Konu: İngilizce Hikayeler Buraya!

Tiger Son

Once there was an elderly widow, Chen Ma, who lived with her only son inside a forest in the Shanxi Province. Her son was one of the tiger hunters licensed by the local magistrate, following the same profession of his father and grandfather before him. His share of the profits from the sale of tiger skins, meat and bones was sufficient to keep the small mud hut well provisioned for himself and his old mother.
All was well until a particularly bitter winter. During a snowstorm, Chen Ma's son was separated from his fellow hunters and became food for a hungry tigress.
After her initial shock and grief subsided, Chen Ma took stock of her own utterly desperate situation -- an old woman left all alone. She went and implored the magistrate to provide her with compensation for the loss of her son, who was her only source of support. The magistrate decreed that henceforth, she would have a small share of profits from the kill of each tiger by the hunters. Needless to say, his decision was not taken well by the hunters, who had plenty of mouths of their own to feed -- both old and young.
So, when the hunters succeeded in killing the tigress that ate Chen Ma's son, they decided not to give her a share of the profits. Instead, they brought her the tigress' newborn cub. He was a small quivery ball of golden furwith wobbly legs and toothless gums. The rope they tied around his neck was so tight that it was practically choking him. Instantly, Chen Ma's heart went out to this helpless creature, whose jade-green eyes were glistening with tears.
After the hunters left, the tiger cub wobbled to where Chen Ma sat and lay at her feet. She bent down to rub his ears and he licked her shoes with his soft tongue.
The elderly widow looked at the tiger baby and sighed. "They told me to butcher you, to salt and smoke your flesh for my meat supply. Your skin would make warm boots for my feet; your bones are good for making Tiger Bone Wine to ease the pain in my joints. But oh, how can I bear to kill you? You are so young and vital, while I am so old and frail."
Chen Ma armed herself with her son's hunting spear and threatened to gut anyone who dared to harm her beloved pet.
"I've lost both husband and son. This tiger is the only companion I have now. I shall go to the magistrate and request to adopt him as my son."
The hunters thought the old woman had become mad and jeered at her. But since she was so determined, they dared not kill her tiger without the magistrate's permission. So they followed Chen Ma and her tiger all the way to the official's judgment hall.
"Venerable Mother," said the magistrate. "Your request is most unusual. Are you not afraid that some day the tiger might revert to his wild nature and devour you?"
"Honorable sir," replied the old widow with tears in her eyes. "What is there to fear? I have lived too long. The only worry I have now is being left utterly alone. Please let me adopt this young tiger, for he has become like a son in my affections."
The kindly magistrate did not have the heart to refuse such an ancient woman's pleading. So he had his assistant draw up a document for the tiger's adoption.
In order to protect the tiger from the hunters' arrows and spears, the magistrate ordered a large copper pendent made to hang around the beast's neck. The words "Fu Chee" were engraved on the pendent meaning Tiger Son. To show her deep gratitude, Chen Ma knelt down in front of the magistrate and knocked her forehead three times. Then she led Fu Chee back to their home in the forest.
And so, Chen Ma untied the rope from the little tiger's neck and fed him a paste of cooked roots with her fingers. Her son had a good supply of grains and roots in the attached shed and she planned to stretch the food out to last the winter.
When the storeI of the firewood was running low, Chen Ma was unable to keep her bedroll on top of the kang warm (a kang is a bed base built of bricks with space for a small fire). So she slept curling against the baby tiger, whose soft fur was cozyand warm.
Once ever so often, women from nearby villages would bring sewing for Chen Ma to do. She was very handy with a needle. They paid her for her labor with dried venison and small sacks of grain. At first they did not find the little tiger's presence alarming; he was no bigger than a piglet. However, when spring came, he had grown into the size of a calf, showing a full set of teeth and claws . The women told their hunter husbands and the men came to kill the young tiger.
By next winter, Fu Chee had grown into his maximum size. Chen Ma's hut was in danger of collapsing whenever the tiger became playful. Reluctantly, she allowed Fu Chee to make his home inside a cave nearby.
However, the affectionate tiger came back to visit his adopted mother often, always bearing a gift in his mouth -- a dead deer or a large piece of tree branch. Also, he still liked to lick her shoes and to have his ears rubbed. Chen Ma's needs were being cared for just as if her natural son was still alive!
After Chen Ma died at the ripe old age past one hundred, the hunters noticed Fu Chee guarded her tomb nightly. They left him unmolested as he had never attacked any humans or domestic animals. This went on for a number of years and then one day the tiger was seen no more.
Out of deep respect and admiration for the filial tiger son, the hunters erected a small stone monument at Chen Ma's tomb with Fu Chee's story engraved on it. Henceforth, Fu Chee became a household legend in that part of Shanxi Province.

ders vermeyen bir keloğlan ve nasreddin hoca

KELOĞLAN AND NASREDDİN HODJA

Keloğlan had gone to the town to sell chickens. When he arrived at the market, he started to look for a customer for the two chickens. A man offered to pay a gold coin for the chickens. Keloğlan didn’t accept this. He said that he absolutely wanted two gold coins for the chickens. The man saw that Keloğlan would not sell the chickens for a gold coin:

“Keloğlan look, I have a treasure map. I am alone, and I’ve already got old. That’s why I couldn’t look for the treasure. I used to work at Zenginoğlu’s mansion. Zenginoğlu gave me this map. Let me have the two chickens, have the map, look for and find the treasure, and be happy all your life” he said. Keloğlan believed the man, and agreed. Keloğlan returned home in the late afternoon. His mother shouted:

“Oh my stupid son! Can two chickens be bartered for this piece of paper? You were meant to buy gas and salt after selling the chickens. You have been cheated. Sit in the dark, eat the meals without any salt and make up your mind.” Keloğlan didn’t care, he was only thinking about the treasure. He passed the night in difficulty and got up very early. Keloğlan said:

“Mother, I am going to look for the treasure. I have prepared food for winter. Let there be no gas; you will go to bed early in the evenings. Let there be salt; you will get it from the neighbour. If I find the treasure, I will make you live like a sultan”. He kissed his mother’s hand. Seeing that Keloğlan was determined, his mother desperately changed her mind. She saw Keloğlan off saying “Goodbye, Keloğlan. I hope you find the treasure.”

Keloğlan crossed mountains and hills, looking for days until finally he found the well on the map. The treasure was meant to be in this well. The stone he threw into the well made a sound like ‘BANG’. Keloğlan understood that there was no water in the well. However, three people who had gone down the well in his village and weren’t able to come out last year came to his mind. “I have a rope, which I brought with me from the village.” He started worrying: “What if I tie the rope to the edge of the well and go down, but then die like them because of the poisonous smoke in the well? That will be a bad state of affairs - first I need a helper who is manly, trustworthy and who is able to remove the danger in the well. Nasreddin Hodja came to mind while thinking where it might be possible to find somebody like this, and he said “Ok, the Hodja will find a way to resolve this matter.”
After a long journey he eventually arrived in Akşehir. There he asked to be shown Nasreddin Hodja’s house. He knocked on the door and Nasreddin Hodja opened it. He said “You are most welcome, my son. I am Nasreddin Hodja. Would you like something?”

“My Hodja, I am called Keloğlan in my village. I would likr your help for an important matter. I would be very happy if you would be so kind as to listen to me.” Hodja welcomed Keloğlan into his house. Keloğlan told him how he had got the treasure map; he told him that he had said goodbye to his mother and had left the village, had found the well on the map, he told himwhy he hadn’t been able to go down the well. He concluded his remarks by saying, “If we find the treasure, we will share it fifty – fifty, my Hodja. What do you say?”
Nasreddin Hodja replied, “Since there is not enough current, this poisonous air gathers in the wells which haven’t been used for a long time and into which poisonous air leaks from the layers of earth around them. If someone goes down into these wells, they will poison and kill that person. As you have told me, the depth of the well is nearly 9 or 10 metres. It is too tiring and troublesome to dig and broaden the hole around the well, we can’t accomplish that. If we try to find a helper, it will spread from ear to ear, and the public will gather at the well. We must find another way Keloğlan. Stay with us for a couple of days as my guest, and I will think and find a suitable way.”

Nasreddin Hodja made plans during the following two days, and drew up drafts. He brought the plans to the smith. He admonished him to give the equipment that he had; to make those he didn’t have according to the drawings. The equipment was ready in a week. He had bought a cart which two donkeys pulled. He put the equipment, and necessities like food and drink in the car. He said goodbye to his wife and mounted his donkey. Hodja with his donkey in the front, and Keloğlan in the cart at the back, set off. After a troublesome journey lasting for days, they reached the well in which the treasure was. Hodja scrutinized the well. He took down the big bellows, which they had got the smith to make, next to the well with Keloğlan. They dangled one of the tips of a pipe, which was nearly 10 centimetres wide, into the bottom of the well. They attached the other tip to the bellows. They started to pump the bellows. The still and poisonous air - which had accumulated for years - started to scatter, rise slowly and get out of the well from the effect of the fresh and pressurized air. The rate of poisonous air in the well lessened each time the bellows pumped air. This process was continued the following day, too. On the third day they came to the conclusion that the well had been cleaned. Just to make sure, Nasreddin Hodja put a cat, which he had brought in the cart, into a sack. After tying up the sack with a rope, he lowered it into the bottom of the well. He saw that the cat was alive and kicking after pulling it back two hours later.

Tying the rope around his waist, Keloğlan had gone down the well. He took out the stone mentioned on the map. After digging the earth under the stone, he found the chest. He tied up the chest with the other rope near him and called out to Hodja to pull him. When Keloğlan had come out of the well, he pulled up the chest with Hodja. When they broke its lock and opened the chest, to their surprise they saw it was full of bright and shiny gold! They felt very happy. They shared the gold immediately. The next day, Nasreddin Hodja set off to Akşehir on his donkey, and Keloğlan set off to his village in the cart.
Keloğlan got a legendary mansion built in his village. He hired maids and manservants. He bought fields, vineyards, gardens. He started to live like a sultan with his mother. The Sultan heard about Keloğlan’s extraordinary wealth. When he was out hunting one day, he stopped by Keloğlan’s mansion. Keloğlan showed respect for the Sultan, and treated him in the best way. The Sultan, who was very pleased with this close interest, invited Keloğlan to his palace for the festival, which was going to be celebrated the following month.
Keloğlan went to the palace by coach and with manservants on the festival day. He met the Sultan’s extremely beautiful daughter, Violet, and fell in love. Violet loved Keloğlan at first sight and didn’t want him to leave. After the festival entertainments had finished, Keloğlan returned to his mansion. He told his mother that he had fallen in love with Sultan Violet at first sight and wouldn’t be able to live without her. They thought it over carefully and they decided to ask the Sultan’s consent to marry Violet. Later he went with his mother to ask the Sultan if he could marry his daughter. The Sultan accepted Violet’s marrying Keloğlan. Keloğlan returned to his mansion and started the wedding preparations. On the way he had sent messengers to Nasreddin Hodja to invite him to his wedding.

After Nasreddin Hodja had returned to Akşehir with his share, he clothed the poor and the orphans, and spent most of his money on good deeds. And at the same time he heard from his friends’ conversation and from the travellers passing by that Keloğlan had got a mansion built in his village, had hired menservants, had bought fields and started to live like a sultan, and he felt happy about the things he heard. When he heard about Keloğlan’s wedding invitation and that he was going to marry Sultan Violet, he regained a lot of his good humour. He started the preparations to go to the wedding. He bought carpets, furs, and silk cloths. He bought jewellery like earrings and a necklace for Violet. He also bought two coaches, which four horses would pull, and he also hired two manservants. He wore his most valuable clothes and his showiest fur. He set out with his wife a couple of days before the wedding. The Hodja arrived at the palace with his entourage, very ostentatiously. Keloğlan welcomed the Hodja at the door. He kissed his hand. They embraced and hugged each other. The Hodja told a lot of stories about events that he had lived, including witty remarks, until the wedding day. He made the guests have a funny time. Keloğlan and Sultan Violet married among the entertainments with musical instruments and much conversation. There were no words to describe their happiness. They lived happily for many years.

THE END



KELOĞLAN İLE NASREDDİN HOCA

Keloğlan kasabaya tavuk satmaya gitmiş. Pazara gelince elindeki iki tavuğa müşteri aramaya başlamış. Adamın biri tavuklara bir altın vermiş. Keloğlan bunu kabul etmemiş. İlle de iki tavuğa iki altın isterim demiş. Keloğlan’ın tavukları bir altına vermediğini gören adam:
“ Bak Keloğlan, bende bir define haritası var. Yalnızım, yaşlandım artık. Bu sebepten defineyi aramaya çıkamadım. Eskiden Zenginoğlu’ nun konağında çalışırdım. Bu haritayı bana Zenginoğlu vermişti. İki tavuk benim olsun, harita senin olsun, defineyi ara bul, ömrünce mutlu ol ” demiş. Keloğlan adama inanmış, değiş tokuş yapılmış. Keloğlan akşamüstü yorgun argın köyüne dönmüş. Anası:

“ A benim kel oğlum, kabak oğlum. Hiç bu kağıt parçasına iki tavuk verilir mi? Sen tavukları satıp gaz, tuz alacaktın. Kandırmışlar seni. Şimdi karanlıkta otur, yemekleri tuzsuz ye de aklın başına gelsin ” diyerek bağırıp çağırmış. Keloğlan oralı olmamış, aklı fikri definedeymiş. Sabahı zor etmiş, erkenden kalkmış. Anasına:

“ Ana ben defineyi aramaya gidiyorum. Kışlık yiyecek hazırlamıştım. Varsın gaz olmasın, akşamları erken yatarsın. Varsın tuz olmasın, komşudan istersin. Defineyi bulursam, seni sultanlar gibi yaşatacağım ”demiş. Anasının elini öpmüş. Keloğlan’ ın kararlı olduğunu gören anası çaresiz fikir değiştirmiş. “ Güle güle git, Keloğlan. İnşallah defineyi bulursun “ diyerek Keloğlan’ ı uğurlamış.

Keloğlan dağ-bayır aşmış, günlerce aramış, sonunda haritadaki kuyuyu bulmuş. Define bu kuyunun içindeymiş. Kuyuya attığı taş tak diye ses çıkarmış. Keloğlan kuyuda su olmadığını anlamış. Fakat geçen yıl köydeki kör kuyuya inen ve bir daha çıkamayan üç kişi aklına gelmiş. “ Yanımda köyden getirdiğim ip var. Kuyunun kenarına bağlayıp insem ya ben de onlar gibi kuyudaki zehirli dumandan boğulur kalırsam halim nice olur, diye düşünceye dalmış. Evvela bana mert, sözünün eri, kuyudaki tehlikeyi ortadan kaldırabilecek bir yardımcı lazım. Böylesi de nerelerde bulunur, diye düşünürken aklına Nasreddin Hoca gelmiş. Tamam demiş Hoca bu işin çaresini bulur. ‘

Az gitmiş uz gitmiş, sonunda Akşehir’ e varmış. Sormuş, Nasreddin Hoca’ nın evini göstermişler. Kapıyı çalmış. Nasreddin Hoca kapıyı açmış. “ Buyurun evladım “ demiş,
“ Ben Nasreddin Hoca’ yım. Bir şey mi arzu etmiştiniz? “

“ Hocam bizim köyde bana Keloğlan derler. Sizin önemli bir meselenin çözümüne yardımınızı rica edecektim. Beni dinlemek zahmetine katlanırsanız çok sevinirim. “
Hoca Keloğlan’ ı evine buyur etmiş. Keloğlan define haritasına nasıl sahip olduğunu, anasına veda edip köyden ayrıldığını, haritadaki kuyuyu bulduğunu, kuyuya neden inemediğini anlatmış. “ Eğer defineyi bulursak yarı yarıya paylaşırız, Hocam. Ne dersiniz? ” diyerek sözü bağlamış.

