briskly, or that the canisters were rattled up and

01:29:42.740 | down like juggling tricks, or even that the blended scents of tea and coffee were so grateful

01:29:47.740 | to the nose, or even that the raisins were so plentiful and rare, the almonds so extremely

01:29:53.140 | light, the sticks of cinnamon so long and straight, the other spices so delicious, the

01:29:58.460 | candied fruit so caked and spotted with molten sugar as to make the coldest lookers on feel

01:30:03.380 | faint and subsequently bilious.

01:30:06.580 | Nor was it that the figs were moist and pulpy, or that the French plums blushed in modest

01:30:12.500 | tartness from their highly decorated boxes, or that everything was good to eat and in

01:30:17.020 | its Christmas dress, but the customers were all so hurried and so eager in the hopeful

01:30:21.740 | promise of the day that they tumbled up against each other at the door, crashing their wicker

01:30:26.380 | baskets wildly and left their purchases upon the counter, and came running back to fetch

01:30:30.620 | them, and committed hundreds of the like mistakes in the best humor possible, while the grocer

01:30:35.820 | and his people were so frank and fresh that the polished hearts with which they fastened

01:30:40.100 | their aprons behind might have been their own worn outside for general inspection and

01:30:45.980 | for Christmas dolls to peck at it if they chose.

01:30:49.460 | But soon the steeples called good people all to church and chapel, and away they came,

01:30:54.940 | flocking through the streets in their best clothes and with their gayest faces, and at

01:30:59.380 | the same time there emerged from scores of by-streets, lanes, and nameless turnings innumerable

01:31:05.820 | people carrying their dinners to the baker's shops.

01:31:09.140 | The sight of these poor revelers appeared to interest the spirit very much, for he stood

01:31:13.420 | with Scrooge beside him in a baker's doorway, and taking off the covers as their bearers

01:31:18.260 | passed, sprinkled incense on their dinners from his torch.

01:31:21.940 | And it was a very uncommon kind of torch, for once or twice, when there were angry words

01:31:26.500 | between some dinner carriers who had jostled each other, he shed a few drops of water on

01:31:31.160 | them from it, and their good humor was restored directly, for they said it was a shame to

01:31:35.600 | quarrel upon Christmas Day.

01:31:37.620 | And so it was.

01:31:38.980 | God love it, so it was.

01:31:41.420 | In time the bells ceased, and the bakers were shut up, and yet there was a genial shadowing

01:31:47.220 | forth of all these dinners, and the progress of their cooking, in the thawed blotch of

01:31:52.260 | wet above each baker's oven, where the pavement smoked as if its stones were cooking too.

01:31:58.860 | "Is there a peculiar flavor in what you sprinkle from your torch?" asked Scrooge.

01:32:04.540 | "There is.

01:32:05.940 | My own."

01:32:06.940 | "Would it apply to any kind of dinner on this day?" asked Scrooge.

01:32:10.860 | "To any kindly given.

01:32:13.180 | To a poor one most."

01:32:14.580 | "Why, to a poor one most?"

01:32:17.140 | asked Scrooge.

01:32:18.300 | "Because it needs it most."

01:32:20.180 | "Spirit," said Scrooge after a moment's thought, "I wonder you, of all the beings

01:32:27.580 | in the many worlds about us, should desire to cramp these people's opportunities of

01:32:31.660 | innocent enjoyment."

01:32:32.660 | "I," cried the spirit, "you would deprive them of their means of dining every seventh

01:32:38.220 | day, often the only day on which they can be said to dine at all," said Scrooge.

01:32:43.220 | "Wouldn't you?"

01:32:44.900 | "I," cried the spirit, "you seek to close these places on the seventh day," said Scrooge,

01:32:50.860 | "and it comes to the same thing."

01:32:53.100 | "I seek," exclaimed the spirit, "forgive me if I am wrong.

01:32:57.780 | It has been done in your name or at least in that of your family," said Scrooge.

01:33:01.580 | "There are some upon this earth of yours," returned the spirit, "who lay claim to know

01:33:06.520 | us and who do their deeds of passion, pride, ill will, hatred, envy, bigotry, and selfishness

01:33:14.780 | in our name, who are as strange to us and all our kith and kin as if they have never

01:33:20.460 | lived.

01:33:21.460 | Remember that and charge their doings on themselves, not us."

01:33:26.660 | Scrooge promised that he would, and they went on, invisible as they had been before into

01:33:31.740 | the suburbs of the town.

01:33:33.860 | It was a remarkable quality of the ghost, which Scrooge had observed at the baker's,

01:33:38.240 | that notwithstanding his gigantic size, he could accommodate himself to any place with

01:33:42.540 | ease, and that he stood beneath a low roof quite as gracefully and like a supernatural

01:33:47.700 | creature as it was possible he could have done in any lofty hall.

01:33:52.500 | And perhaps it was the pleasure the good spirit had in showing off this power of his, or else

01:33:56.780 | it was his own kind, generous, hearty nature, and his sympathy with all poor men that led

01:34:02.280 | him straight to Scrooge's clerks.

01:34:04.660 | For there he went, and took Scrooge with him, holding to his robe, and on the threshold

01:34:09.660 | of the door the spirit smiled, and stopped to bless Bob Cratchit's dwelling with the

01:34:14.820 | sprinkling of his torch.

01:34:16.760 | Think of that.

01:34:18.100 | Bob had but fifteen, Bob, a week for himself.

01:34:20.780 | He pocketed on Saturdays but fifteen copies of his Christian name, and yet the ghost of

01:34:25.720 | Christmas present blessed his four-roomed house.

01:34:29.960 | Then up rose Mrs. Cratchit, Cratchit's wife, dressed out but poorly in a twice-turned gown,

01:34:35.700 | but brave in ribbons, which are cheap and make a goodly show for six pence.

01:34:39.900 | And she laid the cloth, assisted by Belinda Cratchit, second of her daughters, also brave

01:34:44.820 | in ribbons, while Master Peter Cratchit plunged a fork into the saucepan of potatoes, and

01:34:49.660 | getting the corners of his monstrous shirt collar, Bob's private property conferred

01:34:54.140 | upon his son and heir in honor of the day, into his mouth rejoiced to find himself so

01:34:59.260 | gallantly attired, and yearned to show his linen in the fashionable parks.

01:35:04.640 | And now two smaller Cratchits, boy and girl, came tearing in, screaming that outside the

01:35:08.860 | bakers they had smelt the goose and known it for their own, and basking in luxurious

01:35:14.260 | thoughts of sage and onion, these young Cratchits danced about the table, and exalted Master

01:35:20.060 | Peter Cratchit to the skies, while he, not proud, although his collars nearly choked

01:35:24.660 | him, blew the fire, until the slow potatoes bubbling up, knocked loudly at the saucepan

01:35:29.780 | lid, to be let out and peeled.

01:35:31.700 | "What has ever got your precious father, then?" said Mrs. Cratchit.

01:35:35.380 | "And your brother, Tiny Tim.

01:35:37.220 | And Martha warn't as late last Christmas day by half an hour."

01:35:40.340 | "Here's Martha, mother," said a girl, appearing as she spoke.

01:35:43.460 | "Here's Martha, mother!" cried the two young Cratchits.

01:35:45.900 | "Hurrah!

01:35:46.900 | There is such a goose, Martha!"

01:35:48.740 | "Why, bless your heart alive, my dear!

01:35:50.820 | How late you are!" said Mrs. Cratchit, kissing her a dozen times, and taking off her shawl

01:35:55.220 | and bonnet for her with officious zeal.

01:35:57.900 | "We'd a deal of work to finish up last night," replied the girl, "and had to clear away

01:36:02.340 | this morning, mother."

01:36:03.580 | "Well, never mind, so long as you're come," said Mrs. Cratchit.

01:36:06.380 | "Sit ye down before the fire, my dear, and have a warm.

01:36:09.140 | Lord bless ye!"

01:36:10.140 | "No, no, there's father coming!" cried the two young Cratchits, who were everywhere at

01:36:13.860 | once.

01:36:14.860 | "Hide, Martha, hide!"

01:36:15.860 | So Martha hid herself, and in came Little Bob, the father, with at least three feet

01:36:19.740 | of comforter exclusive of the fringe, hanging down before him, and his threadbare clothes

01:36:24.420 | darned up and brushed to look seasonable, and Tiny Tim upon his shoulder.

01:36:29.100 | Alas, for Tiny Tim he bore a little crutch, and had his limbs supported by an iron frame.

01:36:34.860 | "Why, where's our Martha?" cried Bob Cratchit, looking round.

01:36:38.500 | "Not coming," said Mrs. Cratchit.

01:36:40.580 | "Not coming!" said Bob, with a sudden declension in his high spirits, for he had been Tim's

01:36:45.780 | blood horse all the way from church, and had come home rampant.

01:36:48.980 | "Not coming upon Christmas Day!"

01:36:51.660 | Martha didn't like to see him disappointed, if it were only in jokes, so she came out

01:36:55.060 | prematurely from behind the closet door, and ran into his arms, while the two young Cratchits

01:37:00.020 | hustled Tiny Tim, and bore him off into the wash house, that he might hear the pudding

01:37:03.660 | singing in the copper.

01:37:04.820 | "And how did little Tim behave?" asked Mrs. Cratchit, when she had rallied Bob on his

01:37:09.860 | credulity, and Bob had hugged his daughter to his heart's content.

01:37:13.140 | "As good as gold," said Bob, "and better.

01:37:15.820 | Somehow he gets thoughtful, sitting by himself so much, and thinks the strangest things you

01:37:20.100 | ever heard.

01:37:21.100 | He told me, coming home, that he hoped the people saw him in the church, because he was

01:37:24.460 | a cripple, and it might be pleasant to them to remember upon Christmas Day who made lame

01:37:29.260 | beggars walk and blind men see."

01:37:32.220 | Bob's voice was tremulous when he told them this, and trembled more when he said that

01:37:37.620 | Tiny Tim was growing strong and hearty.

01:37:40.840 | His act of little crutch was heard upon the floor, and back came Tiny Tim before another

01:37:45.740 | word was spoken, escorted by his brother and sister to his stool before the fire, and while

01:37:51.380 | Bob, turning up his cuffs, as if, poor fellow, they were capable of being made more shabby,

01:37:57.740 | compounded some hot mixture in a jug with gin and lemons, and stirred it round and round,

01:38:03.300 | and put it on the hob to simmer.

01:38:05.460 | Master Peter and the two ubiquitous young Cratchits went to fetch the goose, with which

01:38:09.900 | they soon returned in high procession.

01:38:13.060 | Such a bustle ensued that you might have thought a goose, the rarest of all birds, a feathered

01:38:18.300 | phenomenon, to which a black swan was a matter of course, and in truth it was something very

01:38:23.180 | like it in that house.

01:38:24.860 | Mrs. Cratchit made the gravy, ready beforehand in a little saucepan, hissing hot.

01:38:29.700 | Master Peter mashed the potatoes with incredible vigor.

01:38:32.700 | Miss Belinda sweetened up the applesauce.

01:38:35.020 | Martha dusted the hot plates.

01:38:36.900 | Bob took Tiny Tim beside him in a tiny corner at the table.

01:38:39.980 | The two young Cratchits set chairs for everybody, not forgetting themselves, and mounting guard

01:38:44.800 | upon their posts, crammed spoons into their mouths, lest they should shriek for goose

01:38:49.780 | before their turn came to be helped.

01:38:52.380 | At last the dishes were set on and grace was said.

01:38:55.260 | It was succeeded by a breathless pause as Mrs. Cratchit, looking slowly all along the

01:39:01.420 | carving knife, prepared to plunge it in the breast.

01:39:04.900 | But when she did, and when the long expected gush of stuffing issued forth, one murmur

01:39:10.400 | of delight arose all around the board, and even Tiny Tim, excited by the two young Cratchits,

01:39:16.060 | beat on the table with the handle of his knife and feebly cried, "Hurrah!"

01:39:21.020 | There never was such a goose.

01:39:23.100 | Bob said he didn't believe there ever was such a goose cooked.

01:39:26.500 | Its tenderness and flavor, size and cheapness, were the themes of universal admiration.

