“A CHRISTMAS CAROL” by Charles Dickens – Full-Length Audio Book Narrated by Darren Marlar - Weird Darkness: Paranormal & True Crime Stories

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens, narrated by Darren Marler.
Stave one Marley's ghost. Marley was dead to begin with.
There is no doubt whatever about that. The register of
his burial was signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker,

(00:23):
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

(00:45):
to regard a coffin nail as the deadest piece of
iron mongerie 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 doornail. Scrooge knew he was dead, of

(01:08):
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 soul assign,
his sole residuary legatee, his sole friend and sole mourner.
And even Scrooge was not so dreadfully cut up by

(01:30):
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 Marlee'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

(01:53):
story I'm 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 and 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

(02:14):
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

(02:36):
knew to the business called Scrooge Scrooge, and sometimes Marley,
but he answered both names. It was all the same
to him. Oh but he was a tight fisted hand
at the grindstone, Scrooge, squeezing, wrenching, grasping, screeping, clutching, covetous, old, sinner,

(02:56):
hard and sharpest, 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

(03:19):
out shrewdly in his grating voice. A frosty rhyme 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

(03:39):
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 east, rain and snow

(04:01):
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 stomped him in the
street to say, with gladsome looks, my dear Scrooge, how
are you? When will you come to see me? No

(04:22):
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 man's
dogs appeared to know him, and when they saw him
coming on, would tug their owners into doorways and up courts,

(04:43):
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,

(05:07):
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

(05:30):
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 keyhole, and was so dense without that although the

(05:53):
court was of the narrowest, the houses opposite were mere phantoms.
To see the dinge 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 opened that he might keep his eye

(06:14):
up on 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

(06:35):
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 maddic Christmas, Uncle,

(06:57):
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

(07:19):
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'm sure I do, said Scrooge. Merry Christmas. What right
of you to be, Maddy? What reason have you to
be Maddy, you're poor enough. Come, then, returned the nephew, gaily,

(07:41):
What right of 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,

(08:01):
Where 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 them through a round dozen of

(08:22):
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,

(08:44):
Keep Christmas in your own way, and I'll keep it
in mind. Keep it, repeated Scrooge, 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
have derived good, by which I have not profited. I

(09:07):
dare say returned the nephew Cristmas among the rest. But
I am sure I have always thought of Christmas Time
when it has come around, 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

(09:28):
know of in the long calendar of the year when
men and women seen by one consent to open their
shudder parts 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 is never put a scrap
of gold or silver in my pocket, I believe that

(09:50):
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 cens of the impropriety, he
poked the fire and extinguished the last frail spark forever.
Let's me hear another sound from you, said Scrooge, And
you'll keep your Christmas by losing your situation. You're quite

(10:14):
a powerful speaker, sir, he added, turning to his nephew,
I wonder you don't go into parliament. You don't be angry, uncle,
Come dine with us tomorrow. Scrooge said that he would
see him. Yes, indeed he did. He went the whole
length of the expression, though, and said that he would
see him in that extremity first. But why, cried Scrooge's nephew.

(10:38):
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.
Bore ridiculous. That ain't merry Christmas. Good afternoon, nay, uncle,
but you've never come to see me before that happened.

(10:59):
Why give it is 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

(11:21):
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 Merry Christmas, uncle,
Good afternoon, said Scrooge, and a happy New Year. Good afternoon,
said Scrooge. His nephew left the room without an angry word. Notwithstanding,

(11:43):
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 shittings a week, and a wife and a family
talking about him, Mary, Chistmas, I'll retire to Bedlem. This lunatic,

(12:06):
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. Hell I the pleasure of addressing mister

(12:26):
Scrooge or mister Marley. Mister 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.

(12:48):
At the ominous word liberality, Scrooge frowned and shook his
head and handed the credentials back. At this festive season
of the year, mister Scrooge said the gentleman, taking a pen,
it is more than usually desirable that we should make
some slight provision for the poor and destitute, who suffer
greatly at the present time. Many thousands are in want

(13:11):
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

(13:34):
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

(13:54):
impression that they scarcely furnished Christian cheer of mind or
body to the multitude, turned the gentleman. A few of
us are endeavoring to raise a fund to buy the purse,
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

(14:16):
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 marry myself at Christmas, and
I can't afford to make idle people marry. I help

(14:37):
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.

(15:01):
It's not my business, Scrooge returned, It's enough for a
man to understand his own business and not to interfere
with other peoples. Mine occupies me constantly. Good afternoon, gentlemen.
Seeing clearly that it would be useless to pursue their point,
the gentleman withdrew. Scrooge resumed his labors, with an improved

(15:23):
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 and carriages and conduct them
on their way. The ancient tower of a church, whose
gruff old bell was always peeping slyly down its Scrooge,

(15:45):
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, and
its frozen head up there, the cold came intense in
the main street. At the corner of the court, some
laborers were repairing the gas pipes and had lighted a

(16:07):
great fire and 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,

(16:30):
made pale faces ruddy as they passed. Halterers and grocer's
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 and the stronghold of the mighty mansion house,

(16:50):
gave orders to his fifty cooks and butlers to keep
Christmas as a lord mayor's household should, And even the
little tailor, whom he had fined five shillings on the
previous Monday for being drunk and bloodthirsty in the streets,
stirred up tomorrow's pudding in his garret, while his lean
wife and the baby sallied out to buy the beef

(17:12):
foggier yet and colder, piercing, searching, biting cold. If the
good Saint Dunstan But had 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's scant, young nose,

(17:33):
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 gentlemen, may nothing you dismay.
Scrooge seized the ruler with such energy of action that
the singer fled in terror, leaving the keyhole to the

(17:53):
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 out his hat. You'll want
all day tomorrow, I suppose, said Scrooge. If it's quite convenient, sir,

(18:17):
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

(18:38):
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 great coat to the chin.
But I suppose you must have the whole day be
here all the earlier. Next morning, clerk promised that he would,

(18:58):
and Scrooge walked out with a g 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 great coat, 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

(19:19):
pelt to play a blind man's bluff. 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

(19:42):
pile of building up a yard where had 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 living it but Scrooge, the other
rooms being all led out as offices. The yard was

(20:06):
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

(20:27):
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, Alderman and Livery. Let it also be borne

(20:51):
in mind that Scrooge had not bestowed one thought on
Marley since his last mention of his seven years dead
partner that afternoon. And 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

(21:13):
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

(21:36):
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.

(22:00):
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

(22:21):
his candle. He did pause with a moment's irresolution before
he shut the door, and he did look cautiously behind
it first, as if he half expected to be terrified
with the sight of Marley's pigtail sticking out into the hall.
But there was nothing on the back of the door
except the screws and nuts that held the knocker on.