Nasreddin Hoca:

“ Uzun süredir kullanılmayan veya etrafındaki toprak tabakasından içine zehirli hava sızan kuyularda, yeterli hava akımı olmadığı için, bu zehirli hava birikir. Eğer böyle kuyulara inilirse insanı zehirler, öldürür. Söylediğine göre kuyunun derinliği dokuz on metre varmış. Kuyunun çevresini kazıp genişletmek çok yorucu ve zahmetli, ikimiz başaramayız. Yardımcı bulmaya kalksak kulaktan kulağa yayılır, halk kuyunun başına dolar. Başka bir yol bulmalıyız Keloğlan. Sen bizde birkaç gün misafir kal, düşünüp hal çaresini bulurum. “

Nasreddin Hoca sonraki iki gün planlar yapmış, taslaklar çizmiş. Planları demirciye götürmüş. Bu aletlerin olanını vermesini, olmayanı çizime uygun olarak yapmasını tembihlemiş. Haftasına aletler hazır olmuş. İki eşeğin çektiği bir araba almış. Arabaya aletleri, yiyecek, içecek gibi ihtiyaçları koymuş. Karısıyla vedalaşıp eşeğine binmiş. Nasreddin Hoca eşeğiyle önde, Keloğlan arabayla arkada, yola koyulmuşlar. Günlerce süren zahmetli yolculuktan sonra definenin bulunduğu kuyuya varmışlar. Hoca kuyuyu incelemiş. Keloğlan ile birlikte demirciye yaptırmış oldukları büyük körüğü kuyunun yanına indirmişler. Yaklaşık on santim genişliğindeki borunun bir ucunu kuyunun dibine sallamışlar. Diğer ucunu körüğe takmışlar. Birlikte körüğe temiz hava basmaya başlamışlar. Yıllardır burada biriken durgun ve zehirli hava, temiz ve basınçlı havanın etkisiyle parçalanmaya, yavaşça yükselmeye, kuyudan çıkmaya başlamış. Körük her hava basışında kuyudaki zehirli hava oranı azalıyormuş. Bu işlem ertesi gün de devam etmiş. Üçüncü gün kuyunun temizlendiğine kanaat getirmişler. Yine de her şeyden emin olmak için Nasreddin Hoca arabada getirdiği bir kediyi çuvala koymuş. Çuvalı ipe bağlayıp kuyunun dibine sarkıtmış. Yarım saat sonra kediyi çıkardığında dipdiri olduğunu görmüş.

Keloğlan ipi beline bağlayıp kuyuya inmiş. Haritada belirtilen taşı çıkarmış. Taşın altındaki toprağı kazınca, sandığı bulmuş. Yanındaki diğer ipe sandığı bağlamış ve Hoca’ ya kendisini çekmesi için seslenmiş. Keloğlan kuyudan çıkınca, Hoca ile sandığı yukarıya çekmişler. Sandığın kilidini kırıp, kapağını açınca, bir de ne görsünler: Çil çil altınlarla dolu değil miymiş sandığın içi… Çok sevinmişler. Hemen altınları paylaşmışlar. Ertesi gün, Nasreddin Hoca eşeğiyle Akşehir’e, Keloğlan arabayla köyüne doğru yola koyulmuşlar.

Keloğlan köyünde dillere destan bir konak yaptırmış. Hizmetçiler, uşaklar tutmuş. Tarlalar, bağlar, bahçeler satın almış. Anasıyla birlikte sultanlar gibi yaşamaya başlamış. Keloğlan’ ın görülmemiş zenginliği padişahın kulağına gitmiş. Ava çıktığı bir gün Keloğlan’ ın konağına uğramış. Keloğlan padişaha hürmet göstermiş, en iyi şekilde ağırlamış. Gördüğü yakın ilgiden çok memnun kalan padişah, Keloğlan’ ı gelecek ay kutlanacak bayram için, sarayına davet etmiş.

Bayram günü Keloğlan arabalar ve uşaklarla beraber saraya gitmiş. Eğlenceler sırasında padişahın dünya güzeli kızı Menekşe ile tanışmış ve aşık olmuş. Menekşe de Keloğlan’ ı görür görmez sevmiş ve yanından ayrılmak istemiyormuş. Bayram eğlenceleri bittikten sonra Keloğlan konağına dönmüş. Anasına Menekşe Sultan’ ı görür görmez aşık olduğunu, onsuz yapamayacağını söylemiş. Düşünmüşler, taşınmışlar, padişahtan Menekşe’yi istemeye karar vermişler. Daha sonra anasıyla gidip kızı istemişler. Padişah Menekşe’yi Keloğlan’ a vermiş. Keloğlan konağına dönüp düğün hazırlıklarına başlamış. Bir taraftan da Nasreddin Hoca’ ya haberciler gönderip, düğüne davet etmiş.

Nasreddin Hoca payına düşen altınlarla Akşehir’e döndükten sonra yoksulları, yetimleri, giydirip kuşatmış, parasının çoğunu hayır işlerinde kullanmış. Bir yandan da Keloğlan’ın köyünde konak yaptırdığını, uşaklar tutup, araziler satın alıp sultanlar gibi yaşamaya başladığını dost sohbetlerinde ve gelip giden yolculardan duyar, anlatılanlara sevinirmiş. Keloğlan’ ın düğün haberini ve Menekşe Sultan ile evleneceğini duyunca keyfi pek yerine gelmiş. Hemen düğüne gitmek için hazırlıklara başlamış. Halılar, kürkler, ipek kumaşlar almış. Menekşe’ye küpe, kolye, gerdanlık gibi ziynet eşyaları almış. Ayrıca dört atın çektiği iki araba satın almış, iki tane de uşak tutmuş. En değerli elbiselerini, en gösterişli kürkünü giymiş. Karısıyla birlikte düğünden birkaç gün önce yola çıkmış. Nasreddin Hoca maiyetiyle birlikte gayetle şatafatlı bir şekilde saraya varmış. Keloğlan Hoca’ yı kapıda karşılamış. Elini öpmüş. Sarılmışlar, hasretle kucaklaşmışlar. Düğün gününe kadar Hoca başından geçmiş nice olaylara ince espriler katarak anlatmış. Davetlilerin hoşça vakit geçirmelerine yardımcı olmuş. Sazlı, sözlü eğlenceler arasında Keloğlan ile Menekşe Sultan evlenmişler. Mutluluklarına diyecek yokmuş. Daha uzun yıllar mutlu ve bahtiyar olarak yaşamışlar.

SON

elinize sağlık

THE LITTLE WHALE AND SHARKS

The little whale whose mother was killed by whale hunters was swimming in the Atlantic Ocean. Whilst swimming, he was surrounded by a group of sharks that included about twenty members. The leader of the sharks came nearer to the little whale and said ‘ I know you and I can understand how you feel little whale. Being unhappy won’t help you. You can’t get anything living unhappily. People killed your mother. You must get your revenge. You mustn’t swim around doing nothing. We are your friends and we can teach you how to kill people so that you can kill them cruelly and get your revenge. In the near future people will get to know you and they will be afraid of this cruel whale.’

‘Did people eat my mother?’ asked the little whale.
‘Yes, my little friend they did. People are so cruel. They kill all the living things in the world wildly and also they are really cruel to each other as well. I have seen lots of people fighting with each other on the ships. My grandfather used to say that they were also fighting on the land and the one who beats the other one was becoming a hero.’ answered the leader of the sharks.
‘It means that people are really bad creature, aren’t they? asked the little whale.
‘Yes, they really are.’ said the shark.
‘If they are so, I am going to punish all of them and the ones that killed my mother and made me cry for a long time but I don’t know how to do this.’ the little whale said.
‘You can learn it. Come on honey, follow me. Let’s go my dear friends. Deep waters are waiting for us.’ said the shark.

The sharks taught the little whale all the techniques about how to kill people and it took them one month to do this. Their aim was to send the little whale to the beaches where a lot of people swam and to make him kill all the people who were swimming around.

Little whale was sure of himself. He was definitely confident that he was able to kill people and he always told the sharks he wanted to kill all the people and pull them to pieces. However, the leader of the sharks thought it was necessary to test the little whale if he really learned how to kill that before sending him to the beach to kill people. So five of the sharks started to look for a person swimming around alone and away from the other people who were doing different activities on the beach. After a short time they realized that there was a little boy swimming alone near the lighthouse. This little boy was going to be their first victim. They didn’t want to go closer to the child as they didn’t want him to be scared. They turned back quickly and showed the little whale his first victim so that the little whale started to swim towards the little boy. The sharks thought that the little boy must be a professional swimmer as the sea was very deep around the lighthouse otherwise he couldn’t swim there because most of the people were afraid of it. At first the little whale took his head out of the sea and then his body and tail appeared. The child realized the whale immediately. The whale took a deep breathe and dived into the sea. Although it was just a baby whale, it was four metres long. It was impossible for the little boy to swim towards the beach because the whale could swim much faster than him so that it could catch him before reaching the beach. He started swimming parallel to the beach but the whale came closer and closer and then the whale started swimming next to him and after a while it suddenly opened its mouth and then closed it. Then it turned back and swam towards the sharks.

When he came near them:

‘ I completed my mission. I killed the child.’ he said.
‘ Did you pull him to pieces?’, asked the leader of the sharks.
‘ No, I didn’t pull him to pieces’, said the little whale.
‘ Didn’t you? What did you do, then?’ asked the shark.
‘ I swallowed him.’ replied the whale.
‘Swallowed?’ asked the shark.
‘ Yes, I did. The child is in my stomach now.’ said the whale.
‘ No matter what you did. As a result you killed him. I really appreciate what you did and I want to congratulate you. We are going somewhere far away tomorrow to attend a meeting so that we won’t be here for a few days. I want you to go to the beach and kill as may people as possible. You can either pull them to pieces or swallow them. You must swim around all the beaches and kill all the people you come across. Do not pity on them.’ said the leader of the sharks.

After a few days the sharks came back and found the little whale swimming around happily. The little whale told them that he had killed twenty people cruelly and people had been afraid of swimming in the sea since than because they were scared to death and next he boasted them all the people were afraid of him. All the sharks became very pleased when they heard that.

The next day one of the sharks saw the boy whom the whale pretended as if he swallowed the other day on the beach near the lighthouse. He went directly beside their leader and told what he had seen so that the leader got furious. He went beside the little whale angrily.

‘You told us that you had swallowed that little boy but we saw him on the beach and he was alive. Nothing has happened to him. He looks so healthy. Are you making fun of us?’ he said.

The whale realized that he was being surrounded by the sharks that seemed very angry.

‘Yes, I swallowed him but I couldn’t digest him so I had to vomit him because he started kicking my stomach.’ replied the little whale.
‘Shut up, you liar! you didn’t swallow him and you didn’t attack other people swimming around. They were all lies. You also told us that people couldn’t come to the beach as they were afraid of you but you see all the beaches are full of people and they don’t care about you. All the things that you told us were lies. If you can’t kill them, I will…… said the leader of the sharks. And he couldn’t finish his sentence.

‘What will you do? I got bored of you all. Get out of my sight!’ said the whale angrily and then hit the leader with his head so strongly that it went down the depths of the sea and then he started to swim very fast towards the beach. It was too late to turn back and the sharks were swimming just behind him and they were so close. If they caught him they would pull him to pieces.

Little whale reached the beach hardly. It struggled and kicked about while lying on its back for a while and it could manage to move a bit on the beach. When he got weak he let his head on the hot sand. The child recognized the whale and ran beside him.

‘What is happening little whale? You must be in the sea not on the beach!’ said the little boy.
‘Thanks God. Is it you little boy? Sorry I can’t remember your name.2 said the little whale.
‘My name is Mark. I am OK! What are you doing on the beach?’ asked the little boy.
‘My name is Sili. We met a few days ago, didn’t we?’ asked the little whale.
‘Yes, I do. We swam next to each other for a while. When you opened your big mouth I got so frightened because I thought that you were going to eat me but I was wrong. You just opened your mouth widely and then closed it and swam away. I couldn’t understand why you did like that.’ said the little boy.
‘ Did you really think that I was going to eat you. That was just a joke. I am so sorry that I made you frightened. Please forgive me for my behaviour’ said the whale.
‘ OK! I do forgive you. Would you please tell me what is going on now? What is the reason for your being here on the beach instead of swimming in the sea?’ asked the little boy.

Little told him everything.

‘As you see my friend all the sharks are chasing me all around and I can not fight them alone because there are twenty sharks that want to kill me. That is why I am here.’ said the whale.
‘Why didn’t you swim away when the sharks went far away for the meeting? You should have asked for help from the other whales.’ said the little boy.
‘If I had swum away, the sharks would catch me easily. I would have no chance to survive because all the sharks in the sea would start looking for me in order to kill me. I wouldn’t have asked for help from other whales because that would cause a cruel war between all the sharks and whales living in the sea. as a result a lot of whales and sharks would die just because of me. I might have died in that war. But now only I am dying and none of the whales is in danger. It is not the end of the world if I die. The world is like a drop in the space and I am not even like a drop in the ocean’ explained the whale.

‘If your mother hadn’t died, the sharks wouldn’t have tried to kill you. You wouldn’t be here and running away from them.’ said the boy.
‘ That is true but people are responsible from my mother’s death. They killed her. What is more I can’t understand the reason why they killed my mother. She didn’t hurt them. Why do you think they killed her, Mark?’ asked the little whale.
‘To earn some money. Some people kill animals to earn some money. They don’t care about what would happen to the babies of those animals that they kill. How can those babies survive without their mothers? They won’t give harm to a child whose mother or father died. Because they respect that child and pity on him. A child whose mother or father died when he was small can understand you very well. I promise you I will never give harm anything on earth.’ promised the child.

‘ I love you, Mark’ said the little whale.
‘ I love you, too Sili’ replied the little boy.



