Stave 3:  The Second of the Three Spirits

     Awaking in the middle of a prodigiously tough snore, and
sitting up in bed to get his thoughts together, Scrooge had no
occasion to be told that the bell was again upon the stroke of
One. He felt that he was restored to consciousness in the
right nick of time, for the especial purpose of holding a
conference with the second messenger despatched to him through
Jacob Marley's intervention. But, finding that he turned
uncomfortably cold when he began to wonder which of his
curtains this new spectre would draw back, he put them every
one aside with his own hands, and lying down again,
established a sharp look-out all round the bed. For, he wished
to challenge the Spirit on the moment of its appearance, and
did not wish to be taken by surprise, and made nervous.

     Gentlemen of the free-and-easy sort, who plume themselves
on being acquainted with a move or two, and being usually
equal to the time-of-day, express the wide range of their
capacity for adventure by observing that they are good for
anything from pitch-and-toss to manslaughter; between which
opposite extremes, no doubt, there lies a tolerably wide and
comprehensive range of subjects. Without venturing for Scrooge
quite as hardily as this, I don't mind calling on you to
believe that he was ready for a good broad field of strange
appearances, and that nothing between a baby and rhinoceros
would have astonished him very much.

     Now, being prepared for almost anything, he was not by
any means prepared for nothing; and, consequently, when the
Bell struck One, and no shape appeared, he was taken with a
violent fit of trembling. Five minutes, ten minutes, a quarter
of an hour went by, yet nothing came. All this time, he lay
upon his bed, the very core and centre of a blaze of ruddy
light, which streamed upon it when the clock proclaimed the
hour; and which, being only light, was more alarming than a
dozen ghosts, as he was powerless to make out what it meant,
or would be at; and was sometimes apprehensive that he might
be at that very moment an interesting case of spontaneous
combustion, without having the consolation of knowing it. At
last, however, he began to think -- as you or I would have
thought at first; for it is always the person not in the
predicament who knows what ought to have been done in it, and
would unquestionably have done it too -- at last, I say, he
began to think that the source and secret of this ghostly
light might be in the adjoining room, from whence, on further
tracing it, it seemed to shine. This idea taking full
possession of his mind, he got up softly and shuffled in his
slippers to the door.

     The moment Scrooge's hand was on the lock, a strange
voice called him by his name, and bade him enter. He obeyed.

     It was his own room. There was no doubt about that. But
it had undergone a surprising transformation. The walls and
ceiling were so hung with living green, that it looked a
perfect grove; from every part of which, bright gleaming
berries glistened. The crisp leaves of holly, mistletoe, and
ivy reflected back the light, as if so many little mirrors had
been scattered there; and such a mighty blaze went roaring up
the chimney, as that dull petrification of a hearth had never
known in Scrooge's time, or Marley's, or for many and many a
winter season gone. Heaped up on the floor, to form a kind of
throne, were turkeys, geese, game, poultry, brawn, great
joints of meat, sucking-pigs, long wreaths of sausages,
mince-pies, plum-puddings, barrels of oysters, red-hot
chestnuts, cherry-cheeked apples, juicy oranges, luscious
pears, immense twelfth-cakes, and seething bowls of punch,
that made the chamber dim with their delicious steam. In easy
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. To-night, if you have aught to
teach me, let me profit by it.'

     `Touch my robe.'

     Scrooge did as he was told, and held it fast.

     Holly, mistletoe, red berries, ivy, turkeys, geese, game,
poultry, brawn, meat, pigs, sausages, oysters, pies, puddings,
fruit, and punch, all vanished instantly. So did the room, the
fire, the ruddy glow, the hour of night, and they stood in the
city streets on Christmas morning, where (for the weather was
severe) the people made a rough, but brisk and not unpleasant
kind of music, in scraping the snow from the pavement in front
of their dwellings, and from the tops of their houses, whence
it was mad delight to the boys to see it come plumping down
into the road below, and splitting into artificial little
snow-storms.