01:39:32.460 | Eeked out by applesauce and mashed potatoes, it was a sufficient dinner for the whole family

01:39:36.860 | indeed.

01:39:37.860 | As Mrs. Cratchit said with great delight, surveying one small atom of a bone upon the

01:39:41.580 | dish, "They hadn't ate it all at last."

01:39:44.100 | Yet every one had had enough, and the youngest Cratchits in particular were steeped in sage

01:39:48.780 | and onion to the eyebrows.

01:39:51.180 | But now, the plates being changed by Miss Belinda, Mrs. Cratchit left the room alone,

01:39:55.840 | too nervous to bear witness, to take the pudding up and bring it in.

01:39:59.900 | Suppose it should not be done enough.

01:40:01.620 | Suppose it should break in turning out.

01:40:03.460 | Suppose somebody should have got over the wall of the backyard and stolen it while they

01:40:06.740 | were merry with the goose, a supposition at which the two young Cratchits became livid.

01:40:11.140 | All sorts of horrors were supposed.

01:40:13.300 | "Ello!"

01:40:14.300 | A great deal of steam.

01:40:15.660 | The pudding was out of the copper.

01:40:16.940 | A smell like a washing day.

01:40:18.500 | That was the cloth.

01:40:19.620 | A smell like an eating house and the pastry cooks next door to each other with a laundress

01:40:23.660 | next door to that.

01:40:25.220 | That was the pudding.

01:40:26.360 | In half a minute, Mrs. Cratchit entered, flushed but smiling proudly, with the pudding, like

01:40:31.180 | a speckled cannonball, so hard and firm, blazing in half a quarter of ignited brandy and bedite

01:40:38.700 | with Christmas holly stuck into the top.

01:40:41.300 | "Oh, what a wonderful pudding," Bob Cratchit said, and calmly, too, that he regarded it

01:40:45.500 | as the greatest success achieved by Mrs. Cratchit since their marriage.

01:40:50.460 | Mrs. Cratchit said that now the weight was off her mind, she would confess she had had

01:40:54.540 | her doubts about the quantity of flour.

01:40:57.540 | Everybody had something to say about it, but nobody said or thought it was at all a small

01:41:01.940 | pudding for a large family.

01:41:03.980 | It would have been flat heresy to do so.

01:41:06.700 | Any Cratchit would have blushed to hint at such a thing.

01:41:10.500 | At last the dinner was all done, the cloth was cleared, the hearth swept, and the fire

01:41:14.220 | made up, the compound and the jug being tasted and considered perfect.

01:41:18.580 | Apples and oranges were put upon the table and a shovel full of chestnuts on the fire.

01:41:22.780 | Then all the Cratchit family drew round the hearth in what Bob Cratchit called a circle,

01:41:27.100 | meaning half a one, and above Cratchit's elbow stood the family display of glass, two

01:41:31.900 | tumblers and a custard cup without a handle.

01:41:35.020 | These held the hot stuff from the jug, however, as well as golden goblets would have done,

01:41:40.100 | and Bob served it out with beaming looks while the chestnuts on the fire sputtered and cracked

01:41:44.820 | noisily.

01:41:46.300 | Then Bob proposed, "A Merry Christmas to us all, my dears.

01:41:50.180 | God bless us," which all the family re-echoed.

01:41:52.780 | "God bless us, everyone," said Tiny Tim, the last of all.

01:41:57.980 | He sat very close to his father's side upon his little stool.

01:42:01.540 | Bob held his withered little hand in his as if he loved the child and wished to keep him

01:42:05.660 | by his side and dreaded that he might be taken from him.

01:42:08.980 | "Spirit," said Scrooge with an interest he had never felt before, "tell me if Tiny

01:42:13.660 | Tim will live."

01:42:14.660 | "I see a vacant seat," replied the ghost, "in the poor chimney corner and a crutch

01:42:19.340 | without an owner carefully preserved.

01:42:21.860 | If these shadows remain unaltered by the future, the child will die."

01:42:25.820 | "No, no," said Scrooge.

01:42:28.380 | "Oh, no, kind spirit, say he will be spared."

01:42:30.980 | "If these shadows remain unaltered by the future, none other of my race," returned

01:42:37.860 | the ghost, "will find him here.

01:42:40.340 | What then?

01:42:41.340 | If he be like to die, he had better do it and decrease the surplus population."

01:42:47.140 | Scrooge hung his head to hear his own words quoted by the spirit and was overcome with

01:42:51.140 | penitence and grief.

01:42:52.820 | "Man," said the ghost, "if man you be in heart, not adamant, forbear that wicked

01:42:58.620 | Kent until you have discovered what the surplus is and where it is.

01:43:03.500 | Will you decide what men shall live, what men shall die?

01:43:07.540 | It may be that in the sight of heaven you are more worthless and less fit to live than

01:43:12.180 | millions like this poor man's child.

01:43:14.740 | Oh God, to hear the insect on the leaf pronouncing on the too much life among his hungry brothers

01:43:20.740 | in the dust."

01:43:23.980 | Scrooge bent before the ghost's rebuke and trembling cast his eyes upon the ground, but

01:43:31.060 | he raised them speedily on hearing his own name.

01:43:34.660 | "Mr. Scrooge," said Bob, "I'll give you Mr. Scrooge, the founder of the feast."

01:43:40.900 | "The founder of the feast indeed," cried Mrs. Cratchit, reddening.

01:43:44.580 | "I wish I had him here.

01:43:46.220 | I'd give him a piece of my mind to feast upon and I hope he'd have a good appetite

01:43:50.000 | for it."

01:43:51.000 | "My dear," said Bob, "the children, Christmas Day."

01:43:55.020 | "It should be Christmas Day, I'm sure," said she, "on which one drinks the health

01:43:59.340 | of such an odious, stingy, hard, unfeeling man as Mr. Scrooge.

01:44:04.560 | You know he is, Robert.

01:44:05.940 | Nobody knows it better than you do, poor fellow."

01:44:08.100 | "My dear," was Bob's mild answer, "Christmas Day."

01:44:14.260 | "I'll drink his health for your sake and the day's," said Mrs. Cratchit, "not

01:44:19.800 | for his.

01:44:20.800 | Long life to him.

01:44:21.800 | A merry Christmas and a happy New Year.

01:44:23.800 | He'll be very merry and very happy, I have no doubt."

01:44:27.800 | The children drank the toast after her.

01:44:30.300 | It was the first of their proceedings, which had no heartiness.

01:44:34.760 | Tiny Tim drank it last of all, but he didn't care two pence for it.

01:44:40.640 | Scrooge was the ogre of the family.

01:44:43.820 | The mention of his name cast a dark shadow on the party, which was not dispelled for

01:44:49.000 | full five minutes.

01:44:51.780 | After it had passed away, they were ten times merrier than before, from the mere relief

01:44:55.720 | of Scrooge the baleful being done with.

01:44:59.400 | Bob Cratchit told them how he had a situation in his eye for Master Peter, which would bring

01:45:04.480 | in if obtained full five and six pence weekly.

01:45:07.960 | The two young Cratchits laughed tremendously at the idea of Peter as being a man of business,

01:45:12.920 | and Peter himself looking thoughtfully at the fire from between his collars, as if he

01:45:18.040 | were deliberating what particular investments he should favor when he came into the receipt

01:45:22.760 | of that bewildering income.

01:45:24.760 | Martha, who was a poor apprentice at a milliner's, then told them what kind of work she had to

01:45:29.800 | do and how many hours she worked at a stretch, and how she meant to lie abed tomorrow morning

01:45:34.760 | for a good long rest, tomorrow being a holiday she passed at home.

01:45:39.400 | Also how she had seen a countess and a lord some days before, and how the lord was much

01:45:44.760 | about as tall as Peter, at which Peter pulled up his collar so high that you couldn't have

01:45:48.680 | seen his head if you had been there.

01:45:50.880 | All this time the chestnuts in the jug went round and round, and by and by they had a

01:45:55.280 | song about a lost child traveling in the snow from Tiny Tim, who had a plaintive little

01:46:00.160 | voice and sang it very well indeed.

01:46:02.820 | There was nothing of high mark in this.

01:46:04.960 | They were not a handsome family.

01:46:06.680 | They were not well-dressed.

01:46:08.240 | Their shoes were far from being waterproof.

01:46:11.200 | Their clothes were scanty.

01:46:12.960 | And Peter might have known, and very likely did, the inside of a pawnbroker's.

01:46:17.340 | But they were happy, grateful, pleased with one another, and contented with the time.

01:46:23.440 | And when they faded and looked happier yet in the bright sprinklings of the spirit's

01:46:28.080 | torch at parting, Scrooge had his eye upon them, and especially on Tiny Tim until the

01:46:33.760 | last.

01:46:35.120 | By this time it was getting dark and snowing pretty heavily, and as Scrooge and the spirit

01:46:38.760 | went along the streets, the brightness of the roaring fires in kitchens, parlors, and

01:46:42.620 | all sorts of rooms was wonderful.

01:46:45.560 | Here the flickering of the blaze showed preparations for a cozy dinner, with hot plates baking

01:46:51.140 | through and through before the fire, and deep red curtains ready to be drawn to shut out

01:46:56.020 | cold and darkness.

01:46:57.800 | There all the children of the house were running out into the snow to meet their married sisters,

01:47:01.480 | brothers, cousins, uncles, aunts, and be the first to greet them.

01:47:04.680 | Here again were shadows on the window blind of guests assembling, and there a group of

01:47:08.560 | handsome girls, all hooded and fur-booted, and all chattering at once, tripped lightly

01:47:13.640 | off to some near neighbor's house, where, "Woe upon the single man who saw them enter!"

01:47:18.480 | Artful witches, well they knew it, in a glow.

01:47:21.840 | But if you had judged from the numbers of people on their way to friendly gatherings,

01:47:25.420 | you might have thought that no one was at home to give them welcome when they got there,

01:47:29.000 | instead of every house expecting company and piling up its fires half chimney high.

01:47:33.400 | Blessings on it, how the ghost exulted!

01:47:35.920 | How it bared its breadth of breast, and opened its capacious palm, and floated on, outpouring

01:47:41.480 | with a generous hand, its bright and harmless mirth on everything within its reach.

01:47:46.400 | The very lamplighter who ran on before, dotting the dusky street with specks of light, and

01:47:51.000 | who was dressed to spend the evening somewhere, laughed out loudly as the spirit passed, though

01:47:56.000 | little kenned the lamplighter that he had any company but Christmas.

01:48:00.480 | And now, without a word of warning from the ghost, they stood upon a bleak and desert

01:48:04.400 | moor, where monstrous masses of rude stone were cast about, as though it were the burial

01:48:10.080 | place of giants, and water spread itself wheresoever it listed, or would have done so but for the

01:48:15.520 | frost that held it prisoner, and nothing grew but moss and firs, and coarse-rank grass.

01:48:22.720 | Down in the west, the setting sun had left a streak of fiery red, which glared upon the

01:48:27.720 | desolation for an instant like a sullen eye, and frowning lower, lower, lower yet, was

01:48:35.320 | lost in the thick gloom of darkest night.

01:48:38.520 | "What place is this?" asked Scrooge.

01:48:42.320 | "A place where miners live, who labour in the bowels of the earth," returned the spirit.

01:48:47.800 | "But they know me, see?"

01:48:49.760 | A light shone from the window of a hut, and swiftly they advanced towards it.

01:48:55.200 | Passing through the wall of mud and stone, they found a cheerful company assembled round

01:48:59.160 | a glowing fire.

01:49:00.560 | An old, old man and woman, with their children and their children's children, and another

01:49:04.800 | generation beyond that, all decked out gaily in their holiday attire.

01:49:09.160 | The old man, in a voice that seldom rose above the howling of the wind upon the barren waste,

01:49:13.480 | was singing them a Christmas song.

01:49:15.400 | It had been a very old song when he was a boy, and from time to time they all joined

01:49:18.940 | in the chorus.

01:49:20.360 | So surely as they raised their voices, the old man got quite blithe and loud, and so

01:49:25.200 | surely as they stopped, his vigour sank again.

01:49:28.440 | A spirit did not tarry here, but bade Scrooge hold his robe, and passing on above the moor,

01:49:34.480 | sped wither, not to see, to see.