YAVRU BALİNA İLE KÖPEKBALIKLARI

Annesi balina avcıları tarafından öldürülen yavru balina Atlas Okyanusu’nda yüzerken etrafını yirmi kadar köpekbalığı sardı. Başkan köpekbalığı yavru balinanın yanına gelerek: “ Seni tanıyorum ve durumunu çok iyi anlıyorum yavru balina. Ama üzülmekle eline bir şey geçmez. Anneni insanlar öldürdü. Sen bunu onların yanına bırakmamalısın. Annenin intikamını almalısın. Biz senin dostunuz. Sana öldürmeyi öğretip, insanların üstüne salacağız. Çok yakında insanlar yavru balinayı tanıyıp, ondan korkacaklar “ dedi.
“ Annemi yerler mi insanlar? “ diye sordu yavru balina.
“ Yerler yavrum. İnsanlar acımasızdır. Onlar dünyadaki tüm canlıları acımasızca öldürürler. Hoş, insanlar birbirlerine karşı da acımasızdır. Ben buralarda çok gördüm gemiler içinde savaşan insanları. Dedem insanların toprak üstünde de savaştıklarını söylerdi. Savaşı kazanan kahraman olurmuş. “
“ İnsanlar kötü yaratık desene? “
“ Hem de çok kötü yaratık. “
“ O zaman beni annesiz bırakan, bana günlerce gözyaşı döktüren insanları cezalandıracağım, ama bunu nasıl yapacağımı bilemiyorum. “
“ Öğrenirsen bilirsin. Haydi, yavrucuk peşimden gel. Siz de peşimden gelin köpek kardeşlerim. Derinlikler bizi bekliyor. “

Aradan bir ay geçti. Bu sürede köpekbalıkları bildikleri öldürme yöntemlerini yavru balinaya öğrettiler. Hedef, insanların toplu halde yüzdükleri plajlar olacaktı. Plajlar, insan kanına boyanacaktı. Yavru balina, öldürürüm, parçalarım, diyordu ama onu plaja salmadan önce bir deneme yapmalıydı. Bakalım öldürebilecek miydi? Beş köpekbalığı yalnız yüzen insan aramaya başladı. Deniz fenerinin yakınında bir çocuk yüzüyordu. İlk kurban o olacaktı. Köpekbalıkları sahilden uzak kaldılar. Çocuğu ürkütmek istemiyorlardı. Yavru balina hızla çocuğa doğru yüzmeye başladı. Fenerin oralar derin demişti köpekbalıkları, çocuk demek ki, usta yüzücüydü. Yoksa onun ne işi vardı böyle derin yerde. Yavru balina kafasını suyun üstüne çıkardı, daha sonra gövdesi ve kuyruğu göründü. Çocuk, yavru balinayı hemen fark etti. Derin bir nefes alıp suya daldı. Balina yavruydu ama dört metre boyundaydı. Sahile doğru yüzmeye kalksa bunu başaramazdı, çünkü yavru balina ondan çok daha hızlıydı. Yetişmesi an meselesiydi. Bundan dolayı çocuk sahile paralel yüzüyordu. Yavru balina çocuğa yetişti, bir süre onunla yan yana yüzdü ve aniden dönerek ağzını açıp kapadı. Yavru balina köpekbalıklarının yanına döndüğünde:

“ Görevimi başardım. Çocuğun işi tamam “ dedi.
“ Çocuğu parçaladın mı? “ diye sordu, başkan köpekbalığı.
“ Hayır, parçalamadım “ dedi yavru balina.
“ Parçalamadın mı? O zaman ne yaptın? “
“ Çocuğu yuttum. “
“ Yuttun mu? “
“ Evet, yuttum…Çocuk şimdi midemde. “
“ Öyle veya böyle, çocuğu öldürmüşsün işte. Seni kutlarım yavru balina. Biz yarın uzaklara gidip bir toplantıya katılacağız. Birkaç gün yokuz. Sen şu ilerdeki plaja git, yakaladığını ister parçala, ister yut. Sıradan bütün plajları dolaş. İnsanlara acıma yok. “

Köpekbalıkları döndüğünde yavru balinayı buldular. Yavru balina yirmi insanı acımadan öldürdüğünü, insanların plajlara çıkamadığını, etrafa korku saldığını söyledi. Köpekbalıkları bu habere çok sevindiler. Ertesi gün bir köpekbalığı deniz fenerinin yakınındaki sahilde yavru balinanın yuttum dediği çocuğu gördü. Başkanı bularak durumu anlattı. Başkan, bunun üzerine çok sinirlendi. Nefretle yavru balinanın üstüne gitti:
“ Hani yutmuştun o çocuğu, bak fenerin oradaymış. Sen bizimle dalga mı geçiyorsun? “ Köpekbalıklarının etrafını sardığını gören yavru balina:
“ Şey, yutmuştum ama hazmedemedim, kusuverdim. Çocuk midemi tekmelemişti. “
“ Sus, yalancı seni, çocuğu yutmadın, plajlara saldırmadın, bütün plajlar dolu. Hani plajlara kimse çıkamıyordu, hani etrafa korku salmıştın. Yalan, hepsi yalan. Madem öldüremiyorsun, ölürsün. Şimdi seni…”
Başkan köpekbalığı sözlerini tamamlayamadı, çünkü yavru balina:
“ Beni ne yaparsın? Sıktın artık, çekil önümden “ dedikten sonra, ona sert bir kafa vurarak denizin derinliklerine yolladı.
Yavru balinanın önü açılmıştı. Gücünün yettiği kadar hızlı yüzmeye başladı. Karşısı sahildi. Artık geriye dönüş yoktu. Peşinde sürüyle köpekbalığı vardı. Yakalarlarsa parçalarlardı. Yavru balina kendini sahile zor attı. Debelendi kumun üstünde biraz daha, biraz daha ilerledi. Gücü tükenince başını sıcacık kumun üstüne bıraktı. Çocuk yavru balinayı tanımıştı. Onun yanına geldi:
“ Ne oluyor, yavru balina? Neden sahile çıktın? “
“ Oh, sen miydin? Nasılsın çocuk? Adın neydi senin? “
“ Benim adım Mark. İyiyim de burada ne işin var? “
“ Benim adım de Sili. Geçenlerde tanışmıştık, hatırladın mı? “
“ Hatırladım. Bir süre yan yana yüzmüştük, sonra sen gitmiştin. Üstüme gelirken beni yiyeceksin sanıp korkmuştum.”
“ Kim? Ben mi seni yiyecektim? O bir şakaydı. Seni korkuttuğum için özür dilerim. Beni affet.”
“ Affettim gitti. Anlat bakalım Sili, neler oluyor? Neden denizde değil de buradasın? “
Yavru balina olanları anlattıktan sonra:
“ Ya, işte böyle Mark, köpekbalıkları peşimde, sayıları yirmiden fazla. Onlarla yalnız başıma çarpışamam. Acı gerçek ama benim için böylesi daha iyi olacak. “
“ Köpekbalıkları toplantıya gittiğinde kaçıp gitseydin uzaklara veya balinalardan yardım isteseydin? “
“ Kaçsam kısa zamanda yakalanırdım. Kurtuluşu yoktu. Okyanustaki bütün köpekbalıkları peşime düşerdi. Balinalardan yardım isteyemezdim, çünkü bu korkunç bir savaşın başlangıcı olurdu. Yüzlerce balina ve köpekbalığı birbirine girerdi. Arada belki ben de ölürdüm. Oysa şimdi sadece ben ölüyorum, hiçbir balinayı tehlikeye atmıyorum. Bir benim için başkalarının keyfini kaçıramam. Sili ölürse kıyamet kopmaz. Hayat devam eder. Dünya uzayda nokta kadar, fakat Sili dünyada nokta kadar bile değil. “
“ Annen yaşasaydı köpekbalıkları sana sokulamazdı. Bu duruma düşmezdin. “
“ Onun orası öyle de annemi insanlar öldürdü. Asıl suçlu annemi öldüren insanlar. Mark, sence insanlar annemi neden öldürdü? “
“ Kazanç uğruna. Bazıları kendileri kazansın diye can alıyorlar. Öldürürken düşünmezler ki, balinanın yavrusu ne olacak? Yavru annesiz ne yapacak? Örneğin; annesiz, babasız bir çocuk ne olur, ne yapar, nasıl yaşar? Çocukken bunu düşünen biri büyüdüğünde diğer canlıların hayatına saygı duyar, onlara zarar vermez. Tanrı şahidimdir ki, ben insan olsun, diğer canlı varlıklar olsun hiçbirine zarar vermeyeceğim. Yemin ediyorum. “
“ Seni seviyorum, Mark.”
“ Ben de seni seviyorum, Sili. “

eline saglık hocam daha fazlasını nereden bulabilirim?

boş bir vaktimde eklemeye çalışırım arkadaşım.. ama burası bir paylaşım sitesi sizde isterseniz ekleyebilirsiniz

ben de ekliyorum şu an:) the story of an hour ve the darling

ÖNEMLİ BİLGİLER: YAZAR: KATE CHOPİN (hikayeleri çok keyiflildir okuyun!:)
yıl:1894
yazar amerikanın zamanının önde gelen feministlerindendir.hikaye, kocasının aniden öldüğünü duyan bir kadının kendini hayatta hissetmeye başlayıp neredeyse mutlu ve özgür denilebilecek bir ruh haline bürünmesi ile ilgilenir ne var ki karakterimiz daha sevinemeden karşısında kocasını görür ve sevinç ya da hüzünden midir bilinmez kalp krizi geçirirverir ve ölür.ölüm nedenini okuyucu olarak sizin bulmanıız gerekiyor:) iki anlam çıkabilecek hikayede yorum sizin .bütün olayın sadece 1 saat içinde gerçekleşmesi de cabası!




The Story of an Hour
Kate Chopin
Knowing that Mrs. Mallard was afflicted with a heart trouble, great care was taken to break
to her as gently as possible the news of her husband's death.
It was her sister Josephine who told her, in broken sentences; veiled hints that revealed in
half concealing. Her husband's friend Richards was there, too, near her. It was he who had been
in the newspaper office when intelligence of the railroad disaster was received, with Brently
Mallard's name leading the list of "killed." He had only taken the time to assure himself of its
truth by a second telegram, and had hastened to forestall any less careful, less tender friend in
bearing the sad message.
She did not hear the story as many women have heard the same, with a paralyzed inability to
accept its significance. She wept at once, with sudden, wild abandonment, in her sister's arms.
When the storm of grief had spent itself she went away to her room alone. She would have no
one follow her.
There stood, facing the open window, a comfortable, roomy armchair. Into this she sank,
pressed down by a physical exhaustion that haunted her body and seemed to reach into her soul.
She could see in the open square before her house the tops of trees that were all aquiver with
the new spring life. The delicious breath of rain was in the air. In the street below a peddler was
crying his wares. The notes of a distant song which some one was singing reached her faintly,
and countless sparrows were twittering in the eaves.
There were patches of blue sky showing here and there through the clouds that had met and
piled one above the other in the west facing her window.
She sat with her head thrown back upon the cushion of the chair, quite motionless, except
when a sob came up into her throat and shook her, as a child who has cried itself to sleep
continues to sob in its dreams.
She was young, with a fair, calm face, whose lines bespoke repression and even a certain
strength. But now there was a dull stare in her eyes, whose gaze was fixed away off yonder on
one of those patches of blue sky. It was not a glance of reflection, but rather indicated a
suspension of intelligent thought.

hikayenin hepsi kopyalanmamıs bütün hali burdadır!

The Story of an Hour
Kate Chopin
Knowing that Mrs. Mallard was afflicted with a heart trouble, great care was taken to break
to her as gently as possible the news of her husband's death.
It was her sister Josephine who told her, in broken sentences; veiled hints that revealed in
half concealing. Her husband's friend Richards was there, too, near her. It was he who had been
in the newspaper office when intelligence of the railroad disaster was received, with Brently
Mallard's name leading the list of "killed." He had only taken the time to assure himself of its
truth by a second telegram, and had hastened to forestall any less careful, less tender friend in
bearing the sad message.
She did not hear the story as many women have heard the same, with a paralyzed inability to
accept its significance. She wept at once, with sudden, wild abandonment, in her sister's arms.
When the storm of grief had spent itself she went away to her room alone. She would have no
one follow her.
There stood, facing the open window, a comfortable, roomy armchair. Into this she sank,
pressed down by a physical exhaustion that haunted her body and seemed to reach into her soul.
She could see in the open square before her house the tops of trees that were all aquiver with
the new spring life. The delicious breath of rain was in the air. In the street below a peddler was
crying his wares. The notes of a distant song which some one was singing reached her faintly,
and countless sparrows were twittering in the eaves.
There were patches of blue sky showing here and there through the clouds that had met and
piled one above the other in the west facing her window.
She sat with her head thrown back upon the cushion of the chair, quite motionless, except
when a sob came up into her throat and shook her, as a child who has cried itself to sleep
continues to sob in its dreams.
She was young, with a fair, calm face, whose lines bespoke repression and even a certain
strength. But now there was a dull stare in her eyes, whose gaze was fixed away off yonder on
one of those patches of blue sky. It was not a glance of reflection, but rather indicated a
suspension of intelligent thought.Copyright © by Holt, Rinehart and Winston. All rights reserved.
Kate Chopin’s “The Story of an Hour” originally published 1894.
There was something coming to her and she was waiting for it, fearfully. What was it? She
did not know; it was too subtle and elusive to name. But she felt it, creeping out of the sky,
reaching toward her through the sounds, the scents, the color that filled the air.
Now her bosom rose and fell tumultuously. She was beginning to recognize this thing that
was approaching to possess her, and she was striving to beat it back with her will—as powerless
as her two white slender hands would have been.
When she abandoned herself a little whispered word escaped her slightly parted lips. She
said it over and over under her breath: "free, free, free!" The vacant stare and the look of terror
that had followed it went from her eyes. They stayed keen and bright. Her pulses beat fast, and
the coursing blood warmed and relaxed every inch of her body.
She did not stop to ask if it were or were not a monstrous joy that held her. A clear and
exalted perception enabled her to dismiss the suggestion as trivial.
She knew that she would weep again when she saw the kind, tender hands folded in death;
the face that had never looked save with love upon her, fixed and gray and dead. But she saw
beyond that bitter moment a long procession of years to come that would belong to her
absolutely. And she opened and spread her arms out to them in welcome.
There would be no one to live for her during those coming years; she would live for herself.
There would be no powerful will bending hers in that blind persistence with which men and
women believe they have a right to impose a private will upon a fellow-creature. A kind
intention or a cruel intention made the act seem no less a crime as she looked upon it in that brief
moment of illumination.
And yet she had loved him—sometimes. Often she had not. What did it matter! What could
love, the unsolved mystery, count for in the face of this possession of self-assertion which she
suddenly recognized as the strongest impulse of her being!
"Free! Body and soul free!" she kept whispering.
Josephine was kneeling before the closed door with her lips to the keyhole, imploring for
admission. "Louise, open the door! I beg; open the door—you will make yourself ill. What are
you doing, Louise? For heaven's sake open the door."
"Go away. I am not making myself ill." No; she was drinking in a very elixir of life through
that open window.Copyright © by Holt, Rinehart and Winston. All rights reserved.
Kate Chopin’s “The Story of an Hour” originally published 1894.
Her fancy was running riot along those days ahead of her. Spring days, and summer days,
and all sorts of days that would be her own. She breathed a quick prayer that life might be long.
It was only yesterday she had thought with a shudder that life might be long.
She arose at length and opened the door to her sister's importunities. There was a feverish
triumph in her eyes, and she carried herself unwittingly like a goddess of Victory. She clasped
her sister's waist, and together they descended the stairs. Richards stood waiting for them at the
bottom.
Some one was opening the front door with a latchkey. It was Brently Mallard who entered, a
little travel-stained, composedly carrying his grip-sack and umbrella. He had been far from the
scene of the accident, and did not even know there had been one. He stood amazed at Josephine's
piercing cry; at Richards' quick motion to screen him from the view of his wife.
But Richards was too late.
When the doctors came they said she had died of heart disease—of joy that kills