(22:42):
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 frighten echoes. He

(23:02):
fastened the door and walked across the hall and up
the stairs, slowly, too, trimming his candle as he went.
You may talk vaguely about driving a coach and six
up a good old flight of stairs, or through a
bad young act of Parliament, but I mean to say
you might have got a hearse up that staircase and

(23:22):
taken it broadwise with the splinter bar towards the wall
and the door towards the balus raids, and done it easy.
There was plenty of width for that, and room despair,
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

(23:43):
have lighted the entry too well, so you may suppose
that it was pretty dark with Scrooge's dip up. Scrooge
went not carrying 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

(24:04):
to do that. Sitting room, bedroom, lumber room, all as
they should be. Nobody under the table, nobody under the sofa,
a small fire in the grate, spoon and basin ready,
and the little saucepan of gruel. Scrooge had a cold
in his head upon the hob Nobody under the bed,

(24:27):
Nobody in the closet, Nobody in his dressing gown, which
was hanging up in a suspicious attitude against the wall.
Lumber room as usual, old fireguard, old shoes, two fish baskets,
washing stand on three legs, and a poker. Quite satisfied,
he closed his door and locked himself in double locked

(24:50):
himself in, which was not his custom. Thus secured against surprise,
he took off his cravat, put on his dressing gown
and slippers and his nightcap, 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

(25:10):
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 canes and abels, pharaoh's daughters, queens of Sheheba,

(25:34):
angelic messengers descending through the air, on clouds like feather beds,
Abraham's Belshazzar's apostles, putting off to sea in butter boats,
hundreds of figures to attract his thoughts, And yet that
face of Marly, seven years dead, came like the ancient
prophets rod, and swallowed up the whole. If each smooth

(25:56):
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

(26:18):
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

(26:39):
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

(27:03):
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 and 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

(27:26):
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

(27:47):
it cried, I know him, Marley's ghost, and fell again
the same face, the very same Marley, in his pig tail,
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

(28:08):
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

(28:29):
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, Nor did he
believe it even now, though he looked the phantom through
and through, and saw it standing before him, though he
felt the chilling influence of its death, cold eyes, and

(28:50):
marked the very texture of the folded kerchief bound about
its head and chin, which wrapped 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? March Marley's voice, no doubt about it?

(29:12):
Who are you? Ask me who I was? Who were you? Then,
said Scrooge, raising his voice, your 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,

(29:35):
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 it
being impossible, it might involve the necessity of an embarrassing explanation.

(29:55):
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.

(30:17):
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 undigestive bit of beef,
a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment
of an underdone potato. Yes, more of gravy than of
grave about you, whatever you are, Scrooge was not much

(30:40):
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, lazed eyes in silence

(31:01):
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

(31:23):
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're not looking at it, said Scrooge,
But I see it, said the ghost. Notwithstanding well, returned Scrooge.

(31:49):
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

(32:10):
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 medisie,
He said, dreadful apolition, why do you trouble me? Man

(32:33):
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

(32:54):
abroad among his fellow men, and travel far and wide,
And that spirit goes not forth in life, it is
condemned to do so. After death, it is doomed to
wander through the world all oh is me and witness

(33:14):
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. He
want a fettered, said Scrooge, trembling. Tell me why I
wear the chain I forged in life, replied the ghost.

(33:37):
I made it link by link and yard by yard.
I gird it a ton 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,

(33:57):
or would you know? Pursued the ghosts the way to
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

(34:22):
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, many tell me more. Speak
comfort to me, Jacob, I have none to give, the
ghost replied. It comes from other regions, Evniza Scrooge, and

(34:45):
is conveyed by other ministers to other kinds of man.
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

(35:10):
spirit never roved beyond the narrow limits of our money.
Changing whole 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

(35:30):
up his eyes or getting off his knees. You must
have been very slow about it, Jacob Scrooge observed, in
a businesslike manner, though with humility and deference. So the
ghost repeated, seven years dead, mused Scrooge, and traveling all
the time the whole time, said the ghost. No rest,

(35:54):
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 hearinginess, set up

(36:15):
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 roled, 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

(36:39):
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's life's

(37:00):
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.

(37:24):
The common welfare was my business. Charity, mercy, for balance,
and benevolence were all my business. The dealings of my
trade were a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean
of my business. It held up its chain at arm's length,

(37:44):
as if that were the cause of all its unveiling 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 the crowds of fellow beings
with my eyes turned down, and never raise them to
that blessed star which led the wise men to a

(38:07):
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 hearing me, cried the ghost. My
time is nearly gone, I will, said Scrooge, But don't

(38:28):
be hot upon me. Don't be flowery, Jacob, pray. How
is it 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

(38:50):
perspiration from his brow. That is no light part of
my penance, pursued the ghost. I am here tonight to
warn you that you have yet a chance and a
hope of escaping my fate, A chance and hope of
my procuring Ebenezer. You are always a good friend to me,

(39:13):
said Scrooge. Thank ye, you will be haunted, resumed the
ghost by three spirits, Scrooge's countenance fell almost as low
as the ghosts had done. Is that the chance in
hope you mentioned, Jacob, he demanded in a faltering voice.
It is I think I'd rather not, said Scrooge. Without

(39:37):
their visits, said the ghost, You cannot hope to shun
the path I tread. Expect the first tomorrow when the
bell holds one. Couldn't I take them all at once?
He have it all over, Jacob hinted Scrooge. Expect a
second on the next night, at the same hour, the

(39:59):
third 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

(40:19):
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,

(40:42):
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 prize and fear,
for on the raising of the hand he became sensible

(41:04):
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.

(41:26):
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'd been quite familiar with one old ghost in a

(41:49):
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 doorsteir.
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

(42:12):
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

(42:35):
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

(42:59):
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.

(43:23):
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.

(43:47):
Its rapid little pulse beat twelve and stopped. Why it
isn't possible, said Scrooge, that I could have slept through
a whole day and far into another night. It isn't
possible that anything is happened to the sun, and this
is twelve at noon, the idea of being an alarming one.
He scrambled out of bed and groped his way to

(44:08):
the window. He was obliged to rub the frost off
with a 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

(44:29):
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 mister Ebenezer Scrooge over
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

(44:50):
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

(45:12):
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 the ghost had warned him of a visitation.
When the bell told one, he resolved to lie awake

(45:36):
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

(45:56):
stingedng a. Thought Scrooge, counting ding dong, half past, said
Scrooge ding dong. Accorded to it, said Scrooge ding Dong.
The hour itself, said Scrooge, triumphantly, and nothing else he

(46:21):
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,

(46:41):
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

(47:02):
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

(47:25):
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

(47:48):
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 of this was visible, and

(48:09):
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

(48:30):
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

(48:50):
in the very wonder of this it would be itself again,
distinct and clear as ever. Are you this fit itself
coming was fultilled 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.

(49:12):
Who and what are you, Scrooge demanded, I am the
ghost of Christmas past, long past inquired Scrooge, observant of
its dwarfish stature. No, you're past. Perhaps Scrooge could not
have told anybody why if anybody could have asked him,

(49:34):
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

(50:00):
to offend, or any knowledge of having wilfully bonneted the
spirit at any period of his life. He then made
bold to inquire what business brought him here. You're welfare,
said the ghost. Scrooge expressed himself much obliged, but could
not help thinking that a knight of unbroken rest would
have been more conducive. To that end. The spirit must

(50:21):
have hurt him thinking, for it said, immediately your reclamation,
then take heed. He put out its strong hand as
it spoke, and clasped him gently by the arm. Rise
and walk with me. It would have been in vain
for Scrooge to plead that the weather and the hour
were not adapted to pedestrian purposes, that bed was warm,

(50:43):
and the thermometer a long way below freezing, that he
was clad but lightly in his slippers, dressing gown and nightcap,
and that he had a cold upon him at that time.
The grasp, though gentle as a woman's hand, was not
to be resisted. He rose, but, finding that the spirit
made towards the window, clasped his robe in supplication. I
am immortal, Scrooge, remonstrated, and liable to fall. There but

(51:08):
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

(51:28):
darkness in the midst 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 red in displace. I was
a boy here. The spirit gazed upon him, mildly, its
gentle touch, though it had been light and instantaneous appeared

(51:50):
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 hope 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

(52:13):
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.

(52:35):
Scrooge recognized every gate and post and tree, until a
little market town appeared in the distance, with his bridge,
its church, and winding river. Some shaggy pawnies now were
seen trotting toward 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

(52:57):
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 joke and travelers came on, And as they came,
Scrooge knew and named them every one. Why he was

(53:18):
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?