     The house fronts looked black enough, and the windows
blacker, contrasting with the smooth white sheet of snow upon
the roofs, and with the dirtier snow upon the ground; which
last deposit had been ploughed up in deep furrows by the heavy
wheels of carts and waggons; furrows that crossed and
recrossed each other hundreds of times where the great streets
branched off; and made intricate channels, hard to trace in
the thick yellow mud and icy water. The sky was gloomy, and
the shortest streets were choked up with a dingy mist, half
thawed, half frozen, whose heavier particles descended in
shower of sooty atoms, as if all the chimneys in Great Britain
had, by one consent, caught fire, and were blazing away to
their dear hearts' content. There was nothing very cheerful in
the climate or the town, and yet was there an air of
cheerfulness abroad that the clearest summer air and brightest
summer sun might have endeavoured to diffuse in vain.

     For, the people who were shovelling away on the housetops
were jovial and full of glee; calling out to one another from
the parapets, and now and then exchanging a facetious snowball
-- better-natured missile far than many a wordy jest --
laughing heartily if it went right and not less heartily if it
went wrong. The poulterers' shops were still half open, and
the fruiterers' were radiant in their glory. There were great,
round, 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 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 bye-streets, lanes, and
nameless turnings, innumerable people, carrying their dinners
to the baker' shops. The sight of these poor revellers
appeared to interest the Spirit very much, for he stood with
Scrooge beside him in a baker's doorway, and taking off the
covers as their bearers passed, sprinkled incense on their
dinners from his torch. And it was a very uncommon kind of
torch, for once or twice 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 out
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 e 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 back-yard, and stolen it, while they were
merry with the goose -- a supposition at which the two young
Cratchits became livid. All sorts of horrors were supposed.

     Hallo. A great deal of steam. The pudding was out of the
copper. A smell like a washing-day. That was the cloth. A
smell like an eating-house and a pastrycook's next door to
each other, with a laundress's next door to that. That was the
pudding. In half a minute Mrs Cratchit entered -- flushed, but
smiling proudly -- with the pudding, like a speckled
cannon-ball, so hard and firm, blazing in half of
half-a-quartern of ignited brandy, and bedight with Christmas
holly stuck into the top.

     Oh, a wonderful pudding. Bob Cratchit said, and calmly
too, that he regarded it as the greatest success achieved by
Mrs Cratchit since their marriage. Mrs Cratchit said that now
the weight was off her mind, she would confess she had had her
doubts about the quantity of flour. Everybody had something to
say about it, but nobody said or thought it was at all a small
pudding for a large family. It would have been flat heresy to
do so. Any Cratchit would have blushed to hint at such a
thing.

     At last the dinner was all done, the cloth was cleared,
the hearth swept, and the fire made up. The compound in the
jug being tasted, and considered perfect, apples and oranges
were put upon the table, and a shovel-full of chestnuts on the
fire. Then all the Cratchit family drew round the hearth, in
what Bob Cratchit called a circle, meaning half a one; and at
Bob Cratchit's elbow stood the family display of glass. Two
tumblers, and a custard-cup without a handle.

     These held the hot stuff from the jug, however, as well
as golden goblets would have done; and Bob served it out with
beaming looks, while the chestnuts on the fire sputtered and
cracked noisily. Then Bob proposed:

     `A Merry Christmas to us all, my dears. God bless us.'

     Which all the family re-echoed.

     `God bless us every one.' said Tiny Tim, the last of all.

     He sat very close to his father's side upon his little
stool. Bob held his withered little hand in his, as if he
loved the child, and wished to keep him by his side, and
dreaded that he might be taken from him.