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, 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 doornail.
Mind! I don’t mean to say that I know of my own knowledge, what there is particularly dead about a doornail. I might have been inclined, myself, to regard a coffin-nail as the deadest piece of ironmongery in the trade. But the wisdom of our ancestors is in the simile; and my unhallowed hands shall not disturb it, or the country’s done for. You will, therefore, permit me to repeat, emphatically, that Marley was as dead as a doornail.
Scrooge knew he was dead? Of course he did. How could it be otherwise? Scrooge and he were partners for I don’t know how many years. Scrooge was his sole executor, his sole administrator, his sole assign, his sole residuary legatee, his sole friend, and sole mourner. And even Scrooge was not so dreadfully cut up by the sad event but that he was an excellent man of business on the very day of the funeral, and solemnised it with an undoubted bargain.
The mention of Marley’s funeral brings me back to the point I started from. There is no doubt that Marley was dead. This must be distinctly understood, or nothing wonderful can come of the story I am going to relate. If we were not perfectly convinced that Hamlet’s father died before the play began, there would be nothing more remarkable in his taking a stroll at night, in an easterly wind, upon his own ramparts, than there would be in a breezy spot — say St Paul’s Churchyard, for instance — literally to astonish his son’s weak mind.
Scrooge never painted out Old Marley’s name. There it stood, years afterwards, above the warehouse door: Scrooge and Marley. The firm was known as Scrooge and Marley. Sometimes people new to the business called Scrooge Scrooge, and sometimes Marley, but he answered to both names. It was all the same to him.
Oh! but he was a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone, Scrooge! a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous old sinner! Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire; secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster. The cold within him froze his old features, nipped his pointed nose, shrivelled his cheek, stiffened his gait; made his eyes red, his thin lips blue; and spoke out shrewdly in his grating voice. A frosty rime was on his head, and on his eyebrows, and his wiry chin. He carried his own low temperature always about with him; he iced his office in the dog-days, and didn’t thaw it one degree at Christmas.
External heat and cold had little influence on Scrooge. No warmth could warm, no wintry weather chill him. No wind that blew was bitterer than he, no falling snow was more intent upon its purpose, no pelting rain less open to entreaty. Foul weather didn’t know where to have him. The heaviest rain, and snow, and hail, and sleet could boast of the advantage over him in only one respect. They often ‘came down’ handsomely, and Scrooge never did.
Nobody ever stopped him in the street to say, with gladsome looks, ‘My dear Scrooge, how are you? When will you come to see me?’ No beggars implored him to bestow a trifle, no children asked him what it was o’clock, no man or woman ever once in all his life enquired the way to such and such a place, of Scrooge. Even the blind men’s dogs appeared to know him; and, when they saw him coming on, would tug their owners into doorways and up courts; and then would wag their tails as though they said, ‘No eye at all is better than an evil eye, dark master!’
But what did Scrooge care? It was the very thing he liked. To edge his way along the crowded paths of life, warning all human sympathy to keep its distance, was what the knowing ones call ‘nuts’ to Scrooge.
Once upon a time — of all the good days in the year, on Christmas Eve — old Scrooge sat busy in his counting-house. It was cold, bleak, biting weather; foggy withal; and he could hear the people in the court outside go wheezing up and down, beating their hands upon their breasts, and stamping their feet upon the pavement stones to warm them. The City clocks had only just gone three, but it was quite dark already — it had not been light all day — and candles were flaring in the windows of the neighbouring 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 court was of the narrowest, the houses opposite were mere phantoms. To see the dingy cloud come drooping down, obscuring everything, one might have thought that nature lived hard by, and was brewing on a large scale.
The door of Scrooge’s counting-house was open, that he might keep his eye upon his clerk, who in a dismal little cell beyond, a sort of tank, was copying letters. Scrooge had a very small fire, but the clerk’s fire was so very much smaller that it looked like one coal. But he couldn’t replenish it, for Scrooge kept the coal-box in his own room; and so surely as the clerk came in with the shovel, the master predicted that it would be necessary for them to part. Wherefore the clerk put on his white comforter, and tried to warm himself at the candle; in which effort, not being a man of strong imagination, he failed.
‘A merry Christmas, uncle! God save you!’ cried a cheerful voice. It was the voice of Scrooge’s nephew, who came upon him so quickly that this was the first intimation he had of his approach.
‘Bah!’ said Scrooge. ‘Humbug!’
He had so heated himself with rapid walking in the fog and frost, this nephew of Scrooge’s, that he was all in a glow; his face was ruddy and handsome; his eyes sparkled, and his breath smoked again.
‘Christmas a humbug, uncle!’ said Scrooge’s nephew. ‘You don’t mean that, I am sure?’
‘I do,’ said Scrooge. ‘Merry Christmas! What right have you to be merry? What reason have you to be merry? You’re poor enough.’
‘Come, then,’ returned the nephew gaily. ‘What right have you to be dismal? What reason have you to be morose? You’re rich enough.’
Scrooge, having no better answer ready on the spur of the moment, said, ‘Bah!’ again; and followed it up with ‘Humbug!’
‘Don’t be cross, uncle!’ said the nephew.
‘What else can I be,’ returned the uncle, ‘when I live in such a world of fools as this? Merry Christmas! Out upon merry Christmas! What’s Christmastime to you but a time for paying bills without money; a time for finding yourself a year older, and not an hour richer; a time for balancing your books, and having every item in ’em through a round dozen of months presented dead against you? If I could work my will,’ said Scrooge indignantly, ‘every idiot who goes about with ‘‘Merry Christmas’’ on his lips should be boiled with his own pudding, and buried with a stake of holly through his heart. He should!’
‘Uncle!’ pleaded the nephew.
‘Nephew!’ returned the uncle sternly, ‘keep Christmas in your own way, and let me keep it in mine.’
‘Keep it!’ repeated Scrooge’s nephew. ‘But you don’t keep it.’
‘Let me leave it alone, then,’ said Scrooge. ‘Much good may it do you! Much good it has ever done you!’
‘There are many things from which I might have derived good, by which I have not profited, I dare say,’ returned the nephew; ‘Christmas among the rest. But I am sure I have always thought of Christmastime, when it has come round — apart from the veneration due to its sacred name and origin, if anything belonging to it can be apart from that — as a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time; the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys. And therefore, uncle, though it has never put a scrap of gold or silver in my pocket, I believe that it has done me good and will do me good; and I say, God bless it!’
The clerk in the tank involuntarily applauded. Becoming immediately sensible of the impropriety, he poked the fire, and extinguished the last frail spark for ever.
‘Let me hear another sound from you,’ said Scrooge, ‘and you’ll keep your Christmas by losing your situation! You’re quite a powerful speaker, sir,’ he added, turning to his nephew. ‘I wonder you don’t go into Parliament.’
‘Don’t be angry, uncle. Come! Dine with us tomorrow.’
Scrooge said that he would see him — Yes, indeed he did. He went the whole length of the expression, and said that he would see him in that extremity first.
‘But why?’ cried Scrooge’s nephew. ‘Why?’
‘Why did you get married?’ said Scrooge.
‘Because I fell in love.’
‘Because you fell in love!’ growled Scrooge, as if that were the only one thing in the world more ridiculous than a merry Christmas. ‘Good-afternoon!’
‘Nay, uncle, but you never came to see me before that happened. Why give it as a reason for not coming now?
‘Good-afternoon,’ said Scrooge.
‘I want nothing from you; I ask nothing of you; why cannot we be friends?’
‘Good-afternoon!’ said Scrooge.
‘I am sorry, with all my heart, to find you so resolute. We have never had any quarrel to which I have been a party. But I have made the trial in homage to Christmas, and I’ll keep my Christmas humour to the last. So A 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. He stopped at the outer door to bestow the greetings of the season on the clerk, who, cold as he was, was warmer than Scrooge; for he returned them cordially.
‘There’s another fellow,’ muttered Scrooge, who overheard him: ‘my clerk, with fifteen shillings a week, and a wife and family, talking about a merry Christmas. I’ll retire to Bedlam.’
This lunatic, in letting Scrooge’s nephew out, had let two other people in. They were portly gentlemen, pleasant to behold, and now stood, with their hats off, in Scrooge’s office. They had books and papers in their hands, and bowed to him.
‘Scrooge and Marley’s, I believe,’ said one of the gentlemen, referring to his list. ‘Have I the pleasure of addressing Mr Scrooge, or Mr Marley?’
‘Mr Marley has been dead these seven years,’ Scrooge replied. ‘He died seven years ago, this very night.’
‘We have no doubt his liberality is well represented by his surviving partner,’ said the gentleman, presenting his credentials.
It certainly was; for they had been two kindred spirits. At the ominous word ‘liberality’ Scrooge frowned, and shook his head, and handed the credentials back.
‘At this festive season of the year, Mr Scrooge,’ said the gentleman, taking up a pen, ‘it is more than usually desirable that we should make some slight provision for the poor and destitute, who suffer greatly at the present time. Many thousands are in want of common necessaries; hundreds of thousands are in want of common comforts, sir.’
‘Are there no prisons?’ asked Scrooge.
‘Plenty of prisons,’ said the gentleman, laying down the pen again.
‘And the Union workhouses?’ demanded Scrooge. ‘Are they still in operation?’
‘They are. Still,’ returned the gentleman, ‘I wish I could say they were not.’
‘The Treadmill and the Poor Law are in full vigour, 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 am very glad to hear it.’
‘Under the impression that they scarcely furnish Christian cheer of mind or body to the multitude,’ returned the gentleman, ‘a few of us are endeavouring to raise a fund to buy the Poor some meat and drink, and means of warmth. We choose this time, because it is a time, of all others, when Want is keenly felt, and Abundance rejoices. What shall I put you down for?’
‘Nothing!’ Scrooge replied.
‘You wish to be anonymous?’
‘I wish to be left alone,’ said Scrooge. ‘Since you ask me what I wish, gentlemen, that is my answer. I don’t make merry myself at Christmas, and I can’t afford to make idle people merry. I help to support the establishments I have mentioned — they cost enough: and those who are badly off must go there.’
‘Many can’t go there; and many would rather die.’
‘If they would rather die,’ said Scrooge, ‘they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population. Besides — excuse me — I don’t know that.’
‘But you might know it,’ observed the gentleman.
‘It’s not my business,’ Scrooge returned. ‘It’s enough for a man to understand his own business, and not to interfere with other people’s. Mine occupies me constantly. Good-afternoon, gentlemen!’
Seeing clearly that it would be useless to pursue their point, the gentlemen withdrew. Scrooge resumed his labours with an improved opinion of himself, and in a more facetious temper than was usual with him.
Meanwhile the fog and darkness thickened so, that people ran about with flaring links, proffering their services to go before horses in carriages, and conduct them on their way. The ancient tower of a church, whose gruff old bell was always peeping slily down at Scrooge out of a Gothic window in the wall, became invisible, and struck the hours and quarters in the clouds, with tremulous vibrations afterwards, as if its teeth were chattering in its frozen head up there. The cold became intense. In the main street, at the corner of the court, some labourers were repairing the gas-pipes, and had lighted a great fire in a brazier, round which a party of ragged men and boys were gathered: warming their hands and winking their eyes before the blaze in rapture. The water-plug being left in solitude, its overflowings suddenly congealed, and turned to misanthropic ice. The brightness of the shops, where holly springs and berries crackled in the lamp heat of the windows, made pale faces ruddy as they passed. Poulterers’ and grocers’ trades became a splendid joke: a glorious pageant, with which it was next to impossible to believe that such dull principles as bargain and sale had anything to do. The Lord Mayor, in the stronghold of the mighty Mansion House, gave orders to his fifty cooks and butlers to keep Christmas as a Lord Mayor’s household should; and even the little tailor, whom he had fined five shillings on the previous Monday for being drunk and bloodthirsty in the streets, stirred up tomorrow’s pudding in his garret, while his lean wife and the baby sallied out to buy the beef.
Foggier yet, and colder! Piercing, searching, biting cold. If the good St Dunstan had but nipped the Evil Spirit’s nose with a touch of such weather as that, instead of using his familiar weapons, then indeed he would have roared to lusty purpose. The owner of one scant young nose, gnawed and mumbled by the hungry cold as bones are gnawed by dogs, stooped down at Scrooge’s keyhole to regale him with a Christmas carol; but, at the first sound of
‘God bless you, merry gentleman,
May nothing you dismay!’
Scrooge seized the ruler with such energy of action that the singer fled in terror, leaving the keyhole to the fog, and even more congenial frost.
At length the hour of shutting up the counting-house arrived. With an ill-will Scrooge dismounted from his stool, and tacitly admitted the fact to the expectant clerk in the tank, who instantly snuffed his candle out, and put on his hat.
‘You’ll want all day tomorrow, I suppose?’ said Scrooge.
‘If quite convenient, sir.’
‘It’s not convenient,’ said Scrooge, ‘and it’s not fair. If I was to stop half a crown for it, you’d think yourself ill used, I’ll be bound?’
The clerk smiled faintly.
‘And yet,’ said Scrooge, ‘you don’t think me ill used when I pay a day’s wages for no work.’
The clerk observed that it was only once a year.
‘A poor excuse for picking a man’s pocket every twenty-fifth of December!’ said Scrooge, buttoning his greatcoat to the chin. ‘But I suppose you must have the whole day. Be here all the earlier next morning.’
The clerk promised that he would; and Scrooge walked out with a growl. The office was closed in a twinkling, and the clerk, with the long ends of his white comforter dangling below his waist (for he boasted no greatcoat), went down a slide on Cornhill, at the end of a lane of boys, twenty times, in honour of its being Christmas Eve, and then ran home to Camden Town as hard as he could pelt, to play at blindman’s- buff.
Scrooge took his melancholy dinner in his usual melancholy tavern; and having read all the newspapers, and beguiled the rest of the evening with his banker’s book, went home to bed. He lived in chambers which had once belonged to his deceased partner. They were a gloomy suite of rooms, in a lowering pile of building up a yard, where it had so little business to be, that one could scarcely help fancying it must have run there when it was a young house, playing at hide-and-seek with other houses, and have forgotten the way out again. It was old enough now, and dreary enough; for nobody lived in it but Scrooge, the other rooms being all let out as offices. The yard was so dark that even Scrooge, who knew its every stone, was fain to grope with his hands. The fog and frost so hung about the black old gateway of the house, that it seemed as if the Genius of the Weather sat in mournful meditation on the threshold.
Now, it is a fact that there was nothing at all particular about the knocker on the door, except that it was very large. It is also a fact that Scrooge had seen it, night and morning, during his whole residence in that place; also that Scrooge had as little of what is called fancy about him as any man in the City of London, even including — which is a bold word — the corporation, aldermen, and livery. Let it also be borne in mind that Scrooge had not bestowed one thought on Marley since his last mention of his seven-years’-dead partner that afternoon. And then let any man explain to me, if he can, how it happened that Scrooge, having his key in the lock of the door, saw in the knocker, without its undergoing any intermediate process of change — not a knocker, but Marley’s face.
Marley’s face. It was not in impenetrable shadow, as the other objects in the yard were, but had a dismal light about it, like a bad lobster in a dark cellar. It was not angry or ferocious, but looked at Scrooge as Marley used to look; with ghostly spectacles turned up on its ghostly forehead. The hair was curiously stirred, as if by breath or hot air; and, though the eyes were wide open, they were perfectly motionless. That, and its livid colour, made it horrible; but its horror seemed to be in spite of the face, and beyond its control, rather than a part of its own expression.
As Scrooge looked fixedly at this phenomenon, it was a knocker again.