(53:39):
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

(54:01):
mansion of dull red brick, with a little weathercock surmounted
cupola on the roof and a bell hanging in it.
It was a large house, but one of broken fortunes,
for the specious offices were little used, Their walls were
damp and mossy, their windows unbroken, and their gates decayed.
Fowls clucked and strutted in their stables, and the coach

(54:24):
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 saver in the air, a chilly bareness in
the place, which associated itself somehow with too much getting

(54:47):
up by candlelight, and not too much to eat. They went,
the Ghost and Scrooge across the hall to a door
at the back of the house. It opened before them,
and to disclosed a long, bare, melancholy room, made bearer
still by lines of plain deal forms and desks. At

(55:08):
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

(55:30):
the dull yard behind, not a sigh among the leafless
boughs of one despondent poplar, Not the idle swinging of
an empty storehouse door. No, not a clicking in the fire,
but fell upon the heart of Scrooge with a softening influence,
and gave a freer passage to his tears. The spirit

(55:51):
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 is. Yes,

(56:14):
I know one Christmas time, when yonder solitary child was
left here on alone, he did come for the first time,
just like that, poor poor boy, and Valentine, said Scrooge.
And his wild brother Awson, 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

(56:35):
the Sultan's groom turned upside down with the JINNI there
he is upon his head. Serve him right time. 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

(56:57):
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 Robinson Crusoe, he called him when he
came home again after sailing round the island. Poor Robinson Crusoe,

(57:18):
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.
Hello hoo, Hello. Then, with a rapidity of transition very
foreign to his usual character, he said, in pity for
his former self, Poor boy, poor boy, and cried again.

(57:43):
I wish, Scrooge muttered, putting his hand in his pocket
and looking about him, after drying his eyes with his cuff.
But he'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

(58:05):
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

(58:27):
of plaster fell out of the ceiling, and the naked
laths were shown instead. But how all of 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

(58:48):
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 toward 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.

(59:09):
I've 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, brim full of glee. Home for good
and all home for ever and ever. Father is so
much kinder that he used to be, that home's like heaven.

(59:30):
He spoke so chetney 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 ought to be
a man, said the child, opening her eyes. And I
never to come back here. But first we're to be
together all Christmas long and have the merriest time in

(59:52):
all the world. 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, toward the door, and he, nothing
loath to go, accompanied her. A terrible voice in the

(01:00:14):
hall cried, bring down Master Scrooge's box there, and in
the hall appeared the schoolmaster himself, who glared on Master
Scrooge with a ferocious condensation 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,

(01:00:34):
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 installments of those
dainties to the young couple, at the same time sending
out a meager servant to offer a glass of something

(01:00:54):
to the postboy, who answered that he thanked the gentleman,
but if it was the same tap as he had
tasted before, he had rather not. Master Scrooge's trunk being
by this time tied on to the top of the chase,
the children bade the schoolmaster goodbye right willingly, and getting
into it, drove gaily down the garden, sweep the quick wheels,
dashing the hoar frost and snow from off the dark

(01:01:16):
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's spit it. God forbid.
She died a woman, said the ghost, and had, as

(01:01:39):
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

(01:01:59):
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 addressing of the shops
that here too, it was Christmas time again. But it
was evening, and the streets were lighted up. The ghost

(01:02:19):
stopped at a certain warehouse door and asked Scrooge if
he knew it. No, it's said Scrooge, Plus 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 fezzy Wig, bless his heart. HiT's fezi

(01:02:42):
Wig 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 v yo, there abn he'za Dick, Scrooge's former self,

(01:03:04):
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 that he is. He
was very much attached to me, was Dick, Poor Dick.
Dear dear yo, boys, said Fezziwig. No more walk tonight
Christmas Eve, Dick, Christmas Ebenezer. Let's have the shutters up,

(01:03:27):
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 him
up in their places, four, five, six, barred them and
pinned them seven, eight nine, and came back before you
could have got to twelve, panting like race horses. Here

(01:03:49):
he who cried Old Fezziwig, skipping down from the high
desk with wonderful agility. Clear away, my lads, and let's
have lots of room here herey o dick, cheer up
ebeneze ch ah, 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

(01:04:10):
moveable 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 ballroom as you would desire to see upon
a winter's night. In came a fiddler with a music book,
and went up to the lofty desk and made an

(01:04:31):
orchestra of it, and tuned like fifty stomach aches. In
came Missus 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

(01:04:53):
cook with her brother's particular friend, the milkman. In came
the boy from over the way, who was suspected of
not having bored 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 the mistress.
If they all came one after another, some shyly, some boldly,
some gracefully, some awkwardly, some pushing, some pulling in they

(01:05:17):
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

(01:05:38):
couples at last, and not a bottom one to help them.
When this result was brought about, Old Feziwig 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

(01:05:59):
dances 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, man, 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

(01:06:21):
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 Missus Fezziwig. Top couple too,

(01:06:42):
But 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 Missus Fezziwig.
As to her, she was worthy to be his partner

(01:07:04):
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 Missus Fezziwig had gone all

(01:07:25):
through the dance, advance and retire both hands to your partner,
bow and curtsey corkscrew, thread the needle, and back again
to your place. Fezziwig cut cut so deftly that he
appeared to wink with his legs, and came upon his
feet again without a stagger. When the clock struck eleven,
this domestic ball broke up. Mister and Missus Fezziwig took

(01:07:47):
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 and 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

(01:08:10):
of this time, Scrooge and 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

(01:08:33):
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

(01:08:53):
to him to listen to the two apprentices who were
pouring out their hearts in praise of Feziwig, And when
he had done so, said, why is it not he
is 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

(01:09:16):
remark and speaking unconsciously like his former not his latter self.
It isn't death spitt it. He has the power to
render his happy or unhappy, to make our service light
or burdensome, a pleasure or a toil. Say that his
power lies in words and looks and things so slight
and insignificant that it is impossible to add and count
him up. What, then, the happiness he gives is quite

(01:09:39):
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

(01:10:01):
be able to see you would a tude to my clique.
Just know that soul, 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 goes short, observed the spirit quick.
This was not addressed to Scrooge or to any one

(01:10:22):
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

(01:10:43):
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 morning dress, in whose eyes there
were tears which sparkled in the light that shone out
of the ghost of Chris must passed. It matters little,
she said softly to you, very little. Another idol has

(01:11:07):
displaced me, and if it can sheer 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

(01:11:28):
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 soldid reproach.
I have seen your nobler aspirations fall off, one by
one until the master passion gain engrosses you. Have I

(01:11:50):
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

(01:12:13):
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 too.
How often and how keenly I have thought of this?
I will not say. It is enough that I have

(01:12:35):
thought of it and could release you. Have I ever
sought release? In words? No? Never? In what? Then? In
a changed nature, in an altered spirit, in another atmosphere
of life, another hope as its great end in everything
that made my love of any worth or value in
your sight? If this had never been between us, said

(01:12:57):
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

(01:13:19):
like this, I know how strong and irresistible it must be.
But if you are free to day, tomorrow, yesterday, can
even I believe that you would choose a dowerless girl? You,
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

(01:13:42):
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

(01:14:04):
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 that you have chosen. She left him,
and they parted. Spit it, said Scrooge, show me no more,

(01:14:24):
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 in place, a room not

(01:14:48):
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

(01:15:09):
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

(01:15:33):
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

(01:15:55):
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

(01:16:16):
raised a blush, to have let loose waves of hair,
an inch of which would be the 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

(01:16:39):
plunder 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,
escaling him with chairs for ladders, to dive into his pockets,
to spoil him of brown paper parcels, hold on tight

(01:17:01):
by his cravat, hug him around the neck, pummel his back,
and kick his legs in irrepressible affection. The shouts of
wonder and delight with which the development of every package
was received. A 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

(01:17:25):
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 stare at
a time up to the top of the house, where
they went to bed, and so subsided. And now Scrooge

(01:17:46):
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 full of promise might have called him father
and been a springtime in the haggard winner of his life,
his sight grew very dim indeed, well, said the husband,

(01:18:11):
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, Mister Scrooge, Mister
Scrooge it was. I passed his office window, and as
it was not shut up, and he had a candle inside,

(01:18:32):
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 spit it,
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.