01:49:39.400 | To Scrooge's horror, looking back, he saw the last of the land, a frightful range of

01:49:43.320 | rocks behind them, and his ears were deafened by the thundering of water as it rolled and

01:49:47.680 | roared and raged among the dreadful caverns it had worn, and fiercely tried to undermine

01:49:52.640 | the earth.

01:49:54.040 | Built upon a dismal reef of sunken rocks, some league or so from shore, on which the

01:49:58.720 | waters chafed and dashed, the wild year through, there stood a solitary lighthouse.

01:50:04.180 | Great heaps of seaweed clung to its base, and storm-birds, born of the wind, one might

01:50:08.920 | suppose, as seaweed of the water, rose and fell about it like the waves they skimmed.

01:50:14.400 | But even here, two men who watched the light had made a fire, that, through the loophole

01:50:18.600 | in the thick stone wall, shed out a ray of brightness on the awful sea.

01:50:22.760 | Joining their horny hands over the rough table at which they sat, they wished each other

01:50:26.760 | Merry Christmas in their can of grog, and one of them, the elder too, with his face

01:50:31.720 | all damaged and scarred with hard weather, as the figurehead of an old ship might be,

01:50:36.640 | struck up a sturdy song that was like a gale in itself.

01:50:40.440 | Then the ghosts sped on, above the black and heaving sea, on, on, until being far away,

01:50:46.320 | as he told Scrooge, from any shore they lighted on a ship.

01:50:49.420 | They stood beside the helmsmen at the wheel, the lookout and the bow, the officers who

01:50:53.640 | had the watch, dark, ghostly figures in their several stations, but every man among them

01:50:58.660 | hummed a Christmas tune, or had a Christmas thought, or spoke below his breath to his

01:51:03.480 | companion of some bygone Christmas day, with homeward hopes belonging to it.

01:51:08.860 | And every man on board, walking or sleeping, good or bad, had had a kinder word for another

01:51:14.720 | on that day than on any day in the year, and had shared to some extent in its festivities,

01:51:20.560 | and had remembered those he cared for at a distance and had known that they were delighted

01:51:23.940 | to remember him.

01:51:26.940 | It was a great surprise to Scrooge, while listening to the moaning of the wind and thinking

01:51:31.980 | what a solemn thing it was to move on through the lonely darkness over an unknown abyss,

01:51:37.020 | whose depths were secrets as profound as death.

01:51:40.380 | It was a great surprise to Scrooge, while thus engaged, to hear a hearty laugh.

01:51:46.100 | It was a much greater surprise to Scrooge to recognize it as his own nephew's, and

01:51:51.620 | to find himself in a bright, dry, gleaming room, with the spirit standing smiling by

01:51:58.100 | his side and looking at that same nephew with approving affability.

01:52:02.940 | "Ha ha ha ha!" laughed Scrooge's nephew.

01:52:07.060 | "Ha ha ha ha!

01:52:08.060 | If you should happen by any unlikely chance to know a man more blessed in a laugh than

01:52:11.780 | Scrooge's nephew, all I can say is, I should like to know him too.

01:52:16.700 | Introduce him to me, and I'll cultivate his acquaintance.

01:52:20.220 | It is a fair, even-handed, noble adjustment of things that while there is infection in

01:52:26.300 | disease and sorrow, there is nothing in the world so irresistibly contagious as laughter

01:52:33.460 | and good humor.

01:52:35.100 | When Scrooge's nephew laughed in this way, holding his sides, rolling his head, and twisting

01:52:39.460 | his face into the most extravagant contortions, Scrooge's niece by marriage laughed as heartily

01:52:45.340 | as he, and their assembled friends, being not a bit behind hand, roared out lustily.

01:52:50.500 | "Ha ha ha ha!

01:52:53.420 | He said that Christmas was a humbug as I live!" cried Scrooge's nephew.

01:52:57.540 | "He believed it too!"

01:52:59.540 | "More shame for him, Fred," said Scrooge's niece indignantly.

01:53:02.780 | "Bless those women!

01:53:03.940 | They never do anything by halves.

01:53:05.300 | They are always in earnest."

01:53:07.180 | She was very pretty, exceedingly pretty, with a dimpled, surprised-looking capital face,

01:53:11.380 | a ripe little mouth that seemed made to be kissed, as no doubt it was, all kinds of good

01:53:15.660 | little dots about her chin that melted into one another when she laughed, and the sunniest

01:53:20.340 | pair of eyes you ever saw in any little creature's head.

01:53:24.100 | Altogether she was what you would have called provoking.

01:53:27.540 | You know, but satisfactory too.

01:53:30.020 | Oh, perfectly satisfactory.

01:53:31.580 | "He's a comical old fellow," said Scrooge's nephew.

01:53:34.660 | "That's the truth, and not so pleasant as he might be.

01:53:37.380 | However, his offenses carry their own punishment, and I have nothing to say against him."

01:53:42.220 | "I am sure he is very rich, Fred," hinted Scrooge's niece.

01:53:46.060 | "At least you always tell me so."

01:53:48.460 | "What of that, my dear?" said Scrooge's nephew.

01:53:51.340 | "His wealth is of no use to him.

01:53:53.820 | He don't do any good with it.

01:53:55.660 | He don't make himself comfortable with it.

01:53:57.620 | He hasn't the satisfaction of thinking that he's ever going to benefit us with it."

01:54:04.380 | "I have no patience with him," observed Scrooge's niece.

01:54:08.380 | Scrooge's niece's sisters and all the other ladies expressed the same opinion.

01:54:12.340 | "Oh, I have," said Scrooge's nephew.

01:54:14.940 | "I'm sorry for him.

01:54:16.540 | I couldn't be angry with him if I tried.

01:54:19.020 | Who suffers by his ill whims?

01:54:21.300 | Himself, always.

01:54:23.100 | Here he takes it into his head to dislike us, and he won't come and dine with us.

01:54:27.860 | What's the consequences?

01:54:29.580 | He don't lose much of a dinner."

01:54:31.540 | "Indeed, I think he loses a very good dinner," interrupted Scrooge's niece.

01:54:36.060 | Everybody else said the same, and they must be allowed to have been competent judges,

01:54:39.900 | because they had just had dinner, and with the dessert upon the table were clustered

01:54:43.300 | round the fire by lamplight.

01:54:44.940 | "Well, I'm very glad to hear it," said Scrooge's nephew, "because I haven't

01:54:48.700 | great faith in these young housekeepers.

01:54:50.860 | What do you say, Topper?"

01:54:53.420 | Topper had clearly got his eye upon one of Scrooge's niece's sisters, for he answered

01:54:57.100 | that a bachelor was a wretched outcast who had no right to express an opinion on the

01:55:01.620 | subject, whereat Scrooge's niece's sister, the plump one with the lace tucker, not the

01:55:06.900 | one with the roses, blushed.

01:55:08.660 | "Do go on, Fred," said Scrooge's niece, clasping her hands.

01:55:12.220 | "He never finishes what he begins to say.

01:55:14.180 | He is such a ridiculous fellow."

01:55:16.740 | Scrooge's nephew revelled in another laugh, and as it was impossible to keep the infection

01:55:20.820 | off, though the plump sister tried hard to do it with aromatic vinegar, his example was

01:55:26.420 | unanimously followed.

01:55:27.740 | "I was only going to say," said Scrooge's nephew, "that the consequences of his taking

01:55:32.140 | a dislike to us and not making merry with us is, as I think, that he loses some pleasant

01:55:38.500 | moments, which could do him no harm.

01:55:41.100 | I am sure he loses pleasanter companions than he can find in his own thoughts, either in

01:55:46.140 | his moldy old office or his dusty chambers.

01:55:49.220 | I mean to give him the same chance every year, whether he likes it or not, for I pity him.

01:55:55.660 | He may rail at Christmas till he dies, but he can't help thinking better of it.

01:56:00.300 | I defy him if he finds me going there in good temper year after year and saying, 'Uncle

01:56:07.580 | Scrooge, how are you?'

01:56:08.860 | If it only puts him in the vein to leave his poor clerk fifty pounds, that's something,

01:56:14.020 | and I think I shook him yesterday."

01:56:16.500 | It was their turn to laugh now at the notion of his shaking Scrooge, but being thoroughly

01:56:21.460 | good-natured and not much caring what they laughed at, so that they laughed at any rate,

01:56:27.260 | he encouraged them in their merriment and passed the bottle joyously.

01:56:31.900 | After tea they had some music, for they were a musical family and knew what they were about

01:56:35.620 | when they sung a glee or catch, I can assure you, especially Topper, who could growl away

01:56:40.540 | in the bass like a good one and never swell the large veins in his forehead or get red

01:56:44.820 | in the face over it.

01:56:46.540 | Scrooge's niece played well upon the harp and played among other tunes a simple little

01:56:49.940 | air, a mere nothing, you might learn to whistle it in two minutes, which had been familiar

01:56:54.100 | to the child who fetched Scrooge from the boarding school as he had been reminded by

01:56:58.420 | the ghost of Christmas past.

01:57:00.660 | When this strain of music sounded, all the things that ghost had shown him came upon

01:57:05.820 | his mind.

01:57:07.260 | He softened more and more and thought that if he could have listened to it often years

01:57:12.820 | ago, he might have cultivated the kindnesses of life for his own happiness with his own

01:57:17.420 | hands without resorting to the sexton's spade that buried Jacob Marley.

01:57:24.160 | But they didn't devote the whole evening to music.

01:57:26.780 | After a while, they played at forfeits, for it is good to be children sometimes and never

01:57:30.660 | better than at Christmas, when its mighty founder was a child himself.

01:57:34.420 | Stop!

01:57:35.420 | There was first a game at blind man's buff.

01:57:37.340 | Of course there was.

01:57:38.760 | And I no more believe Topper was really blind than I believe he had eyes in his boots.

01:57:43.000 | My opinion is that it was a done thing between him and Scrooge's nephew and that the ghost

01:57:47.340 | of Christmas present knew it.

01:57:49.160 | The way he went after that plump sister in the lace tucker was an outrage on the credulity

01:57:53.760 | of human nature, knocking down the fire irons, tumbling over the chairs, bumping against

01:57:58.420 | the piano, smothering himself among the curtains.

01:58:01.140 | Wherever she went, there went he.

01:58:03.720 | He always knew where the plump sister was.

01:58:06.620 | He wouldn't catch anybody else.

01:58:08.460 | If you had fallen up against him, as some of them did, on purpose, he would have made

01:58:12.420 | a feint of endeavoring to seize you, which would have been an affront to your understanding

01:58:16.240 | and would instantly have sidled off in the direction of the plump sister.

01:58:20.380 | She often cried out that it wasn't fair and it really was not.

01:58:24.040 | But when at last he caught her, when in spite of all her silken rustlings and her rapid

01:58:28.320 | flutterings past him, he got her into a corner whence there was no escape, then his conduct

01:58:33.760 | was the most execrable.

01:58:36.160 | For his pretending not to know her, his pretending that it was necessary to touch her headdress

01:58:40.480 | and further to assure himself of her identity by pressing a certain ring upon her finger

01:58:44.680 | and a certain chain about her neck was vile, monstrous.

01:58:48.840 | No doubt she told him her opinion of it when, another blind man being in office, they were

01:58:53.120 | so very confidential together behind the curtains.

01:58:56.920 | Scrooge's niece was not one of the blind man's buff party but was made comfortable

01:59:00.580 | with a large chair and a footstool in a snug corner where the ghost and Scrooge were close

01:59:05.340 | behind her.

01:59:06.540 | But she joined in the forfeits and loved her love to admiration with all the letters of

01:59:10.860 | the alphabet.

01:59:12.100 | Likewise at the game of how, when, and where, she was very great and to the secret joy of

01:59:16.740 | Scrooge's nephew beat her sisters hollow, though they were sharp girls too, as Topper

01:59:21.300 | could have told you.

01:59:22.380 | There might have been twenty people there, young and old, but they all played and so

01:59:26.460 | did Scrooge, for wholly forgetting in the interest he had in what was going on that

01:59:31.060 | his voice made no sound in their ears, he sometimes came out with his guess quite loud

01:59:35.500 | and very often guessed quite right too, for the sharpest needle, best Whitechapel warranted

01:59:40.100 | not to cut in the eye, was not sharper than Scrooge, blunt as he took it in his head to

01:59:44.220 | be.