To say that he was not startled, or that his blood was not conscious of a terrible sensation to which it had been a stranger from infancy, would be untrue. But he put his hand upon the key he had relinquished, turned it sturdily, walked in, and lighted his candle.
He did pause, with a moment’s irresolution, before he shut the door; and he did look cautiously behind 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, so he said, ‘Pooh, pooh!’ and closed it with a bang.
The sound resounded through the house like thunder. Every room above, and every cask in the wine- merchant’s cellars below, appeared to have a separate peal of echoes of its own. Scrooge was not a man to be frightened by echoes. He fastened the door, and walked across the hall, and up the stairs: slowly, too: trimming his candle as he went.
You may talk vaguely about driving a coach and six up a good old flight of stairs, or through a bad young Act of Parliament; but I mean to say you might have got a hearse up that staircase, and taken it broadwise, with the splinter-bar towards the wall, and the door towards the balustrades: and done it easy. There was plenty of width for that, and room to spare; which is perhaps the reason why Scrooge thought he saw a locomotive hearse going on before him in the gloom. Half a dozen gas-lamps out of the street wouldn’t have lighted the entry too well, so you may suppose that it was pretty dark with Scrooge’s dip.
Up Scrooge went, not caring a button for that. Darkness is cheap, and Scrooge liked it. But, before he shut his heavy door, he walked through his rooms to see that all was right. He had just enough recollection of the face to desire to do that.
Sitting-room, bedroom, lumber-room. All as they should be. Nobody under the table, nobody under the sofa; a small fire in the grate; spoon and basin ready; and the little saucepan of gruel (Scrooge had a cold in his head) upon the hob. Nobody under the bed; nobody in the closet; nobody in his dressing-gown, which was hanging up in a suspicious attitude against the wall. Lumber-room as usual. Old 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 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; and sat down before the fire to take his gruel.
It was a very low fire indeed; nothing on such a bitter night. He was obliged to sit close to it, and brood over it, before he could extract the least sensation of warmth from such a handful of fuel. The fireplace was an old one, built by some Dutch merchant long ago, and paved all round with quaint Dutch tiles, designed to illustrate the Scriptures. There were Cains and Abels, Pharaoh’s daughters, Queens of Sheba, Angelic messengers descending through the air on clouds like feather-beds, Abrahams, Belshazzars, Apostles putting off to sea in butter-boats, hundreds of figures to attract his thoughts; and yet that face of Marley, seven years dead, came like the ancient Prophet’s rod, and swallowed up the whole. If each smooth tile had been a blank at first, with power to shape some picture on its surface from the disjointed fragments of his thoughts, there would have been a copy of old Marley’s head on every one.
‘Humbug!’ said Scrooge; and walked across the room.
After several turns he sat down again. As he threw his head back in the chair, his glance happened to rest upon a bell, a disused bell, that hung in the room, and communicated, for some purpose now forgotten, with a chamber in the highest storey of the building. It was with great astonishment, and with a strange, inexplicable dread, that, as he looked, he saw this bell begin to swing. It swung so softly in the outset that it scarcely made a sound; but soon it rang out loudly, and so did every bell in the house.
This might have lasted half a minute, or a minute, but it seemed an hour. The bells ceased, as they had begun, together. They were succeeded by a clanking noise deep down below as if some person were dragging a heavy chain over the casks in the wine-merchant’s cellar. Scrooge then remembered to have heard that ghosts in haunted houses were described as dragging chains.
The cellar door flew open with a booming sound, and then he heard the noise much louder on the floors below; then coming up the stairs; then coming straight towards his door.
‘It’s humbug still!’ said Scrooge. ‘I won’t believe it.’
His colour changed, though, when, without a pause, it came on through the heavy door and passed into the room before his eyes. Upon its coming in, the dying flame leaped up, as though it cried, ‘I know him! Marley’s Ghost!’ and fell again.
The same face: the very same. Marley in his pigtail, usual waistcoat, tights, and boots; the tassels on the latter bristling, like his pigtail, and his coat-skirts, and the hair upon his head. The chain he drew was clasped about his middle. It was long, and wound about him like a tail; and it was made (for Scrooge observed it closely) of cash-boxes, keys, padlocks, ledgers, deeds, and heavy purses wrought in steel. His body was transparent: so that Scrooge, observing him, and looking through his waistcoat, could see the two buttons on his coat behind.
Scrooge had often heard it said that Marley had no bowels, but he had never believed it until now.
No, nor did he believe it even now. Though he looked the phantom through and through, and saw it standing before him; though he felt the chilling influence of its death-cold eyes, and marked the very texture of the folded kerchief bound about its head and chin, which wrapper he had not observed before, he was still incredulous, and fought against his senses.
‘How now!’ said Scrooge, caustic and cold as ever. ‘What do you want with me?’
‘Much!’ Marley’s voice; no doubt about it.
‘Who are you?’
‘Ask me who I was.’
‘Who were you, then?’ said Scrooge, raising his voice. ‘You’re particular, for a shade.’ He was going to say ‘to a shade’, but substituted this, as more appropriate.
‘In life I was your partner, Jacob Marley.’
‘Can you — can you sit down?’ asked Scrooge, looking doubtfully at him.
‘I can.’
‘Do it, then.’
Scrooge asked the question, because he didn’t know whether a ghost so transparent might find himself in a condition to take a chair; and felt that in the event of its being impossible, it might involve the necessity of an embarrassing explanation. But the Ghost sat down on the opposite side of the fireplace, as if he were quite used to it.
‘You don’t believe in me,’ observed the Ghost.
‘I don’t,’ said Scrooge.
‘What evidence would you have of my reality beyond that of your own senses?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Scrooge.
‘Why do you doubt your senses?’
‘Because,’ said Scrooge, ‘a little thing affects them. A slight disorder of the stomach makes them cheats. You may be an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of an underdone potato. There’s more of gravy than of grave about you, whatever you are!’
Scrooge was not much in the habit of cracking jokes, nor did he feel in his heart by any means waggish then. The truth is, that he tried to be smart, as a means of distracting his own attention, and keeping down his terror; for the spectre’s voice disturbed the very marrow in his bones.
To sit staring at those fixed, glazed eyes in silence, for a moment, would play, Scrooge felt, the very deuce with him. There was something very awful, too, in the spectre’s being provided with an infernal atmosphere of his own. Scrooge could not feel it himself, but this was clearly the case; for though the Ghost sat perfectly motionless, its hair, and skirts, and tassels were still agitated as by the hot vapour from an oven.
‘You see this toothpick?’ said Scrooge, returning quickly to the charge, for the reason just assigned; and wishing, though it were only for a second, to divert the vision’s stony gaze from himself.
‘I do,’ replied the Ghost.
‘You are not looking at it,’ said Scrooge.
‘But I see it,’ said the Ghost, ‘notwithstanding.’
‘Well!’ returned Scrooge, ‘I have but to swallow this, and be for the rest of my days persecuted by a legion of goblins, all of my own creation. Humbug, I tell you: humbug!’
At this the spirit raised a frightful cry, and shook its chain with such a dismal and appalling noise, that Scrooge held on tight to his chair, to save himself from falling in a swoon. But how much greater was his horror when the phantom, taking off the bandage round his head, as if it were too warm to wear indoors, its lower jaw dropped down upon its breast!
Scrooge fell upon his knees, and clasped his hands before his face.
‘Mercy!’ he said. ‘Dreadful apparition, why do you trouble me?’
‘Man of the worldly mind!’ replied the Ghost, ‘do you believe in me or not?’
‘I do,’ said Scrooge; ‘I must. But why do spirits walk the earth, and why do they come to me?’
‘It is required of every man,’ the Ghost returned, ‘that the spirit within him should walk abroad among his fellow-men, and travel far and wide; and, if that spirit goes not forth in life, it is condemned to do so after death. It is doomed to wander through the world — oh, woe is me! and witness what it cannot share, but might have shared on earth, and turned to happiness!’
Again the spectre raised a cry, and shook its chain and wrung its shadowy hands.
‘You are fettered,’ said Scrooge, trembling. ‘Tell me why?’
‘I wear the chain I forged in life,’ replied the Ghost. ‘I made it link by link, and yard by yard; I girded it on of my own free will, and of my own free will I wore it. Is its pattern strange to you?’
Scrooge trembled more and more.
‘Or would you know,’ pursued the Ghost, ‘the weight and length of the strong coil you bear yourself? It was full as heavy and as long as this seven Christmas Eves ago. You have laboured on it since. It is a ponderous chain!’
Scrooge glanced about him on the floor, in the expectation of finding himself surrounded by some fifty or sixty fathoms of iron cable; but he could see nothing.
‘Jacob!’ he said imploringly. ‘Old Jacob Marley, tell me more! Speak comfort to me, Jacob!’
‘I have none to give,’ the Ghost replied. ‘It comes from other regions, Ebenezer Scrooge, and is conveyed by other ministers, to other kinds of men. Nor can I tell you what I would. A very little more is all permitted to me. I cannot rest, I cannot stay, I cannot linger anywhere. My spirit never walked beyond our counting- house — mark me — in life my spirit never roved beyond the narrow limits of our money-changing hole; and weary journeys lie before me!’
It was a habit with Scrooge, whenever he became thoughtful, to put his hands in his breeches pockets. Pondering on what the Ghost had said, he did so now, but without lifting up his eyes, or getting off his knees.
‘You must have been very slow about it, Jacob,’ Scrooge observed in a business-like manner, though with humility and deference.
‘Slow!’ the Ghost repeated.
‘Seven years dead,’ mused Scrooge. ‘And travelling all the time?’
‘The whole time,’ said the Ghost. ‘No rest, no peace. Incessant torture of remorse.’
‘You travel fast?’ said Scrooge.
‘On the wings of the wind,’ replied the Ghost.
‘You might have got over a great quantity of ground in seven years,’ said Scrooge.
The Ghost, on hearing this, set up another cry, and clanked its chain so hideously in the dead silence of the night, that the Ward would have been justified in indicting it for a nuisance.
‘Oh! captive, bound, and double-ironed,’ cried the phantom, ‘not to know that ages of incessant labour, by immortal creatures, for this earth must pass into eternity before the good of which it is susceptible is all developed! Not to know that any Christian spirit working kindly in its little sphere, whatever it may be, will find its mortal life too short for its vast means of usefulness! Not to know that no space of regret can make amends for one life’s opportunities misused! Yet such was I! Oh, such was I!’
‘But you were always a good man of business, Jacob,’ faltered Scrooge, who now began to apply this to himself.
‘Business!’ cried the Ghost, wringing its hands again. ‘Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence were, all, my business. The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business!’
It held up its chain at arm’s-length, as if that were the cause of all its unavailing grief, and flung it heavily upon the ground again.
‘At this time of the rolling year,’ the spectre said, ‘I suffer most. Why did I walk through crowds of fellow- beings with my eyes turned down, and never raise them to that blessed Star which led the Wise Men to a poor abode? Were there no poor homes to which its light would have conducted me?’
Scrooge was very much dismayed to hear the spectre going on at this rate, and began to quake exceedingly.
‘Hear me!’ cried the Ghost. ‘My time is nearly gone.’
‘I will,’ said Scrooge. ‘But don’t be hard upon me! Don’t be flowery, Jacob! Pray!’
‘How it is that I appear before you in a a shape that you can see, I may not tell. I have sat invisible beside you many and many a day.’
It was not an agreeable idea. Scrooge shivered, and wiped the perspiration from his brow.
‘That is no light part of my penance,’ pursued the Ghost. ‘I am here tonight to warn you that you have yet a chance and hope of escaping my fate. A chance and hope of my procuring, Ebenezer.’
‘You were always a good friend to me,’ said Scrooge. ‘Thankee!’
‘You will be haunted,’ resumed the Ghost, ‘by Three Spirits.’
Scrooge’s countenance fell almost as low as the Ghost’s had done.
‘Is that the chance and hope you mentioned, Jacob?’ he demanded in a faltering voice.
‘It is.’
‘I — I think I’d rather not,’ said Scrooge.
‘Without their visits,’ said the Ghost, ‘you cannot hope to shun the path I tread. Expect the first tomorrow when the bell tolls One.’
‘Couldn’t I take ’em all at once, and have it over, Jacob?’ hinted Scrooge.
‘Expect the second on the next night at the same hour. The third, upon the next night when the last stroke of Twelve has ceased to vibrate. Look to see me no more; and look that, for your own sake, you remember what has passed between us!’
When it had said these words, the spectre took its wrapper from the table, and bound it round its head as before. Scrooge knew this by the smart sound its teeth made when the jaws were brought together by the bandage. He ventured to raise his eyes again, and found his supernatural visitor confronting him in an erect attitude, with its chain wound over and about its arm.
The apparition walked backward from him; and, at every step it took, the window raised itself a little, so that, when the spectre reached it, it was wide open. It beckoned Scrooge to approach, which he did. When they were within two paces of each other, Marley’s Ghost held up its hand, warning him to come no nearer. Scrooge stopped.
Not so much in obedience as in surprise and fear; for, on the raising of the hand, he became sensible of confused noises in the air; incoherent sounds of lamentation and regret; wailings inexpressibly sorrowful and self-accusatory. The spectre, after listening for a moment, joined in the mournful dirge; and floated out upon the bleak, dark night.
Scrooge followed to the window: desperate in his curiosity. He looked out.
The air was filled with phantoms, wandering hither and thither in restless haste, and moaning as they went. Every one of them wore chains like Marley’s Ghost; some few (they might be guilty governments) were linked together; none were free. Many had been personally known to Scrooge in their lives. He had been quite familiar with one old ghost in a white waistcoat, with a monstrous iron safe attached to its ankle, who cried piteously at being unable to assist a wretched woman with an infant, whom it saw below upon a doorstep. The misery with them all was clearly, that they sought to interfere, for good, in human matters, and had lost the power for ever.
Whether these creatures faded into mist, or mist enshrouded them, he could not tell. But they and their spirit voices faded together; and the night became as it had been when he walked home.
Scrooge closed the window, and examined the door by which the Ghost had entered. It was double locked, as he had locked it with his own hands, and the bolts were undisturbed. He tried to say ‘Humbug!’ but stopped at the first syllable. And being, from the emotions he had undergone, or the fatigues of the day, or his glimpse of the Invisible World, or the dull conversation of the Ghost, or the lateness of the hour, much in need of repose, went straight to bed without undressing, and fell asleep upon the instant.

Stave Two
The First of the Three Spirits
When Scrooge awoke it was so dark, that, looking out of bed, he could scarcely distinguish the transparent window from the opaque walls of his chamber. He was endeavouring to pierce the darkness with his ferret eyes, when the chimes of a neighbouring church struck the four quarters. So he listened for the hour.
To his great astonishment, the heavy bell went on from six to seven, and from seven to eight, and regularly up to twelve; then stopped. Twelve! It was past two when he went to bed. The clock was wrong. An icicle must have got into the works. Twelve!