     `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 to-morrow morning for a good long rest; to-morrow
being a holiday she passed at home. Also how she had seen a
countess and a lord some days before, and how the lord was
much about as tall as Peter;' at which Peter pulled up his
collars so high that you couldn't have seen his head if you
had been there. All this time the chestnuts and the jug went
round and round; and by-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 water-proof; their clothes were scanty; and
Peter might have known, and very likely did, the inside of a
pawnbroker's. But, they were happy, grateful, pleased with one
another, and contented with the time; and when they faded, and
looked happier yet in the bright sprinklings of the Spirit's
torch at parting, Scrooge had his eye upon them, and
especially on Tiny Tim, until the last.

     By this time it was getting dark, and snowing pretty
heavily; and as Scrooge and the Spirit went along the streets,
the brightness of the roaring fires in kitchens, parlours, and
all sorts of rooms, was wonderful. Here, the flickering of the
blaze showed preparations for a cosy dinner, with hot plates
baking through and through before the fire, and deep red
curtains, ready to be drawn to shut out cold and darkness.
There all the children of the house were running out into the
snow to meet their married sisters, brothers, cousins, uncles,
aunts, and be the first to greet them. Here, again, were
shadows on the 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.'

     Alight 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 sea-weed clung to its base, and storm-birds -- born of the
wind one might suppose, as sea-weed of the water -- rose and
fell about it, like the waves they skimmed.

     But even here, two men who watched the light had made a
fire, that through the loophole in the thick stone wall shed
out a ray of brightness on the awful sea. Joining their horny
hands over the rough table at which they sat, they wished each
other Merry Christmas in their can of grog; and one of them:
the elder, too, with his face all damaged and scarred with
hard weather, as the figure-head of an old ship might be:
struck up a sturdy song that was like a Gale in itself.

     Again the Ghost sped on, above the black and heaving sea
-- on, on -- until, being far away, as he told Scrooge, from
any shore, they lighted on a ship. They stood beside the
helmsman at the wheel, the look-out in the bow, the officers
who had the watch; dark, ghostly figures in their several
stations; but every man among them hummed a Christmas tune, or
had a Christmas thought, or spoke below his breath to his
companion of some bygone Christmas Day, with homeward hopes
belonging to it. And every man on board, waking or sleeping,
good or bad, had had a kinder word for another on that day
than on any day in the year; and had shared to some extent in
its festivities; and had remembered those he cared for at a
distance, and had known that they delighted to remember him.

     It was a great surprise to Scrooge, while listening to
the moaning of the wind, and thinking what a solemn thing it
was to move on through the lonely darkness over an unknown
abyss, whose depths were secrets as profound as Death: it was
a great surprise to Scrooge, while thus engaged, to hear a
hearty laugh. It was a much greater surprise to Scrooge to
recognise it as his own nephew's and to find himself in a
bright, dry, gleaming room, with the Spirit standing smiling
by his side, and looking at that same nephew with approving
affability.

     `Ha, ha.' laughed Scrooge's nephew. `Ha, ha, ha.'

     If you should happen, by any unlikely chance, to know a
man more blest in a laugh than Scrooge's nephew, all I can say
is, I should like to know him too. Introduce him to me, and
I'll cultivate his acquaintance.

     It is a fair, even-handed, noble adjustment of things,
that while there is infection in disease and sorrow, there is
nothing in the world so irresistibly contagious as laughter
and good-humour. When Scrooge's nephew laughed in this way:
holding his sides, rolling his head, and twisting his face
into the most extravagant contortions: Scrooge's niece, by
marriage, laughed as heartily as he. And their assembled
friends being not a bit behindhand, roared out lustily.

     `Ha, ha. Ha, ha, ha, ha.'

     `He said that Christmas was a humbug, as I live.' cried
Scrooge's nephew. `He believed it too.'

     `More shame for him, Fred.' said Scrooge's niece,
indignantly. Bless those women; they never do anything by
halves. They are always in earnest.

     She was very pretty: exceedingly pretty. With a dimpled,
surprised-looking, capital face; a ripe little mouth, that
seemed made to be kissed -- as no doubt it was; all kinds of
good little dots about her chin, that melted into one another
when she laughed; and the sunniest pair of eyes you ever saw
in any little creature's head. Altogether she was what you
would have called provoking, you know; but satisfactory,

     `He's a comical old fellow,' said Scrooge's nephew,'
that's the truth: and not so pleasant as he might be. However,
his offences carry their own punishment, and I have nothing to
say against him.'

