1 files changed, 5483 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/41894-0.txt b/41894-0.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f04c015
--- /dev/null
+++ b/41894-0.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,5483 @@
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 41894 ***
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+A little boy in Miss Harrison's kindergarten heard the story of the
+legend of the Christ Child, told just prior to his going to Europe for
+a three months trip with his father and mother. While there his mother
+took him one day with her to see a collection of art photographs. He
+looked at them quietly and thoughtfully for a time, and then picking
+up a copy of the above picture he said, "Mamma, you told me I might
+take a present home to Miss Harrison, and I would like to take her
+this picture, because it looks just as I think the little Christ Child
+that she read us about must have looked."
+
+So beautiful was the thought embodied in the story that it left the
+same impression upon the mind of the child that the great artist
+Murillo had left upon canvas. This is but one instance that great
+thoughts do make impressions upon the mind of the child.
+
+
+
+
+CHRISTMAS-TIDE
+
+
+
+BY
+
+ELIZABETH HARRISON
+
+CO-PRINCIPAL OF THE CHICAGO KINDERGARTEN COLLEGE
+
+
+
+PUBLISHED BY
+CHICAGO KINDERGARTEN COLLEGE
+10 VAN BUREN STREET
+CHICAGO
+
+COPYRIGHTED 1902
+BY
+ELIZABETH HARRISON
+
+
+
+
+    DEDICATED TO MY FATHER
+    FROM WHOSE HEART AND LIFE AGE CANNOT
+    BANISH THE
+    PERPETUAL CHRISTMAS-TIDE
+
+    --E. H.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+                                                                 PAGE
+
+   I. CHRISTMAS PRESENTS                                            9
+
+  II. THE PLACE OF TOYS IN THE EDUCATION OF A CHILD                25
+
+ III. HOW TO CELEBRATE CHRISTMAS                                   41
+
+  IV. SANTA CLAUS                                                  49
+
+   V. A CHRISTMAS EXPERIENCE                                       55
+
+  VI. A CHRISTMAS CAROL                                            81
+
+ VII. CHRISTMAS STORIES FOR THE CHILDREN                          219
+
+VIII. A CHRISTMAS STORY FOR GROWN-UPS                             237
+
+  IX. A CHRISTMAS SONG                                            247
+
+   X. BIBLE STORY OF CHRISTMAS                                    251
+
+
+
+
+I.
+
+CHRISTMAS PRESENTS.
+
+
+Many mothers are sorely perplexed as the Christmas-tide approaches by
+the problem of how to select such presents for their children as will
+help them rather than hinder them in their much-needed self-activity.
+Let the toys be _simple, strong, and durable, that your child may not
+gain habits of reckless extravagance and destruction_ which flimsy
+toys always engender. Remember a few good toys, like a few good books,
+are far better than many poor toys. Toys in which the child's own
+creative power has full play are far better than the finished toys
+from the French manufacturers. In fact, too complex a toy is like too
+highly seasoned food, too elaborately written books, too old society,
+or any other mature thing forced upon the immature mind. Your choice
+should be based, not so much on _what the toy is, as on what the child
+can do with it_. The instinctive delight of putting their own thought
+into their play-things instead of accepting the thought of the
+manufacturer explains why simple toys are often more pleasing to
+children than expensive ones.
+
+The following list has been compiled from such toys as have delighted
+as well as have helped the children of kindergarten-trained mothers.
+
+
+    TOYS FOR CHILDREN FROM ONE TO TWO YEARS OF AGE.
+
+    Linen picture-books, rubber animals, cotton-flannel animals, rubber
+    rings, worsted balls, strings of spools, knit dolls, rag dolls,
+    rubber dolls, wooden animals (unpainted), new silver dollars.
+
+The kindergarten materials helpful at this period of the child's
+development are the soft worsted balls of the first gift. When the
+child begins to listen to sounds and to attempt to articulate, the
+sphere, cube, and cylinder of the second gift may be given to him.
+These two gifts, when rightly used, assist the clear, distinct, and
+normal growth of the powers of observation and aid the little one in
+expressing himself, even before he has language at his command. Songs
+and games illustrative of the various ways in which these gifts can be
+used with a young child, are to be found in the Kindergarten Guides
+now published. Some very good ones are included in the first year's
+course of study for mothers of the Kindergarten College. However,
+almost any mother can invent plays with them for her child.
+
+
+The kindergarten materials found most helpful for this period of the
+average child's growth are the second gift and the divided cubes of
+the third gift. With the latter the child can early be trained into
+habits of _constructive_ play, rather than _destructive_ play. As all
+children like to transform and rearrange their toys, this gift is
+particularly adapted to that purpose. It is simple and easy to handle.
+Much logical training can be given the child by teaching him to change
+one form made with his blocks into another, without scattering, or
+entirely destroying the first form. Many suggestive forms may also be
+found in the various Kindergarten Guides already published. A series
+of these are now being prepared by the College for general sale.
+However, the child himself will oftentimes name the forms made by some
+name of his own, which should be accepted by the mother. The wooden
+tablets, sticks, rings, and points of the kindergarten can also be
+used with a child from three to four years of age though they are, as
+a rule, less satisfactory than the blocks. The second gift beads
+furnish an almost exhaustless amusement for some children at this
+stage of their growth. A long linen shoe-string with a firm knot tied
+at one end has been found to be the most serviceable kind of a string
+on which to string the beads. Knowledge of color, form, and number are
+also incidentally taught the child by these beads.
+
+Low sand tables are an almost endless pleasure to small children, as
+sand is one of the most easily mastered of the materials of nature,
+and can serve as a surface for the first efforts at drawing, or can be
+the beginning of the childish attempts to mold the solid forms about
+him. When lightly dampened it serves as an excellent substance on
+which to leave the impress of various objects of interest. In fact,
+there is scarcely any play in which the sand may not take part. The
+child should be taught from the very beginning that he must not spill
+the sand upon the floor nor throw it at any one. In case he violates
+these laws of neatness and safety, the sand table may be removed for a
+time.
+
+A blackboard and chalk are usually a source of much keen and innocent
+enjoyment to three and four year old children, especially if the
+mother sometimes enters into the making of pictures, or story-telling
+by means of pictures, no matter how crudely drawn. Various other
+kindergarten "occupations" may be used by the trained mother--but the
+untrained mother often finds them confusing and of little use.
+
+Whenever it is possible the back yard should have a sand pile, a load
+of kindling, and a swing in it, that the child in his instinctive
+desire to master material, to construct, and to be free, may find
+these convenient friends to help him in his laudable aspirations. The
+street has less temptations for children thus provided for.
+
+
+    TOYS FOR CHILDREN FROM THREE TO FIVE YEARS OF AGE.
+
+    Blackboard and crayon, building blocks, balls, train of cars, doll
+    and cradle, wooden beads to string, small glass beads to string,
+    rocking-chair, doll's carriage, books with pictures of trade life,
+    flowers, vegetables, etc., tracing cards and paper dolls, toy
+    poultry yard with fences, trees, a woman, and a dozen ducks and
+    chickens.
+
+The more advanced gifts of the kindergarten now interest the child.
+Clay modeling and paper folding can easily be taught him, and many of
+the simpler formulas for the mat weaving, also some of the sewing. A
+good kindergarten is the best play ground for a child at this stage of
+his development, as he _needs_ comrades of his own age and ability. If
+a kindergarten cannot be had the mother must be as nearly a child
+herself as she knows how to be. Good, simple, wholesome stories now
+become a part of the child's life. They form the door by which he is
+later to be led into the great world of literature. Therefore,
+story-books may be numbered among the suitable toys for four and five
+year old children, though stories _told_ to the child are better.
+Almost any mother who has her child's best interests at heart can
+simplify the old Greek myths as retold by Hawthorne in his "Wonder
+Book," or the Norse legends as given us by Hamilton Mabie in "Norse
+Stories," or the rich, pithy experience of the Teutonic peoples as
+collected in Grimm's "Fairy Tales." All of these contain the seeds of
+wisdom which the early child races stored away in childish forms, and
+therefore, they delight the heart of the child of to-day and aid
+materially in cultivating his imagination in the right way.
+
+
+    TOYS FOR CHILDREN FROM FIVE TO SIX YEARS OF AGE.
+
+    Kitchen, laundry and baking sets, balls, building blocks, picture
+    puzzles, dissecting maps, historical story-books, outline
+    picture-books to color with paint or crayon, trumpet, music-box,
+    desk, blackboard, wagon, whip, sled, kite, pipe for soap bubbles,
+    train of cars, carpenter tools, jackstraws, hobby-horses,
+    substantial cook-stove, sand table, skates, rubber boots, broom,
+    Richter's stone blocks, shovel, spade, rake and hoe, marbles,
+    tops, swing and see-saw, strong milk-wagon equipped with cylinder
+    cans, substantial churn, a few bottles filled with water, spices,
+    coffee, sugar, etc., for a drug store.
+
+Ordinarily children of this age still love their kindergarten tools,
+and can be led to do really pretty work with their mats, folding,
+pasting, etc. The fifth and sixth gifts[1] now come into use and aid
+the child in more definite expression of his ideas. More stories
+should be told, and the beginning made of collections of pictures for
+scrap-books, also collections of stones, leaves, curios for his own
+little cabinet. Many references may from time to time be made to the
+books to be read by and by, which will tell him wonderful things about
+these treasures. In this way a desire to learn to read is awakened,
+and soon the world of nature and of books takes the place of toys,
+except of course, those by means of which bodily skill is gained and
+tested. These later belong in general to the period of boyhood and
+girlhood.
+
+          [1] See "The Kindergarten Building Gifts" by Elizabeth
+          Harrison and Belle Woodson.
+
+To this list of Christmas toys is added a list of books suitable for
+Christmas gifts. Very handsome books are to be avoided, as the child
+delights in handling his own books almost as much as his own toys. The
+value of the right kind of books cannot be too much emphasized. Is not
+the food which you give to your child's mind of as much importance as
+that which you give to his body?
+
+When your boy stops questioning you, he has not stopped questioning
+concerning life and its problems; he has turned to those silent
+companions which you have placed upon his bookshelf or on the library
+table. Shall heroes and prophets be his counselors, or shall "Peck's
+Bad Boy" and the villain of the dime novel teach him how to look at
+life? _It rests with you._
+
+There is a great difference between books which are to be read _to_
+children, those which are to be read _with_ children, and those which
+are to be read _by_ children.
+
+The second kind, which are more profitable than the first, require the
+mother's sympathetic and genuine interest in the subject-matter in
+hand; and frequent stops for little talks about what has been read are
+necessary.
+
+The third class are books for older children who can read well enough
+to peruse them alone; but, if the mother will take time to read them
+before giving them to the child, she will strengthen the bonds of
+intellectual sympathy between herself and him.
+
+
+    LIST No. 1.
+
+    FOR CHILDREN UNDER SIX YEARS OF AGE.
+
+    Mother-play and Nursery Song, by Frederick Froebel.
+
+    Nursery Finger Plays, by Emile Poulsson.
+
+    Mother Goose, in one syllable.
+
+    Songs for Little Ones, by Eleanor Smith.
+
+    Æsop's Fables, in one syllable, by Mary Mapes Dodge.
+
+    Boley's Own Æsop; illustrated by Walter Crane.
+
+    Baby World, by Mary Mapes Dodge.
+
+    Rhymes and Jingles.
+
+    Little People of the Air, by Olive Thorne Miller.
+
+    Nonsense Book, by Edward Sears.
+
+
+    LIST No. 2.
+
+    FOR CHILDREN FROM SIX TO EIGHT YEARS OF AGE.
+
+    Doll World, by Mrs. O. Reilly.
+
+    Sparrow the Tramp, by Wesselhoeft.
+
+    The Joyous Story of Toto, by L. E. Richards.
+
+    Doings of the Bodley Family, by H. E. Scudder.
+
+    Bodleys Telling Stories, by H. E. Scudder.
+
+    The Bird's Christmas Carol, by K. D. Wiggin.
+
+    Hans Andersen's Fairy Tales, translated by H. S. Brackstad.
+
+    Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, by Lewis Carroll.
+
+    Bible Stories from the Old Testament, by Richard G. Moulton.
+
+    Moon Folks, by Jane Austin.
+
+    Mopsa the Fairy, by Ingelow.
+
+    Evenings at Home, by Barbould and Aiken.
+
+    Posies for Children, by Anna Lowell.
+
+    Shanny and Light House.
+
+
+    LIST No. 3.
+
+    STORY-BOOKS.--FOR CHILDREN BETWEEN THE AGES OF EIGHT AND FOURTEEN.
+
+    Seven Little Sisters, by Miss Jane Andrews.
+
+    Each and All, by Miss Jane Andrews.