He touched the spring of his repeater, to correct this most preposterous clock. Its rapid little pulse beat twelve, and stopped. ‘Why, it isn’t possible,’ said Scrooge, ‘that I can have slept through a whole day and far into another night. It isn’t possible that anything has happened to the sun, and this is twelve at noon!’
The idea being an alarming one, he scrambled out of bed, and groped his way to the window. He was obliged to rub the frost off with the sleeve of his dressing-gown before he could see anything; and could see very little then. All he could make out was, that it was still very foggy and extremely cold, and that there was no noise of people running to and fro, and making a great stir, as there unquestionably would have been if night had beaten off bright day, and taken possession of the world. This was a great relief, because ‘Three days after sight of this First of Exchange pay to Mr Ebenezer Scrooge or his order,’ and so forth, would have become a mere United States security if there were no days to count by.
Scrooge went to bed again, and thought, and thought, and thought it over and over, and could make nothing of it. The more he thought, the more perplexed he was; and, the more he endeavoured not to think, the more he thought.
Marley’s Ghost bothered him exceedingly. Every time he resolved within himself, after mature enquiry, that it was all a dream, his mind flew back again, like a strong spring released, to its first position, and presented the same problem to be worked all through, ‘Was it a dream or not?’
Scrooge lay in this state until the chime had gone three-quarters more, when he remembered, on a sudden, that the Ghost had warned him of a visitation when the bell tolled one. He resolved to lie awake until the hour was passed; and, considering that he could no more go to sleep than go to heaven, this was, perhaps, the wisest resolution in his power.
The quarter was so long, that he was more than once convinced he must have sunk into a doze unconsciously, and missed the clock. At length it broke upon his listening ear.
‘Ding, dong!’
‘A quarter past,’ said Scrooge, counting.
‘Ding, dong!’
‘Half past,’ said Scrooge.
‘Ding, dong!’
‘A quarter to it,’ said Scrooge.
‘Ding, dong!’
‘The hour itself,’ said Scrooge triumphantly, ‘and nothing else!’
He spoke before the hour bell sounded, which it now did with a deep, dull, hollow, melancholy One. Light flashed up in the room upon the instant, and the curtains of his bed were drawn.
The curtains of his bed were drawn aside, I tell you, by a hand. Not the curtains at his feet, nor the curtains at his back, but those to which his face was addressed. The curtains of his bed were drawn aside; and Scrooge, starting up into a half-recumbent attitude, found himself face to face with the unearthly visitor who drew them: as close to it as I am now to you, and I am standing in the spirit at your elbow.
It was a strange figure — like a child; yet not so like a child as like an old man, viewed through some supernatural medium, which gave him the appearance of having receded from the view, and being diminished to a child’s proportions. Its hair, which hung about its neck and down its back, was white, as if with age; and yet the face had not a wrinkle in it, and the tenderest bloom was on the skin. The arms were very long and muscular; the hands the same, as if its hold were of uncommon strength. Its legs and feet, most delicately formed, were, like those upper members, bare. It wore a tunic of the purest white; and round its waist was bound a lustrous belt, the sheen of which was beautiful. It held a branch of fresh green holly in its hand; and, in singular contradiction of that wintry emblem, had its dress trimmed with summer flowers. But the strangest thing about it was, that from the crown of its head there sprang a bright clear jet of light, by which all this was visible; and which was doubtless the occasion of its using, in its duller moments, a great extinguisher for a cap, which it now held under its arm.
Even this, though, when Scrooge looked at it with increasing steadiness, was not its strangest quality. For, as its belt sparkled and glittered, now in one part and now in another, and what was light one instant at another time was dark, so the figure itself fluctuated in its distinctness; being now a thing with one arm, now with one leg, now with twenty legs, now a pair of legs without a head, now a head without a body: of which dissolving parts no outline would be visible in the dense gloom wherein they melted away. And, in the very wonder of this, it would be itself again; distinct and clear as ever.
‘Are you the Spirit, sir, whose coming was foretold to me?’ asked Scrooge.
‘I am!’
The voice was soft and gentle. Singularly low, as if, instead of being so close behind him, it were at a distance.
‘Who and what are you?’ Scrooge demanded.
‘I am the Ghost of Christmas Past.’
‘Long Past?’ enquired Scrooge, observant of its dwarfish stature.
‘No. Your past.’
Perhaps Scrooge could not have told anybody why, if anybody could have asked him; but he had a special desire to see the Spirit in his cap, and begged him to be covered.
‘What!’ exclaimed the Ghost, ‘would you so soon put out, with worldly hands, the light I give? Is it not enough that you are one of those whose passions made this cap, and force me through whole trains of years to wear it low upon my brow?’
Scrooge reverently disclaimed all intention to offend or any knowledge of having wilfully ‘bonneted’ the Spirit at any period of his life. He then made bold to enquire what business brought him there.
‘Your welfare!’ said the Ghost.
Scrooge expressed himself much obliged, but could not help thinking that a night of unbroken rest would have been more conducive to that end. The Spirit must have heard him thinking, for it said immediately —
‘Your reclamation, then. Take heed!’
It put out its strong hand as it spoke, and clasped him gently by the arm.
‘Rise! and walk with me!’
It would have been in vain for Scrooge to plead that the weather and the hour were not adapted to pedestrian purposes; that bed was warm, 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 its robe in supplication.
‘I am a mortal,’ Scrooge remonstrated, ‘and liable to fall.’
‘Bear but a touch of my hand there,’ said the Spirit, laying it upon his heart, ‘and you shall be upheld in more than this!’
As the words were spoken, they passed through the wall, and stood upon an open country road, with fields on either hand. The city had entirely vanished. Not a vestige of it was to be seen. The darkness and the mist had vanished with it, for it was a clear, cold, winter day, with snow upon the ground.
‘Good Heaven!’ said Scrooge, clasping his hands together, as he looked about him. ‘I was bred in this place. I was a boy here!’
The Spirit gazed upon him mildly. Its gentle touch, though it had been light and instantaneous, appeared still present to the old man’s sense of feeling. He was conscious of a thousand odours floating in the air, each one connected with a thousand thoughts, and hopes, and joys, and cares long, long forgotten!
‘Your lip is trembling,’ said the Ghost. ‘And what is that upon your cheek?’
Scrooge muttered, with an unusual catching in his voice, that it was a pimple; and begged the Ghost to lead him where he would.
‘You recollect the way?’ enquired the Spirit.
‘Remember it!’ cried Scrooge with fervour; ‘I could walk it blindfold.’
‘Strange to have forgotten it for so many years!’ observed the Ghost. ‘Let us go on.’
They walked along the road, Scrooge recognising every gate, and post, and tree, until a little market- town appeared in the distance, with its bridge, its church, and winding river. Some shaggy ponies now were seen trotting towards them with boys upon their backs, who called to other boys in country gigs and carts, driven by farmers. All these boys were in great spirits, and shouted to each other, until the broad fields were so full of merry music, that the crisp air laughed to hear it.
‘These are but shadows of the things that have been,’ said the Ghost. ‘They have no consciousness of us.’
The jocund travellers came on; and as they came, Scrooge knew and named them everyone. Why was he rejoiced beyond all bounds to see them? Why did his cold eye glisten, and his heart leap up as they went past? Why was he filled with gladness when he heard them give each other Merry Christmas, as they parted at crossroads and byways for their several homes? What was merry Christmas to Scrooge? Out upon merry Christmas! What good had it ever done to him?
‘The school is not quite deserted,’ said the Ghost. ‘A solitary child, neglected by his friends, is left there still.’
Scrooge said he knew it. And he sobbed.
They left the highroad by a well-remembered lane and soon approached a mansion of dull red brick, with a little weathercock surmounted cupola on the roof, and a bell hanging in it. It was a large house, but one of broken fortunes; for the spacious offices were little used, their walls were damp and mossy, their windows broken, and their gates decayed. Fowls clucked and strutted in the stables; and the coach- houses and sheds were overrun with grass. Nor was it more retentive of its ancient state within; for, entering the dreary hall, and glancing through the open doors of many rooms, they found them poorly furnished, cold, and vast. There was an earthy savour in the air, a chilly bareness in the place, which associated itself somehow with too much getting up by candle light and not too much to eat.
They went, the Ghost and Scrooge, across the hall, to a door at the back of the house. It opened before them, and disclosed a long, bare, melancholy room, made barer still by lines of plain deal forms and desks. At one of these a lonely boy was reading near a feeble fire; and Scrooge sat down upon a form, and wept to see his poor forgotten self as he had used to be.
Not a latent echo in the house, not a squeak and scuffle from the mice behind the panelling, not a drip from the half-thawed waterspout in the dull yard behind, not a sigh among the leafless boughs of one despondent poplar, not the idle swinging of an empty storehouse door, no, not a clicking in the fire, but fell upon the heart of Scrooge with softening influence, and gave a freer passage to his tears.
The Spirit touched him on the arm, and pointed to his younger self, intent upon his reading. Suddenly a man in foreign garments, wonderfully real and distinct to look at, stood outside the window, with an axe stuck in his belt, and leading by the bridle an ass laden with wood.
‘Why, it’s Ali Baba!’ Scrooge exclaimed in ecstasy. ‘It’s dear old honest Ali Baba! Yes, yes, I know. One Christmastime, when yonder solitary child was left here all alone, he did come, for the first time, just like that. Poor boy! And Valentine,’ said Scrooge, ‘and his wild brother, Orson; there they go! And what’s his name, who was put down in his drawers, asleep, at the gate of Damascus; don’t you see him? And the Sultan’s Groom turned upside down by the Genii; there he is upon his head! Serve him right! I’m glad of it. What business had he to be married to the Princess?’
To hear Scrooge expending all the earnestness of his nature on such subjects, in a most extraordinary voice between laughing and crying; and to see his heightened and excited face; would have been a surprise to his business friends in the City, indeed.
‘There’s the Parrot!’ cried Scrooge. ‘Green body and yellow tail, with a thing like a lettuce growing out of the top of his head; there he is! Poor Robin Crusoe he called him, when he came home again after sailing round the island. ‘‘Poor Robin Crusoe, where have you been, Robin Crusoe?’’ The man thought he was dreaming, but he wasn’t. It was the Parrot, you know. There goes Friday, running for his life to the little creek! Halloa! Hoop! Halloo!’
Then, with a rapidity of transition very foreign to his usual character, he said, in pity for his former self, ‘Poor boy!’ and cried again.
‘I wish,’ Scrooge muttered, putting his hand in his pocket, and looking about him, after drying his eyes with his cuff; ‘but it’s too late now.’
‘What is the matter?’ asked the Spirit.
‘Nothing,’ said Scrooge. ‘Nothing. There was a boy singing a Christmas carol at my door last night. I should like to have given him something: that’s all.’
The Ghost smiled thoughtfully, and waved its hand, saying as it did so, ‘Let us see another Christmas!’
Scrooge’s former self grew larger at the words, and the room became a little darker and more dirty. The panels shrunk, the windows cracked; fragments of plaster fell out of the ceiling, and the naked laths were shown instead; but how all this was brought about Scrooge knew no more than you do. He only knew that it was quite correct; that everything had happened so; that there he was, alone again, when all the other boys had gone home for the jolly holidays.
He was not reading now, but walking up and down despairingly. Scrooge looked at the Ghost, and, with a mournful shaking of his head, glanced anxiously towards the door.
It opened; and a little girl, much younger than the boy, came darting in, and, putting her arms about his neck, and often kissing him, addressed him as her ‘dear, dear brother.’
‘I have come to bring you home, dear brother!’ said the child, clapping her tiny hands, and bending down to laugh. ‘To bring you home, home, home!’
‘Home, little Fan?’ returned the boy.
‘Yes!’ said the child, brimful of glee. ‘Home for good and all. Home for ever and ever. Father is so much kinder than he used to be, that home’s like heaven! He spoke so gently to me one dear night when I was going to bed, that I was not afraid to ask him once more if you might come home; and he said Yes, you should; and sent me in a coach to bring you. And you’re to be a man!’ said the child, opening her eyes; ‘and are never to come back here; but first we’re to be together all the Christmas long, and have the merriest time in all the world.’
‘You are quite a woman, little Fan!’ exclaimed the boy.
She clapped her hands and laughed, and tried to touch his head; but, being too little laughed again, and stood on tiptoe to embrace him. Then she began to drag him, in her childish eagerness, towards the door; and he, nothing loath to go, accompanied her.
A terrible voice in the 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 condescension, and threw him into a dreadful state of mind by shaking hands with him. He then conveyed him and his sister into the veriest old well of a shivering best parlour that ever was seen, where the maps upon the wall, and the celestial and terrestrial globes in the windows, were waxy with cold. Here he produced a decanter of curiously light wine, and a block of curiously heavy cake, and administered instalments of those dainties to the young people; at the same time sending out a meagre servant to offer a glass of ‘something’ to the postboy, who answered that he thanked the gentleman, but, if it was the same tap as he had tasted before, he had rather not. Master Scrooge’s trunk being by this time tied on to the top of the chaise, the children bade the schoolmaster goodbye right willingly; and, getting into it, drove gaily down the garden sweep; the quick wheels dashing the hoarfrost and snow from off the dark leaves of the evergreens like spray.
‘Always a delicate creature, whom a breath might have withered,’ said the Ghost. ‘But she had a large heart!’
‘So she had,’ cried Scrooge. ‘You’re right. I will not gainsay it, Spirit. God forbid!’
‘She died a woman,’ said the Ghost, ‘and had, as I think, children.’
‘One child,’ Scrooge returned.
‘True,’ said the Ghost. ‘Your nephew!’
Scrooge seemed uneasy in his mind, and answered briefly, ‘Yes.’