01:59:45.220 | The ghost was greatly pleased to find him in this mood and looked upon him with such

01:59:49.340 | favor that he begged like a boy to be allowed to stay until the guests departed.

01:59:53.940 | But this, the spirit said, could not be done.

01:59:56.860 | "Here is a new game," said Scrooge.

01:59:59.140 | "One half hour, spirit, only one!"

02:00:01.580 | It was a game called Yes and No, where Scrooge's nephew had to think of something and the rest

02:00:06.080 | must find out what, he only answering to their questions, yes or no, as the case was.

02:00:11.740 | The brisk fire of questioning to which he was exposed elicited from him that he was

02:00:15.460 | thinking of an animal, a live animal, rather a disagreeable animal, a savage animal, an

02:00:20.620 | animal that growled and grunted sometimes and talked sometimes and lived in London and

02:00:24.260 | walked about the streets and wasn't made a show of and wasn't led by anybody and didn't

02:00:27.660 | live in a menagerie and was never killed in a market and was not a horse or an ass or

02:00:31.900 | a cow or a bull or a tiger or a dog or a pig or a cat or a bear.

02:00:36.580 | At every fresh question that was put to him, this nephew burst into a fresh roar of laughter

02:00:41.180 | and was so inexpressibly tickled that he was obliged to get up off the sofa and stamp.

02:00:45.940 | At last, the plump sister falling into a similar state cried out, "I found it out!

02:00:50.540 | I know what it is, Fred!

02:00:51.660 | I know what it is!"

02:00:52.660 | "What is it?" cried Fred.

02:00:54.220 | "It's your Uncle Scrooge!"

02:00:57.540 | Which it certainly was.

02:00:59.260 | Admiration was the universal sentiment, though some objected that the reply to "Is it a

02:01:03.700 | bear?" ought to have been "yes" inasmuch as an answer in the negative was sufficient

02:01:08.060 | to have diverted their thoughts from Mr. Scrooge, supposing they had ever had any tendency that

02:01:13.020 | way.

02:01:14.020 | "He has given us plenty of merriment, I am sure," said Fred, "and it would be

02:01:19.100 | ungrateful not to drink his health.

02:01:21.900 | Here is a glass of mulled wine, ready to our hand at the moment, and I say, 'Uncle Scrooge!'"

02:01:28.140 | "Well, Uncle Scrooge!" they cried.

02:01:30.820 | "A Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to the old man, whatever he is," said Scrooge's

02:01:35.620 | nephew.

02:01:36.620 | "He didn't take it from me, but may he have it nevertheless.

02:01:40.940 | Uncle Scrooge!"

02:01:43.540 | Uncle Scrooge had imperceptibly become so gay and light of heart that he would have

02:01:48.740 | pledged the unconscious company in return and thanked them in an audible speech if the

02:01:53.820 | ghost had given him time.

02:01:56.020 | But the whole scene passed off in the breath of the last word spoken by his nephew, and

02:02:00.140 | he and the spirit were again upon their travels.

02:02:03.100 | Such they saw, and far they went, and many homes they visited, but always with a happy

02:02:08.340 | end.

02:02:09.340 | The spirit stood beside sick beds, and they were cheerful, on foreign lands, and they

02:02:13.380 | were close at home, by struggling men, and they were patient in their greater hope, by

02:02:17.700 | poverty, and it was rich, in almshouse, hospital, and jail, in miseries every refuge, where

02:02:24.020 | vain man in his little brief authority had not made fast the door and barred the spirit

02:02:28.780 | out, he left his blessing and taught Scrooge his precepts.

02:02:34.140 | It was a long night, if it were only a night, but Scrooge had his doubts of this, because

02:02:38.700 | the Christmas holidays appeared to be condensed into the space of time they passed together.

02:02:43.940 | It was strange, too, that while Scrooge remained unaltered in his outward form, the ghost grew

02:02:49.460 | older, clearly older.

02:02:52.860 | Scrooge had observed this change, but never spoke of it, until they left a children's

02:02:56.420 | twelfth night party, when, looking at the spirit as they stood together in an open place,

02:03:01.020 | he noticed that its hair was gray.

02:03:03.140 | "Are spirits' lives so short?" asked Scrooge.

02:03:06.700 | "My life upon this globe is very brief," replied the ghost.

02:03:10.460 | "It ends tonight."

02:03:11.460 | "Tonight!" cried Scrooge.

02:03:12.460 | "Tonight at midnight.

02:03:13.460 | Hark!

02:03:14.460 | The time is drawing near."

02:03:17.100 | The chimes were ringing the three quarters past eleven at that moment.

02:03:20.620 | "Forgive me if I am not justified in what I ask," said Scrooge, looking intently at

02:03:25.780 | the spirit's robe.

02:03:26.780 | "But I see something strange and not belonging to yourself protruding from your skirts.

02:03:31.460 | Is it a foot or a claw?"

02:03:33.540 | "It might be a claw, for the flesh there is upon it," was the spirit's sorrowful

02:03:38.180 | reply.

02:03:39.180 | "Look here!"

02:03:40.620 | From the foldings of its robe it brought two children, wretched, abject, frightful, hideous,

02:03:49.100 | miserable.

02:03:50.580 | They knelt down at its feet and clung upon the outside of its garment.

02:03:54.460 | "Oh man, look here!

02:03:56.300 | Look, look, down here!" exclaimed the ghost.

02:03:59.340 | They were a boy and a girl, yellow, meager, ragged, scowling, wolfish, but prostrate too

02:04:06.100 | in their humility.

02:04:07.660 | Where graceful youth should have filled their features out and touched them with its freshest

02:04:11.580 | tints, a stale and shriveled hand like that of age had pinched and twisted them and pulled

02:04:17.920 | them into shreds.

02:04:19.500 | Where angels might have sat enthroned, devils lurked and glared out menacing.

02:04:25.180 | No change, no degradation, no perversion of humanity in any grade, through all the mysteries

02:04:31.020 | of wonderful creation, has monsters half so horrible and dread.

02:04:36.060 | Scrooge started back, appalled, having them shown to him in this way.

02:04:39.740 | He tried to say they were fine children, but the words choked themselves rather than be

02:04:45.460 | parties to a lie of such enormous magnitude.

02:04:48.580 | "Spirit, are they yours?"

02:04:50.780 | Scrooge could say no more.

02:04:51.940 | "They are man's," said the spirit, looking down upon them.

02:04:54.900 | "And they cling to me, appealing from their fathers.

02:04:57.900 | This boy is ignorance.

02:04:59.580 | This girl is want.

02:05:01.380 | Beware them both and all of their degree, but most of all, beware this boy, for on his

02:05:06.200 | brow I see that written which is doom, unless the writing be erased.

02:05:11.700 | Deny it!" cried the spirit, stretching out its hand towards the city.

02:05:15.340 | "Slander those who tell it ye.

02:05:17.380 | Forget it for your factious purposes and make it worse, and bide the end."

02:05:22.380 | "Have they no refuge or resource?" cried Scrooge.

02:05:25.340 | "Are there no prisons?" said the spirit, turning on him for the last time with his

02:05:29.380 | own words.

02:05:30.380 | "Are there no workhouses?"

02:05:32.380 | The bell struck twelve.

02:05:35.340 | Scrooge looked about him for the ghost and saw it not.

02:05:37.900 | As the last stroke ceased to vibrate, he remembered the prediction of old Jacob Marley, and lifting

02:05:45.180 | up his eyes, beheld a solemn phantom, draped and hooded, coming, like a mist along the

02:05:53.140 | ground, towards him.

02:06:01.660 | Stave IV.

02:06:03.380 | The Last of the Spirits

02:06:06.500 | The phantom slowly, gravely, silently approached.

02:06:12.620 | When it came near him, Scrooge bent down upon his knee, for in the very air through which

02:06:18.500 | this spirit moved, it seemed to scatter gloom and mystery.

02:06:23.460 | It was shrouded in a deep black garment, which concealed its head, its face, its form, and

02:06:29.660 | left nothing of it visible save one outstretched hand.

02:06:34.540 | But for this it would have been difficult to detach its figure from the night and separate

02:06:39.180 | it from the darkness by which it was surrounded.

02:06:42.400 | He felt that it was tall and stately when it came beside him, and that its mysterious

02:06:47.860 | presence filled him with a solemn dread.

02:06:51.680 | He knew no more, for the spirit neither spoke nor moved.

02:06:56.700 | "I am in the presence of the ghost of Christmas yet to come," said Scrooge.

02:07:03.700 | The spirit answered not, but pointed onward with its hand.

02:07:09.180 | "You are about to show me shadows of the things that have not happened but will happen

02:07:13.940 | in the time before us," Scrooge pursued.

02:07:15.780 | "Is that so, spirit?"

02:07:17.860 | The upper portion of the garment was contracted for an instant in its folds, as if the spirit

02:07:24.020 | had inclined its head.

02:07:27.460 | That was the only answer he received.

02:07:30.420 | Although well used to ghostly company by this time, Scrooge feared the silent shape so much

02:07:35.680 | that his legs trembled beneath him, and he found that he could hardly stand when he prepared

02:07:40.460 | to follow it.

02:07:41.740 | The spirit paused a moment as observing his condition and giving him time to recover.

02:07:46.460 | But Scrooge was all the worse for this.

02:07:48.260 | It thrilled him with a vague, uncertain horror to know that behind the dusky shroud there

02:07:53.180 | were ghostly eyes intently fixed upon him, while he, though he stretched his own to the

02:07:58.620 | utmost, could see nothing but a spectral hand and one great heap of black.

02:08:05.640 | "Ghost of the future!" he exclaimed.

02:08:07.200 | "I fear you more than any specter I have seen, but as I know your purpose is to do

02:08:11.160 | me good, and as I hope to live to be another man from what I was, I am prepared to bear

02:08:15.960 | you company and do it with a thankful heart.

02:08:19.100 | Will you not speak to me?"

02:08:22.440 | It gave him no reply.

02:08:24.440 | The hand was pointed straight before them.

02:08:28.840 | "Lead on," said Scrooge.

02:08:31.000 | "Lead on!

02:08:32.000 | The night is waning fast, and it is precious time to me, I know.

02:08:35.840 | Lead on, spirit!"

02:08:37.520 | The phantom moved away as it had come towards him.

02:08:41.480 | Scrooge followed in the shadow of its dress, which bore him up, he thought, and carried

02:08:45.680 | him along.

02:08:46.940 | They scarcely seemed to enter the city, for the city rather seemed to spring up about

02:08:50.900 | them and encompass them of its own act.

02:08:53.960 | But there they were, in the heart of it, on change, amongst the merchants, who hurried

02:08:57.980 | up and down and chinked the money in their pockets and conversed in groups, and looked

02:09:02.880 | at their watches and trifled thoughtfully with their great gold seals and so forth,

02:09:09.520 | as Scrooge had seen them often.

02:09:12.200 | The spirit stopped beside one little knot of businessmen.

02:09:17.300 | Observing that the hand was pointed to them, Scrooge advanced to listen to their talk.

02:09:23.320 | "No," said a great fat man with a monstrous chin.

02:09:26.400 | "I don't know much about it either way.

02:09:28.720 | I only know he's dead."

02:09:30.120 | "When did he die?"

02:09:31.760 | inquired another.

02:09:32.760 | "Last night, I believe."

02:09:33.760 | "Why?

02:09:34.760 | What was the matter with him?" asked a third, taking a vast quantity of snuff out of a very

02:09:40.120 | large snuff box.

02:09:41.360 | "I thought he'd never die."

02:09:42.640 | "God knows," said the first with a yawn.

02:09:45.760 | "What has he done with his money?" asked a red-faced gentleman with a pendulous excrescence

02:09:52.120 | on the end of his nose that shook like the gills of a turkey cock.

02:09:56.760 | "I haven't heard," said the man with a large chin, yawning again.

02:10:00.920 | "Left it to his company, perhaps."

02:10:02.960 | "He hasn't left it to me, that's all I know."