     `I'm sure he is very rich, Fred,' hinted Scrooge's niece.
`At least you always tell me so.'

     `What of that, my dear.' said Scrooge's nephew. `His
wealth is of no use to him. He don't do any good with it. He
don't make himself comfortable with it. He hasn't the
satisfaction of thinking -- ha, ha, ha. -- that he is ever
going to benefit us with it.'

     `I have no patience with him,' observed Scrooge's niece.
Scrooge's niece's sisters, and all the other ladies, expressed
the same opinion.

     `Oh, I have.' said Scrooge's nephew. `I am sorry for him;
I couldn't be angry with him if I tried. Who suffers by his
ill whims. Himself, always. Here, he takes it into his head to
dislike us, and he won't come and dine with us. What's the
consequence. He don't lose much of a dinner.'

     `Indeed, I think he loses a very good dinner,'
interrupted Scrooge's niece. Everybody else said the same, and
they must be allowed to have been competent judges, because
they had just had dinner; and, with the dessert upon the
table, were clustered round the fire, by lamplight.

     `Well. I'm very glad to hear it,' said Scrooge's nephew,
`because I haven't great faith in these young housekeepers.
What do you say, Topper.'

     Topper had clearly got his eye upon one of Scrooge's
niece's sisters, for he answered that a bachelor was a
wretched outcast, who had no right to express an opinion on
the subject. Whereat Scrooge's niece's sister -- the plump one
with the lace tucker: not the one with the roses -- blushed.

     `Do go on, Fred,' said Scrooge's niece, clapping her
hands. `He never finishes what he begins to say. He is such a
ridiculous fellow.'

     Scrooge's nephew revelled in another laugh, and as it was
impossible to keep the infection off; though the plump sister
tried hard to do it with aromatic vinegar; his example was
unanimously followed.

     `I was only going to say,' said Scrooge's nephew,' that
the consequence of his taking a dislike to us, and not making
merry with us, is, as I think, that he loses some pleasant
moments, which could do him no harm. I am 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
blind-man's buff. Of course there was. And I no more believe
Topper was really blind than I believe he had eyes in his
boots. My opinion is, that it was a done thing between him and
Scrooge's nephew; and that the Ghost of Christmas Present knew
it. The way he went after that plump sister in the lace
tucker, was an outrage on the credulity of human nature.
Knocking down the fire-irons, tumbling over the chairs,
bumping against the piano, smothering himself among the
curtains, wherever she went, there went he. He always knew
where the plump sister was. He wouldn't catch anybody else. If
you had fallen up against him (as some of them did), on
purpose, he would have made a feint of endeavouring to seize
you, which would have been an affront to your understanding,
and would instantly have sidled off in the direction of the
plump sister. She often cried out that it wasn't fair; and it
really was not. But when at last, he caught her; when, in
spite of all her silken rustlings, and her rapid flutterings
past him, he got her into a corner whence there was no escape;
then his conduct was the most execrable. For his pretending
not to know her; his pretending that it was necessary to touch
her head-dress, and further to assure himself of her identity
by pressing a certain ring upon her finger, and a certain
chain about her neck; was vile, monstrous. No doubt she told
him her opinion of it, when, another blind-man being in
office, they were so very confidential together, behind the
curtains.

     Scrooge's niece was not one of the blind-man's buff
party, but was made comfortable with a large chair and a
footstool, in a snug corner, where the Ghost and Scrooge were
close behind her. But she joined in the forfeits, and loved
her love to admiration with all the letters of the alphabet.
Likewise at the game of How, When, and Where, she was very
great, and to the secret joy of Scrooge's nephew, beat her
sisters hollow: though they were sharp girls too, as could
have told you. There might have been twenty people there,
young and old, but they all played, and so did Scrooge, for,
wholly forgetting the interest he had in what was going on,
that his voice made no sound in their ears, he sometimes came
out with his guess quite loud, and very often guessed quite
right, too; for the sharpest needle, best Whitechapel,
warranted not to cut in the eye, was not sharper than Scrooge;
blunt as he took it in his head to be.