(01:18:54):
Do not blame me, remove me, Scrooge exclaimed, I cannot
bet 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
that had shown him, wrestled with it. Leave me, take
me back, Halt me no longer. In the struggle, if
that can be called a struggle, in which the ghost,

(01:19:16):
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

(01:19:37):
its whole thorn. 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

(01:20:00):
or he sank into a heavy sleep. Stave three, the
second of the three spirits. Awakening 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 strike of one.

(01:20:22):
He felt that he was restored to consciousness and the
right nick of time for the especial purpose of holding
a conference with the second messenger dispatched 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

(01:20:46):
a sharp lookout all around the bed, for he wished
to challenge the spirits 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
plumed them on being acquainted with a move or two,
and being usually equal to the time of day, expressed
the wide range of their capacity for adventure by observing

(01:21:09):
that they are good for anything from pitch and toss
to manslaughter, between which opposite extremes no doubt there lies
a tolerable, wide and comprehensive range of subjects. Without venturing.
For Scrooge quite as heartily as this, I don't mind
calling on you to believe that he was ready for
a good broad field of strange appearances, and nothing between

(01:21:31):
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

(01:21:54):
of an hour went by, yet nothing came. All this
time he lay on 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

(01:22:16):
would be at and was sometimes apprehensive that he might
be at that very moment. An interesting case of spontaneous combustion,
without having the consolation of knowing it. At last, however,
he began to think as you or I would have
thought at first, For it is always the person not
in the predicament who knows what ought to have been
done in it, and would unquestionably have done it too.

(01:22:39):
At last, I say, he began to think that the
source and secret of this ghostly light might be in
the adjoining room. From wentce 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. Scrooge's hand was on the lock. A strange

(01:23:03):
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 like a perfect grove, from every part

(01:23:23):
of which bright gleaming berries glistened. The crisp believes of holly,
mistletoe and ivy reflected back the light, as if so
many little mirrors had been scattered there, And such a
mighty blaze went roaring up the chimney, as that dull
petrification of a hearth had never known in Scrooge's time,

(01:23:44):
or Marley's, or for many and many a winter season gone.
Heaped 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,

(01:24:10):
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

(01:24:33):
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.

(01:24:55):
Look upon me. Scrooge reverently did so. 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

(01:25:17):
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

(01:25:37):
unconstrained demeanor, and its joyful air. Girded around its middle
was an antique scabbard, but no sword was in it,
and the ancient sheath was eaten up with rust. You've
never seen the like of me before, exclaimed the spirit.
Never Scrooge made answer to it. I've never walked forth

(01:25:57):
with the young 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

(01:26:19):
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 learned
a lesson which is working now tonight. If you have
ought to teach me, let me profit by it. Touch

(01:26:40):
my robe, Scrooge dear 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,

(01:27:02):
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

(01:27:23):
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 plowed up in deep furrows by the
heavy wheels of carts and wagons, furrows that crossed and

(01:27:44):
recrossed each other hundreds of times, where the great streets
branched off and made intricate channels hard to trace in
the thick yellow mud and icy water. The sky was gloomy,
and the shortest streets were choked up with a dingy mist,
thawed half frozen, whose heavier particles descended in a shower
of sooty atoms, as if all the chimneys in Great

(01:28:07):
Britain had by one consent caught fire and were blazing
away to their dear heart's content. There was nothing very
cheerful in the climate or the town. And yet was
there an air of cheerfulness abroad that the clearest summer
air and brightest summer sun might have endeavored to diffuse
in vain. For the people who were shoveling away on

(01:28:29):
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

(01:28:50):
their glory. There were great, round, pot bellied baskets of chestnuts,
shaped like the waistcoats of jolly old gentlemen, lolling at
the door 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,

(01:29:11):
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
and blooming pyramids. There were bunches of grapes, made in
the shopkeeper's benevolence to dangle from conspicuous hooks that people's
mouths might water gratis as they passed. There were piles

(01:29:33):
of filberts, mossy and brown, recalling in their fragrance ancient
walks among the woods, and pleasant shufflings angled deep through
withered leaves. There were Norfolk biffins, squat 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

(01:29:55):
after dinner. The very gold and silver fish set forth
among those 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

(01:30:17):
perhaps two shutters down or one. But through those gaps
such glimpses, it was not alone that these 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

(01:30:38):
so grateful to the nose, or even that the raisins
were so plentiful and rare, the almonds so extremely white,
the sticks of cinnamon so long and straight, the other
spices so delicious, the candied fruits so caked and spotted
with molten sugar as to make the coldest lookers on
feel faint and subsequently bilious. Nor was it that the

(01:31:01):
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 at 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

(01:31:22):
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
grocery 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.

(01:31:45):
But soon the steeples called good people all to church
and chapel, and away they came, flocking through the streets
in their best clothes and with their gayest faces. And
at the same time there emerged from scores of by streets,
lanes and name tameless turnings, innumerable people carrying their dinners
to the baker's shops. The sight of these poor revelers

(01:32:06):
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

(01:32:27):
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.

(01:32:50):
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? And 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,

(01:33:10):
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

(01:33:31):
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,

(01:33:54):
said Scrooge. And it comes to the same thing I seek,
claimed 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

(01:34:14):
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

(01:34:37):
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, as

(01:34:58):
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 clerks, For there he went

(01:35:18):
and took Scrooge with him, holding to his robe, And
on the threshold of the door, the Spirit smiled and
stopped to bless Bob Cratchit's dwelling with the sprinkling of
his torch. Think of that Bob had but fifteen bob
a week himself he pocketed on Saturdays, but fifteen copies
of his Christian name, And yet the ghost of Christmas

(01:35:39):
present blessed his four roomed house. Then up rose Missus
Cratchittt 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 Cratchett plunged a fork into

(01:36:02):
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 Cratchets, boy and girl, came tearing in, screaming that

(01:36:24):
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 Crotchets danced about the table
and exalted Master Peter Cratchett 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

(01:36:44):
the saucepan lid to be let out and peeled. What
has ever got your precious father, then, said Missus Cratchett.
And your brother tiny Tim and Matha walked his late
last Christmas day by half an hour. Here's Matha, mother,
said a girl, appearing as she sped. Here's Martha, mother,
cried the two young Cratchets. Hurrah, there's such a goose, Matha.