02:10:06.360 | This pleasantry was received with a general laugh.

02:10:09.560 | "It's likely to be a very cheap funeral," said the same speaker, "for upon my life,

02:10:14.800 | I don't know of anybody to go to it.

02:10:17.680 | Suppose we make up a party and volunteer."

02:10:19.640 | "I don't mind going if a lunch is provided," observed the gentleman with the excrescence

02:10:25.520 | on his nose.

02:10:26.520 | "But I must be fed if I make one."

02:10:29.440 | Another laugh.

02:10:30.600 | "Well, I am the most disinterested among you after all," said the first speaker, "for

02:10:36.200 | I never wear black gloves and I never eat lunch.

02:10:40.480 | But I'll offer to go if anybody else will.

02:10:43.120 | When I come to think of it, I'm not at all sure that I wasn't his most particular friend,

02:10:47.040 | for we used to stop and speak whenever we met.

02:10:49.680 | Bye-bye."

02:10:51.440 | Speakers and listeners strolled away and mixed with other groups.

02:10:55.480 | Scrooge knew the men and looked towards the spirit for an explanation.

02:10:59.960 | The phantom glided on into a street, its finger pointed to two persons meeting.

02:11:05.720 | Scrooge listened again, thinking that the explanation might lie here.

02:11:09.800 | He knew these men also perfectly.

02:11:12.200 | They were men of business, very wealthy and of great importance.

02:11:15.920 | He had made a point always of standing well in their esteem.

02:11:19.760 | On a business point of view, that is strictly in a business point of view.

02:11:23.200 | "How are you?" said one.

02:11:24.760 | "How are you?" returned the other.

02:11:26.480 | "Well," said the first, "old Scratch has got his own at last, eh?"

02:11:29.840 | "So I'm told," returned the second, "cold, isn't it?

02:11:32.480 | Seasonable for Christmas time.

02:11:33.880 | You're not a skater, I suppose?

02:11:35.600 | No, no, something else to think of.

02:11:37.400 | Good morning."

02:11:40.000 | Not another word.

02:11:41.600 | That was their meeting, their conversation, and their parting.

02:11:46.200 | Scrooge was at first inclined to be surprised that the spirit should attach importance to

02:11:49.480 | conversations apparently so trivial, but feeling assured that they must have some hidden purpose,

02:11:54.600 | he set himself to consider what it was likely to be.

02:11:57.240 | They could scarcely be supposed to have any bearing on the death of Jacob, his old partner,

02:12:01.720 | for that was past and this ghost's province was the future.

02:12:05.400 | Nor could he think of anyone immediately connected with himself to whom he could apply them,

02:12:09.600 | but nothing doubting that to whomsoever they applied they had some latent moral for his

02:12:14.240 | own improvement.

02:12:15.440 | He resolved to treasure up every word he heard and everything he saw, and especially to observe

02:12:19.840 | the shadow of himself when it appeared, for he had an expectation that the conduct of

02:12:24.480 | his future self would give him the clue he missed and would render the solution of these

02:12:28.300 | riddles easy.

02:12:29.880 | He looked about in that very place for his own image, but another man stood in his accustomed

02:12:35.240 | corner.

02:12:36.640 | And though the clock pointed to his usual time of day for being there, he saw no likeness

02:12:41.360 | of himself among the multitudes that poured in through the porch.

02:12:45.520 | It gave him little surprise, however, for he had been revolving in his mind a change

02:12:50.100 | of life and thought and hoped he saw his newborn resolutions carried out in this.

02:12:55.960 | Quiet and dark beside him stood the phantom with its outstretched hand.

02:13:01.520 | When he roused himself from his thoughtful quest, he fancied from the turn of the hand

02:13:05.480 | and its situation in reference to himself that the unseen eyes were looking at him keenly.

02:13:12.680 | It made him shudder and feel very cold.

02:13:16.960 | They left the busy scene and went into an obscure part of the town where Scrooge had

02:13:21.320 | never penetrated before, although he recognized its situation and its bad repute.

02:13:27.160 | The ways were foul and narrow, the shops and houses wretched, the people half-naked, drunken,

02:13:37.240 | slipshod, ugly.

02:13:40.280 | Alleys and archways, like so many cesspools, disgorged their offenses of smell and dirt

02:13:47.000 | and life upon the straggling streets, and the whole quarter reeked with crime, with

02:13:53.400 | filth and misery.

02:13:56.640 | Far in this den of infamous resort there was a low-browed beetling shop below a penthouse

02:14:03.240 | roof where iron, old rags, bottles, bones, and greasy offal were bought.

02:14:10.200 | Upon the floor within were piled up heaps of rusty keys, nails, chains, hinges, files,

02:14:16.840 | scales, weights, and refuse iron of all kinds.

02:14:21.320 | Things that few would like to scrutinize were bred and hidden in mountains of unseemly rags,

02:14:28.440 | masses of corrupted fat, and sepulchres of bones.

02:14:33.120 | Sitting in among the wares he dealt in, by a charcoal stove made of old bricks, was a

02:14:38.560 | gray-haired rascal, nearly seventy years of age, who had screened himself from the cold

02:14:44.520 | air without, by a frowsy curtaining of miscellaneous tatters, hung upon a line, and smoked his

02:14:50.880 | pipe in all the luxury of calm retirement.

02:14:55.840 | Scrooge and the Phantom came into the presence of this man, just as a woman with a heavy

02:15:00.120 | bundle slunk into the shop; but she had scarcely entered when another woman, similarly laden,

02:15:07.440 | came in too, and she was closely followed by a man in faded black, who was no less startled

02:15:12.880 | by the sight of them than they had been upon the recognition of each other, after a short

02:15:16.960 | period of blank astonishment in which the old man with the pipe had joined them, they

02:15:22.920 | all three burst into a laugh.

02:15:25.240 | "Let the charwoman alone to be the first," cried she who had entered first.

02:15:29.360 | "Let the laundress alone to be the second, and let the undertaker's man alone to be

02:15:33.520 | the third.

02:15:34.520 | Look here, old Joe, here's a chance, if we haven't all three met here without meaning

02:15:38.720 | it."

02:15:39.720 | "You couldn't have met in a better place," said old Joe, removing his pipe from his mouth.

02:15:44.320 | "Come into the parlor, you were made free of it long ago, you know, and the other two

02:15:48.320 | aren't strangers.

02:15:49.720 | Stop till I shut up the door of the shop."

02:15:51.040 | "Ah, how it squeaks.

02:15:52.640 | There ain't such a rusty bit of metal in the place as its own hinges, I believe, and

02:15:56.240 | I'm sure there's no such old bones here as mine.

02:15:59.160 | Ha ha, we're all suitable to our calling, we're well matched.

02:16:02.740 | Come into the parlor, come into the parlor."

02:16:04.680 | The parlor was the space behind the screen of rags.

02:16:07.840 | The old man raked the fire together with an old stair rod, and having trimmed his smoky

02:16:13.000 | lamp, for it was night, with the stem of his pipe, put it in his mouth again.

02:16:18.240 | While he did this, the woman who had already spoken threw her bundle on the floor, and

02:16:22.800 | sat down in a flaunting manner on a stool, crossing her elbows on her knees, and looking

02:16:27.720 | with a bold defiance at the other two.

02:16:30.600 | "What odds, then, what odds, Mrs. Dilber," said the woman.

02:16:34.600 | "Every person has a right to take care of themselves.

02:16:37.240 | He always did."

02:16:38.560 | "That's true, indeed," said the laundress.

02:16:40.880 | "No man more so."

02:16:42.600 | "Why, then, don't stand staring as if you was afraid, woman.

02:16:45.480 | Who's the wiser?

02:16:46.480 | We're not going to pick holes in each other's coats, I suppose."

02:16:48.960 | "No, indeed," said Mrs. Dilber and the man together.

02:16:52.000 | "We should hope not."

02:16:53.000 | "Very well, then," cried the woman.

02:16:55.120 | "That's enough.

02:16:56.120 | Who's the worse for the loss of a few things like these?

02:16:58.240 | Not a dead man, I suppose."

02:16:59.480 | "No, indeed," said Mrs. Dilber, laughing.

02:17:02.360 | "If he wanted to keep him after he was dead, a wicked old screw," pursued the woman.

02:17:06.360 | "Why wasn't he natural in his lifetime?

02:17:08.600 | If he had been, he'd have had somebody to look after him when he was struck with death,

02:17:11.800 | instead of lying gasping out his last there, alone by himself."

02:17:16.480 | "It's the truest word that ever was spoke," said Mrs. Dilber.

02:17:20.080 | "It's a judgment on him."

02:17:21.840 | "I wish it was a little heavier judgment," replied the woman.

02:17:24.920 | "And it should have been.

02:17:26.040 | You may depend upon it.

02:17:27.400 | If I could have laid my hands on anything else.

02:17:29.880 | Open that bundle, old Joe, and let me know the value of it.

02:17:32.680 | Speak out plain.

02:17:33.680 | I'm not afraid to be the first, nor afraid for them to see it.

02:17:36.040 | We know pretty well that we were helping ourselves before we met here, I believe.

02:17:39.400 | It's no sin.

02:17:40.400 | Open the bundle, Joe."

02:17:42.120 | But the gallantry of her friends would not allow of this, and the man in faded black,

02:17:47.360 | mounting the breach first, produced his plunder.

02:17:50.760 | It was not extensive.

02:17:52.520 | A seal or two, a pencil case, a pair of sleeve buttons, and a brooch of no great value were

02:17:58.120 | all.

02:17:59.120 | They were severally examined and appraised by old Joe, who chalked the sums he was disposed

02:18:04.480 | to give for each upon the wall, and added them up into a total when he found there was

02:18:08.960 | nothing more to come.

02:18:10.400 | "That's your account," said Joe, "and I wouldn't give another sixpence if I was to be boiled

02:18:14.400 | for not doing it.

02:18:15.400 | Who's next?"

02:18:16.400 | Mrs. Dilber was next.

02:18:18.080 | Sheets and towels, a little wearing apparel, two old-fashioned silver teaspoons, a pair

02:18:24.560 | of sugar tongs, and a few boots.

02:18:26.920 | Her account was stated on the wall in the same manner.

02:18:29.440 | "I always give too much to ladies.

02:18:31.440 | It's a weakness of mine, and that's the way I ruin myself," said old Joe.

02:18:34.640 | "That's your account.

02:18:35.640 | If you asked me for another penny and made it an open question, I'd repent of being so

02:18:38.420 | liberal and knock off half a crown."

02:18:40.000 | "And now undo my bundle, Joe," said the first woman.

02:18:44.080 | Joe went down on his knees for the greater convenience of opening it, and having unfastened

02:18:48.800 | a great many knots, dragged out a large and heavy roll of some dark stuff.

02:18:52.920 | "What do you call this?" said Joe.

02:18:55.520 | "Bed curtains."

02:18:56.520 | "Ah," returned the woman, laughing and leaning forward on her crossed arms.

02:19:00.760 | "Bed curtains.

02:19:02.360 | You don't mean to say you took 'em down rings and all with him lying there," said Joe.

02:19:06.160 | "Yes, I do," replied the woman.

02:19:08.280 | "Why not?"

02:19:09.280 | "You were born to make your fortune," said Joe, "and you'll certainly do it."

02:19:14.680 | "I certainly shan't hold my hand when I can get anything in it by reaching it out for the

02:19:18.640 | sake of such a man as he was, I promise you, Joe," returned the woman, coolly.

02:19:23.200 | "Don't drop that oil upon the blankets now."

02:19:25.800 | "His blankets?" asked Joe.

02:19:27.880 | "Whose else's do you think?" replied the woman.

02:19:30.440 | "He isn't likely to take cold without 'em, I dare say."

02:19:33.320 | "I hope he didn't die of anything catching, eh?" said old Joe, stopping in his work and

02:19:37.880 | looking up.

02:19:38.880 | "Don't you be afraid of that," returned the woman.

02:19:40.760 | "I ain't so fond of his company that I'd loiter about him for such things if he did."

02:19:44.600 | "Ah, you may look through that shirt till your eyes ache, but you won't find a hole

02:19:48.080 | in it nor a threadbare place.