Although they had but that moment left the school behind them, they were now in the busy thoroughfares of a city, where shadowy passengers passed and repassed; where shadowy carts and coaches battled for the way, and all the strife and tumult of a real city were. It was made plain enough, by the dressing of the shops, that here, too, it was Christmastime again; but it was evening, and the streets were lighted up.
The Ghost stopped at a certain warehouse door, and asked Scrooge if he knew it.
‘Know it!’ said Scrooge. ‘Was I apprenticed here?’
They went in. At sight of an old gentleman in a Welsh wig, sitting behind such a high desk, that if he had been two inches taller, he must have knocked his head against the ceiling, Scrooge cried in great excitement—
‘Why, it’s old Fezziwig! Bless his heart, it’s Fezziwig alive again!’
Old Fezziwig laid down his pen, and looked up at the clock, which pointed to the hour of seven. He rubbed his hands; adjusted his capacious waistcoat; laughed all over himself, from his shoes to his organ of benevolence; and called out, in a comfortable, oily, rich, fat, jovial voice —
‘Yo ho, there! Ebenezer! Dick!’
Scrooge’s former self, now grown a young man, came briskly in, accompanied by his fellow-’prentice.
‘Dick Wilkins, to be sure!’ said Scrooge to the Ghost. ‘Bless me, yes. There he is. He was very much attached to me, was Dick. Poor Dick! Dear, dear!’
‘Yo ho, my boys!’ said Fezziwig. ‘No more work tonight. Christmas Eve, Dick. Christmas, Ebenezer! Let’s have the shutters up,’ cried old Fezziwig, with a sharp clap of his hands, ‘before a man can say Jack Robinson!’
You wouldn’t believe how those two fellows went at it! They charged into the street with the shutters — one, two, three — had ’em up in their places — four, five, six — barred ’em and pinned ’em — seven, eight, nine — and came back before you could have got to twelve, panting like racehorses.
‘Hilli-ho!’ cried old Fezziwing, skipping down from the high desk with wonderful agility. ‘Clear away, my lads, and let’s have lots of room here! Hilli-ho, Dick! Chirrup, Ebenezer!’
Clear away! There was nothing they wouldn’t have cleared away, or couldn’t have cleared away, with old Fezziwig looking on. It was done in a minute. Every movable was packed off, as if it were dismissed from public life for evermore; the floor was swept and watered, the lamps were trimmed, fuel was heaped upon the fire; and the warehouse was as sung, 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 orchestra of it, and tuned like fifty stomachaches. In came Mrs Fezziwig, one vast substantial smile. In came the three Miss Fezziwigs, beaming and lovable. In came the six young followers whose hearts they broke. In came all the young men and women employed in the business. In came the housemaid, with her cousin the baker. In came the cook with her brother’s particular friend the milkman. In came the boy from over the way, who was suspected of not having board enough from his master; trying to hide himself behind the girl from next door but one, who was proved to have had her ears pulled by her mistress. In they all came, one after another; some shyly, some boldly, some gracefully, some awkwardly, some pushing, some pulling; in they all came, anyhow and every how. Away they all went, twenty couple at once; hands half round and back again the other way; down the middle and up again; round and round in various stages of affectionate grouping; old top couple always turning up in the wrong place; new top couple starting off again as soon as they got there; all top couples at last, and not a bottom one to help them! When this result was brought about, old Fezziwig, clapping his hands to stop the dance, cried out, ‘Well done!’ and the fiddler plunged his hot face into a pot of porter, especially provided for that purpose. But, scorning rest upon his reappearance, he instantly began again, though there were no dancers yet, as if the other fiddler had been carried home, exhausted, on a shutter, and he were a bran-new man resolved to beat him out of sight, or perish.
There were more dances, and there were forfeits, and more dances, and there was cake, and there was negus, and there was a great piece of Cold Roast, and there was a great piece of Cold Boiled, and there were mincepies, and plenty of beer. But the great effect of the evening came after the Roast and Boiled, when the fiddler (an artful dog, mind! The sort of man who knew his business better than you or I could have told it him!) struck up ‘Sir Roger de Coverley’. Then old Fezziwig stood out to dance with Mrs Fezziwig. Top couple, too; with a good stiff piece of work cut out for them; three or four and twenty pair of partners; people who were not to be trifled with; people who would dance, and had no notion of walking.
But if they had been twice as many — ah! four times — old Fezziwig would have been a match for them, and so would Mrs Fezziwig. As to her, she was worthy to be his partner in every sense of the term. If that’s not high praise, tell me higher, and I’ll use it. A positive light appeared to issue from Fezziwig’s calves. They shone in every part of the dance like moons. You couldn’t have predicted, at any given time, what would become of them next. And when old Fezziwig and Mrs Fezziwig had gone all through the dance; advance and retire, both hands to your partner, bow and curtsy, 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. Mr and Mrs Fezziwig took their stations, one on either side the door, and, shaking hands with every person individually as he or she went out, wished him or her a Merry Christmas. When everybody had retired but the two ’prentices, they did the same to them; and thus the cheerful voices died away, and the lads were left to their beds; which were under a counter in the back-shop.
During the whole of this time Scrooge had acted like a man out of his wits. His heart and soul were in the scene, and with his former self. He corroborated everything, remembered everything, enjoyed everything, and underwent the strangest agitation. It was not until now, when the bright faces of his former self and Dick were turned from them, that he remembered the Ghost, and became conscious that it was looking full upon him, while the light upon its head burnt very clear.
‘A small matter,’ said the Ghost, ‘to make these silly folks so full of gratitude.’
‘Small!’ echoed Scrooge.
The Spirit signed to him to listen to the two apprentices, who were pouring out their hearts in praise of Fezziwig; and when he had done so, said:
‘Why! Is it not? He has spent but a few pounds of your mortal money: three or four, perhaps. Is that so much that he deserves this praise?’
‘It isn’t that,’ said Scrooge, heated by the remark, and speaking unconsciously like his former, not his latter self. ‘It isn’t that, Spirit. He has the power to render us happy or unhappy; to make our service light or burdensome; a pleasure or a toil. Say that his power lies in words and looks; in things so slight and insignificant that it is impossible to add and count ’em up: what then? The happiness he gives is quite as great as if it cost a fortune.’
He felt the Spirit’s glance, and stopped.
‘What is the matter?’ asked the Ghost.
‘Nothing particular,’ said Scrooge.
‘Something, I think?’ the Ghost insisted.
‘No,’ said Scrooge, ‘no. I should like to be able to say a word or two to my clerk just now. That’s all.’
His former self turned down the lamps as he gave utterance to the wish; and Scrooge and the Ghost again stood side by side in the open air.
‘My time grows short,’ observed the Spirit. ‘Quick!’
This was not addressed to Scrooge, or to anyone whom he could see, but it produced an immediate effect. For again Scrooge saw himself. He was older now; a man in the prime of life. His face had not the harsh and rigid lines of later years; but it had begun to wear the signs of care and avarice. There was an eager, greedy, restless motion in the eye, which showed the passion that had taken root, and where the shadow of the growing tree would fall.
He was not alone, but sat by the side of a fair young girl in a mourning dress: in whose eyes there were tears, which sparkled in the light that shone out of the Ghost of Christmas Past.
‘It matters little,’ she said softly. ‘To you, very little. Another idol has displaced me; and, if it can cheer and comfort you in time to come as I would have tried to do, I have no just cause to grieve.’
‘What Idol has displaced you?’ he rejoined.
‘A golden one.’
‘This is the evenhanded dealing of the world!’ he said. ‘There is nothing on which it is so hard as poverty; and there is nothing it professes to condemn with such severity as the pursuit of wealth!’
‘You fear the world too much,’ she answered gently. ‘All your other hopes have merged into the hope of being beyond the chance of its sordid reproach. I have seen your nobler aspirations fall off one by one, until the master passion, Gain, engrosses you. Have I not?’
‘What then?’ he retorted. ‘Even if I have grown so much wiser, what then? I am not changed towards you.’
She shook her head.
‘Am I?’
‘Our contract is an old one. It was made when we were both poor, and content to be so, until, in good season, we could improve our worldly fortune by our patient industry. You are changed. When it was made you were another man.’
‘I was a boy,’ he said impatiently.
‘Your own feeling tells you that you were not what you are,’ she returned. ‘I am. That which promised happiness when we were one in heart is fraught with misery now that we are two. How often and how keenly I have thought of this I will not say. It is enough that I have thought of it, and can release you.’
‘Have I ever sought release?’
‘In words. No. Never.’
‘In what, then?’
‘In a changed nature; in an altered spirit; in another atmosphere of life; another Hope as its great end. In everything that made my love of any worth or value in your sight. If this had never been between us,’ said the girl, looking mildly, but with steadiness, upon him; ‘tell me, would you seek me out and try to win me now? Ah, no!’
He seemed to yield to the justice of this supposition in spite of himself. But he said, with a struggle, ‘You think not.’
‘I would gladly think otherwise if I could,’ she answered. ‘Heaven knows! When I have learned a Truth like this, I know how strong and irresistible it must be. But if you were free today, tomorrow, yesterday, can even I believe that you would choose a dowerless girl — you who, in your very confidence with her, weigh everything by Gain: or, choosing her, if for a moment you were false enough to your one guiding principle to do so, do I not know that your repentance and regret would surely follow? I do; and I release you. With a full heart, for the love of him you once were.’
He was about to speak; but, with her head turned from him, she resumed:
‘You may — the memory of what is past half makes me hope you will — have pain in this. A very, very brief time, and you will dismiss the recollection of it gladly, as an unprofitable dream, from which it happened well that you awoke. May you be happy in the life you have chosen!’
She left him, and they parted.
‘Spirit!’ said Scrooge, ‘show me no more! Conduct me home. Why do you delight to torture me?’
‘One shadow more!’ exclaimed the Ghost.
‘No more!’ cried Scrooge. ‘No more! I don’t wish to see it. Show me no more!’
But the relentless Ghost pinioned him in both his arms, and forced him to observe what happened next.
They were in another scene and place; a room, not very large or handsome, but full of comfort. Near to the winter fire sat a beautiful young girl, so like that last that Scrooge believed it was the same, until he saw her, now a comely matron, sitting opposite her daughter. The noise in this room was perfectly tumultuous, for there were more children there than Scrooge in his agitated state of mind could count; and, unlike the celebrated herd in the poem, they were not forty children conducting themselves like one, but every child was conducting itself like forty. The consequences were uproarious beyond belief; but no one seemed to care; on the contrary, the mother and daughter laughed heartily, and enjoyed it very much; and the latter, soon beginning to mingle in the sports, got pillaged by the young brigands most ruthlessly. What would I not have given to be one of them! Though I never could have been so rude, no, no! I wouldn’t for the wealth of all the world have crushed that braided hair, and torn it down; and for the precious little shoe, I wouldn’t have plucked it off, God bless my soul! to save my life. As to measuring her waist in sport, as they did, bold young brood, I couldn’t have done it; I should have expected my arm to have grown round it for a punishment, and never come straight again. And yet I should have dearly liked, I own, to have touched her lips; to have questioned her, that she might have opened them; to have looked upon the lashes of her downcast eyes, and never raised a blush; to have let loose waves of hair, an inch of which would be a keepsake beyond price: in short, I should have liked, I do confess, to have had the lightest licence of a child, and yet to have been man enough to know its value.
But now a knocking at the door was heard, and such a rush immediately ensued that she, with laughing face and plundered dress, was borne towards it the centre 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 defenceless porter! The scaling him, with chairs for ladders, to dive into his pockets, despoil him of brown-paper parcels, hold on tight by his cravat, hug him round his neck, 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! The terrible announcement that the baby had been taken in the act of putting a doll’s frying pan into his mouth, and was more than suspected of having swallowed a fictitious turkey, glued on a wooden platter! The immense relief of finding this a false alarm! The joy, and gratitude, and ecstasy! They are all indescribable alike. It is enough that, by degrees, the children and their emotions got out of the parlour, and, by one stair at a time, up to the top of the house, where they went to bed, and so subsided.
And now Scrooge looked on more attentively than ever, when the master of the house, having his daughter leaning fondly on him, sat down with her and her mother at his own fireside; and when he thought that such another creature, quite as graceful and as full of promise, might have called him father, and been a springtime in the haggard winter of his life, his sight grew very dim indeed.
‘Belle,’ said the husband, turning to his wife with a smile, ‘I saw an old friend of yours this afternoon.’
‘Who was it?’
‘Guess!’
‘How can I? Tut, don’t I know?’ she added in the same breath, laughing as he laughed. ‘Mr Scrooge.’
‘Mr Scrooge it was. I passed his office window; and as it was not shut up, and he had a candle inside, I could scarcely help seeing him. His partner lies upon the point of death, I hear; and there he sat alone. Quite alone in the world, I do believe.’
‘Spirit!’ said Scrooge in a broken voice, ‘remove me from this place.’
‘I told you these were shadows of the things that have been,’ said the Ghost. ‘That they are what they are do not blame me!’
‘Remove me!’ Scrooge exclaimed, ‘I cannot bear it!’
He turned upon the Ghost, and seeing that it looked upon him with a face, in which in some strange way there were fragments of all the faces it had shown him, wrestled with it.
‘Leave me! Take me back. Haunt me no longer!’
In the struggle, if that can be called a struggle in which the Ghost with no visible resistance on its own part was undisturbed by any effort of its adversary, Scrooge observed that its light was burning high and bright; and dimly connecting that with its influence over him, he seized the extinguisher-cap, and by a sudden action pressed it down upon its head.
The Spirit dropped beneath it, so that the extinguisher covered its whole form; but though Scrooge pressed it down with all his force, he could not hide the light, which streamed from under it, in an unbroken flood upon the ground.
He was conscious of being exhausted, and overcome by an irresistible drowsiness; and, further, of being in his own bedroom. He gave the cap a parting squeeze, in which his hand relaxed; and had barely time to reel to bed, before he sank into a heavy sleep.

Stave Three
The Second of the Three Spirits
Awaking in the middle of a prodigiously tough snore, and sitting up in bed to get his thoughts together, Scrooge had no occasion to be told that the bell was again upon the stroke of One. He felt that he was restored to consciousness in the right nick of time, for the especial purpose of holding a conference with the second messenger despatched to him through Jacob Marley’s intervention. But finding that he turned uncomfortably cold when he began to wonder which of his curtains this new spectre would draw back, he put them every one aside with his own hands, and, lying down again, established a sharp lookout all round the bed. For he wished to challenge the Spirit on the moment of its appearance, and did not wish to be taken by surprise and made nervous.
Gentlemen of the free-and-easy sort, who plume themselves on being acquainted with a move or two, and being usually equal to the time of day, express the wide range of their capacity for adventure by observing that they are good for anything from pitch-and-toss to manslaughter; between which opposite extremes, no doubt, there lies a tolerably wide and comprehensive range of subjects. Without venturing for Scrooge quite as hardily as this, I don’t mind calling on you to believe that he was ready for a good broad field of strange appearances, and that nothing between a bady and a rhinoceros would have astonished him very much.
Now, being prepared for almost anything, he was not by any means prepared for nothing; and consequently, when the bell struck One, and no shape appeared, he was taken with a violent fit of trembling. Five minutes, ten minutes, a quarter of an hour went by, yet nothing came. All this time he lay upon his bed, the very core and centre of a blaze of ruddy light, which streamed upon it when the clock proclaimed the hour; and which, being only light, was more alarming than a dozen ghosts, as he was powerless to make out what it meant, or would be at; and was sometimes apprehensive that he might be at that very moment an interesting case of spontaneous combustion, without having the consolation of knowing it. At last, however, he began to think — as you or I would have thought at first; for it is always the person not in the predicament who knows what ought to have been done in it, and would unquestionably have done it too — at last, I say, he began to think that the source and secret of this ghostly light might be in the adjoining room, from whence, on further tracing it, it seemed to shine. This idea taking full possession of his mind, he got up softly, and shuffled in his slippers to the door.
The moment Scrooge’s hand was on the lock a strange voice called him by his name, and bade him enter. He obeyed.