+
+    Ten Little Boys on the Way from Long Ago to Now, by Miss Jane
+    Andrews.
+
+    Story of a Short Life, by Mrs. Juliana Horatia Ewing.
+
+    Mary's Meadow, by Mrs. Juliana Horatia Ewing.
+
+    Jackanapes, by Mrs. Juliana Horatia Ewing.
+
+    Dandelion Clocks, by Mrs. Juliana Horatia Ewing.
+
+    The Wonder Book, by Nathaniel Hawthorne; illustrated by Howard
+    Pyle.
+
+    Tanglewood Tales, by Nathaniel Hawthorne; illustrated by Howard
+    Pyle.
+
+    True Tales, by Nathaniel Hawthorne.
+
+    Fairy Tales, by Jean Macé.
+
+    Grimm's Household Tales.
+
+    Fairy Tales, by Hans Christian Andersen.
+
+    Two Grey Girls, by Ellen Haile.
+
+    Three Brown Boys, by Ellen Haile.
+
+    Chivalric Days.
+
+    Robinson Crusoe, by De Foe.
+
+    Hans Brinker, by Mary Mapes Dodge.
+
+    Arabian Nights; illustrated by A. H. Houghton.
+
+    Homer's Iliad and Odyssey; illustrated by John Flaxman.
+
+    Shakespeare's Tempest and Two Gentlemen of Verona; illustrated by
+    Walter Crane.
+
+    Gulliver's Travels, by Dean Swift; illustrated by Gordon Browne.
+
+    Legends of Sleepy Hollow, by Washington Irving; illustrated by A.
+    H. Houghton.
+
+    Christmas Stories, by Dickens; illustrated by E. A. Abbey.
+
+    Child's Dream of a Star, by Dickens.
+
+    Water Babies, by Charles Kingsley.
+
+    A Child Garden of Verse, by Robert Louis Stevenson; illustrated by
+    Charles Robinson.
+
+    The Boy with an Idea, Putnam & Sons, publishers.
+
+    Young Merchants, Putnam & Sons, publishers.
+
+    Boy Engineer, Putnam & Sons, publishers.
+
+    Story of the Nations (8 vols.), Putnam & Sons, publishers.
+
+    Adventures of Ulysses, by Charles Lamb.
+
+    Tales from Shakespeare, by Charles Lamb.
+
+    Stories from Greek Tragedians, by Rev. A. J. Church.
+
+    The Golden Age, by James Baldwin.
+
+    The Vision of Dante, by Elizabeth Harrison; illustrated by Walter
+    Crane.
+
+    Æsop's Fables (without the moral explanations attached).
+
+    Swiss Family Robinson.
+
+    The Lame Prince, by Miss Mulock.
+
+    Parables from Nature, by Margaret Gattey.
+
+    Child Life, by J. G. Whittier.
+
+    Child's History of England, by Charles Dickens.
+
+    In Storyland, by Elizabeth Harrison.
+
+    Bible Stories from the New Testament, by Richard G. Moulton.
+
+    Nonsense Books, by Edward Lear.
+
+    The Monkey that Would Not Kill, by Henry Drummond.
+
+    The Heroes, by Charles Kingsley.
+
+    At the Back of the North Wind, by George MacDonald.
+
+    Uncle Remus, by Joel Chandler Harris.
+
+    Tom Brown at Rugby, by Thomas Hughes.
+
+    Nehe, by Anna Pierpont Siviter; illustrated by Chase Emerson.
+
+    The Princess Story Book.
+
+    The Cruise of the Cachalot, by Frank Bullen.
+
+    The American Boys' Handy Book, by D. C. Beard.
+
+    The Jungle Book, by Rudyard Kipling.
+
+Boyhood is pre-eminently the period of perception. Hence all books on
+scientific subjects are helpful, if they are simple enough to aid the
+child in seeing nature and her marvels. The mother should be careful
+that the child does not rest in mere perception of the objects of
+nature, but that he compares and classifies them, and above all, that
+he is led to trace a purpose in created things, in order that he may
+learn "to look through nature up to nature's God."
+
+
+    LIST OF CHILDREN'S BOOKS ON SCIENTIFIC SUBJECTS.
+
+    The Story Mother Nature Told, by Jane Andrews.
+
+    Child's Book of Nature (3 vols.), by Worthington Hooper.
+
+    Among the Stars, by Agnes Giberne.
+
+    History of a Mouthful of Bread, by Jean Macé.
+
+    Overhead, by Laura and Anna Moore.
+
+    Life and Her Children, by Arabella Buckley.
+
+    Winners in Life's Race, by Arabella Buckley.
+
+    Fairyland of Science, by Arabella Buckley.
+
+    Little Folks in Feathers and Furs, by Olive Thorne Miller.
+
+    Queer Pets.
+
+    Little Lucy's Wonderful Globe, by Charlotte M. Yonge.
+
+    Four Feet, Two Feet, and No Feet.
+
+    Odd Folks at Home, by C. L. Mateaux.
+
+    Tenants of an Old Farm Yard, by McCook.
+
+    Home Studies in Nature, by Mary Treat.
+
+Many other valuable books might be added to this list. However, a few
+good books are better than many less good ones. It is well to lead a
+child to the world's _great books_ as soon as possible. Enough have
+been given to show the kinds of books which are not hurtful to
+children. Each book on the above list has been personally inspected.
+
+After all, it is not so important what your child reads as what you
+read. If the father reads _nothing_ but the newspapers and the mother
+_nothing_ but novels, what then? Children are taught as much by the
+general tone of conversation of their parents as by the books they are
+given to read.
+
+
+    A LIST OF BOOKS HELPFUL TO MOTHERS AND TEACHERS IN THEIR STUDY OF
+    CHILD NATURE.
+
+    Mother-play and Nursery Song, by Frederick Froebel.
+
+    Letters to a Mother, by Susan E. Blow.
+
+    Symbolic Education, by Susan E. Blow.
+
+    Commentaries of Froebel's Mother-play Songs, by Denton J. Snider.
+
+    A Study of Child Nature, by Elizabeth Harrison.
+
+    The Child, by Madam Marenholtz von Bulow.
+
+    Household Education, by Harriet Martineau.
+
+    Levana, by Jean Paul Richter.
+
+    Christian Nurture, by Horace Bushnell.
+
+    Conscious Motherhood, by Emma Marwedel.
+
+    Bits of Talk about Home Matters, by H. H.
+
+    Reminiscences of Froebel, by Madam Marenholtz von Bulow.
+
+    The Children for Christ, by Rev. Andrew Murray.
+
+    From the Cradle to the School, by Bertha Meyer.
+
+    Gentle Measures in Training the Young, by Jacob Abbott.
+
+    Emil, by Jean Paul Rousseau.
+
+    Leonard and Gertrude, by Pestalozzi.
+
+    Hints on Early Education, Anonymous.
+
+    For Boys, a Special Physiology, by Mrs. E. R. Shepherd.
+
+    For Girls, a Special Physiology, by Mrs. E. R. Shepherd.
+
+
+    LIST OF BOOKS HELPFUL TO MOTHERS AND TEACHERS IN SCIENCE.
+
+    Steps in Scientific Knowledge, by Paul Bert.
+
+    History of a Mouthful of Bread, by Jean Macé.
+
+    Ministry of Nature, by Hugh Macmillan.
+
+    Bible Teachings in Nature, by Hugh Macmillan.
+
+    Sabbath in the Fields, by Hugh Macmillan.
+
+    Elementary Book of Zoölogy, by Packard.
+
+    Little Folks in Feathers and Furs, by Olive Thorne Miller.
+
+    The Geological Story Briefly Told, by Dana.
+
+    Science Primer--Geology, by Archibald Geikie.
+
+    Science Primer--Botany, by F. D. Hooker.
+
+    Science Primer--Chemistry, by H. E. Roscoe.
+
+    Madam How and Lady Why, by Charles Kingsley.
+
+    Principles of Geology, by Lyell.
+
+    How Plants Grow, by Gray.
+
+    How Plants Behave, by Gray.
+
+    Child's Book of Nature, by Hooker.
+
+    Elementary Botany, by Bessey.
+
+    Revised Manual of Botany, by Gray.
+
+    Plant Relations, by John M. Coulter.
+
+
+
+
+II.
+
+THE PLACE OF TOYS IN THE EDUCATION OF A CHILD.
+
+
+As Christmas is peculiarly the season for toy-giving and
+toy-receiving, it may be well for the mother to consider this subject.
+
+Old Homer, back in the past ages, shows us a charming picture of
+Nausicaa and her maidens, after a hard day's washing, resting
+themselves with a game of ball. Thus we see this most free and
+graceful plaything connected with that free and beautifully developed
+nation which has been the admiration of the world ever since. Plato
+has said, "The plays of children have the mightiest influence on the
+maintenance or non-maintenance of laws"; and again, "During earliest
+childhood, the soul of the nursling should be made cheerful and kind,
+by keeping away from him sorrow and fear and pain, by soothing him
+with sound of the pipe and of rhythmical movement." He still further
+advised that the children should be brought to the temples, and
+allowed to play under the supervision of nurses, presumably trained
+for that purpose. Here we see plainly foreshadowed the Kindergarten,
+whose foundation is "education by play"; as the study of the
+Kindergarten system leads to the earnest, thoughtful consideration of
+the office of play, and the exact value which the plaything or toy has
+in the development of the child, when this is once understood, the
+choice of what toys to give to children is easily made.
+
+In the world of nature, we find the blossom comes before the fruit; in
+history, art arose long before science was possible; in the human
+race, the emotions are developed sooner than the reason. With the
+individual child it is the same; the childish heart opens
+spontaneously in play, the barriers are down, and the loving mother or
+the wise teacher can find entrance into the inner court as in no other
+way. The child's _sympathies_ can be attracted towards an object,
+person, or line of conduct much earlier than his reason can grasp any
+one of them. His emotional nature can and does receive impressions
+long before his intellectual nature is ready for them; in other words,
+he can _love_ before he can _understand_.
+
+One of the mistakes of our age is, that we begin by educating our
+children's _intellects_ rather than their _emotions_. We leave these
+all-powerful factors, which give to life its coloring of light or
+darkness, to the oftentimes insufficient training of the ordinary
+family life--insufficient, owing to its thousand interruptions and
+pre-occupations. The results are, that many children grow up cold,
+hard, matter-of-fact, with little of poetry, sympathy, or ideality to
+enrich their lives--mere Gradgrinds in God's world of beauty. We
+starve the healthful emotions of children in order that we may
+overfeed their intellects. Is not this doing them a great wrong? When
+the sneering tone is heard, and the question "Will it pay?" is the
+all-important one, do we not see the result of such training? Possibly
+the unwise training of the emotional nature may give it undue
+preponderance, producing morbid sentimentalists, who think that the
+New Testament would be greatly improved if the account of Christ
+driving the money-changers from the temple, or his denunciation of the
+Pharisees, could be omitted. Such people feed every able-bodied tramp
+brought by chance to their doors, and yet make no effort to lighten
+the burden of the poor sewing-woman of our great cities, who is
+working at almost starvation prices. This is a minor danger, however.
+The education of the heart must advance along with that of the head,
+if well-balanced character is to be developed.
+
+Pedagogy tells us that "_the science of education is the science of
+interesting_"; and yet, but few pedagogues have realized the
+importance of _educating the interest of the child_. In other words,
+little or no value has been attached to the likes and dislikes of
+children; but in reality they are very important.
+
+A child can be given any quantity of information, he can be made to
+get his lessons, he can even be crowded through a series of
+examinations, but that is not _educating_ him. Unless his interest in
+the subject has been awakened, the process has been a failure. _Once
+get him thoroughly interested and he can educate himself, along that
+line, at least._
+
+Hence the value of toys; they are not only promoters of play, but they
+appeal to the sympathies and give exercise to the emotions; in this
+way a hold is gotten upon the child, by interesting him before more
+intellectual training can make much impression. The two next great
+obstacles to the exercise of the right emotions are _fear_ and _pity_;
+these do not come into the toy-world, hence we can see how toys,
+according to their own tendencies, help in the healthful education of
+the child's emotions, through his emotions the education of his
+thoughts, through his thoughts the education of his will, and hence
+his character. One can readily see how this is so. By means of their
+dolls, wagons, drums, or other toys, children's thoughts are turned in
+certain directions. They play that they are mothers and fathers, or
+shop-keepers, or soldiers, as the case may be. Through their dramatic
+play, they become interested more and more in those phases of life
+which they have imitated, and that which they watch and imitate they
+become like.
