A Christmas Carrol  

                        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 cross-roads and bye-ways, 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 high-road, 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
                        candle-light, 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.'

                        The Ghost smiled thoughtfully, and waved its hand: saying as it did so, 'Let us see another
                        Christmas!'

                        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 school-master himself, who glared at 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 school-master good-
                        bye right willingly; and getting into it, drove gaily down the garden-sweep: the quick wheels
                        dashing the hoar-frost 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 to-night. 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 their places- four, five, six- barred 'em and pinned 'em-
                        seven, eight, nine- and came back before you could have got to twelve, panting like race-horses.

                        'Hilli-ho!' cried old Fezziwig, skipping down from the high desk, with wonderful agility. 'Clear away,
                        my lads, and let's have lots of room here! Hilli-ho, Dick! Chirrup, Ebenezer!'

                        Clear away! There was nothing they wouldn't have cleared away, or couldn't have cleared away,
                        with old Fezziwig looking on. It was done in a minute. Every movable was packed off, as if it were
                        dismissed from public life for evermore; the floor was swept and watered, the lamps were trimmed,
                        fuel was heaped upon the fire; and the warehouse was as snug, and warm, and dry, and bright a
                        ball-room, as you would desire to see upon a winter's night.

                        In came a fiddler with a music-book, and went up to the lofty desk, and made an orchestra of it,
                        and tuned like fifty stomach- aches. In came Mrs. Fezziwig, one vast substantial smile. In came the
                        three Miss Fezziwigs, beaming and lovable. In came the six young followers whose hearts they
                        broke. In came all the young men and women employed in the business. In came the housemaid,
                        with her cousin, the baker. In came the cook, with her brother's particular friend, the milkman. In
                        came the boy from over the way, who was suspected of not having board enough from his master;
                        trying to hide himself behind the girl from next door but one, who was proved to have had her ears
                        pulled by her mistress. In they all 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

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