     The Ghost was greatly pleased to find him in this mood,
and looked upon him with such favour, that he begged like a
boy to be allowed to stay until the guests departed. But this
the Spirit said could not be done.

     `Here is a new game,' said Scrooge. `One half hour,
Spirit, only one.'

     It was a Game called Yes and No, where Scrooge's nephew
had to think of something, and the rest must find out what; he
only answering to their questions yes or no, as the case was.
The brisk fire of questioning to which he was exposed,
elicited from him that he was thinking of an animal, a live
animal, rather a disagreeable animal, a savage animal, an
animal that growled and grunted sometimes, and talked
sometimes, and lived in London, and walked about the streets,
and wasn't made a show of, and wasn't led by anybody, and
didn't live in a menagerie, and was never killed in a market,
and was not a horse, or an ass, or a cow, or a bull, or a
tiger, or a dog, or a pig, or a cat, or a bear. At every fresh
question that was put to him, this nephew burst into a fresh
roar of laughter; and was so inexpressibly tickled, that he
was obliged to get up off the sofa and stamp. At last the
plump sister, falling into a similar state, cried out:

     `I have found it out. I know what it is, Fred. I know
what it is.'

     `What is it.' cried Fred.

     `It's your Uncle Scrooge.'

     Which it certainly was. Admiration was the universal
sentiment, though some objected that the reply to `Is it a
bear.' ought to have been `Yes;' inasmuch as an answer in the
negative was sufficient to have diverted their thoughts from
Mr Scrooge, supposing they had ever had any tendency that way.

     `He has given us plenty of merriment, I am sure,' said
Fred,' and it would be ungrateful not to drink his health.
Here is a glass of mulled wine ready to our hand at the
moment; and I say, "Uncle Scrooge."'

     `Well. Uncle Scrooge.' they cried.

     `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 to-night.'

     `To-night.' cried Scrooge.

     `To-night at midnight. Hark. The time is drawing near.'

     The chimes were ringing the three quarters past eleven at
that moment.

     `Forgive me if I am not justified in what I ask,' said
Scrooge, looking intently at the Spirit's robe,' but I see
something strange, and not belonging to yourself, protruding
from your skirts. Is it a foot or a claw.'

     `It might be a claw, for the flesh there is upon it,' was
the Spirit's sorrowful reply. `Look here.'

     From the foldings of its robe, it brought two children;
wretched, abject, frightful, hideous, miserable. They knelt
down at its feet, and clung upon the outside of its garment.

     `Oh, Man. look here. Look, look, down here.' exclaimed
the Ghost.

     They were a boy and a girl. Yellow, meagre, ragged,
scowling, wolfish; but prostrate, too, in their humility.
Where graceful youth should have filled their features out,
and touched them with its freshest tints, a stale and
shrivelled hand, like that of age, had pinched, and twisted
them, and pulled them into shreds. Where angels might have sat
enthroned, devils lurked, and glared out menacing. No change,
no degradation, no perversion of humanity, in any grade,
through all the mysteries of wonderful creation, has monsters
half so horrible and dread.

     Scrooge started back, appalled. Having them shown to him
in this way, he tried to say they were fine children, but the
words choked themselves, rather than be parties to a lie of
such enormous magnitude.

     `Spirit. are they yours.' Scrooge could say no more.

     `They are Man's,' said the Spirit, looking down upon
them. `And they cling to me, appealing from their fathers.
This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware them both,
and all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy, for
on his brow I see that written which is Doom, unless the
writing be erased. Deny it.' cried the Spirit, 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.