(01:37:07):
Why bless your heart alive, my dear? How late you are,
said Missus Cratchett, 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 Missus Cratchett.
Sit ye down before the fire, my dear, and have

(01:37:28):
a warm Lord bless ye. No, no, there's father coming,
cried the two young Cratchets, 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

(01:37:50):
tiny Tim upon his shoulder. Alas for Tiny Tim, he
bore a little crutch and had his limbs supported by
an iron frame. Why wears arm more, author, cried Bob Cratchitt,
looking around. Not coming, said Missus Cratchett. Not coming, said Bob,
with a suddenly clension in his high spirits, for he

(01:38:10):
had been Tim's blood horse all the way from church
and had come home rampant. Not coming upon Christmas Day.
Martha didn't like to see him disappointed, if it were
only in joke, so she came out prematurely from behind
the closet door and ran into his arms, while the
two young Cratchetts hustled Tiny Tim and bore him off
into the washhouse that he might hear the pudding singing

(01:38:33):
in the copper. And how did little Tim behave asked
missus Cratchett, 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

(01:38:54):
that he hoped that 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 in blind ben c Bob's voice was tremulous
when he told him this, and trembled more when he
said the tiny Tim was growing strong and hearty. His

(01:39:15):
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 hobbed simmer. Master Peter and the two ubiquitous young

(01:39:38):
Crotchets 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, Missus Cratchett made the gravy
ready beforehand, and a little saucepan hissing hot Master Peter

(01:40:03):
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 cratches 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

(01:40:24):
came to be helped. At last, the dishes were set on,
and grace was said. It was succeeded by a breathless pause,
as Missus Cratchett, looking 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 around the board, and
even tiny Tim, excited by the two young Cratchets, beat

(01:40:47):
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.

(01:41:07):
It was a sufficient dinner for the whole family. Indeed,
as Missus Cratchett said, with great delight, surveying one small
atom of a bone upon the dish, they hadn't ate
it all at last. Yet everyone had had enough, and
the youngest Cratchets in particular, were steeped in sage and
onion to the eyebrows. But now the plates being changed
by miss Belinda, Missus Cratchett left the room alone, too

(01:41:31):
nervous to bear witness to take the pudding up and
bring it in. Suppose it should not be done enough,
Suppose it should break in turning out. Suppose somebody should
have got over the wall of the backyard and stolen
it while they were merry with the goose, a supposition
at which the two young Cratchets became livid. All sorts
of horror were supposed. Hallo, a great deal of steam.

(01:41:54):
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, Missus Cratchett entered,
flushed but smiling proudly, with the pudding like a speckled cannonball,

(01:42:14):
so hard and firm, blazing in half of half a
quartern of ignited brandy, and benight with crispmas Holly stuck
into the top. Oh, a wonderful pudding, Bob Cratchitt said,
and calmly too, that he regarded it as the greatest
success achieved by Missus Cratchett since their marriage. Missus Cratchett
said that now the weight was off her mind, she

(01:42:36):
would confess she 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 Cratchett 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

(01:42:59):
made made up the compound in the jug being tasted
and considered perfect. Apples and oranges were put upon the table,
and a shovel full of chestnuts on the fire. Then
all the Cratchit family drew around 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,

(01:43:21):
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 medachlistmas to
us all might his God bless us, which all the

(01:43:43):
family re echoed, God bless, says everyone 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, dreaded that
he might be taken from him. Spirit said Scrooge, with

(01:44:05):
an interest he had never felt before. Tell me if
tiny tim will live. I see a vacanceit 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,

(01:44:29):
kind spirit is say that he will be spared if
these shadows remain unaltered by the future. None other of
my race, returned the ghost. We'll find him here. What then,
if if he liked to die, he had better do
it and decrease the surplus population. Scrooge hung his head

(01:44:49):
to hear his own words quoted by the spirit, and
was overcome with penitence and grief. Man, said the ghost.
If man, you be in heart not adamant forbear that
wicked cant until you have discovered what the surplus is
and where it is? Will you decide what men shall live,

(01:45:10):
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
too much life among his hungry brothers in the dust.

(01:45:32):
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. Mister Scrooge, said Bob, I'll give you,
mister Scrooge, the founder of the feast, The founder of
the feast, indeed, cried Missus Cratchett, reddening. I wish I

(01:45:54):
had him here. I'd give him a piece of my
mind to feast upon, and I hope he'd have a
good appetite. Poet, my dear, said Bob the children Christmas Day.
It should be Christmas Day, I'm sure, said she, on
which one drinks the health of such an odious, stingy, hot,
unfeeling man as mister Scrooge. You know he is Robert.

(01:46:17):
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 days, said Missus Cratchitt, not
for his long life. To him a merry Christmas, in
a happy new Year, he'll be very merry and very happy,

(01:46:38):
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 at last of all, but he didn't
care two pence 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 fire.

(01:47:00):
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 Cratchett 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 Cratchetts laughed tremendously at the idea of

(01:47:21):
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

(01:47:42):
how many hours she worked at a stretch, and how
she meant to lie abed tomorrow morning for a good
long rest, tomorrow being a holiday. She passed at home.
Also how she had seen a countess and a lord
some days before, and how the lord was much about
as tall as Peter, at which Peter pulled up his
collars so high that you couldn't have seen his head

(01:48:04):
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

(01:48:24):
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 pawnbrokers.
But they were happy, grateful, pleased with one another, and
contended with the time. And when they faded and looked

(01:48:45):
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 to screw
which and the spirit went along the streets. The brightness
of the roaring fires and kitchens, parlors and all sorts

(01:49:06):
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,

(01:49:29):
and be the first to greet them. Here again were
shadows on the window blind of guests assembling, and there
a group of handsome girls, all hooded and fur booted,
and all chattering at once, tripped lightly off to some
near 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

(01:49:52):
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

(01:50:12):
floated on out, pouring with a generous hand its bright
and harmless mirth on everything within its reach. The very
lamp lighter, who ran on before, dotting the dusky street
with specks of light, and it was dressed to spend
the evening somewhere, laughed out loudly as the spirit passed.
Though little kenned the lamp lighter that he had any

(01:50:33):
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

(01:50:55):
grew but moss and furres and coarse rank grass. 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 a thick gloom of darkest night. What

(01:51:16):
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 toward it.
Passing through the wall of mud and stone, they found
a cheerful company assembled round a glowing fire, an old

(01:51:39):
old man and woman with their children, and their children's children,
and another generation beyond that, all decked out gaily in
their holiday attire. The old man, in a voice that
seldom rose above the howling of the wind upon the
barren waste, was singing them a Christmas song. It had
been a very old song when he was a boy,
and from time to time they all joined in the chorus.

(01:52:02):
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 see to see. To

(01:52:22):
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

(01:52:43):
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

(01:53:05):
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

(01:53:28):
up a sturdy song that was like a gale in itself. Again,
the ghosts spat on above the black and heaving sea.
On on, and so, 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

(01:53:51):
their several stations, But every man among them hummed a
Christmas tune, or had a Christmas thought, or spoke below
his breath to his coon 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

(01:54:13):
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

(01:54:33):
over an unknown abyss whose depths were secret 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 nephews, and to find himself in a bright, dry,
gleaming room with the Spirit standing smiling by his side,

(01:54:56):
and looking at that same nephew with approving affability. Ha ha,
laughed Scrooge's nephew. Ha. If you should happen, by any
unlikely chance to know a man more blessed 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,

(01:55:20):
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

(01:55:41):
niece by marriage laughed as heartily as he, and their
assembled friends, being not a bit behindhand, roared out lustily.
Ha ha ha ha. He said that Christmas was a
humbug as I live, said Scrooge's nephew. He believed it
too machine for him, fred, said Scrooge's niece, indignantly. Bless

(01:56:02):
those women may 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

(01:56:24):
sunniest pair of eyes you ever saw in any little
creature's head. Although 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

(01:56:44):
carry their own punishment, and I have nothing to say
against him. I'm sure he is very rich, fed, 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 that he is ever going

(01:57:07):
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'm sorry for him. I couldn't be angry with him
if I tried. Who suffers by his ill whims himself

(01:57:28):
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,

(01:57:50):
and with the dessert upon the table, were clustered around
the fire by a lamplight. Well, I'm very glad to
hear it, said Scrooge's nephew, because I haven't great faith
in these young housekeeppers. 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

(01:58:10):
who had no right to express an opinion on the subject.
Whereat Scrooge's niece's sister, the plump one with the lace tucker,
not the one with the roses blushed. Do go on, fred,
said Scrooge's niece, clapping her hands. He never finishes what
he begins to say. He's such a ridiculous fellow, Scrooge's
nephew reveled in another laugh. And as it was impossible

(01:58:33):
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 many with us is as I think
that he loses some pleasant moments which could do him
no harm. I'm sure he loses pleasanter companions than he

(01:58:57):
could find in his own thoughts, either in his motive
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

(01:59:17):
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

(01:59:39):
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,

(01:59:59):
and ever swell the large veins at 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.