+
+The toy-shops of any great city are to him who can read the signs of
+the times, prophecies of the future of that city. They not only
+predict the future career of a people, but they tell us of national
+tendencies. Seguin, in his report on the educational exhibit at Vienna
+a few years ago, said: "The nations which had the most toys had, too,
+more individuality, ideality, and heroism." And again: "The nations
+which have been made famous by their artists, artisans, and idealists
+supplied their infants with toys." It needs but a moment's thought to
+recognize the truth of this statement. Children who have toys exercise
+their _own_ imagination, put into action their _own ideals_. Ah me,
+how much that means! What ideals have been strangled in the breasts of
+most of us because others did not think as we did! With the toy, an
+outline only is drawn; the child must fill in the details. On the
+other hand, in story-books the details are given. Both kinds of
+training are needed: individual development, and participation in the
+development of others--of the world, of the past, of the _All_. With
+this thought of the influence of toys upon the life of nations, a
+visit to any large toy-shop becomes an interesting and curious study.
+The following is the testimony, unconsciously given, by the shelves
+and counters in one of the large importing establishments which gather
+together and send out the playthings of the world. The _French_ toys
+include nearly all the pewter soldiers, all guns and swords; surely,
+such would be the toys of the nation which produced a Napoleon. All
+Punch and Judy shows are of French manufacture; almost all miniature
+theaters; all doll tea-sets which have wine-glasses and finger-bowls
+attached. The French _dolls_ mirror the fashionable world, with all
+its finery and unneeded luxury, and hand it down to the little child.
+No wonder Frances Willard made a protest against dolls, if she had in
+mind the _French_ doll.
+
+"You see," said the guileless saleswoman, as she handed me first one
+and then another of these dolls, thinking doubtless that she had a
+slow purchaser whom she had to assist in making a selection, "you can
+dress one of these dolls as a lady, or as a little girl, just as you
+like." And sure enough, the very baby dolls had upon their faces the
+smile of the society flirt, or the deep, passionate look of the woman
+who had seen the world. I beheld the French Salons of the eighteenth
+century still lingering in the nineteenth-century dolls. All their
+toys are dainty, artistic, exquisitely put together, but lack strength
+and power of endurance, are low or shallow in aim, and are oftentimes
+inappropriate in the extreme. For instance, I was shown a Noah's Ark
+with a rose-window of stained glass in one end of it. Do we not see
+the same thing in French literature? Racine's Orestes, bowing and
+complimenting his Iphigenia, is the same French adornment of the
+strong, simple, Greek story that the pretty window was of the Hebrew
+Ark.
+
+The _German_ toys take another tone. They are heavier, stronger, and
+not so artistic, and largely represent the home and the more primitive
+forms of trade-life. From Germany we get all our ready-made
+doll-houses, with their clean tile floors and clumsy porcelain stoves,
+their parlors with round iron center-tables, and stiff, ugly chairs
+with the inevitable lace tidies. Here and there in these miniature
+houses we see a tiny pot of artificial flowers. All such playthings
+tend to draw the child's thoughts to the home life. Next come the
+countless number of toy butcher shops, bakers, blacksmiths, and other
+representations of the small, thrifty, healthful trade-life which one
+sees all over Germany. Nor is the child's love attracted toward the
+home and the shops alone. Almost all of the better class of toy horses
+and carts are of German manufacture. The "woolly sheep," so dear to
+childish heart, is of the same origin. Thus a love for simple,
+wholesome out-of-door activities is instilled.
+
+And then the German dolls! One would know from the dolls alone that
+Germany was the land of Froebel and the birthplace of the
+Kindergarten, that it was the country where even the beer-gardens are
+softened and refined by the family presence. All the regulation
+ornaments for Christmas trees come from this nation, bringing with
+them memories of Luther; of his breaking away from the celibacy
+enjoined by the church; of his entering into the joyous family life,
+and trying to bring with him into the home life all that was sacred in
+the church--Christmas festivals along with the rest. Very few firearms
+come from this nation, but among them I saw some strong cast-iron
+cannons from Berlin; they looked as if Bismarck himself might have
+ordered their manufacture.
+
+The _Swiss_ toys are largely the bluntly carved wooden cattle, sheep
+and goats, with equally blunt shepherds and shepherdesses, reminding
+one forcibly of the dull faces of those much-enduring beasts of burden
+called Swiss peasants. I once saw a Swiss girl who had sold to an
+American woman, for a few francs, three handkerchiefs, the
+embroidering of which had occupied the evenings of her entire winter;
+there was no look of discontent or disgust as the American tossed them
+into her trunk with a lot of other trinkets, utterly oblivious of the
+amount of human life which had been patiently worked into them. What
+kind of toys could come from a people among whom such scenes are
+accepted as a matter of course?
+
+The _English_ rag doll is particularly national in its placidity of
+countenance. The British people stand pre-eminent in the matter of
+story-books for children, but, so far as I have been able to observe,
+are somewhat lacking in originality as to toys; possibly this is due
+to the out-of-door life encouraged among them.
+
+When I asked to see the _American_ toys, my guide turned, and with a
+sweep of her hand, said: "These _trunks_ are American. All doll-trunks
+are manufactured in this country." Surely our Emerson was right when
+he said that "the tape-worm of travel was in every American." Here we
+see the beginning of the restless, migratory spirit of our people;
+even these children's toys suggest, "How nice it would be to pack up
+and go somewhere!" All tool-chests are of domestic origin. Seemingly,
+all the inventions of the Yankee mind are reproduced in miniature form
+to stimulate the young genius of our country.
+
+The _Japanese_ and _Chinese_ toys are a curious study, telling of
+national traits as clearly as do their laws or their religion. They
+are endurable, made to last unchanged a long time; no flimsy tinsel is
+used which can be admired for the hour, then cast aside. If "the hand
+of Confucius reaches down through twenty-four centuries of time still
+governing his people," so, too, can the carved ivory or inlaid wooden
+toy be used without injury or change by at least one or two successive
+generations of children.
+
+Let us turn to the study of the development of the race as a whole,
+that we may the better grasp this thought. The toy not only directs
+the emotional activity of the child, but also forms a bridge between
+the great realities of life and his small capacities. To man was given
+the dominion over the earth, but it was a potential dominion. He had
+to conquer the beasts of the field; to develop the resources of the
+earth; by his _own effort_ to subordinate all things else unto
+himself. We see the faint foreshadowing, or presentiment, of this in
+the myths and legends of the race. The famous wooden horse of Troy,
+accounts of which have come down to us in a dozen different channels
+of literature and history, seems to have been the forerunner of the
+nineteenth-century bomb, which defies walls and leaps into the enemy's
+camp, scattering death and destruction in every direction. At least,
+the two have the same effect; they speedily put an end to physical
+resistance, and bring about consultation and settlement by
+arbitration. The labors of Hercules tell the same story in another
+form--man's power to make nature perform the labors appointed to him;
+the winged sandals of Hermes, Perseus' cloak of invisibility, the
+armor of Achilles, and a hundred other charming myths, all tell us of
+man's sense of his sovereignty over nature. The old Oriental stories
+of the enchanted carpet tell us that the sultan and his court had but
+to step upon it, ere it rose majestically and sailed unimpeded through
+the air, and landed its precious freight at the desired destination.
+Is not this the dim feeling in the breasts of the childish race that
+_man_ ought to have power to transcend space, and by his intelligence
+contrive to convey himself from place to place? Are not our luxurious
+palace cars almost fulfilling these early dreams? What are the fairy
+tales of the Teutonic people, which Grimm has so laboriously collected
+for us? They have lived through centuries of time, because they have
+told of genii and giant, governed by the will of puny man and made to
+do his bidding. Eagerly the race has read them, pleased to see
+symbolically pictured forth man's power over elements stronger than
+himself. In fact, the study of the race development is much like the
+study of those huge, almost obliterated outlines upon the walls of
+Egyptian temples--dim, vague, fragmentary, yet giving us glimpses of
+insight and flashes of light, which aid much in the understanding of
+the meaning of to-day. We find the instincts of the race renewed in
+each new-born infant. Each individual child desires to master his
+surroundings. He cannot yet drive a real horse and wagon, but his very
+soul delights in the three-inch horse and the gayly painted wagon
+attached; he cannot tame real tigers and lions, but his eyes dance
+with pleasure as he places and replaces the animals of his toy
+menagerie; he cannot at present run engines or direct railways, but he
+can control for a whole half-hour the movement of his miniature train;
+he is not yet ready for real fatherhood, but he can pet and play with,
+and rock to sleep, and tenderly guard the doll baby.
+
+Dr. Seguin also calls attention to the fact that a handsomely dressed
+lady will be passed by unnoticed by a child, whereas her counterpart
+in a foot-long doll will call forth his most rapt attention; the one
+is too much for the small brain, the other is just enough.
+
+The boy who has a toy gun marches and drills and camps and fights many
+a battle before the real battle comes. The little girl who has a toy
+stove plays at building a fire and putting on a kettle long before
+these real responsibilities come to her.
+
+A young mother, whose daughter had been for some time in a
+Kindergarten, came to me and said, "I have been surprised to see how
+my little Katherine handles the baby, and how sweetly and gently she
+talks to him." I said to the daughter, "Katherine, where did you learn
+how to talk to baby, and to take care of one so nicely?" "Why, that's
+the way we talk to the dolly at Kindergarten!" she replied. Her powers
+of baby-loving had been developed definitely by the toy baby, so that
+when the real baby came, she was ready to transfer her tenderness to
+the larger sphere. Thus, as I said before, toys form a bridge between
+the great realities and possibilities of life, and the small
+capacities of the child. If wisely selected, they lead him on from
+conquering yet to conquer. Thus he enters ever widening and increasing
+fields of activity, until he stands as God intended he should stand,
+the master of all the elements and forces about him, until he can bid
+the solid earth, "Bring forth thy treasures"; until he can say unto
+the great ocean, "Thus far shalt thou go and no farther"; until he can
+call unto the quick lightning, "Speak thou my words across a
+continent"; until he can command the fierce fire, "Do thou my
+bidding"; and earth, and air, and fire, and water, become the servants
+of the divine intelligence which is within him.
+
+
+
+
+III.
+
+HOW TO CELEBRATE CHRISTMAS.
+
+SUGGESTIONS FOR MOTHERS AND KINDERGARTNERS.
+
+
+All festival occasions, when rightly used, have a unifying effect upon
+the family, neighborhood, Sunday-school, church, state, or nation, in
+that they direct all minds, for the time being, away from self, and in
+one direction, toward one central thought. The family festivals are an
+enormous power in the hands of the mother who knows how to use them
+aright. By means of the birthday anniversaries, Fourth of July,
+Thanksgiving, and above all, Christmas, she can direct her children's
+activities into channels of unselfish endeavor.
+
+Of all festivals of the year the Christmas festival is perhaps the
+least understood, that is, if one is to judge by the manner in which
+the day is generally observed. _Why do we celebrate Christmas? What
+are we celebrating?_ Is it not the greatest manifestation of love,
+unselfish love, that has ever been revealed to man? And how, as a
+rule, are children taught to observe it? Usually by expecting an undue
+amount of attention, an unlimited amount of injudicious feeding, and a
+selfish exaction of unneeded presents; thus egotism, greed, and
+selfishness are fostered, where love, generosity, and self-denial
+should be exercised.
+
+The Christmas season is the season in which _the joy of giving_ should
+be so much greater than that of receiving, that the child, through his
+own experiences, is prepared somewhat to comprehend that great truth,
+"God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son."
+
+For weeks beforehand the mother can lay her plans by means of which
+each child in the family may be led to make something, or may do
+without something, or may earn money for the purchase of something,
+which is to add to his Christmas joy by enabling him to give to those
+he loves, and also to some less fortunate child who, but for his
+thoughtfulness, would be without any Christmas "cheer." In this
+endeavor, of course, the mother must join with heart and soul, else
+the giving is liable to become a mere formal fulfillment of a taxing
+obligation.
+
+Little children, when rightly dealt with, enjoy putting _themselves_
+into the preparations with which they are to surprise and please
+others fully as much, if not more, than they enjoy receiving presents.
+So near as yet are they to the hand of God that unselfish love is an
+easy thing to inculcate. Let me contrast two preparations for
+Christmas which have passed under my own eye. In the first case I
+chanced to be in one of those crowded toy-shops where hurried, tired
+women are trying to fill out their lists of supposed obligations for
+the Christmas season. All was confusion and haste, impatience, and
+more or less ill-humor. My attention was directed towards a handsomely
+dressed mother, leading by the hand an over-dressed little girl of
+about eight years of age. The tones of the woman's voice struck like a
+discord through my soul. "Come on!" said she petulantly to the child
+who had stopped for a moment to admire some new toy. "Come on, we have
+to give her something and we may as well buy her a couple of dolls.