02:19:49.640 | It's the best he had and a fine one, too.

02:19:52.120 | They'd have wasted it if it hadn't been for me."

02:19:54.160 | "What do you call wasting of it?" asked old Joe.

02:19:57.040 | "Putting it on him to be buried and to be sure," replied the woman with a laugh.

02:20:00.440 | "Somebody was fool enough to do it, but I took it off again.

02:20:02.840 | If calico ain't good enough for such a purpose, it isn't good enough for anything.

02:20:06.040 | It's quite as becoming to the body.

02:20:07.520 | He can't look uglier than he did in that one."

02:20:10.560 | Scrooge listened to this dialogue in horror.

02:20:14.840 | As they sat grouped about their spoil in the scanty light afforded by the old man's lamp,

02:20:19.000 | he viewed them with a detestation and disgust which could hardly have been greater, though

02:20:25.960 | they had been obscene demons, marketing the corpse itself.

02:20:30.280 | "Ha ha!" laughed the same woman, when old Joe, producing a flannel bag with money in

02:20:35.320 | it, told out their several gains upon the ground.

02:20:38.120 | "This is the end of it, you see.

02:20:39.920 | He frightened everyone away from him when he was alive to profit us when he was dead.

02:20:46.720 | Ha ha ha ha!"

02:20:48.520 | "Spirit," said Scrooge, shuddering from head to foot, "I see.

02:20:53.200 | I see.

02:20:54.400 | The case of this unhappy man might be my own.

02:20:56.920 | My life tends that way now.

02:20:58.720 | Merciful heaven, what is this?"

02:21:01.180 | He recoiled in terror, for the scene had changed and now he almost touched a bed, a bare, uncurtained

02:21:07.440 | bed on which beneath a ragged sheet there lay a something covered up, which, though

02:21:13.520 | it was dumb, announced itself in awful language.

02:21:17.160 | The room was very dark, too dark to be observed with any accuracy, though Scrooge glanced

02:21:22.300 | round it in obedience to a secret impulse, anxious to know what kind of room it was.

02:21:26.840 | A pale light, rising in the outer air, fell straight upon the bed and on it, plundered

02:21:32.080 | and bereft, unwatched, unwept, uncared for, was the body of this man.

02:21:39.160 | Scrooge glanced towards the phantom.

02:21:41.280 | Its steady hand was pointed to the head.

02:21:44.200 | The cover was so carelessly adjusted that the slightest raising of it, the motion of

02:21:48.280 | a finger upon Scrooge's part, would have disclosed the face.

02:21:51.880 | He thought of it, felt how easy it would be to do and longed to do it, but had no more

02:21:56.680 | power to withdraw the veil than to dismiss the spectre at his side.

02:22:01.480 | "Oh, cold, cold, rigid, dreadful death!

02:22:06.000 | Set up thine altar here and dress it with such terrors as thou hast at thy command,

02:22:11.840 | for this is thy dominion.

02:22:14.120 | But of the loved, revered, and honoured head thou canst not turn one hair to thy dread

02:22:21.040 | purposes or make one feature odious.

02:22:24.520 | It is not that the hand is heavy and will fall down when released.

02:22:28.880 | It is not that the heart and pulse are still, but that the hand was open, generous, and

02:22:36.960 | true, the heart brave, warm, and tender, and the pulse a man's.

02:22:43.520 | Strike, shadow, strike, and see his good deeds springing from the wound to sow the world

02:22:49.400 | with life immortal."

02:22:52.740 | No voice pronounced these words in Scrooge's ears, and yet he heard them when he looked

02:22:58.320 | upon the bed.

02:22:59.780 | He thought, if this man could be raised up now, what would be his foremost thoughts?

02:23:05.280 | Avarice?

02:23:06.820 | Hard-dealing, griping cares?

02:23:09.100 | They have brought him to a rich end.

02:23:11.220 | Truly, he lay in the dark, empty house with not a man, a woman, or a child to say that

02:23:16.540 | he was kind to me in this or that, and for the memory of one kind word I will be kind

02:23:21.500 | to him.

02:23:22.580 | A cat was tearing at the door, and there was a sound of gnawing rats beneath the hearthstone.

02:23:28.540 | What they wanted in the room of death and why they were so restless and disturbed, Scrooge

02:23:33.940 | did not dare to think.

02:23:36.500 | "Spirit," he said, "this is a fearful place.

02:23:40.220 | In leaving it, I shall not leave its lesson.

02:23:42.020 | Trust me, let us go."

02:23:43.780 | Still the ghost pointed with an unmoved finger to the head.

02:23:46.580 | "I understand you," Scrooge returned, "and I would do it if I could, but I have not the

02:23:50.500 | power.

02:23:51.500 | Spirit, I have not the power."

02:23:53.820 | Again it seemed to look upon him.

02:23:55.700 | "If there is any person in the town who feels emotion caused by this man's death," said

02:24:02.100 | Scrooge, quite agonized, "show that person to me, Spirit.

02:24:05.660 | I beseech you."

02:24:07.580 | The phantom spread its dark robe before him for a moment, like a wing, and withdrawing

02:24:13.700 | it, revealed a room by daylight where a mother and her children were.

02:24:19.460 | She was expecting someone, and with anxious eagerness, for she walked up and down the

02:24:24.140 | room, started at every sound, looked out from the window, glanced at the clock, tried but

02:24:30.260 | in vain to work with her needle and could hardly bear the voices of the children in

02:24:33.860 | their play.

02:24:35.400 | At length the long-expected knock was heard.

02:24:39.820 | She hurried to the door and met her husband, a man whose face was careworn and depressed,

02:24:45.580 | though he was young.

02:24:47.380 | There was a remarkable expression in it now, a kind of serious delight of which he felt

02:24:52.180 | ashamed and which he struggled to repress.

02:24:55.100 | He sat down to the dinner that had been hoarding for him by the fire, and when she asked him

02:24:59.700 | faintly what news, which was not until after a long silence, he appeared embarrassed how

02:25:04.580 | to answer.

02:25:05.580 | "Is it good," she said, "or bad, to help him?"

02:25:08.820 | "Bad," he answered.

02:25:10.420 | "We are quite ruined?"

02:25:12.580 | "No, there is hope yet, Caroline."

02:25:15.260 | "If he relents," she said, amazed, "there is.

02:25:18.500 | Nothing is past hope if such a miracle has happened."

02:25:20.700 | "He is past relenting," said her husband.

02:25:24.500 | "He is dead."

02:25:27.880 | She was a mild and patient creature if her face spoke truth, but she was thankful in

02:25:35.420 | her soul to hear it, and she said so with clasped hands.

02:25:40.460 | She prayed forgiveness the next moment and was sorry, but the first was the emotion of

02:25:45.140 | her heart.

02:25:46.140 | "What the half-drunken woman whom I told you of last night said to me, when I tried

02:25:50.260 | to see him and obtain a week's delay, and what I thought was a mere excuse to avoid

02:25:55.020 | me, turns out to have been quite true.

02:25:57.700 | He was not only very ill, but dying then."

02:26:00.580 | "To whom will our debt be transferred?"

02:26:02.580 | "I don't know, but before that time we shall be ready with the money, and even though

02:26:06.580 | we were not, it would be a bad fortune indeed to find so merciless a creditor in his successor.

02:26:12.640 | We may sleep tonight with light hearts, Caroline."

02:26:15.720 | Yes, soften it as they would, their hearts were lighter.

02:26:19.660 | The children's faces, hushed and clustered round to hear what they so little understood,

02:26:25.200 | were brighter, and it was a happier house for this man's death.

02:26:28.960 | The only emotion that the ghost could show him caused by the event was one of pleasure.

02:26:33.400 | "Let me see some tenderness connected with a death," said Scrooge, "or that dark

02:26:38.340 | chamber spirit which we left just now will be forever present to me."

02:26:44.000 | The ghost conducted him through several streets familiar to his feet, and as they went along

02:26:48.600 | Scrooge looked here and there to find himself, but nowhere was he to be seen.

02:26:53.440 | They entered poor Bob Cratchit's house, the dwelling he had visited before, and found

02:26:58.000 | the mother and the children seated round the fire.

02:27:01.200 | Quiet, very quiet.

02:27:04.080 | The noisy little Cratchits were as still as statues in one corner, and sat looking up

02:27:08.120 | at Peter, who had a book before him.

02:27:10.680 | The mother and her daughters were engaged in sewing, but surely they were very quiet,

02:27:14.800 | and he took a child and set him in the midst of them.

02:27:17.720 | Where had Scrooge heard those words?

02:27:19.160 | He had not dreamed them.

02:27:20.160 | The boy must have read them out as he and the spirit crossed the threshold.

02:27:23.360 | Why did he not go on?

02:27:25.120 | The mother laid her work upon the table and put her hand up to her face.

02:27:28.400 | "The color hurts my eyes," she said.

02:27:30.960 | "The color?

02:27:31.960 | Ah, poor tiny Tim."

02:27:33.480 | "They're better now again," said Cratchit's wife.

02:27:35.880 | "It makes them weak by candlelight, and I wouldn't show weak eyes to your father when

02:27:39.200 | he comes home for the world.

02:27:40.680 | It must be near his time."

02:27:42.040 | "Past it, rather," Peter answered, shutting up his book.

02:27:44.920 | "But I think he's walked a little slower than he used these few last evenings, mother."

02:27:50.360 | They were very quiet again.

02:27:51.880 | At last, she said, and in a steady, cheerful voice that only faltered once, "I have known

02:27:57.800 | him walk with tiny Tim upon his shoulder very fast indeed."

02:28:03.720 | "And so have I," cried Peter often.

02:28:06.440 | "And so have I," exclaimed another.

02:28:08.560 | So had all.

02:28:10.240 | But he was very light to carry, she resumed, intent upon her work.

02:28:13.680 | And his father loved him so that it was no trouble, no trouble, and there was your father

02:28:17.760 | at the door.

02:28:18.760 | She hurried out to meet him, and little Bob and his comforter—he had need of it, poor

02:28:21.880 | fellow—came in.

02:28:23.280 | His tea was ready for him on the hob, and they all tried who should help him to it most.

02:28:28.080 | Then the two young Cratchits got upon his knees and laid each child a little cheek against

02:28:31.680 | his face, as if they said, "Don't mind it, father, don't be grieved."

02:28:35.880 | Bob was very cheerful with them, and spoke pleasantly to all the family.

02:28:39.200 | He looked at the work upon the table, and praised the industry and speed of Mrs. Cratchit

02:28:43.240 | and the girls.

02:28:44.400 | They would be done long before Sunday, he said.

02:28:47.040 | "Sunday?

02:28:48.040 | You went today then, Robert?" said his wife.

02:28:49.760 | "Yes, my dear," returned Bob.

02:28:51.600 | "I wish you could have gone.

02:28:53.080 | It would have done you good to see how green a place it is, but you'll see it often.

02:28:56.040 | I promised him that I would walk there on a Sunday.

02:28:59.080 | My little child, my little child!" cried Bob.

02:29:02.640 | "My little child!"

02:29:04.880 | He broke down all at once.

02:29:06.200 | He couldn't help it.

02:29:07.840 | If he could have helped it, he and his child would have been farther apart, perhaps, than

02:29:10.840 | they were.

02:29:11.840 | He left the room and went upstairs into the room above, which was lighted cheerfully and

02:29:16.360 | hung with Christmas.

02:29:17.360 | There was a chair set close beside the child, and there were signs of someone having been

02:29:22.840 | there lately.

02:29:25.000 | There Bob sat down in it, and when he had thought a little and composed himself, he

02:29:29.160 | kissed the little face.

02:29:31.200 | He was reconciled to what had happened and went down again, quite happy.

02:29:35.000 | They drew about the fire and talked, the girls and mother working still.

02:29:39.160 | Bob told them of the extraordinary kindness of Mr. Scrooge's nephew, whom he had scarcely

02:29:44.060 | seen but once, and who, meeting him in the street that day and seeing that he looked

02:29:47.640 | a little, just a little down, you know, said Bob, inquired what had happened to distress

02:29:52.560 | him.

02:29:53.560 | "I'm sorry, Mr. Scrooge," said Bob, "for he is the pleasantest spoken gentleman you

02:29:56.160 | ever heard.