(02:00:20):
When this strain of music sounded, all the things that
ghosts 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

(02:00:41):
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 first,
there was a game at blind Man's Bluff, of course
there was, And I no more believe Topper was really

(02:01:03):
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

(02:01:26):
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 followen 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

(02:01:47):
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 letterings, passed him,
he got her into a corner, whence there was no escape,
then his conduct was the most execrable. For his pretending

(02:02:07):
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

(02:02:30):
confidential together behind the curtains. Scrooge's niece was not one
of the blind man's bluff 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

(02:02:51):
the game of how, when and where, she was very great,
and to the secret joy of Scrooge's nephew, beat her
sister's 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

(02:03:12):
was going on, that his voice made no sound in
their ears. He sometimes came out with his guest 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

(02:03:32):
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's a new game,
said Scrooge, one half hour spirit only one. It was
a game called yes and No, where Scrooge's nephew had

(02:03:53):
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 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,

(02:04:13):
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

(02:04:34):
was put to him, this nephew burst into a fresh
roar of laughter, and was so inexpressively 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. I know what it is, Fred,
I know what it is? What is it? Cried Fred,
it's your uncle Scrooge, which it certainly was. Admira was

(02:05:00):
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 mister Scrooge, supposing they had ever
had any tendency that way. He has given us plenty
of merriment, I'm sure, said friend, and it would be

(02:05:21):
ungrateful not to drink his health. Here is a glass
of mold wine ready at our hand at the moment
when 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,

(02:05:44):
Uncle Scrooge. Uncle Scrooge had imperceptibly become so gay in
light of heart, that he would have pledged the unconscious
company in return and thanked them in an audible speech
if the ghost had given him time. But the whole
scene passed stoff, and the breath of the last words
spoken by his nephew, and he and the Spirit were

(02:06:05):
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,

(02:06:29):
in miseries, every refuge where vain man and his little
brief authority had not made fast to the door and
barred the Spirit out. He left his blessing and taught
Scrooge as 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

(02:06:50):
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

(02:07:11):
stood together in an open place, he noticed that its
hair was gray. Are the spirit's lives so short, asked Scrooge.
My life upon this globe is very brief, replied the ghost.
It ends tonight. Tonight, said Scrooge, tonight at midnight. Hark,

(02:07:33):
the time is drawing near. The chimes were ringing the
three quarters past eleven at that moment. Forgive me if
I'm 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 skirits. Is

(02:07:54):
it a foot or a claw? It might be a
claw for the flesh. There there 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 its feet and clung upon the outside of

(02:08:16):
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

(02:08:37):
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 unthroned, devils lurked and glared out,
menacing no change, no degradation, no perversion of humanity in
any grade, through all the mysteries of wonderful creedation as

(02:09:01):
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,
spit it are the yours? Scrooge could say no more.
They are man's, said the Spirit, looking down upon them,

(02:09:24):
and they cling to me, appealing from their fathers. This
boy is ignorance, this girl is wont 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,

(02:09:47):
cried the Spirit, stretching out its hand toward the city,
slander those who tell it. Ye, admit it for your
factious purposes, and make it worse. And by the end
have they no refuge or resource? Cried Scrooge, Are there
no prisons? Said the spirit, turning on him for the

(02:10:09):
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 lifted
up his eyes beheld a solemn phantom, draped and hooded,

(02:10:32):
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,

(02:10:53):
for in the very air through which his spirit moved,
it seemed to scatter gloom and mystery, 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

(02:11:13):
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.

(02:11:35):
It 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

(02:11:56):
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,

(02:12:19):
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

(02:12:42):
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 hoped to live to be another man
from what I was, I pre I am prepared to
bear you company and do it with a thankful heart.

(02:13:05):
Who 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.

(02:13:27):
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,

(02:13:48):
on change, amongst the merchants, who hurried up and down
and chanked the money in their pockets, and conversed in groups,
and looked at their watches, and trifled thoughtfully with their
great gold seas, 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,

(02:14:10):
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

(02:14:31):
snuff box. I thought he'd never die. God knows, said
the first, with a yawn. What has he done with
his money? As they read faced gentleman with a pendulous
exprescence on the end of his nose that shook like
the gills of a turkey cock. I haven't heard, said
the man with a large chin, yawning again. Left it
to his company. Perhaps he hasn't left it to me.

(02:14:53):
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 if 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

(02:15:16):
on his nose, but I must be fed if I
make one another laugh. Well, I'm 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

(02:15:37):
wasn't his most particular friend, For we used to stop
and speak whenever we met. Bye bye speakers and listeners
strolled away and mixed with other groups. Scrooge knew the
man and looked toward 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

(02:16:01):
might lie here. He knew these men also perfectly. They
were men of business, very wealthy, and of great importance.
He'd 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

(02:16:24):
Old scratch has got his own last day, so I'm
told returned the second code. Isn't it season above for
a Christmas time? You're not a skater I suppose no,
no someone else to think of good morning, not another word.
That was their meeting, their conversation, and their parting. Scrooge

(02:16:49):
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 had any bearing on
the death of Jacob, his old partner, for that was past,
and this ghost province was the future. Nor could he

(02:17:12):
think of anyone 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

(02:17:33):
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

(02:17:54):
multitudes that poured in through the porch. It gave him
little surprise, however, for he 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,

(02:18:16):
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.

(02:18:41):
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

(02:19:04):
this dn of infamous resort, there was a low browed
beetling shop below a penthouse roof, where iron, old rags, bottles, bones,
and greasy offal were bought upon the floor. Within were
piled up heaps of rusty keys, nails, chains, hinges, files, scales, weights,

(02:19:26):
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

(02:19:48):
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 in to 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

(02:20:08):
came in too, and she was closely followed by a
man in faded black who was no less startled by
the side 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 fast, cried she who had entered first.

(02:20:31):
Let the laundress alone to be the second, and let
the undertaker's man alone to be the third. Look here,
old Joe, here's a chance. If we haven't all the
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

(02:20:52):
two ain't strangers. Stop till I shut the door of
the shop. Ah, how it screakes. Ain't such a rusty'd
better metal in the places its own hinges, I believe,
And I'm sure there's no such old bones here as mine.
We're all suitable to our calling. We're well matched. Come

(02:21:15):
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,

(02:21:35):
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? Missus Dilber, said
the woman. Every person has a right to take care
of themselves. He always did. That's true, indeed, said the laundress.