+They'll be broken to pieces in three weeks' time, but that's no matter
+to us. Come on, I've no time to wait." This last was accompanied by an
+impatient jerk of the loitering child's arm. Thus what _should have
+been the joy of Christmas-giving was made to that child a
+disagreeable, unwilling and useless expenditure of money_. What part
+of the real Christmas spirit, the God spirit "which so loved the
+world," could possibly come to a child from such a preparation for
+Christmas as this? Nor is it an unusual occurrence. Go into any of our
+large stores and shops just before Christmas and you will see scores
+of women checking off their lists in a way which shows the relief of
+having "one more present settled." All the great, true, and beautiful
+spirit of Christmas joy is gone and a mere commercial transaction,
+oftentimes a vulgar display of wealth, has taken its place.
+
+On the other hand, go with me into one of our quiet Kindergartens,
+where the sunshine without is rivaled by the sunshine within. See the
+white-aproned teacher seat herself and gather around her the group of
+eager children. Listen to the tones of her voice when she says, "Oh,
+children, children! You don't know what a happy time I am going to let
+you have this Christmas! Just guess, each one of you, what we are
+going to do to make this the gladdest, brightest, happiest Christmas
+that ever was!" Look into the eager little faces anticipating a new
+joy, knowing from past experience that the joy means effort, endeavor,
+self-control, and self-denial; nevertheless, that it means happiness
+too. Listen to the eager questions and plans of the children. Some of
+them, alas, are showing their past training in selfishness, by their
+"You're going to give each of us a present," or "You're going to have
+a party!" Then hear her gleeful answer, "No, guess again, it is better
+than that!--better even than that!" Then, after a pause, during which
+expectation stands on tiptoe, "I am going to let each one of you be a
+little Santa Claus. We are going to make not only mamma and papa
+happy, but also some dear little child who might not have a happy
+Christmas unless we gave one to him!" Listen, as I have listened, to
+the clapping of hands after such an announcement. Look at the light
+which comes into the eyes. Notice the eager look of interest upon each
+childish face as all seat themselves at the work-table and the plan of
+work is more definitely laid out. Go, as I have gone, morning after
+morning, and see these same children working patiently, earnestly, and
+continuously upon the little gifts which are to make Christmas happier
+for some one else. Will you then need to ask the question as to which
+is the truer way of celebrating the holy Christmas time? Not that I
+would have any mother deprived of the pleasure of giving to her
+children, any more than I would have her children robbed of their
+pleasure of giving to others. Let us be careful that our gifts are not
+gifts of useless profusion, of such articles as cultivate
+self-indulgence, vanity, or indolence. Gifts for children should be
+few and simple, such as are suggestive and will aid them in the future
+drawing out of their own inner thoughts or ideals. Above all let the
+joy of having given of his best to some one else be the chief thought
+of the glad Christmas time.
+
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+SANTA CLAUS.
+
+
+All little children are poets if not marred by the prosaic parent or
+teacher who unintentionally dulls the imaginative faculties by
+insisting upon their minds dwelling exclusively on _facts_ which can
+be verified by the five senses.
+
+Much innocent pleasure as well as much development of intellectual
+power is lost by this misapprehension of a child's needs. _All great
+truth must come to the immature mind in an embodied form_ or by means
+of a symbol. In fact, we of more mature culture still cling to the
+sacred symbols of the church by means of which communion with the
+Divine and the regenerating power of the spirit of God are expressed.
+The spire of a church, the flag of our nation, the medal with which we
+decorate the breast of a hero, are but a few of the symbols with which
+we are all familiar. Indeed, if symbols were banished from our daily
+lives much of pleasure and beauty would be lost.
+
+Again, when we insist upon mere facts being presented to our children
+we rob them of the great heirloom which has come down to them from the
+past in the form of those inexhaustible mythical stories by means of
+which the race has learned its most beautiful lessons of the true
+nobility and grandeur of life; stories so rich and full and
+significant that two or three thousand years have not dimmed their
+luster, nor lessened their power to hold and impress the childish
+mind.
+
+As the Christmas season approaches many honest, earnest parents are
+perplexed as to what to do with the time-honored legend of Santa
+Claus. They do not realize that he is but the poetic embodiment of the
+Christian thought of great love manifesting itself through giving. The
+joyous loving nature of the innocent Santa Claus brings closer to the
+childish heart the realization of the willingness with which the
+Divine Father gave to his children--mankind. The traditional fireplace
+through which the beloved Santa Claus gains entrance into the house is
+but a symbol of that center of light and warmth and cheer which love
+lights in every true home. The mystery of the coming and going of this
+great-hearted lover of good little children is but the embodied way of
+expressing that mystery of love which makes labor light and sacrifice
+a pleasure. The whole legend of Santa Claus, when rightly understood,
+is but the necessarily crude--and therefore more easily
+grasped--foreshadowing of the sacred thought of God's infinite love
+which lies at the very center of the Christmas thought. No one can
+deplore more than we Kindergartners do the coarse and oftentimes
+grotesque representations of Santa Claus which are to be seen in many
+advertisements and shop windows at this season of the year.
+
+Almost all children gradually outgrow the idea of Santa Claus as they
+do other childish conceptions after they have served their purpose of
+training the emotional nature in the right direction. The transition
+is the more easily made if the child is gradually led to make and to
+give Christmas gifts to those he loves. Thus, as I have tried to show
+in a previous article, the mere material thought of Christmas as a
+time for a jolly lot of fun is gradually changed into the higher
+thought of a joyful festival, _through the child's own deeds_.
+
+No mother need expect her child to understand the Christian Christmas
+by one celebration. His own experiences of the joy which arises from
+unselfish giving must be repeated many times before he can enter into
+the thought that God, in whose image he has been made, must have shown
+his love to mankind by some such manifestation as that which the
+celebration of Christmas commemorates.
+
+
+
+
+V.
+
+CHRISTMAS TIME.[2]
+
+
+A memory which will always remain with me comes up as I approach the
+end of these chronicles. And although it did not arise from any one
+picture or song of the "Mother-Play-Book," it was caused by the
+Kindergarten study which had become part of our inmost life.
+
+          [2] Reprinted, by request, from "Two Children of the
+          Foothills."
+
+The long, dry season was over. Half a dozen rains had refreshed the
+land and caused it to blossom like a garden. It was hard to realize,
+midst the roses and lilies, tender green foliage and fragrant
+orange-blossoms, rippling streams and songs of mocking-birds, that
+Christmas was approaching; our northern minds had always associated
+the season with sleigh-bells and ice and snow, and yet it was amidst
+just such semitropical surroundings as these, that in the faraway
+Palestine was born the Babe, the celebration of whose returning
+birthday each year fills all Christendom with the spirit of
+self-sacrifice, love, and joy, and binds, as does no other festal day,
+a multitude of the human race into one common brotherhood.
+
+Margaret and I decided that whatever else we did or did not do, during
+the remainder of our sojourn among the hills, the children should have
+a _real Christmas_. In order that we might make it an inner Christmas
+as well as an outer one, we began at the approach of Advent to show
+them how to make Christmas presents. It took no small amount of
+patience to pin down to definite work, which must be neatly and
+daintily done, the two little mortals who had lived almost as free
+from tasks as the lilies of the field. However, we both realized that
+the children must make a real effort to give genuinely to others
+something which they themselves had made, if they were to have the
+real joy which ought to come with the receiving of presents.
+
+Far too often children accept Christmas presents as so many added,
+material possessions, not as expressions of love and service from
+others. We had both long ago learned that only he who gives can truly,
+spiritually receive, and that a gift without this comprehension of its
+inner meaning is no gift at all, but merely something gained which
+oftentimes awakens greed and selfishness.
+
+Therefore, by dint of raising up visions of _how surprised_
+grossmutter would be when Christmas morning came and she received two
+presents made by four little hands she loved, by enacting in dramatic
+detail the astonishment which their father would show when he too
+should receive a present made by them, we succeeded in awakening in
+them sufficient ambition to attempt what was to both of them a
+disagreeable task. They had been willing enough to draw, cut, fold,
+mold, or paste anything which would serve as an illustration of a
+story in which they were interested, or which would revivify some
+pleasant personal experience; but to sit down and deliberately draw,
+or paint, or sew an object for somebody else, with the thought of
+making it pleasant to that person rather than to themselves, was a new
+idea.
+
+First one and then the other of us would occasionally sew a flower
+upon a picture-frame when the little untrained fingers grew too tired;
+or we would adroitly exchange work, letting them bring in a pail of
+water from the spring while we put a strip or two in a gay
+gold-and-scarlet mat which was to be worked over into a Christmas
+present, thus bringing the end of the little task somewhat nearer.
+Occasionally, of course, a story would be told of some loving little
+child about whom even the fairies sang, because he or she worked hard
+to make Christmas gifts for loved ones. Sometimes Margaret would
+exclaim: "What do you suppose _the knights_ would say if they should
+come riding up the road and see two dear children working away as hard
+as they could on their Christmas presents?"
+
+The first two presents, for grossmutter and father, their two nearest
+relatives, were finished and daintily folded away in colored tissue
+paper, when Margaret had a whispered conversation with them and
+suggested that they should surprise me also with a Christmas present,
+and I, on a like occasion, proposed to them that they should surprise
+her with something at Christmas time. Then followed days of whispered
+talk; of sudden hiding of work, or of gleeful shouting: "Go away! You
+mustn't come here now!"
+
+Often there would be delighted covering up of the hands and lap at my
+approach, or at that of Margaret--scenes so common in the homes of
+Kindergarten-trained children, but so delightfully new to these little
+Arabs of the desert who had never, in all their short lives before,
+felt the dignity of individual, personal possessions which they could
+give away.
+
+Our presents finished and mysteriously laid away, the next step was to
+lead to the thought of making presents for our next neighbor and his
+good wife, whose ranch was about half a mile away. This, of course,
+soon led on to the idea of having a Christmas present ready for
+_everybody_. There were only about five families in all on the
+foothills, but they constituted _everybody_ to the children, whose
+world, dear souls, was bounded by the horizon which had its center in
+their own home; saving of course, that boundless world into which
+Margaret and I had introduced them through pictures and stories, where
+lived the mighty kings and queens, giants and genii, fairies and
+princesses, prophets and priests, and above all, _the knights_. This
+latter world of the imagination was such a grand world that it did not
+need presents.
+
+Soon the two happy little hearts were overflowing with the true
+Christmas love; and the presents made by their own hands "for
+_everybody_" were laid out upon my bed and examined and exclaimed
+over. Each of these was again folded up in a bright piece of tissue
+paper and tied with a bit of narrow, daintily colored ribbon and
+labeled with the name of the person to whom it was to be given. All
+these long, busy days were so full of Christmas talks and songs and
+stories that they even yet bring back to me the feeling of having
+lived them in the midst of a great musical festival.
+
+We had frequent occasion to cross the ranches belonging to our
+different neighbors, in our daily tramps over the foothills, and often
+met the men at their work or stopped to chat for a moment with the
+women in their doorways. At such times, Georgie would look up with a
+laughing face and sparkling eyes and say: "We've got somefin' for you
+for Christmas, but you mustn't know what it is."
+
+And then, if the inquisitive neighbor would question, he would dance
+about and clap his hands, and shake his little head, saying: "No, no,
+no! Wait until Christmas comes, and then you shall see it; but we made
+it all ourselves."
+
+"'Cept what _they_ did to help us," the more conscientious Lena would
+add, as she pointed to Margaret or me.
+
+We had found, as is not uncommon in sparsely settled districts, where
+there must necessarily be a struggle for a livelihood, that life among
+our neighbors had somewhat narrowed itself down to the material
+standpoint, and consequently, as always happens when this is the case,
+various frictions had occurred among them, leaving them not always in
+quite the neighborly attitude toward each other. But no one was able
+to resist the children's joyful over-flowing Christmas love.
+
+In a short time it was settled among us all that the Christmas
+celebration should take place at Georgie's and Lena's home, and that
+all the neighbors should be present on Christmas Eve to see the
+lighting of the Christmas tree, which Margaret and I had decided was
+to be as gorgeous as our limited resources could make it.
+
+In a little while first one and then another neighbor volunteered to
+help decorate the house; one offering to saw off and bring to us
+branches from an unusually beautiful pepper-tree; another volunteered
+his services in going to town for anything we might need; and a good
+housewife recalled the days when she was young and asked if we would
+like to have her make some ginger-bread boys and girls and animals to
+hang on the tree, and so on. Before long the children's spirit of
+enthusiasm and love for others had spread throughout our small
+foothill world, and everywhere we went we were greeted with smiles,
+significant nods, and occasional whispered conversations.
