A CHRISTMAS CAROL


By Charles Dickens


PREFACE

I have endeavoured in this Ghostly little book to raise the Ghost of an Idea 
which shall not put my readers out of humour with themselves, with each other, 
with the season, or with me. May it haunt their house pleasantly, and no one 
wish to lay it.

Their faithful Friend and Servant, C.D.

December, 1843




CHARACTERS

BOB CRATCHIT, clerk to Ebenezer Scrooge.
PETER CRATCHIT, a son of the preceding.
TIM CRATCHIT (`Tiny Tim'), a cripple, youngest son of Bob Cratchit.
MR.FEZZIWIG, a kind-hearted, jovial old merchant.
FRED, Scrooge's nephew.
GHOST OF CHRISTMAS PAST, a phantom showing things past.
GHOST OF CHRISTMAS PRESENT, a spirit of a kind, generous, and hearty nature.
GHOST OF CHRISTMAS YET TO COME, an apparition showing the shadows of things 
which yet may happen.
GHOST OF JACOB MARLEY, a spectre of Scrooge's former partner in business.
JOE, a marine-store dealer and receiver of stolen goods.
EBENEZER SCROOGE, a grasping, covetous old man, the surviving partner of the 
firm of Scrooge and Marley.
MR.TOPPER, a bachelor.
DICK WILKINS, a fellow apprentice of Scrooge's.
BELLE, a comely matron, an old sweetheart of Scrooge's.
CAROLINE, wife of one of Scrooge's debtors.
MRS.CRATCHIT, wife of Bob Cratchit.
BELINDA AND MARTHA CRATCHIT, daughters of the preceding.
MRS.DILBER, a laundress.
FAN, the sister of Scrooge.
MRS.FEZZIWIG, the worthy partner of Mr.Fezziwig.



CONTENTS


STAVE 1.Marley's Ghost.
STAVE 2.The First of the Three Spirits.
STAVE 3.The Second of the Three Spirits.
STAVE 4.The Last of the Spirits.
STAVE 5.The End of it.



A CHRISTMAS CAROL

BEING A GHOST STORY

OF CHRISTMAS



STAVE 1.

MARLEY'S GHOST


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

"God bless you, merry gentleman!
May nothing you dismay!"

Scrooge seized the ruler with such energy of action, that the singer fled in 
terror, leaving the keyhole to the fog and even more congenial frost.
At length the hour of shutting up the counting-house arrived. With an ill-will 
Scrooge dismounted from his stool, and tacitly admitted the fact to the 
expectant clerk in the Tank, who instantly snuffed his candle out, and put on 
his hat.
"You'll want all day tomorrow, I suppose?" said Scrooge.
"If quite convenient, sir."
"It's not convenient," said Scrooge, "and it's not fair. If I was to stop 
half-a-crown for it, you'd think yourself ill-used, I'll be bound?"
The clerk smiled faintly.
"And yet," said Scrooge, "you don't think me ill-used, when I pay a day's 
wages for no work."

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






STAVE 2.

THE FIRST OF THE THREE SPIRITS.


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






STAVE 3.


THE SECOND OF THE THREE SPIRITS.


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






STAVE 4.


THE LAST OF THE SPIRITS.


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






STAVE 5.


THE END OF IT.


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

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