(02:21:56):
No men more so? Well, then, don't stand staring as
if he was a fright who's the wiser? We're not
going to pick holes in each other's coats, I suppose no, indeed,
said Missus Dilber. And the man together, we should hope
not there he rode, then cried the woman. That's enough
whose there was for the loss of a few things

(02:22:16):
like these? Not a dead man, I suppose, no, indeed,
said Missus Dilber, laughing if he wanted to keep him
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 had somebody to look after him. When he was
struck with death, instead of lying gasping out his last

(02:22:37):
there alone by himself. It's the truest word that was
ever spoke, said Missus Dilber. It's a judgment on him.
I wish it was a little heavy a judgment, replied
the woman. And it should have been. You may depend
on it if I could have laid my hands on
anything else. Open that bundle, old Joe, and let me

(02:22:57):
know the value of it. Speak out playing. I'm not
afraid to be the first, nor afraid for them to
see it. We know pretty well that we will help
in 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 breech first produced his plunder. It was not extensive.

(02:23:21):
A seal or two, a pencil case, a pair of
sleeve buttons, and a brooch of no great value were all.
They were severely 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

(02:23:43):
if I was to be boiled for not doing it.
Who's next, missus Dilbert was next, sheets and towels, a
little wearing apparel, two old fashioned silver teaspoons, a pair
of sugar tongs, and a few boots. Her account was
stated on the wall in the same manner. I always
give too much to the ladies. It's a wakeness of mine.

(02:24:05):
And that's the way I ruined myself, said old Joe.
That's your recount. If you ask me another penny and
made it an open question, I'd repent to being so liberal.
And I'll go off. Have a crown. And now onto
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

(02:24:27):
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. Dead curtains.
You don't mean to say you took them down, rings
and awe with them? Lyon there, said Joe. Yes, I do,

(02:24:48):
replied the woman. Why not. You were born to make
your fortune, said Joe, and you'll certainly do it. I certainly,
she had told my hand. When I can get anything
in 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 is bankets? Asked Joe. Who else is do you think?

(02:25:10):
Replied the woman. He isn't likely to take cold without him,
I dare say. I hope he didn't die of anything catching, eh,
said old Joe, stopping in his work and looking up.
Don't you be afraid of that? Returned the woman. I
ain't so fond of his company that i'd loiter about
him for such things if he did. Ah, you may
look through that shirt to your eyaac, but you won't

(02:25:32):
find an ol in it, nor a threadbare place. It's
the best the ad, and a fine one too. They
had a wasted it if it hadn't been for me.
What do you call a 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

(02:25:52):
Kaliko ain't good enough for such a purpose, it isn't
good enough for anything. It's quite as becoming to the body.
He can't look uglier than he did. And that one.
Scrooge listened to this dialogue in horror. As they sat
grouped about their spoil in the scanty light affordable by
the old man's lamp. He viewed them with a detestation

(02:26:12):
and disgusted, which could hardly have been greater, though they
had been obscene demons marketing the corpse itself. Ha ha,
laughed the same woman, with Old Joe, producing a flannel
bag with money in it, told out their several gains
upon the pound. This is the end of it, you see.
He frightened everyone away from him when he was alive,

(02:26:33):
to profit us when he was dead. Spit it, 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 heavens, what is this?
He recoiled in terror, for the scene had changed, and

(02:26:55):
now he almost touched a bed, a bare uncurtained 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

(02:27:17):
a secret impulse, anxious to know what kind of room
it was. A peal 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.

(02:27:40):
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,

(02:28:03):
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.

(02:28:25):
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 this good deeds springing from the wound,
to sow the world with life immortal. No voice pronounced

(02:28:47):
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, dealing, griping cares. They have brought him
to a rich end. Truly, he lay in the dark,

(02:29:08):
empty house, with not a man, a woman, or a
child to say that he was kind to me in
this or that, or 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?

(02:29:31):
Scrooge did not dare to think spit it. He said,
this is a fearful place in leaving it, I shall
not leave its lesson tress. 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

(02:29:52):
if I could, But I have not the power. Spit,
I have not the power. Again, it seemed to look
upon him. If there is any person in this town
who feels emotion caused by this man's death, said Scrooge,
quite agonized, show that person to me, spirit, I beseech you.

(02:30:14):
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 someone, 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

(02:30:36):
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
care worn 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.

(02:31:00):
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,

(02:31:26):
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

(02:31:49):
so with clasped hands. She prayed forgiveness the next moment,
and was sorry. But the first was the emotion of
her heart. Both the half drunken war whom I told
you of last night said to me when I tried
to see him in obtain a week's to delay, And
what I thought was a mere excuse to avoid me

(02:32:10):
turns out to have been quite true. He was not
only very ill, but dying. Then to who 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

(02:32:33):
may sleep tonight with light hearts, Caroline, Yes, softened 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

(02:32:56):
him caused by the event was one of pleasure. Let
me see some some tenderness connected with a death, said Scrooge.
Or or that dark chamber spirit which we just left
just now will be for I have a present to me.
The ghosts conducted him through several streets familiar to his feet,

(02:33:17):
and as they went along, Scrooge looked here and there
to find himself, But nowhere was he to be seen.
They entered poor Bob Cratchitt's house, the dwelling he had
visited before, and found the mother and the children seated
round the fire, quiet, very quiet. The noisy little cratchets
were as still as statues. In one corner and sat

(02:33:39):
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 at
Scrooge heard those words. He had not dreamed them. The
boy must have read them out as he and the

(02:34:02):
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 better now, again,

(02:34:22):
said Crotchet's wife, makes them weak by candlelight. And they
wouldn't show weak eyes to your father when he comes
home for the world. He must be near his time
passed 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

(02:34:46):
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

(02:35:06):
all but he was very late to caddy. She resumed
intent upon her work, and his father loved him so
that it was no trouble, no trouble. And and there
it 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

(02:35:28):
was ready for him on the hob, and they all
tried who should help him to it most. Then the
two young Cratchetts got upon his knees and laid each
child a little cheek against his face, as if they said,
don't mind it, father, don't be grieved. Bob was very
cheerful with them, and spoke pleasantly to all the family.

(02:35:48):
He looked at the work upon the table and praised
the industry and speed of missus Cratchett and the girls.
They would be done long before Sunday, he said, Sunday
you went today? Then, Robert said his wife. Yes, my dear,
returned Bob, I wish you could have gone. It would
have done you good to see how green a place

(02:36:08):
it is. But you'll see it often. I promised him
that I would walk there on a Sunday. My 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,

(02:36:28):
perhaps than they were. He left the room and went
upstairs into the room above, which was lighted cheerfully and
hung with Christmas. There was a chair set close beside
the child, and there were signs of someone having been
there lately. Poor Bob sat down in it, and when
he had thought a little and composed himself, he kissed

(02:36:49):
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 mister Scrooge's nephew,
whom he had scarcely seen but once, and whom meeting
him in the street that day, and seeing that he

(02:37:11):
looked a little, just a little down, you know, said Bob,
inquired what had happened to distress him? On which said Bob,
why he is the pleasant, pleasantest spoken gentleman you've ever heard.
I told him. I am heartily sorry for it, mister Cratchett,
he said, and heartily sorry for your good wife. By

(02:37:32):
the bye, 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

(02:37:55):
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

(02:38:16):
tim and felt with us. I'm sure he is a
good soul, said Missus Cratchett. You would be surer of it,
my dear, returned Bob, if you saw him and spoke
to him. I shouldn't be at all surprised. Mark what
I say if if he got Peter a better situation.
Only hear that, Peter, said Missus Cratchett, and then cried

(02:38:40):
one of the girls. Peter will be keeping company with
someone and setting up for himself. Get along with you,
retorted Peter, grinning. It's just as likely as not, said Bob.
One of these days, though there's plenty of time for that,
my dear. But however, and whenever we part from one another,
I'm sure we shall none of us forget poor tiny Tim,

(02:39:02):
shall we? Or this first parting that there was among us? Never? Father?
Cried they all, And I know, said Bob, I know,
my deears, 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

(02:39:24):
tiny Tim in doing it. No, Never Father, they all
cried again. I I am very happy, said little Bob.
I am very happy. Missus Cratchit kissed him, His daughters
kissed him. The two young Cratchets kissed him, and Peter
and himself shook hands. Spirit of tiny Tim. Thy childish

(02:39:46):
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 and
that was whom we saw lying dead, The ghost of
Christmas yet to come conveyed him as before, though at

(02:40:09):
a different time, he thought, Indeed, there seemed no order
in these latter visions, save 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,

(02:40:34):
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.