+
+A few days before Christmas came, one of our foothill neighbors
+stopped us on the road to suggest that he should go down, on Christmas
+Eve, to the mesa below and bring up two little English children whose
+home had been saddened by the death of their father a few weeks
+before, and whose mother, being a stranger in California, had no
+friends to whom to go. Thus was the Christmas spirit overflowing the
+foothills and spreading on to the farther districts. Then some one
+else thought of a man and his wife and young baby who lived about six
+miles up the cañon, and they, too, were invited. All small grudges
+were forgotten and seemingly swallowed up in the coming festivities.
+
+The contagion of love is as great as the contagion of disease or
+crime. Each time we finished a bit of trimming for the tree, which was
+yet to be selected, it had now to be taken down to be shown to Mrs.
+Middlin. As we passed the old wood-chopper he would make some light,
+laughing remark, and we occasionally stopped at his side to sing to
+him a new Christmas song which the children had just learned. He would
+at such times lay down his axe, and his wrinkled old face would become
+bright with the light of his far-away youth, as he looked down into
+the children's happy, eager eyes; and he usually sent us on our way
+with some such remark as, "Well, them children air great ones," or
+else it would be, "Children will be children. I used to be that way
+myself." The half-invalid woman, whom pain had made fretful and
+nervous, and who had been in the habit of declaring that all children
+were a nuisance and ought to be kept in their homes, could not resist
+Georgie's roguish shout, "I got somefin' for you Christmas! You must
+be sure to come up to see the Christmas tree." On the eventful day she
+actually did come with all the rest and brought with her some
+home-made candy, such as she used to make when she was a girl some
+forty odd years before.
+
+This drawing together round the Christmas thought, each and every one
+making an effort to add something to the joy of the occasion, proved
+what every true lover of humanity believes, that deep down in each
+human heart is love and a desire to be loved, is joy in seeing others
+happy, and the greater joy of serving others.
+
+In return for this unexpected volunteer addition to our plans for the
+children, Margaret and I contrived some trifle or joke for each man
+member of the community. To one it was a bundle of toothpicks done up
+in fancy tissue paper. To another it was a Mexican tamale. To a young
+fellow who worked on one of the ranches it was a candy sweetheart. For
+each of the women we made some trifle in the way of needle-book,
+iron-holder, or the like, as we wanted the children to have the
+pleasure of seeing their elders go up to the tree and receive gifts as
+well as themselves.
+
+Three days before the Christmas Eve party the two children and their
+father, Margaret and I, went up the cañon to let the children select a
+small fir-tree for the Christmas tree. As we came triumphantly driving
+through a neighbor's ranch on our way home with the little tree in the
+back of the wagon, the children shouted out with great glee: "Come
+out! Come out! and see the tree! See the tree! Here it is! Here it is!
+The really, really Christmas tree!" And out came both gray-haired old
+neighbors, almost as much pleased as the children.
+
+The tree was fastened between two boards, and then with great ceremony
+we marched in a procession into the little best room which their
+grandmother usually kept shut and unused, and placed it upon the table
+in the center of the room. Then began the exciting, and to the
+children most charming, work of decorating it with strings of popcorn
+and cranberries; and fancy chains made with the scarlet and blue, gilt
+and silver paper which loving hearts in the far-away Chicago had sent,
+helped make gorgeous our little tree. Some fancy pink and pale blue
+papers which had come from the drug store had been carefully saved for
+the occasion. Onto these we pasted narrow strips of the gold and
+silver paper, and "Chinese lanterns" were made, much to the delight of
+the children. Each afternoon we decorated the tree with the work which
+had been done in the morning, and then danced around it and sang songs
+to it, and told it stories about other little Christmas trees which
+had made other little children happy.
+
+One day Georgie improvised a song, and like the poet of old, danced in
+rhythm to the melody which he himself created to the tune of
+"Heigh-ho, the way we go." The words were as follows:
+
+                "Miss Margaret and I
+                We wish we could fly,
+    Heigh-ho, heigh-ho, under the Christmas tree.
+                We sing now for joy,
+                The girl and the boy,
+    Heigh-ho, heigh-ho, under the Christmas tree."
+
+He had undoubtedly caught the rhythm, and perhaps the refrain, from
+some verses which Margaret had written about our mountain home, and
+whose refrain was "Heigh-ho, heigh-ho, under the greenwood-tree." But
+I was much pleased to see his original application of the idea, and
+his feeling of the fitness of the festival occasion for improvised
+verse. It seemed to bubble out of the fullness of his joy just as many
+a refrain and love song of old was born on festival occasions; so
+close is the child akin to the child race.
+
+Some time before this Margaret had brought from her mysterious trunk a
+small and very beautiful copy of the Mother and Child which forms the
+center of Correggio's great picture, "The Holy Night," and Lena had
+sewed a round picture frame, designed by Margaret, with a gold star on
+the upper corner and a modest little violet on the lower, symbolic, it
+seemed to me, of the exaltation and humility which that picture so
+marvelously portrays. It was to be a joint gift from Margaret and Lena
+to the dear old grossmutter. The children had both sat and studied the
+two beautiful faces, so luminous with light; and Margaret had
+explained to them that the light came from the dear baby's face and
+shone into that of the mother because this dear little Christ Child
+had just come from God and the mother knew it.
+
+"That is what makes her so happy," said Georgie, and Margaret
+answered, "Yes, that is what makes every good mother happy when she
+looks into her baby's face," and Georgie had accepted this somewhat
+broad interpretation of the picture with one of his significant nods.
+So far as we could ascertain, the children had as yet no training
+whatever in biblical lore, and our plan had been that we would speak
+only in general terms of the Bible story of Christmas until after they
+had experienced the love and joy of service and giving. Then we would
+tell them why not only their little world, but the whole great big
+world of Christendom celebrated the day with such joy. But suddenly
+one evening, as we were returning from our hilltop scramble, Lena
+said, "Grossmutter knows all about the dear little Christ Child, and
+she says the angels knew that He was coming."
+
+"Let's sit down here by this rock," said Georgie, "and then you can
+tell us all about it." He had implicit faith that Margaret could tell
+him all about anything he wished to know, so he never hesitated to make
+the demand.
+
+We sat down on the ground, with sky above us radiant and glowing in
+sunset's splendor, and Margaret told, as I had never heard it told
+before, of the watching of the shepherds and of the coming of the
+angels, and when she came to the part, "and as the shepherds raised
+their bodies up from the ground and listened and listened, the far-away
+music came nearer and nearer, and then they saw that the music was the
+singing of countless numbers of beautiful angels, and that the bright
+light which had slowly spread over the whole heavens came from the
+beauty of their faces; the whole sky seemed full of them, and they were
+all singing joyfully the first Christmas song that was ever heard on
+earth," Georgie rose from his half-reclining position and coming close
+to Margaret placed his hands upon her shoulder and said, eagerly: "Sing
+it! Sing it! Sing it just as the angels sang it!"
+
+She afterwards told me that she would have given five years of her life
+to have had Patti's voice for just that one hour. She quietly replied:
+"I cannot sing it, Georgie, as the angels sang it. No one on earth can
+sing it as the angels sang it on the first glad Christmas night, but we
+can know what they meant to tell the shepherds."
+
+He turned his face away from her with a look of disappointment, and his
+eyes wandered far over the hills to the glowing sky, then quickly
+turning toward us, he said, "Maybe the Christmas angels will come now.
+Let us listen and see if we can hear them."
+
+Then we listened silently until the light began to fade out of the
+evening sky, and Margaret said: "I can tell you what the words were
+which the angels sang, and perhaps we can feel their song down in our
+hearts."
+
+And then slowly and reverently she repeated the old, yet ever new,
+message to mankind: "Glory to God in the highest. Peace on earth, good
+will to men!" And gently added, by way of explanation, that good will
+to men meant that we were all brothers and sisters in God's sight, and
+that this was one of the great things which the dear Christ Child came
+to teach us. "And this," she added, "is why we celebrate His birthday
+by making gifts for 'everybody.'" Both children nodded assent in a
+matter-of-course way. They, dear little hearts, did not yet know the
+schisms and discords that sometimes separate brothers and sisters, and
+to them it was a matter of course, that men should accept the angelic
+message.
+
+As we walked home, Georgie skipping and dancing along in front, sang,
+"I love everybody! I love everybody! I am so happy! I am so happy! I
+love everybody!"
+
+"So do I, Georgie," said Margaret, earnestly; and I think for the time
+being, at least, all of us felt the true Christmas spirit. That motto
+from Froebel's "Mother-Play-Songs" came into my mind with a new meaning:
+
+    "Would'st thou unite the child for aye with thee,
+    Then let him with the Highest One thy union see
+    By every noble thought thy heart is fired,
+    The young child's soul will surely be inspired.
+    And thou can'st no better gift bestow,
+    Than union with the Eternal One to know."
+
+We quickened our steps as we neared home, and all four of us sang
+softly--
+
+    "In another land and clime,
+    Long ago and far away."
+
+The morning of Christmas Eve brought to us our friend, Mrs. Brown, who
+had a Kindergarten in a neighboring town. Her contribution to the
+festive occasion was a box of fifty small wax candles, and we proceeded
+at once to add the final touches for the evening entertainment. A
+frieze had already been made around the walls of the room with branches
+of the pepper-tree, whose feathery green leaves and coral-colored
+branches of berries made a beautiful decoration. Large bunches of the
+dark green eucalyptus had been sawed off and so arranged that they made
+frames of the green around the two windows whose white curtains the
+good grossmutter had washed and ironed the day before. In the center of
+the room was the Christmas tree on which hung the treasures worked by
+little hands. The red, green, and yellow candles were fastened in the
+safer parts of the horizontal branches; others were placed around the
+table on candlesticks made of ripe oranges; and a row of these golden
+candlesticks was also placed upon the edge of a wooden shelf which had
+held the grossmutter's German Bible. The ugly woolen cover of the shelf
+was entirely concealed by soft green ferns. A pound or two of candy had
+been purchased by the father, and this the dear old grandmother, with
+trembling but eager hands, showed us how to tie up with strings of
+worsted and fasten to the tree, "just as they used to do in the
+faterland," she explained to the children. Her joy over the whole
+affair was, if anything, greater than that of the little ones. She
+insisted that Mrs. Brown, Margaret, and I should be her guests at the
+noonday dinner; and her appreciation of our work was shown by the
+killing of the fatted goose, and by boiling and baking and stewing, in
+true German fashion, about three times the quantity of food which we
+could possibly consume. During the getting ready of this dinner she
+bustled in and out of the little parlor, sometimes throwing her arms
+around the children and exclaiming, "Oh, Chorgie! Chorgie! Dis is just
+like a Christmas in the old country! Just tink of it! Just tink of it!
+Mine kinder are to have a German Christmas! A real German Christmas!"
+Then, as if fearing that her emotions should be taken for weakness, she
+buffeted them severely with her hand and pushed them to one side with
+the words, "Keep out of de way! Don't talk so much! You are little
+nuisances anyhow!" but with so much love in the tone that the rebuking
+words were unheeded. Again, she would come into the room and stand with
+her hands resting upon her hips and gaze silently, with unspeakable
+satisfaction, at the busy scene before her.
+
+In making our plans for the evening, Margaret turned and said in a tone
+of quiet respect: "Frau Zorn, we will, of course, expect you to stand
+with the children and us, and receive the guests. It is your party, you
+know, as well as the children's. We are merely helping to get it
+ready."
+
+"Oh, mein dear! Mein dear!" exclaimed the old lady, evidently much
+pleased with the unexpected prominence which was to be given to her.
+Without further words she bustled out of the room, and in about a
+half-hour called to Margaret and me to come up into the little attic
+above. There we found her on her knees before an old horsehair trunk
+out of which she had taken a black and gray striped silk gown of the
+fashion of about twenty years before; also a soft white silk neck
+handkerchief. In an embarrassed tone, looking half-ashamed, half-proud,
+she said: "I had laid dem away for my burying clothes, but I can wear
+dem to-night, if you tink it best."
+
+"Certainly," exclaimed Margaret; "that dress is just the thing, and the
+pretty white handkerchief will make you look young again. I am so glad
+you have them. I will come in time to arrange your hair and I have a
+wee bit of a lace handkerchief which I know how to fix into a cap, just
+such as my own grandmother used to wear, and you will be the handsomest
+part of the whole Christmas entertainment." Then she added in great
+glee: "Don't let the children see the dress until after you put it on.
+It will be such a lovely surprise for them."
+
+The old woman's face showed how keen this simple pleasure was to her as
+she softly patted the dress, straightening here and there a bit of its
+old-fashioned trimming, and then laid it gently into the trunk until
+the appointed hour should come.