02:29:57.160 | I told him."

02:29:58.160 | "I am heartily sorry for it, Mr. Cratchit," he said, "and heartily sorry for your good

02:30:01.960 | wife."

02:30:02.960 | By the by, how he ever knew that, I don't know.

02:30:05.560 | "Knew what, my dear?"

02:30:07.040 | "Why, that you were a good wife," replied Bob.

02:30:09.560 | "Everybody knows that," said Peter.

02:30:11.360 | "Very well observed, my boy," cried Bob.

02:30:13.480 | "I hope they do.

02:30:14.480 | Heartily sorry," he said, "for your good wife."

02:30:16.720 | "If I can be of service to you in any way," he said, giving me his card, "that's where

02:30:21.160 | I live.

02:30:22.160 | Pray come to me."

02:30:23.320 | Now it wasn't, cried Bob, for the sake of anything he might be able to do for us, so

02:30:27.680 | much as for his kind way that this was quite delightful.

02:30:31.080 | It really seemed as if he had known our tiny Tim and felt with us.

02:30:35.120 | "I'm sure he's a good soul," said Mrs. Cratchit.

02:30:38.080 | "You would be sure of it, my dear," returned Bob, "if you saw and spoke to him.

02:30:42.800 | I shouldn't be at all surprised.

02:30:44.680 | Mark what I say if he got Peter a better situation."

02:30:47.240 | "Only hear that, Peter," said Mrs. Cratchit.

02:30:50.120 | "And then," cried one of the girls, "Peter will be keeping company with someone and setting

02:30:54.080 | up for himself.

02:30:55.360 | Get along with you," retorted Peter, grinning.

02:30:58.080 | "It's just as likely as not," said Bob.

02:31:00.200 | "One of these days, though there's plenty of time for that, my dear, but however and

02:31:03.960 | whenever we part from one another, I am sure we shall none of us forget poor tiny Tim,

02:31:08.240 | shall we?

02:31:09.240 | Or this first parting that there was amongst us?"

02:31:11.160 | "Never, father," cried they all.

02:31:12.960 | "And I know," said Bob, "I know, my dears, that when we recollect how patient and how

02:31:17.360 | mild he was, although he was a little, little child, we shall not quarrel easily among ourselves

02:31:22.920 | and forget poor tiny Tim in doing it."

02:31:25.400 | "No, never, father," they all cried again.

02:31:28.120 | "I am very happy," said little Bob.

02:31:30.400 | "I am very happy."

02:31:32.920 | Mrs. Cratchit kissed him, and his daughters kissed him.

02:31:35.960 | The two young Cratchits kissed him, and Peter and himself shook hands.

02:31:40.000 | "Spirit of tiny Tim, thy childish essence was from God."

02:31:45.880 | "Spectre," said Scrooge, "something informs me that our parting moment is at hand.

02:31:51.000 | I know it, but I know not how.

02:31:53.240 | Tell me what man that was whom we saw lying dead."

02:31:55.720 | The ghost of Christmas yet to come conveyed him as before, though at a different time,

02:32:00.800 | he thought.

02:32:01.800 | Indeed, there seemed no order in these latter visions, save that they were in the future,

02:32:06.240 | into the resorts of businessmen, but showed him not himself.

02:32:09.680 | Indeed, the spirit did not stay for anything, but went straight on as to the end just now

02:32:13.760 | desired until besought by Scrooge to tarry for a moment.

02:32:17.480 | "This court," said Scrooge, "through which we hurry now is where my place of occupation

02:32:21.760 | is, and has been for a length of time.

02:32:23.880 | I see the house.

02:32:25.080 | Let me behold what I shall be in days to come."

02:32:27.720 | The spirit stopped.

02:32:29.080 | The hand was pointed elsewhere.

02:32:30.400 | "The house is yonder," Scrooge exclaimed.

02:32:32.760 | "Why do you point away?"

02:32:34.720 | The inexorable finger underwent no change.

02:32:37.680 | Scrooge hastened to the window of his office and looked in.

02:32:40.040 | It was an office still, but not his.

02:32:42.160 | The furniture was not the same, and the figure in the chair was not himself.

02:32:45.560 | The phantom pointed as before.

02:32:47.480 | He joined it once again, and wondering why and whither he had gone, accompanied it until

02:32:51.320 | they reached an iron gate.

02:32:52.760 | He paused to look round before entering.

02:32:54.960 | A churchyard.

02:32:55.960 | Here, then, the wretched man whose name he had now to learn lay underneath the ground.

02:33:01.720 | It was a worthy place, walled in by houses, overrun by grass and weeds.

02:33:06.520 | The growth of vegetation's death, not life, choked up with too much burying.

02:33:11.400 | Fat, with repleted appetite.

02:33:13.560 | A worthy place.

02:33:15.080 | The spirit stood among the graves and pointed down to one.

02:33:19.040 | He advanced towards it, trembling.

02:33:22.240 | The phantom was exactly as it had been, but he dreaded that he saw new meaning in its

02:33:26.480 | solemn shape.

02:33:27.720 | "Before I draw nearer to that stone to which you point," said Scrooge, "answer me one

02:33:32.000 | question.

02:33:33.000 | Are these the shadows of things that will be, or are they the shadow of things that may

02:33:37.640 | be only?"

02:33:40.640 | Still the ghost pointed downward to the grave by which it stood.

02:33:45.040 | "Men's courses will foreshadow certain ends to which, if persevered in, they must

02:33:49.920 | lead," said Scrooge.

02:33:51.240 | "But if the courses be departed from, the ends will change.

02:33:55.680 | Say it is thus with what you show me."

02:33:59.520 | The spirit was immovable as ever.

02:34:04.320 | Scrooge crept towards it, trembling as he went, and following the finger, read upon

02:34:11.800 | the stone of the neglected grave his own name, Ebenezer Scrooge.

02:34:20.520 | "Am I that man who lay upon the bed?" he cried upon his knees.

02:34:26.800 | The finger pointed from the grave to him and back again.

02:34:30.200 | "No, spirit!

02:34:31.520 | No, no, no!"

02:34:33.400 | The finger still was there.

02:34:35.160 | "Spirit!" he cried, tight clutching at its robe.

02:34:37.800 | "Hear me!

02:34:38.800 | I am not the man I was.

02:34:40.400 | I will not be the man I must have been but for this intercourse.

02:34:44.760 | Why show me this if I am past all hope?"

02:34:47.920 | For the first time the hand appeared to shake.

02:34:50.360 | "Good spirit!" he pursued as down upon the ground he fell before it.

02:34:54.200 | "Your nature intercedes for me and pities me.

02:34:57.640 | Assure me that I yet may change these shadows you have shown me by an altered life."

02:35:02.000 | The kind hand trembled.

02:35:04.800 | "I will honor Christmas in my heart and try to keep it all the year.

02:35:08.880 | I will live in the past, the present, and the future.

02:35:12.320 | The spirits of all three shall strive within me.

02:35:15.360 | I will not shut out the lessons that they teach.

02:35:17.760 | Oh, tell me I may sponge away the writing on this stone!"

02:35:22.520 | In his agony he caught the spectral hand.

02:35:26.680 | It sought to free itself, but he was strong in his entreaty and detained it.

02:35:30.720 | The spirit, stronger yet, repulsed him.

02:35:33.760 | Holding up his hands in a last prayer to have his fate reversed, he saw an alteration in

02:35:38.800 | the phantom's hood and dress.

02:35:41.960 | It shrunk, collapsed, and dwindled down into a bedpost.

02:35:53.200 | Stave 5, The End of It

02:35:54.840 | Yes, and the bedpost was his own.

02:35:58.120 | The bed was his own.

02:35:59.120 | The room was his own.

02:36:00.120 | The best and happiest of all, the time before him was his own to make amends in.

02:36:04.920 | "I will live in the past, the present, and the future," Scrooge repeated as he scrambled

02:36:09.280 | out of bed.

02:36:10.280 | "The spirits of all three shall strive within me.

02:36:12.800 | Oh, Jacob Marley, heaven in the Christmas time be praised for this.

02:36:16.400 | I say it on my knees, old Jacob, on my knees."

02:36:19.680 | He was so fluttered and so glowing with his good intentions that his broken voice would

02:36:23.480 | scarcely answer to his call.

02:36:25.240 | He had been sobbing violently in his conflict with the spirit and his face was wet with

02:36:29.200 | tears.

02:36:30.200 | "They are not torn down," cried Scrooge, folding one of his bed curtains in his arms.

02:36:33.960 | "They are not torn down, rings and all.

02:36:35.840 | They are here.

02:36:36.840 | I am here.

02:36:37.920 | The shadow of the things that would have been may be dispelled.

02:36:40.420 | They will be.

02:36:41.420 | I know they will."

02:36:42.560 | His hands were busy with his garments all this time, turning them inside out, putting

02:36:45.760 | them on upside down, tearing them, mislaying them, making the parties do every kind of

02:36:49.360 | extravagance.

02:36:50.360 | "I don't know what to do," cried Scrooge, laughing and crying in the same breath and

02:36:53.960 | making a perfect laucoon of himself with his stockings.

02:36:56.440 | "I am as light as a feather.

02:36:58.000 | I am as happy as an angel.

02:36:59.680 | I am as merry as a schoolboy.

02:37:01.280 | I am as giddy as a drunken man.

02:37:03.160 | A merry Christmas to everybody.

02:37:05.320 | A happy new year to all the world.

02:37:07.600 | Hello there.

02:37:08.600 | Hello."

02:37:09.600 | He had frisked into the sitting room and was now standing there, perfectly winded.

02:37:13.640 | "There's the saucepan that the gruel was in," cried Scrooge, starting off again and going

02:37:17.640 | around the fireplace.

02:37:18.640 | "There's the door by which the ghost of Jacob Marley entered.

02:37:22.000 | There's the corner where the ghost of Christmas presents sat.

02:37:25.000 | There's the window where I saw the wandering spirits.

02:37:27.440 | It's all right.

02:37:28.440 | It's all true.

02:37:29.440 | It all happened."

02:37:30.440 | Really, for a man who had been out of practice for so many years, it was a splendid laugh,

02:37:35.440 | a most illustrious laugh, the father of a long, long line of brilliant laughs.

02:37:40.080 | "I don't know what day of the month it is," said Scrooge.

02:37:42.760 | "I don't know how long I've been among the spirits.

02:37:44.800 | I don't know anything.

02:37:45.800 | I'm quite a baby.

02:37:46.800 | Never mind.

02:37:47.800 | I don't care.

02:37:48.800 | I'd rather be a baby.

02:37:49.800 | Hello.

02:37:50.800 | Hello there."

02:37:51.800 | He was checked in his transports by the churches ringing out the lustiest peals he had ever

02:37:55.640 | heard, clash, clang, hammer, ding, dong, bell, bell, dong, ding, hammer, clang, clash.

02:38:04.280 | "Oh, glorious, glorious."

02:38:06.440 | Running to the window, he opened it and put out his head.

02:38:08.560 | No fog, no mist, clear, bright, jovial, stirring, cold, cold, piping for the blood to dance

02:38:15.320 | to, golden sunlight, heavenly sky, sweet, fresh air, merry bells.

02:38:20.560 | "Oh, glorious, glorious.

02:38:22.840 | What's today?"

02:38:23.840 | cried Scrooge, calling downward to a boy in Sunday clothes who perhaps had loitered in

02:38:27.360 | to look about him.

02:38:28.840 | "Eh?"

02:38:29.840 | returned the boy with all his might of wonder.

02:38:31.320 | "What's today, my fine young fellow?" said Scrooge.

02:38:34.520 | "Today," replied the boy, "why, Christmas Day."

02:38:37.840 | "It's Christmas Day," said Scrooge to himself.

02:38:40.240 | "I haven't missed it.

02:38:41.680 | The spirits have done it all in one night.

02:38:43.480 | They can do anything they like.

02:38:44.480 | Of course they can.

02:38:45.480 | Of course they can.

02:38:46.480 | Hello, my fine fellow.

02:38:47.480 | Hello," returned the boy.

02:38:48.800 | "Do you know the poulterers in the next street but one at the corner?"

