A Christmas Carrol

                        '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 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 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 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-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 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 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.

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