+
+The morning work was at last ended, including our most conscientious
+endeavors to do justice to the elaborate dinner. We locked the door of
+the little parlor fearing that the temptation to meddle with the wax
+candles might be too great to be resisted. Handing the key to Frau Zorn
+and giving our "Christmas kiss" to each of the children, somewhat tired
+we went back to our little cabin to rest until the evening. We had
+promised to come early so as to be there before the first guests should
+arrive, and just before starting out on our return Margaret quietly
+gathered a basketful of beautiful La France roses which were blossoming
+in bewildering profusion near our doorstep.
+
+"What are you going to do with those?" I asked. "Make every man and
+woman who comes to-night feel that he or she is in true festival
+attire," she answered, smiling. And sure enough as each guest came in,
+Lena, by Margaret's instructions, asked the privilege of pinning a
+Christmas rose upon the man's coat and the woman's dress. The smile
+with which the unaccustomed decoration was accepted showed the wisdom
+of Margaret's plan. An added festivity came over the scene, and each
+individual felt himself or herself duly decorated for the occasion.
+
+When the man from the cañon beyond arrived with his wife and the little
+three-months-old baby, Georgie's face was a study worthy of Raphael's
+brush; confusion, surprise, pleasure, joy were all commingled, as
+looking up to Margaret, he exclaimed, "Why, Miss Marg't! We are going
+to have a _real, truly baby_ at our Christmas time!" Then, lowering his
+voice, "Perhaps it will be like the Christ baby and we can see the
+light shining from it just as the shepherds saw it."
+
+The guests had been invited into the little dining-room which was the
+usual sitting-room of the family, and the parlor was kept closed. At a
+signal from Margaret, the father of the two children walked forward,
+and throwing the door open, invited the guests to walk in. It was
+lighted entirely by the wax candles, which gave that peculiar mellow
+light suggestive of silent and reverent feeling that the Roman Catholic
+Church has been wise enough to seize upon and make use of.
+
+The hilarious laughter and somewhat awkward jokes which had been going
+on ceased for the time being. When all were seated on the benches and
+the improvised seats which had been brought in, Margaret and the
+children sang two or three Christmas songs. Then, as a surprise to the
+rest of us, they clustered around the dear old grossmutter and the
+four, bowing, joined in a German hymn of praise and thanksgiving. This
+was intended as a surprise to the father and to me, and was indeed a
+surprise to all of us, as none of the neighbors had ever heard the dear
+old woman sing.
+
+Then came the distribution of presents, and the laughter and jokes and
+fun such as happy hearts improvise and enjoy. One neighbor had brought
+an old-fashioned hat-box labeled "For Lena and Georgie." When opened,
+out sprang two frisky little kittens that, in a frightened fashion,
+scampered away under the protecting skirts of some of the women, but
+were soon captured and caressed with delight by the little owners. The
+same thoughtful neighbor had brought two little chickens for the little
+English children from the mesa below. They were less lively, but were
+tenderly cared for by the children.
+
+Finally, when all the presents had been distributed, including part of
+the fruit and candy, two of the men laughingly disappeared from the
+room, and on their return, brought between them a huge California
+pumpkin, which measured five and one-half feet around its
+circumference. This had previously been prepared into what they called
+a "Christmas box," the top had been cut smoothly off, and into it had
+been fastened the handle of a bucket. The lower part had been hollowed
+out, washed, and dried; the pumpkin seemed almost large enough to have
+served as a carriage for Cinderella. It was placed at Margaret's feet,
+and the top lifted off amidst shouts of laughter and the clapping of
+hands. Each guest present had stored away in it some loving little
+gift, of no value whatever so far as the world considers value, but
+rich indeed to one who prizes a gift according to the loving thought
+which it shows. One woman had pasted upon several sheets of writing
+paper some rare ferns and mosses which she had brought from the
+mountains of New Mexico years before, and had sewed them together in
+the form of a book. Another had embroidered Margaret's initials upon a
+Chinese silk scarf, which had been one of her treasures in the days of
+greater prosperity. Another had rounded off and polished a pin-cushion
+of Yoca wood, sawed from a stalk in the higher mountain districts. The
+fourth had made her a shell-box, of shells gathered on some past trip
+to the Cataline Islands. A fifth had heard her express a desire to make
+a collection of the different kinds of wood which grew in the
+neighborhood and had brought carefully sawed and neatly polished
+specimens of a half-dozen varieties, and so on; each showing that her
+taste had been remembered, some wish expressed at an odd moment had
+been recalled, or some pleasant surprise anticipated.
+
+Margaret's eyes filled with tears as one by one she unfolded these
+gifts of love; then, realizing that such a time as the present needed
+more joy than anything else, she laughingly brushed away the unshed
+tears and proposed that they should all enter into some games together.
+This was heartily agreed to by the others, and the evening ended in
+almost a romp. Hands were shaken, good bys were said, the last joke
+uttered, and wagon and gig and buggy drove away.
+
+Margaret, Mrs. Brown, and I remained to help put the children to bed
+and somewhat straighten up the little house. Then bidding the
+happy-faced old woman "Good by," we started out, alone, for a quiet
+walk across the hill, under the Christmas stars. As we prepared for bed
+Margaret exclaimed, "What a happy, happy day we have had!" I looked
+into her radiant face, and said, softly, to myself: "_Blessed be
+motherhood, even if it must be the mothering of other women's
+children_!"
+
+
+
+
+VI.
+
+A CHRISTMAS CAROL.
+
+
+STAVE ONE.
+
+MARLEY'S GHOST.
+
+    [We hardly know of anything better to recommend than the following
+    exquisite masterpiece of Dickens, for hearts that have grown dull
+    to the real joy of Christmas tide.]
+
+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
+solemnized 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, shriveled 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 dog-days, 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 neighboring offices, like ruddy smears upon the palpable
+brown air. The fog came pouring in at every chink and key-hole, 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, gayly. "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 forever.
+
+"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 to-morrow."
+
+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 humor to the
+last. So, a merry Christmas, uncle!"
+
+"Good afternoon!" said Scrooge.
+
+"And a happy New Year!"
+
+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 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 vigor, 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 endeavoring 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 labors 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, proffering 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 slily 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
+laborers 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 to-morrow'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 to-morrow, 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 honor 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 color, 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 at 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 stair-case, 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
+gas-lamps 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 sauce-pan 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 fire-guard, 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 night-cap, 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 then
+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 color 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
+cash-boxes, 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 his 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,
+whatever 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 Specter'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 Specter'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 vapor
+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 fellowmen, 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 Specter 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 labored 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 traveling 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 labor, 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 Specter 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 Specter 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
+to-night 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 to-morrow, 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 Specter 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 Specter 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 Specter, 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 was 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 door-step. The misery with them all
+was clearly that they sought to interfere, for good, in human matters,
+and had lost the power forever.
+
+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 TWO.
+
+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 endeavoring to pierce the darkness with his ferret
+eyes when the chimes of a neighboring 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 endeavored 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 willfully "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 the bed was
+warm, and the thermometer a long way below freezing; that he was clad
+but lightly in his slippers, dressing-gown, and night-cap; 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 odors 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 fervor; "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 recognizing 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 travelers 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 by-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 weather-cock-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 savor 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 paneling, not a drip from the half-thawed water-spout in the
+dull yard behind, not a sigh among the leafless boughs of one
+despondent poplar, not the idle swinging of an empty store-house door,
+no, not a clicking in the fire, but fell upon the head 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,
+forever 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
+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 parlor
+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 meager servant to offer a glass
+of "something" to the post-boy, 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 onto the top
+of the chaise, the children bade the school-master good by right
+willingly, and getting into it drove gayly 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 forevermore, 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 out of it, and tuned like fifty stomachaches. 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, cork-screw, thread-the-needle, and
+back again to your place--Fezziwig "cut"--cut so deftly that he
+appeared to wink with his legs, and came up on 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 ever 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 to-day, to-morrow,
+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, there 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 license 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 center 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 defenseless 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 frying-pan 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 parlor, 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 THREE.
+
+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 specter 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 center 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 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 petrifaction 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 demeanor, 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
+wagons--furrows that crossed and re-crossed 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 dear hearts'
+content. There was nothing very cheerful in the climate of the town,
+and yet was there an air of cheerfulness abroad that the clearest
+summer air and brightest summer sun might have endeavored to diffuse in
+vain. For the people who were shoveling 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 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 pure, 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 humor 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. At the same time there emerged from scores of
+by-streets, lanes, and nameless turnings, innumerable people, carrying
+their dinners to the bakers' shops. The sight of these poor revelers
+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 humor 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 the stones were cooking, too.
+
+"Is there a peculiar flavor 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 sprinklings 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 honor 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 led 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 a 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 vigor;
+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 flavor, 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 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 canon-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 is it. 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 favor 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 by they had a song, about a lost child traveling 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, parlors, and all sorts of rooms was
+wonderful. Here the flickering of the blaze showed preparations for a
+cozy 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
+windowblind 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 neighbor'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 labor 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 gayly 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 vigor 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 recognize 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 humor. 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, 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 offenses 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. Whereas 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 reveled 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 moldy 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 the 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 kindness 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 that 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 endeavoring 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 favor 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 gray.
+
+"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, meager, 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 shriveled 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 FOUR.
+
+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 specter
+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 snuff-box. "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. By-by!"
+
+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 a 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 of day 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 recognized 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 offenses
+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 pent-house 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 scrutinize were bred
+and hidden in mountains of unseemly rags, masses of corrupted fat, and
+sepulchers of bones. Sitting in among the wares he dealt in, by a
+charcoal stove made of old bricks, was a gray-haired rascal, nearly
+seventy years of age, who had screened himself from the cold air
+without by a frowsy 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
+under-taker'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 parlor. You were made free of it
+long ago, you know, and the other two an't strangers. Stop till I shut
+the door of the shop. Ah! How it skreeks! There an'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 parlor. Come into the
+parlor."
+
+The parlor 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 was 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 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 of 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, 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 of
+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 heavy
+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 an 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 sha'n'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 an'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 an't good enough for such a purpose, it isn't good
+enough for anything. It's quite as unbecoming 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 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 toward 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 specter 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 honored 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 hearthstone. 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 agonized, "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 quite 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 to-night 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 forever
+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 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 color hurts my eyes," she said.
+
+The color? 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 very 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 up on 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 to-day, 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
+loose 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 by, how he ever
+knew _that_, I don't know."
+
+"Knew 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 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.
+
+"Specter," 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 round
+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 replete 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 course 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 honor 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 FIVE.
+
+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 Laocoön 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 school-boy. 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 to-day?" 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 to-day, my fine fellow?" said Scrooge.
+
+"To-day!" 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 sha'n'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-humored 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 a 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 was 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 favor?"
+
+"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 that 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--could 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 dining-room, 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
+dining-room 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'm 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 straight-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 endeavor 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!
+
+
+
+
+VII.
+
+LITTLE GRETCHEN AND THE WOODEN SHOE.
+
+A CHRISTMAS STORY FOR LITTLE CHILDREN.
+
+
+The following story is one of many which has drifted down to us from
+the story-loving nurseries and hearthstones of Germany. I cannot recall
+when I first had it told to me as a child, varied of course by
+different tellers, but always leaving that sweet, tender impression of
+God's loving care for the least of his children. I have since read
+different versions of it in at least a half-dozen story books for
+children.
+
+Once upon a time, a long time ago, far away across the great ocean, in
+a country called Germany, there could be seen a small log hut on the
+edge of a great forest, whose fir-trees extended for miles and miles to
+the north. This little house, made of heavy hewn logs, had but one room
+in it. A rough pine door gave entrance to this room, and a small square
+window admitted the light. At the back of the house was built an
+old-fashioned stone chimney, out of which in winter usually curled a
+thin blue smoke, showing that there was not very much fire within.
+
+Small as the house was, it was large enough for the two people who
+lived in it. I want to tell you a story to-day about these two people.
+One was an old, gray-haired woman, so old that the little children of
+the village, nearly half a mile away, often wondered whether she had
+come into the world with the huge mountains and the great fir-trees,
+which stood like giants back of her small hut. Her face was wrinkled
+all over with deep lines, which if the children could only have read
+aright, would have told them of many years of cheerful, happy,
+self-sacrifice, of loving, anxious watching beside sick-beds, of quiet
+endurance of pain, of many a day of hunger and cold, and of a thousand
+deeds of unselfish love for other people; but, of course, they could
+not read this strange handwriting. They only knew that she was old and
+wrinkled, and that she stooped as she walked. None of them seemed to
+fear her, for her smile was always cheerful, and she had a kindly word
+for each of them if they chanced to meet her on her way to and from the
+village. With this old, old woman lived a very little girl. So bright
+and happy was she that the travelers who passed by the lonesome little
+house on the edge of the forest often thought of a sunbeam as they saw
+her. These two people were known in the village as Granny Goodyear and
+Little Gretchen.