02:38:52.600 | Scrooge inquired.

02:38:53.600 | "I should hope I did," replied the lad.

02:38:55.640 | "An intelligent boy," said Scrooge.

02:38:56.960 | "A remarkable boy.

02:38:58.480 | Do you know whether they've sold the prized turkey that was hanging up there?

02:39:01.560 | Not the little prized turkey, the big one."

02:39:03.400 | "What?

02:39:04.400 | The one as big as me?" returned the boy.

02:39:05.880 | "What a delightful boy," said Scrooge.

02:39:07.720 | "It's a pleasure to talk to him."

02:39:09.320 | "Yes, my buck."

02:39:10.320 | "It's hanging there now," replied the boy.

02:39:12.680 | "Is it?" said Scrooge.

02:39:14.160 | "Go and buy it."

02:39:16.160 | "Walker?" exclaimed the boy.

02:39:18.160 | "No, no," said Scrooge.

02:39:20.160 | "I'm in earnest.

02:39:21.160 | Go and buy it and tell him to bring it here, but I may give him the direction where to

02:39:24.680 | take it.

02:39:25.680 | Come back with the man and I'll give you a shilling.

02:39:27.920 | Come back with him in less than five minutes and I'll give you half a crown."

02:39:31.200 | The boy was off like a shot.

02:39:32.600 | He must have had a steady hand at a trigger who could have got a shot off half so fast.

02:39:35.920 | "I'll send it to Bob Cratchit," whispered Scrooge, rubbing his hands and splitting with

02:39:40.320 | a laugh.

02:39:41.320 | "He shan't know who sends it.

02:39:42.680 | It's twice the size of Tiny Tim.

02:39:44.680 | Joe Miller never made such a joke as sending it to Bob's will be."

02:39:48.080 | The hand in which he wrote the address was not a steady one, but righted he did somehow

02:39:51.520 | and went downstairs to open the street door ready for the coming of the polterer's man.

02:39:55.560 | As he stood there awaiting his arrival, the knocker caught his eye.

02:39:58.200 | "I shall love it as long as I live," cried Scrooge, patting it with his hand.

02:40:01.680 | "I scarcely ever looked at it before.

02:40:03.800 | What an honest expression it has in its face.

02:40:06.120 | It's a wonderful knocker.

02:40:07.600 | Here's the turkey.

02:40:08.600 | Hello!

02:40:09.600 | How are you?

02:40:10.600 | Merry Christmas!"

02:40:11.980 | It was a turkey.

02:40:13.520 | He never could have stood upon its legs, that bird.

02:40:15.560 | He would have snapped him short off in a minute like sticks of sealing wax.

02:40:18.840 | "Why, it's impossible to carry that to Camden Town," said Scrooge.

02:40:22.080 | "You must have a cab."

02:40:23.560 | The chuckle with which he said this and the chuckle with which he paid for the turkey

02:40:26.440 | and the chuckle with which he paid for the cab and the chuckle with which he recompensed

02:40:29.400 | the boy were only to be exceeded by the chuckle with which he sat down breathless in his chair

02:40:33.400 | again and chuckled till he cried.

02:40:36.160 | Shaving was not an easy task, for his hand continued to shake very much, and shaving

02:40:39.760 | requires attention even when you don't dance while you are at it.

02:40:43.020 | But if he had cut the end of his nose off, he would have put a piece of sticking plaster

02:40:46.040 | over it and been quite satisfied.

02:40:48.260 | He dressed himself all in his best and at last got out into the streets.

02:40:51.680 | The people were by this time pouring forth as he had seen them with the ghost of Christmas

02:40:55.220 | present and walking with his hands behind him.

02:40:57.880 | Scrooge regarded everyone with a delighted smile.

02:41:00.420 | He looked so irresistibly pleasant.

02:41:02.700 | In a word that three or four good-humored fellows said, "Good morning, sir.

02:41:06.140 | Merry Christmas to you!"

02:41:07.140 | And Scrooge said often afterwards that of all the blithe sounds he had ever heard, those

02:41:10.760 | were the blithest in his ears.

02:41:12.720 | He had not gone far when coming on towards him he beheld the portly gentleman who had

02:41:16.240 | walked into his counting house the day before and said, "Scrooge and Marley's, I believe."

02:41:20.520 | It sent a pang across his heart to think how this old gentleman would look upon him when

02:41:23.580 | they met, but he knew what path lay straight before him and he took it.

02:41:26.840 | "My dear sir," said Scrooge, quickening his pace and taking the old gentleman by both

02:41:30.200 | his hands, "how do you do?

02:41:31.800 | I hope you succeeded yesterday.

02:41:33.540 | It was very kind of you.

02:41:34.600 | A merry Christmas to you, sir."

02:41:36.840 | "Mr. Scrooge?"

02:41:38.080 | "Yes," said Scrooge, "that is my name, and I fear it may not be pleasant to you.

02:41:42.220 | Allow me to ask your pardon, and will you have the goodness?"

02:41:45.440 | Here Scrooge whispered in his ear.

02:41:47.360 | "Lord bless me!" cried the gentleman, as if his breath were taken away.

02:41:50.640 | "My dear Mr. Scrooge, are you serious?"

02:41:52.760 | "If you please," said Scrooge, "not a farthing less.

02:41:55.440 | A great many back payments are included in it, I assure you.

02:41:58.540 | Will you do me that favor?"

02:41:59.880 | "My dear sir," said the other, shaking hands with him, "I don't know what to say to such

02:42:03.680 | munificent—"

02:42:04.680 | "Don't say anything, please," retorted Scrooge.

02:42:07.640 | "Come and see me.

02:42:08.840 | Will you come and see me?"

02:42:10.000 | "I will!" cried the old gentleman, and it was clear he meant to do it.

02:42:13.520 | "Thank ye," said Scrooge, "I am much obliged to you.

02:42:15.560 | I thank you fifty times.

02:42:17.400 | Bless you!"

02:42:18.400 | He went to church, and walked about the streets, and watched the people hurrying to and fro,

02:42:22.240 | and patted children on the head, and questioned beggars, and looked down into the kitchens

02:42:25.620 | of houses and up to the windows, and found that everything could yield him pleasure.

02:42:30.380 | He had never dreamed that any walk, that anything, could give him so much happiness.

02:42:35.480 | In the afternoon he turned his steps towards his nephew's house.

02:42:39.160 | He passed the door a dozen times before he had the courage to go up and knock, but he

02:42:43.040 | made a dash and did it.

02:42:44.640 | "Is your master at home, my dear?" said Scrooge to the girl.

02:42:47.480 | "Nice girl, very.

02:42:48.480 | Yes, sir."

02:42:49.480 | "Where is he, my love?" said Scrooge.

02:42:51.480 | "He's in the dining-room, sir, along with mistress.

02:42:53.600 | I'll show you upstairs, if you please."

02:42:55.320 | "Thank ye, he knows me," said Scrooge, with his hand already on the dining-room lock.

02:42:58.640 | "I'll go in here, my dear."

02:43:00.200 | He turned it gently, and sidled his face in round the door.

02:43:02.960 | They were looking at the table, which was spread out in great array, for these young

02:43:05.720 | housekeepers are always nervous on such points, and like to see that everything is right.

02:43:09.520 | "Fred!" said Scrooge.

02:43:11.200 | Dear heart alive, how his niece by marriage started!

02:43:14.120 | Scrooge had forgotten for the moment about her sitting in the corner with a footstool,

02:43:16.640 | or he wouldn't have done it on any account.

02:43:18.360 | "I bless my soul!" cried Fred.

02:43:20.400 | "Who's that?"

02:43:21.400 | "It's I, your Uncle Scrooge.

02:43:22.920 | I have come to dinner.

02:43:23.920 | Will you let me in, Fred?"

02:43:25.560 | Let him in?

02:43:26.560 | It is a mercy he didn't shake his arm off.

02:43:28.360 | He was at home in five minutes.

02:43:30.240 | Nothing could be heartier.

02:43:31.320 | His niece looked just the same.

02:43:32.580 | So did Topper when he came.

02:43:34.160 | So did the plump sister when she came.

02:43:36.360 | So did everyone when they came.

02:43:38.600 | Wonderful party, wonderful games, wonderful unanimity, wonderful happiness!

02:43:44.320 | But he was early at the office next morning.

02:43:46.320 | He was early there.

02:43:47.600 | If he could only be there first and catch Bob Cratchit coming late.

02:43:50.580 | That was the thing he had set his heart upon.

02:43:52.660 | And he did it.

02:43:53.660 | Yes, he did.

02:43:54.660 | The clock struck nine.

02:43:55.660 | No Bob.

02:43:56.660 | The quarter passed.

02:43:57.660 | No Bob.

02:43:58.660 | He was full eighteen minutes and a half behind his time.

02:44:01.520 | Scrooge sat with his door wide open that he might see him come into the tank.

02:44:05.680 | His hat was off before he opened the door.

02:44:07.520 | His comforter too.

02:44:08.560 | He was on his stool in the jiffy, driving away with his pen as if he were trying to

02:44:11.600 | overtake nine o'clock.

02:44:12.960 | "Hello," growled Scrooge in his accustomed voice as near as he could feign it.

02:44:16.640 | "What do you mean by coming here at this time of day?"

02:44:18.960 | "I'm very sorry, sir," said Bob.

02:44:20.880 | "I am behind my time."

02:44:22.520 | "You are?"

02:44:23.520 | Repeated Scrooge.

02:44:24.520 | "Yes, I think you are.

02:44:26.560 | Step this way, sir, if you please."

02:44:27.960 | "It's only once a year, sir," pleaded Bob, appearing from the tank.

02:44:31.400 | "It shall not be repeated.

02:44:32.520 | I was making rather merry yesterday, sir."

02:44:34.680 | "Now, I'll tell you what, my friend," said Scrooge.

02:44:37.680 | "I am not going to stand this sort of thing any longer, and therefore," he continued,

02:44:42.520 | leaping from his stool and giving Bob such a dig in the waistcoat that he staggered back

02:44:45.520 | into the tank again, "and therefore I am about to raise your salary."

02:44:49.640 | Bob trembled and got a little nearer to the ruler.

02:44:51.680 | He had a momentary idea of knocking Scrooge down with it, holding him and calling to the

02:44:55.600 | people in the court for help in a straight waistcoat.

02:44:57.920 | "A merry Christmas, Bob," said Scrooge with an earnestness that could not be mistaken

02:45:01.640 | as he clapped him on the back.

02:45:02.840 | "A merrier Christmas, Bob, my good fellow, than I have given you for many a year.

02:45:06.720 | I'll raise your salary and endeavor to assist your struggling family, and we will discuss

02:45:11.160 | your affairs this very afternoon over a Christmas bowl of smoking, Bishop Bob.

02:45:16.120 | Make up the fires and buy another coal scuttle before you dot another I, Bob Cratchit."

02:45:21.080 | Scrooge was better than his word.

02:45:22.480 | He did it all and infinitely more, and to Tiny Tim, who did not die, he was a second

02:45:28.560 | father.

02:45:29.560 | He became as good a friend, as good a master, and as good a man as the good old city knew,

02:45:34.280 | or any other good old city, town, or borough in the good old world.

02:45:38.120 | Some people laughed to see the alteration in him, but he let them laugh, and little

02:45:41.480 | heeded them, for he was wise enough to know that nothing ever happened on this globe for

02:45:45.560 | good at which some people did not have their fill of laughter in the outset, and knowing

02:45:49.640 | that such as these would be blind anyway, he thought it quite as well that they should

02:45:53.280 | wrinkle up their eyes and grins, as have the malady in less attractive forms.

02:45:57.480 | His own heart laughed, and that was quite enough for him.

02:46:00.560 | He had no further intercourse with spirits, but lived upon the total abstinence principle

02:46:05.360 | ever afterwards, and it was always said of him that he knew how to keep Christmas well,

02:46:11.400 | if any man alive possessed the knowledge.

02:46:14.600 | May that be truly said of us, and all of us.

02:46:20.200 | And so, as Tiny Tim observed, God bless us, everyone.

02:46:25.920 | [BLANK_AUDIO]

Replay_838_A_Christmas_Carol_by_Charles_Dickens