(02:41:00):
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

(02:41:24):
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,

(02:41:47):
with repleted appetite, a worthy place. The spirit stood among
the graves and pointed down to one. He advanced toward 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,

(02:42:08):
said Scrooge, Answer me one question. Are these the shadows
of the things that will be? Or are they the
shadows of things that may be? Only still? The ghost
pointed downward to the grave by which it stood. Men's
courses will be foreshadow certain ends to which, if preserved

(02:42:29):
in they must lead, said Scrooge. But if the courses
be departed from the the ends would 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

(02:42:50):
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, No, no, the finger still was there. Spirit.

(02:43:12):
He cried, tight clutching in this 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.

(02:43:35):
Your nature it decedes 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

(02:43:57):
shall strive within me. I will not shut up 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

(02:44:18):
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

(02:44:38):
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 believe 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 in the Christmas time

(02:45:01):
be praised for this. I say it on my knees,
Oh 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,

(02:45:21):
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. He 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,

(02:45:42):
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 lacoon of himself with his stockings. I'm his lightest
a feather. I'm as happy as an angel, I'm as
merry as a schoolboy. Miss Giddy has a drunken man.

(02:46:03):
Merry Christmas to everybody, a happy New Year to all
the world. And new here he he frisped into the
sitting room and was now standing there, perfectly winded. There's
the saucepan that the groove was in, cried Scrooge, starting
off again and going around the fireplace. There's the door
by which the ghost of Jacob Marley entered. There's the

(02:46:24):
corner where the ghost of Christmas Presents sat. There's the
window where I saw the wandering spirits. It's all right,
it's all true. It all happened, 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

(02:46:47):
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. Hello. Helloo
there wo. He was checked in his transports by the churches,
ringing out the lustiest peals he had ever heard. Clash, clang, hammer,

(02:47:10):
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,

(02:47:31):
heavenly sky, sweet fresh air, merry bells. Oh, glorious, glorious.
What's today? Cried Scrooge, calling downward to a boy in
Sunday clothes, who perhaps had loitered in to look about him. Ay,
returned the boy with all his might of wonder. What's
to day, my fine fellow, said Scrooge today, replied the boy,

(02:47:54):
what Christmas Day? It's Christmas Day, said Scrooge to himself.
I haven't missed it. The spirits had done it it
all in one night, well, they can do anything they like.
Of course they can. Of course they can't. Hello, my
fine fellow, Hello, returned the boy. Do you know the
polterbers in the next street, but one at the corner?

(02:48:15):
Scrooge inquired, I should help, are dad? 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 to give the big one?
Why there was big as may, returned the boy. What
a delightful boy, said Scrooge. It's a pleasure to talk

(02:48:36):
to him. Yes, my buck ti and man now, replied
the boy. Is it, said Scrooge, Go and buy it, walker,
exclaimed the boy. No, no, said Scrooge. I'm in earnest.
Go and buy it, and tell them and to bring
it here that I may give them the directions we
have to take it. Come back with the man and
I'll give you a shitting Come back with him in

(02:48:58):
less than five minutes, and I'll give you a half
a crown. The boy was off like a shot. He
must have had a steady hand and a trigger. Who
could have got a shot off half so fast? I'll
send it to Bob Cracket's, whispered Scrooge, rubbing his hands
and splitting with a laugh. He shan't know who sends
it to. He's twice the size of tiny Tim Joe

(02:49:20):
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. He shall
love it as long as I live, cried Scrooge, patting

(02:49:42):
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. Helloo woop, how are
you at a Christmas? It was a turkey. He never
could have stood upon his legs that bird. He would
have snapped him sh short off in a minute, like
sticks of sealing wax. Why it's impossible to carry that

(02:50:05):
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

(02:50:27):
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

(02:50:48):
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 of them with
a delighted smile. He looked so resistibly pleasant in a word,
that three or four good humored fellows said good morning, sir,
and merry Christmas to you. And Scrooge said often afterwards

(02:51:10):
that of all the blithe sounds he had ever heard,
those were the blithest. In his ears. He'd not gone
far when coming on towards him, He beheld the portly
gentleman who had walked into his counting house the day before,
and said, Scrooge and Marley's I believe it, said a
pang across his heart to think how this old gentleman
would look upon him when they met. But he knew

(02:51:33):
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, and he was very kind
of you. Many Christmas to you, sir, mister Scrooge, Yes,
said Scrooge, that is my name, and I fear that

(02:51:54):
it may not be pleasant to you. Allow me to
ask your pardon, and will you have the goodness here?
Scrooge whispered in his ear. Lord bless me, cried the gentleman,
as if his breath were taken away. My dear mister Scrooge,
are you serious, if you please, said Scrooge. Not a
farthing less a great many back payments are included in it.

(02:52:15):
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 munificent Don't say anything, please,
retorted Scrooge. Come and see me, Will you come and
see me? I will, cried the old gentleman, And it
was clear he meant to do it. Think'ee, said Scrooge.

(02:52:38):
I'm much obliged to you. I think 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

(02:52:59):
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. He's your
master at home, my dear, said Scrooge to the girl.

(02:53:20):
Nice girl, very yes, sir. Where is he, my love,
said Scrooge. He's in the dining room, sir, along with
his mistress. I'll show you upstairs, if you please, yankee.
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

(02:53:41):
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,

(02:54:01):
or he wouldn't have done it on any account. Why,
bless my soul, cried Fred, who's that? It's I, your
uncle's Scrooge. I've 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.

(02:54:25):
So did Topper when he came. So did the plump
sister when she came. So did everyone 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

(02:54:47):
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 an
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

(02:55:09):
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. Hello, 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 by time,

(02:55:30):
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 maddy yesterday, sir. Now, I'll tell
you what my friend said Scrooge. I am not going

(02:55:54):
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'm there 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,

(02:56:16):
holding him and calling to the people in the court
for help and a straight waistcoat. A medy Christmas, Bob,
said Scrooge with an earnestness that could not be mistaken
as he clapped him on the back. A media Christmas, Bob,
my good fellow, than I have given you for many
a year. I'll raise your salary and endeavor to insist
your struggling family, and we'll discuss your affairs this afternoon

(02:56:39):
over a Christmas bowl of smoking Bishop, Bob, make up
the fires and burn another coal. Scuttle before you dot
another eye, Bob, cretchit. Scrooge was better than his word.
He did it all and infinitely more, and a tiny
tim who did not die. He was a second father.
He became as good a friend, as good a man,

(02:57:00):
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

(02:57:22):
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

(02:57:43):
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 sad of
us and all of us. And so, as tiny Tim observed,
God bless us everyone

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“A CHRISTMAS CAROL” by Charles Dickens – Full-Length Audio Book Narrated by Darren Marlar

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}“A CHRISTMAS CAROL” by Charles Dickens – Full-Length Audio Book Narrated by Darren Marlar