+
+The winter had come and the frost had snapped off many of the smaller
+branches from the pine-trees in the forest. Gretchen and her Granny
+were up by daybreak each morning. After their simple breakfast of
+oatmeal, Gretchen would run to the little closet and fetch Granny's old
+woolen shawl, which seemed almost as old as Granny herself. Gretchen
+always claimed the right to put the shawl over her Granny's head, even
+though she had to climb onto the wooden bench to do it. After carefully
+pinning it under Granny's chin, she gave her a good by kiss, and Granny
+started out for her morning's work in the forest. This work was nothing
+more nor less than the gathering up of the twigs and branches which the
+autumn winds and winter frosts had thrown upon the ground. These were
+carefully gathered into a large bundle which Granny tied together with
+a strong linen band. She then managed to lift the bundle to her
+shoulder and trudged off to the village with it. Here she sold the
+fagots for kindling wood to the people of the village. Sometimes she
+would get only a few pence each day, and sometimes a dozen or more, but
+on this money little Gretchen and she managed to live; they had their
+home, and the forest kindly furnished the wood for the fire which kept
+them warm in cold weather.
+
+In the summer-time Granny had a little garden at the back of the hut
+where she raised, with little Gretchen's help, a few potatoes and
+turnips and onions. These she carefully stored away for winter use. To
+this meager supply, the pennies, gained by selling the twigs from the
+forest, added the oatmeal for Gretchen and a little black coffee for
+Granny. Meat was a thing they never thought of having. It cost too much
+money. Still, Granny and Gretchen were very happy, because they loved
+each other dearly. Sometimes Gretchen would be left alone all day long
+in the hut because Granny would have some work to do in the village
+after selling her bundle of sticks and twigs. It was during these long
+days that little Gretchen had taught herself to sing the song which the
+wind sang to the pine branches. In the summer-time she learned the
+chirp and twitter of the birds, until her voice might almost be
+mistaken for a bird's voice; she learned to dance as the swaying
+shadows did, and even to talk to the stars which shone through the
+little square window when Granny came home too late or too tired to
+talk.
+
+Sometimes when the weather was fine, or her Granny had an extra bundle
+of newly knitted stockings to take to the village, she would let little
+Gretchen go along with her. It chanced that one of these trips to the
+town came just the week before Christmas, and Gretchen's eyes were
+delighted by the sight of the lovely Christmas trees which stood in the
+window of the village store. It seemed to her that she would never tire
+of looking at the knit dolls, the woolly lambs, the little wooden shops
+with their queer, painted men and women in them, and all the other fine
+things. She had never owned a play-thing in her whole life; therefore,
+toys which you and I would not think much of, seemed to her to be very
+beautiful.
+
+That night, after their supper of baked potatoes was over, and little
+Gretchen had cleared away the dishes and swept up the hearth because
+Granny dear was so tired, she brought her own small wooden stool and
+placed it very near Granny's feet and sat down upon it, folding her
+hands on her lap. Granny knew that this meant she wanted to talk about
+something, so she smilingly laid away the large Bible which she had
+been reading, and took up her knitting, which was as much as to say:
+"Well, Gretchen, dear, Granny is ready to listen."
+
+"Granny," said Gretchen slowly, "it's almost Christmas time, isn't it?"
+
+"Yes, dearie," said Granny, "only five more days now," and then she
+sighed, but little Gretchen was so happy that she did not notice
+Granny's sigh.
+
+"What do you think, Granny, I'll get this Christmas?" said she, looking
+up eagerly into Granny's face.
+
+"Ah, child, child," said Granny, shaking her head, "you'll have no
+Christmas this year. We are too poor for that."
+
+"Oh, but Granny," interrupted little Gretchen, "think of all the
+beautiful toys we saw in the village to-day. Surely Santa Claus has
+sent enough for every little child."
+
+"Ah, dearie," said Granny, "those toys are for people who can pay money
+for them, and we have no money to spend for Christmas toys."
+
+"Well, Granny," said Gretchen, "perhaps some of the little children who
+live in the great house on the hill at the other end of the village
+will be willing to share some of their toys with me. They will be so
+glad to give some to a little girl who has none."
+
+"Dear child, dear child," said Granny, leaning forward and stroking the
+soft, shiny hair of the little girl, "your heart is full of love. You
+would be glad to bring a Christmas to every child; but their heads are
+so full of what they are going to get that they forget all about
+anybody else but themselves." Then she sighed and shook her head.
+
+"Well, Granny," said Gretchen, her bright, happy tone of voice growing
+a little less joyous, "perhaps the dear Santa Claus will show some of
+the village children how to make presents that do not cost money, and
+some of them may surprise me Christmas morning with a present. And,
+Granny, dear," added she, springing up from her low stool, "can't I
+gather some of the pine branches and take them to the old sick man who
+lives in the house by the mill, so that he can have the sweet smell of
+our pine forest in his room all Christmas day?"
+
+"Yes, dearie," said Granny, "you may do what you can to make the
+Christmas bright and happy, but you must not expect any present
+yourself."
+
+"Oh, but Granny," said little Gretchen, her face brightening, "you
+forget all about the shining Christmas angels, who came down to earth
+and sang their wonderful song the night the beautiful Christ Child was
+born! They are so loving and good that _they_ will not forget any
+little child. I shall ask my dear stars to-night to tell them of us.
+You know," she added, with a look of relief, "the stars are so very
+high that they must know the angels quite well, as they come and go
+with their messages from the loving God."
+
+Granny sighed, as she half whispered, "Poor child, poor child!" but
+Gretchen threw her arm around Granny's neck and gave her a hearty kiss,
+saying as she did so: "Oh, Granny, Granny, you don't talk to the stars
+often enough, else you wouldn't be sad at Christmas time." Then she
+danced all around the room, whirling her little skirts about her to
+show Granny how the wind had made the snow dance that day. She looked
+so droll and funny that Granny forgot her cares and worries and laughed
+with little Gretchen over her new snow-dance. The days passed on, and
+the morning before Christmas Eve came. Gretchen having tidied up the
+little room--for Granny had taught her to be a careful housewife--was
+off to the forest, singing a bird-like song, almost as happy and free
+as the birds themselves. She was very busy that day, preparing a
+surprise for Granny. First, however, she gathered the most beautiful of
+the fir branches within her reach to take the next morning to the old
+sick man who lived by the mill.
+
+The day was all too short for the happy little girl. When Granny came
+trudging wearily home that night, she found the frame of the doorway
+covered with green pine branches.
+
+"It's to welcome you, Granny! It's to welcome you!" cried Gretchen;
+"our dear old home wanted to give you a Christmas welcome. Don't you
+see, the branches of evergreen make it look as if it were smiling all
+over, and it is trying to say, 'A happy Christmas' to you, Granny!"
+
+Granny laughed and kissed the little girl, as they opened the door and
+went in together. Here was a new surprise for Granny. The four posts of
+the wooden bed, which stood in one corner of the room, had been trimmed
+by the busy little fingers with smaller and more flexible branches of
+the pine-trees. A small bouquet of red mountain-ash berries stood at
+each side of the fireplace, and these, together with the trimmed posts
+of the bed, gave the plain old room quite a festival look. Gretchen
+laughed and clapped her hands and danced about until the house seemed
+full of music to poor, tired Granny, whose heart had been sad as she
+turned towards their home that night, thinking of the disappointment
+which must come to loving little Gretchen the next morning.
+
+After supper was over little Gretchen drew her stool up to Granny's
+side, and laying her soft, little hands on Granny's knee, asked to be
+told once again the story of the coming of the Christ Child; how the
+night that he was born the beautiful angels had sung their wonderful
+song, and how the whole sky had become bright with a strange and
+glorious light, never seen by the people of earth before. Gretchen had
+heard the story many, many times before, but she never grew tired of
+it, and now that Christmas Eve had come again, the happy little child
+wanted to hear it once more.
+
+When Granny had finished telling it the two sat quiet and silent for a
+little while thinking it over; then Granny rose and said that it was
+time for them to go to bed. She slowly took off her heavy wooden shoes,
+such as are worn in that country, and placed them beside the hearth.
+Gretchen looked thoughtfully at them for a minute or two, and then she
+said, "Granny, don't you think that _somebody_ in all this wide world
+will think of us to-night?"
+
+"Nay, Gretchen," said Granny, "I don't think any one will."
+
+"Well, then, Granny," said Gretchen, "the Christmas angels will, I
+know; so I am going to take one of your wooden shoes, and put it on the
+window sill outside, so that they may see it as they pass by. I am sure
+the stars will tell the Christmas angels where the shoe is."
+
+"Ah, you foolish, foolish child," said Granny; "you are only getting
+ready for a disappointment. To-morrow morning there will be nothing
+whatever in the shoe. I can tell you that now."
+
+But little Gretchen would not listen. She only shook her head and cried
+out: "Ah, Granny, you don't talk enough to the stars." With this she
+seized the shoe, and opening the door, hurried out to place it on the
+window-sill. It was very dark without, and something soft and cold
+seemed to gently kiss her hair and face. Gretchen knew by this that it
+was snowing, and she looked up to the sky, anxious to see if the stars
+were in sight, but a strong wind was tumbling the dark, heavy
+snow-clouds about and had shut away all else.
+
+"Never mind," said Gretchen softly to herself, "the stars are up there,
+even if I can't see them, and the Christmas angels do not mind
+snow-storms."
+
+Just then a rough wind went sweeping by the little girl, whispering
+something to her which she could not understand, and then it made a
+sudden rush up to the snow-clouds and parted them, so that the deep,
+mysterious sky appeared beyond, and shining down out of the midst of it
+was Gretchen's favorite star.
+
+"Ah, little star, little star!" said the child, laughing aloud, "I knew
+you were there, though I couldn't see you. Will you whisper to the
+Christmas angels as they come by, that little Gretchen wants so very
+much to have a Christmas gift to-morrow morning if they have one to
+spare, and that she has put one of Granny's shoes upon the window-sill
+ready for it?"
+
+A moment more and the little girl, standing on tiptoe, had reached the
+window-sill and placed the shoe upon it, and was back in the house
+again beside Granny and the warm fire. The two went quietly to bed, and
+that night as little Gretchen knelt to pray to the Heavenly Father, she
+thanked him for having sent the Christ Child into the world to teach
+all mankind how to be loving and unselfish, and in a few moments she
+was quietly sleeping, dreaming of the Christmas angels.
+
+The next morning, very early, even before the sun was up, little
+Gretchen was awakened by the sound of sweet music coming from the
+village. She listened for a moment and then she knew that the
+choir-boys were singing the Christmas carols in the open air of the
+village street. She sprang out of bed and began to dress herself as
+quickly as possible, singing as she dressed. While Granny was slowly
+putting on her clothes, little Gretchen, having finished dressing
+herself, unfastened the door and hurried out to see what the Christmas
+angels had left in the old wooden shoe.
+
+The white snow covered everything--trees, stumps, roads, and
+pastures--until the whole world looked like fairyland. Gretchen climbed
+up on a large stone which was beneath the window and carefully lifted
+down the wooden shoe. The snow tumbled off of it in a shower over the
+little girl's hands, but she did not heed that; she ran hurriedly back
+into the house, putting her hand into the toe of the shoe as she ran.
+
+"Oh, Granny! Oh, Granny!" she exclaimed, "you didn't believe the
+Christmas angels would think about us, but see, they have, they have!
+Here is a dear little bird nestled down in the toe of your shoe! Oh,
+isn't he beautiful!"
+
+Granny came forward and looked at what the child was holding lovingly
+in her hand. There she saw a tiny chick-a-dee, whose wing was evidently
+broken by the rough and boisterous winds of the night before, and who
+had taken shelter in the safe, dry toe of the old wooden shoe. She
+gently took the little bird out of Gretchen's hands, and skilfully
+bound his broken wing to his side, so that he need not hurt himself by
+trying to fly with it. Then she showed Gretchen how to make a nice warm
+nest for the little stranger, close beside the fire, and when their
+breakfast was ready she let Gretchen feed the little bird with a few
+moist crumbs.
+
+Later in the day Gretchen carried the fresh, green boughs to the old
+sick man by the mill, and on her way home stopped to see and enjoy the
+Christmas toys of some other children whom she knew, never once wishing
+that they were hers. When she reached home she found that the little
+bird had gone to sleep. Soon, however, he opened his eyes and stretched
+his head up, saying just as plain as a bird could say, "Now, my new
+friends, I want you to give me something more to eat." Gretchen gladly
+fed him again, and then holding him in her lap, she softly and gently
+stroked his gray feathers until the little creature seemed to lose all
+fear of her. That evening Granny taught her a Christmas hymn and told
+her another beautiful Christmas story. Then Gretchen made up a funny
+little story to tell to the birdie. He winked his eyes and turned his
+head from side to side in such a droll fashion that Gretchen laughed
+until the tears came.
+
+As Granny and she got ready for bed that night, Gretchen put her arms
+softly around Granny's neck, and whispered: "What a beautiful Christmas
+we have had to-day, Granny! Is there anything in the world more lovely
+than Christmas?"
+
+"Nay, child, nay," said Granny, "not to such loving hearts as yours."
+
+
+
+
+VIII.
+
+THE LEGEND OF THE CHRIST CHILD.[3]
+
+A STORY FOR CHRISTMAS EVE.
+
+
+I want to tell you to-night a story which has been told to little
+children in Germany for many hundreds of years.
+
+          [3] Adapted from the German.
+
+Once upon a time, a long, long time ago, on the night before Christmas,
+a little child was wandering all alone through the streets of a great
+city. There were many people on the street, fathers and mothers,
+sisters and brothers, uncles and aunts, and even gray-haired
+grandfathers and grandmothers, all of whom were hurrying home with
+bundles of presents for each other and for their little ones. Fine
+carriages rolled by, express wagons rattled past, even old carts were
+pressed into service, and all things seemed in a hurry, and glad with
+expectation of the coming Christmas morning.
+
+From some of the windows bright lights were already beginning to stream
+until it was almost as bright as day. But the little child seemed to
+have no home, and wandered about listlessly from street to street. No
+one took any notice of him, except perhaps Jack Frost, who bit his bare
+toes and made the ends of his fingers tingle. The north wind, too,
+seemed to notice the child, for it blew against him and pierced his
+ragged garments through and through, causing him to shiver with cold.
+Home after home he passed, looking with longing eyes through the
+windows, in upon the glad, happy children, most of whom were helping to
+trim the Christmas trees for the coming morrow.
+
+"Surely," said the child to himself, "where there is so much gladness
+and happiness, some of it may be for me." So with timid steps he
+approached a large and handsome house. Through the windows he could see
+a tall and stately Christmas tree already lighted. Many presents hung
+upon it. Its green boughs were trimmed with gold and silver ornaments.
+Slowly he climbed up the broad steps and gently rapped at the door. It
+was opened by a large man-servant. He had a kindly face, although his
+voice was deep and gruff. He looked at the little child for a moment,
+then sadly shook his head and said, "Go down off the steps. There is no
+room here for such as you." He looked sorry as he spoke; possibly he
+remembered his own little ones at home, and was glad that they were not
+out in this cold and bitter night. Through the open door a bright light
+shone, and the warm air, filled with the fragrance of the Christmas
+pine, rushed out from the inner room and greeted the little wanderer
+with a kiss. As the child turned back into the cold and darkness, he
+wondered why the footman had spoken thus, for surely, thought he, those
+little children would love to have another companion join them in their
+joyous Christmas festival. But the little children inside did not even
+know that he had knocked at the door.
+
+The street grew colder and darker as the child passed on. He went sadly
+forward, saying to himself, "Is there no one in all this great city who
+will share the Christmas with me?" Farther and farther down the street
+he wandered, to where the homes were not so large and beautiful. There
+seemed to be little children inside of nearly all the houses. They were
+dancing and frolicking about. Christmas trees could be seen in nearly
+every window, with beautiful dolls and trumpets and picture-books and
+balls and tops and other dainty toys hung upon them. In one window the
+child noticed a little lamb made of soft, white wool. Around its neck
+was tied a red ribbon. It had evidently been hung on the tree for one
+of the children. The little stranger stopped before this window and
+looked long and earnestly at the beautiful things inside, but most of
+all was he drawn toward the white lamb. At last, creeping up to the
+window-pane, he gently tapped upon it. A little girl came to the window
+and looked out into the dark street where the snow had now begun to
+fall. She saw the child, but she only frowned and shook her head and
+said, "Go away and come some other time. We are too busy to take care
+of you now." Back into the dark, cold street he turned again. The wind
+was whirling past him and seemed to say, "Hurry on, hurry on, we have
+no time to stop. 'Tis Christmas Eve and everybody is in a hurry
+to-night."
+
+Again and again the little child rapped softly at door or window-pane.
+At each place he was refused admission. One mother feared he might have
+some ugly disease which her darlings would catch; another father said
+he had only enough for his own children, and none to spare for beggar
+brats. Still another told him to go home where he belonged, and not to
+trouble other folks.
+
+The hours passed; later grew the night, and colder blew the wind, and
+darker seemed the street. Farther and farther the little one wandered.
+There was scarcely any one left upon the street by this time, and the
+few who remained did not seem to see the child, when suddenly ahead of
+him, there appeared a bright, single ray of light. It shone through the
+darkness into the child's eyes. He looked up smilingly, and said, "I
+will go where the small light beckons, perhaps they will share their
+Christmas with me."
+
+Hurrying past all the other houses he soon reached the end of the
+street and went straight up to the window from which the light was
+streaming. It was a poor, little, low house, but the child cared not
+for that. The light seemed still to call him in. From what do you
+suppose the light came? Nothing but a tallow candle which had been
+placed in an old cup with a broken handle, in the window, as a glad
+token of Christmas Eve. There was neither curtain nor shade to the
+small, square window, and as the little child looked in he saw standing
+upon a neat, wooden table a branch of a Christmas tree. The room was
+plainly furnished, but it was very clean. Near the fireplace sat a
+lovely faced mother with a little two-year-old on her knee and an older
+child beside her. The two children were looking into their mother's
+face and listening to a story. She must have been telling them a
+Christmas story, I think. A few bright coals were burning in the
+fireplace, and all seemed light and warm within.
+
+The little wanderer crept closer and closer to the window-pane. So
+sweet was the mother's face, so loving seemed the little children, that
+at last he took courage and tapped gently, very gently, on the door.
+The mother stopped talking, the little children looked up. "What was
+that, mother?" asked the little girl at her side. "I think it was some
+one tapping on the door," replied the mother. "Run as quickly as you
+can and open it, dear, for it is a bitter cold night to keep any one
+waiting in this storm." "Oh, mother, I think it was the bough of the
+tree tapping against the window-pane," said the little girl. "Do please
+go on with our story." Again the little wanderer tapped upon the door.
+"My child! my child," exclaimed the mother, rising, "that certainly was
+a rap on the door. Run quickly and open it. No one must be left out in
+the cold on our beautiful Christmas Eve."
+
+The child ran to the door and threw it wide open. The mother saw the
+ragged stranger standing without, cold and shivering, with bare head
+and almost bare feet. She held out both hands and drew him into the
+warm, bright room. "You poor dear child," was all she said, and putting
+her arms around him, she drew him close to her breast. "He is very
+cold, my children," she exclaimed. "We must warm him." "And," added the
+little girl, "we must love him and give him some of our Christmas,
+too." "Yes," said the mother, "but first let us warm him."
+
+The mother sat down beside the fire with the child on her lap, and her
+own two little ones warmed his half-frozen hands in theirs. The mother
+smoothed his tangled curls, and bending low over his head, kissed the
+child's face. She gathered the three little ones in her arms and the
+candle and the fire light shone over them. For a moment the room was
+very still. By and by the little girl said, softly, to her mother, "May
+we not light the Christmas tree, and let him see how beautiful it
+looks?" "Yes," said the mother. With that she seated the child on a low
+stool beside the fire, and went herself to fetch the few simple
+ornaments which from year to year she had saved for her children's
+Christmas tree. They were soon so busy that they did not notice the
+room had filled with a strange and brilliant light. They turned and
+looked at the spot where the little wanderer sat. His ragged clothes
+had changed to garments white and beautiful; his tangled curls seemed
+like a halo of golden light about his head; but most glorious of all
+was his face, which shone with a light so dazzling that they could
+scarcely look upon it.
+
+In silent wonder they gazed at the child. Their little room seemed to
+grow larger and larger until it was as wide as the whole world, the
+roof of their low house seemed to expand and rise, until it reached to
+the sky.
+
+With a sweet and gentle smile the wonderful child looked upon them for
+a moment, and then slowly rose and floated through the air, above the
+treetops, beyond the church spire, higher even than the clouds
+themselves, until he appeared to them to be a shining star in the sky
+above. At last he disappeared from sight. The astonished children
+turned in hushed awe to their mother, and said, in a whisper, "Oh,
+mother, it was the Christ Child, was it not?" And the mother answered
+in a low tone, "Yes."
+
+And it is said, dear children, that each Christmas Eve the little
+Christ Child wanders through some town or village, and those who
+receive him and take him into their homes and hearts have given to them
+this marvelous vision which is denied to others.
+
+
+
+
+IX.
+
+A CHRISTMAS SONG.
+
+
+The following anonymous poem so exquisitely expresses the true
+Christmas thanksgiving and joy that we give it with this collection of
+Christmas thoughts, regretting that we are not able to give the name of
+the author also.
+
+    "There is a song so thrilling,
+    So far all songs excelling,
+      That he who sings it sings it oft again;
+    No mortal did invent it,
+    But God by angels sent it,
+      So deep and earnest yet so sweet and plain.
+
+    "The love that it revealeth
+    All earthly sorrows healeth,
+      They flee like mist before the break of day;
+    When, oh, my soul, thou learnest
+    This song of songs in earnest
+      Thy cares and sorrows all shall flee away."
+
+
+
+
+X.
+
+BIRTH AND CHILDHOOD OF JESUS.
+
+THE SHEPHERDS AND THE ANGELS.
+
+
+Now it came to pass there went out a decree from Cæsar Augustus, that
+all the world should be enrolled. And all went to enroll themselves,
+every one to his own city. And Joseph also went up from Galilee, out of
+the city of Nazareth, into Judæa, to the city of David, which is called
+Bethlehem, because he was of the house and family of David; to enroll
+himself with Mary. And it came to pass, while they were there she
+brought forth her firstborn son; and she wrapped him in
+swaddling-clothes, and laid him in a manger, because there was no room
+for them in the inn.
+
+And there were shepherds in the same country abiding in the field, and
+keeping watch by night over their flock. And an angel of the Lord stood
+by them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they
+were sore afraid. And the angel said unto them, Be not afraid; for
+behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy which shall be to all the
+people: for there is born to you this day in the city of David a
+Saviour, which is Christ the Lord. And this is the sign unto you; ye
+shall find a babe wrapped in swaddling-clothes, and lying in a manger.
+And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host
+praising God, and saying:
+
+    Glory to God in the highest,
+    And on earth peace
+    Among men in whom he is well pleased.
+
+And it came to pass, when the angels went away from them into heaven,
+the shepherds said one to another, Let us now go even unto Bethlehem,
+and see this thing that is come to pass, which the Lord hath made known
+unto us. And they came with haste, and found both Mary and Joseph, and
+the babe lying in the manger. And when they saw it, they made known
+concerning the saying which was spoken to them about this child. And
+all that heard it wondered at the things which were spoken unto them by
+the shepherds. But Mary kept all these sayings, pondering them in her
+heart. And the shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all
+the things that they had heard and seen, even as it was spoken unto
+them.
+
+And when eight days were fulfilled his name was called
+
+    JESUS.
+
+
+THE WISE MEN FROM THE EAST.
+
+Now when Jesus was born, behold, Wise Men from the east came to
+Jerusalem, saying, Where is he that is born King of the Jews? for we
+saw his star in the east, and are come to worship him. And when Herod
+the king heard it, he was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him. And
+gathering together all the chief priests and scribes of the people, he
+inquired of them where the Christ should be born. And they said unto
+him, In Bethlehem of Judæa: for thus it is written by the prophet:
+_And thou Bethlehem, land of Judah, are in no wise least among the
+princes of Judah: for out of thee shall come forth a governor, which
+shall be shepherd of my people Israel._ Then Herod privily called
+the Wise Men, and learned of them carefully what time the star
+appeared. And he sent them to Bethlehem, and said, Go and search out
+carefully concerning the young child; and when ye have found him, bring
+me word, that I also may come and worship him. And they, having heard
+the king, went their way; and lo, the star, which they saw in the east,
+went before them, till it came and stood over where the young child
+was. And when they saw the star, they rejoiced with exceeding great
+joy. And they came into the house and saw the young child with Mary his
+mother; and they fell down and worshiped him; and opening their
+treasures they offered unto him gifts, gold and frankincense and myrrh.
+And being warned of God in a dream that they should not return to
+Herod, they departed into their own country another way.
+
+
+  PRINTED BY R. R. DONNELLEY
+  AND SONS COMPANY, AT THE
+  LAKESIDE PRESS, CHICAGO, ILL.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Christmas-Tide, by Elizabeth Harrison
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 41894 ***