It was his own room. There was no doubt about that. But it had undergone a surprising transformation. The walls and ceiling were so hung with living green, that it looked a perfect grove; from every part of which bright gleaming berries glistened. The crisp leaves of holly, mistletoe, and ivy reflected back the light, as if so many little mirrors had been scattered there; and such a mighty blaze went roaring up the chimney as that dull petrification of a hearth had never known in Scrooge’s time, or Marley’s, or for many and many a winter season gone. Heaped up on the floor, to form a kind of throne, were turkeys, geese, game, poultry, brawn, great joints of meat, sucking-pigs, long wreaths of sausages, mince-pies, plum- puddings, barrels of oysters, red-hot chestnuts, cherry-cheeked apples, juicy oranges, luscious pears, immense twelfth-cakes, and seething bowls of punch, that made the chamber dim with their delicious steam. In easy state upon this couch there sat a jolly Giant, glorious to see; who bore a glowing torch, in shape not unlike Plenty’s horn, and held it up, high up, to shed its light on Scrooge as he came peeping round the door.
‘Come in!’ exclaimed the Ghost. ‘Come in! and know me better, man!’
Scrooge entered timidly, and hung his head before this Spirit. He was not the dogged Scrooge he had been; and though the Spirit’s eyes were clear and kind, he did not like to meet them.
‘I am the Ghost of Christmas Present,’ said the Spirit. ‘Look upon me!’
Scrooge reverently did so. It was clothed in one simple deep green robe, or mantle, bordered with white fur. This garment hung so loosely on the figure, that its capacious breast was bare, as if disdaining to be warded or concealed by any artifice. Its feet, observable beneath the ample folds of the garment, were also bare; and on its head it wore no other covering than a holly wreath, set here and there with shining icicles. Its dark-brown curls were long and free; free as its genial face, its sparkling eye, its open hand, its cheery voice, its unconstrained demeanour, and its joyful air. Girded round its middle was an antique scabbard; but no sword was in it, and the ancient sheath was eaten up with rust.
‘You have never seen the like of me before!’ exclaimed the Spirit.
‘Never,’ Scrooge made answer to it.
‘Have never walked forth with the younger members of my family; meaning (for I am very young) my elder brothers born in these later years?’ pursued the Phantom.
‘I don’t think I have,’ said Scrooge. ‘I am afraid I have not. Have you had many brothers, Spirit?’
‘More than eighteen hundred,’ said the Ghost.
‘A tremendous family to provide for,’ muttered Scrooge.
The Ghost of Christmas Present rose.
‘Spirit,’ said Scrooge submissively, ‘conduct me where you will. I went forth last night on compulsion, and I learned a lesson which is working now. Tonight if you have aught to teach me, let me profit by it.’
‘Touch my robe!’
Scrooge did as he was told, and held it fast.
Holly, mistletoe, red berries, ivy, turkeys, geese, game, poultry, brawn, meat, pigs, sausages, oysters, pies, puddings, fruit, and punch, all vanished instantly. So did the room, the fire, the ruddy glow, the hour of night, and they stood in the city streets on Christmas morning, where (for the weather was severe) the people made a rough, but brisk and not unpleasant kind of music, in scraping the snow from the pavement in front of their dwellings, and from the tops of their houses, whence it was mad delight to the boys to see it come plumping down into the road below, and splitting into artificial little snowstorms.
The house-fronts looked black enough, and the windows blacker, contrasting with the smooth white sheet of snow upon the roofs, and with the dirtier snow upon the ground; which last deposit had been ploughed up in deep furrows by the heavy wheels of carts and wagons: furrows that crossed and recrossed each other hundreds of times where the great streets branched off; and made intricate channels, hard to trace in the thick yellow mud and icy water. The sky was gloomy, and the shortest streets were choked up with a dingy mist, half thawed, half frozen, whose heavier particles descended in a shower of sooty atoms, as if all the chimneys in Great Britain had, by one consent, caught fire, and were blazing away to their dear hearts’ content. There was nothing very cheerful in the climate or the town, and yet was there an air of cheerfulness abroad that the clearest summer air and brightest summer sun might have endeavoured to diffuse in vain.
For the people who were shovelling away on the house-tops were jovial and full of glee; calling out to one another from the parapets, and now and then exchanging a facetious snowball — better-natured missile far than many a wordy jest — laughing heartily if it went right, and not less heartily if it went wrong.
The poulterers’ shops were still half open, and the fruiterers’ were radiant in their glory. There were great, round, potbellied baskets of chestnuts, shaped like the waistcoats of jolly old gentlemen, lolling at the doors, and tumbling out into the street in their apoplectic opulence. There were ruddy, brown-faced, broad-girthed Spanish onions, shining in the fatness of their growth like Spanish friars, and winking from their shelves in wanton slyness at the girls as they went by, and glanced demurely at the hung-up mistletoe. There were pears and apples clustered high in blooming pyramids; there were bunches of grapes, made, in the shopkeepers’ benevolence, to dangle from conspicuous hooks that people’s mouths might water gratis as they passed; there were piles of filberts, mossy and brown, recalling, in their fragrance, ancient walks among the woods, and pleasant shufflings ankle deep through withered leaves; there were Norfolk Biffins, squab and swarthy, setting off the yellow of the oranges and lemons, and, in the great compactness of their juicy persons, urgently entreating and beseeching to be carried home in paper bags and eaten after dinner. The very gold and silver fish, set forth among these choice fruits in a bowl, though members of a dull and stagnant-blooded race, appeared to know that there was something going on; and, to a fish, went gasping round and round their little world in slow and passionless excitement.
The Grocers’! oh, the Grocers’! nearly closed, with perhaps two shutters down, or one; but through those gaps such glimpses! It was not alone that the scales descending on the counter made a merry sound, or that the twine and roller parted company so briskly, or that the canisters were rattled up and down like juggling tricks, or even that the blended scents of tea and coffee were so grateful to the nose, or even that the raisins were so plentiful and rare, the almonds so extremely white, the sticks of cinnamon so long and straight, the other spices so delicious, the candied fruits so caked and spotted with molten sugar as to make the coldest lookers-on feel faint, and subsequently bilious. Nor was it that the figs were moist and pulpy, or that the French plums blushed in modest tartness from their highly-decorated boxes, or that everything was good to eat and in its Christmas dress; but the customers were all so hurried and so eager in the hopeful promise of the day, that they tumbled up against each other at the door, crashing their wicker baskets wildly, and left their purchases upon the counter, and came running back to fetch them, and committed hundreds of the like mistakes, in the best humour possible; while the grocer and his people were so frank and fresh, that the polished hearts with which they fastened their aprons behind might have been their own, worn outside for general inspection, and for Christmas daws to peck at if they chose.
But soon the steeples called good people all to church and chapel, and away they came, flocking through the streets in their best clothes and with their gayest faces. And at the same time there emerged, from scores of by-streets, lanes, and nameless turnings, innumerable people, carrying their dinners to the bakers’ shops. The sight of these poor revellers appeared to interest the Spirit very much, for he stood with Scrooge beside him in a baker’s doorway, and, taking off the covers as their bearers passed, sprinkled incense on their dinners from his torch. And it was a very uncommon kind of torch, for once or twice, when there were angry words between some dinner-carriers who had jostled each other, he shed a few drops of water on them from it, and their good-humour was restored directly. For they said, it was a shame to quarrel upon Christmas Day. And so it was! God love it, so it was!
In time the bells ceased, and the bakers were shut up; and yet there was a genial shadowing forth of all these dinners, and the progress of their cooking, in the thawed blotch of wet above each baker’s oven, where the pavement smoked as if its stones were cooking too.
‘Is there a peculiar flavour in what you sprinkle from your torch?’ asked Scrooge.
‘There is. My own.’
‘Would it apply to any kind of dinner on this day?’ asked Scrooge.
‘To any kindly given. To a poor one most.’
‘Why to a poor one most?’ asked Scrooge.
‘Because it needs it most.’
‘Spirit!’ said Scrooge, after a moment’s thought, ‘I wonder you, of all the beings in the many worlds about us, should desire to cramp these people’s opportunities of innocent enjoyment.’
‘I!’ cried the Spirit.
‘You would deprive them of their means of dining every seventh day, often the only day on which they can be said to dine at all,’ said Scrooge; ‘wouldn’t you?’
‘I!’ cried the Spirit.
‘You seek to close these places on the Seventh Day,’ said Scrooge. ‘And it comes to the same thing.’
‘I seek!’ exclaimed the Spirit.
‘Forgive me if I am wrong. It has been done in your name, or at least in that of your family,’ said Scrooge.
‘There are some upon this earth of yours,’ returned the Spirit, ‘who lay claim to know us, and who do their deeds of passion, pride, ill-will, hatred, envy, bigotry, and selfishness in our name, who are as strange to us, and all our kith and kin, as if they had never lived. Remember that, and charge their doings on themselves, not us.’
Scrooge promised that he would; and they went on, invisible, as they had been before, into the suburbs of the town. It was a remarkable quality of the Ghost (which Scrooge had observed at the baker’s), that notwithstanding his gigantic size, he could accommodate himself to any place with ease; and that he stood beneath a low roof quite as gracefully and like a supernatural creature as it was possible he could have done in any lofty hall.
And perhaps it was the pleasure the good Spirit had in showing off this power of his, or else it was his own kind, generous, hearty nature, and his sympathy with all poor men, that led him straight to Scrooge’s clerk’s; for there he went, and took Scrooge with him, holding to his robe; and on the threshold of the door the Spirit smiled, and stopped to bless Bob Cratchit’s dwelling with the sprinklings of his torch. Think of that! Bob had but fifteen ‘Bob’ a week himself; he pocketed on Saturdays but fifteen copies of his Christian name; and yet the Ghost of Christmas Present blessed his four-roomed house!
Then up rose Mrs Cratchit, Cratchit’s wife, dressed out but poorly in a twice-turned gown, but brave in ribbons, which are cheap, and make a goodly show for sixpence; and she laid the cloth, assisted by Belinda Cratchit, second of her daughters, also brave in ribbons; while Master Peter Cratchit plunged a fork into the saucepan of potatoes, and getting the corners of his monstrous shirt-collar (Bob’s private property, conferred upon his son and heir in honour of the day), into his mouth, rejoiced to find himself so gallantly attired, and yearned to show his linen in the fashionable Parks. And now two smaller Cratchits, boy and girl, came tearing in, screaming that outside the baker’s they had smelt the goose, and known it for their own; and basking in luxurious thoughts of sage and onion, these young Cratchits danced about the table, and exalted Master Peter Cratchit to the skies, while he (not proud, although his collars nearly choked him) blew the fire, until the slow potatoes, bubbling up, knocked loudly at the saucepan-lid to be let out and peeled.
‘What has ever got your precious father, then?’ said Mrs Cratchit. ‘And your brother, Tiny Tim? And Martha warn’t as late last Christmas Day by half an hour!’
‘Here’s Martha, mother!’ said a girl, appearing as she spoke.
‘Here’s Martha, mother!’ cried the two young Cratchits. ‘Hurrah! There’s such a goose, Martha!’
‘Why, bless your heart alive, my dear, how late you are!’ said Mrs Cratchit, kissing her a dozen times, and taking off her shawl and bonnet for her with officious zeal.
‘We’d a deal of work to finish up last night,’ replied the girl, ‘and had to clear away this morning, mother!’
‘Well! never mind so long as you are come,’ said Mrs Cratchit. ‘Sit ye down before the fire, my dear, and have a warm, Lord bless ye!’
‘No, no! There’s father coming,’ cried the two young Cratchits, who were everywhere at once. ‘Hide, Martha, hide!’
So Martha hid herself, and in came little Bob, the father, with at least three feet of comforter, exclusive of the fringe, hanging down before him, and his threadbare clothes darned up and brushed to look seasonable, and Tiny Tim upon his shoulder. Alas for Tiny Tim, he bore a little crutch, and had his limbs supported by an iron frame!
‘Why, where’s our Martha?’ cried Bob Cratchit, looking round.
‘Not coming,’ said Mrs Cratchit.
‘Not coming!’ said Bob, with a sudden declension in his high spirits; for he had been Tim’s blood-horse all the way from church, and had come home rampant. ‘Not coming upon Christmas Day!’
Martha didn’t like to see him disappointed, if it were only in joke; so she came out prematurely from behind the closet door, and ran into his arms, while the two young Cratchits hustled Tiny Tim, and bore him off into the wash-house, that he might hear the pudding singing in the copper.
‘And how did little Tim behave?’ asked Mrs Cratchit when she had rallied Bob on his credulity, and Bob had hugged his daughter to his heart’s content.
‘As good as gold,’ said Bob, ‘and better. Somehow, he gets thoughtful, sitting by himself so much, and thinks the strangest things you ever heard. He told me, coming home, that he hoped the people saw him in the church, because he was a cripple, and it might be pleasant to them to remember upon Christmas Day who made lame beggars walk and blind men see.’
Bob’s voice was tremulous when he told them this, and trembled more when he said that Tiny Tim was growing strong and hearty.
His active little crutch was heard upon the floor, and back came Tiny Tim before another word was spoken, escorted by his brother and sister to his stool beside the fire; and while Bob, turning up his cuffs — as if, poor fellow, they were capable of being made more shabby — compounded some hot mixture in a jug with gin and lemons, and stirred it round and round, and put it on the hob to simmer, Master Peter and the two ubiquitous young Cratchits went to fetch the goose, with which they soon returned in high procession.

Such a bustle ensued that you might have thought a goose the rarest of all birds; a feathered phenomenon, to which a black swan was a matter of course — and, in truth, it was something very like it in that house. Mrs Cratchit made the gravy (ready beforehand in a little saucepan) hissing hot; Master Peter mashed the potatoes with incredible vigour; Miss Belinda sweetened up the apple sauce; Martha dusted the hot plates; Bob took Tiny Tim beside him in a tiny corner at the table; the two young Cratchits set chairs for everybody, not forgetting themselves, and, mounting guard upon their posts, crammed spoons into their mouths, lest they should shriek for goose before their turn came to be helped. At last the dishes were set on, and grace was said. It was succeeded by a breathless pause, as Mrs Cratchit, looking slowly all along the carving-knife, prepared to plunge it in the breast; but when she did, and when the long- expected gush of stuffing issued forth, one murmur of delight arose all round the board, and even Tiny Tim, excited by the two young Cratchits, beat on the table with the handle of his knife and feebly cried Hurrah!
There never was such a goose. Bob said he didn’t believe there ever was such a goose cooked. Its tenderness and flavour, size and cheapness, were the themes of universal admiration. Eked out by apple sauce and mashed potatoes, it was a sufficient dinner for the whole family; indeed, as Mrs Cratchit said with great delight (surveying one small atom of a bone upon the dish), they hadn’t ate it all at last! Yet everyone had had enough, and the youngest Cratchits, in particular, were steeped in sage and onion to the eyebrows! But now, the plates being changed by Miss Belinda, Mrs Cratchit left the room alone — too nervous to bear witnesses — to take the pudding up, and bring it in.
Suppose it should not be done enough! Suppose it should break in turning out! Suppose somebody should have got over the wall of the backyard and stolen it, while they were merry with the goose — a supposition at which the two young Cratchits became livid! All sorts of horrors were supposed.
Hallo! A great deal of steam! The pudding was out of the copper. A smell like a washing-day! That was the cloth. A smell like an eating-house and a pastry-cook’s next door to each other, with a laundress’s next door to that! That was the pudding! In half a minute Mrs Cratchit entered — flushed, but smiling proudly — with the pudding, like a speckled cannonball, so hard and firm, blazing in half of half a quartern of ignited brandy, and bedight with Christmas holly stuck into the top.
Oh, a wonderful pudding! Bob Cratchit said, and calmly too, that he regarded it as the greatest success achieved by Mrs Cratchit since their marriage. Mrs Cratchit said that, now the weight was off her mind, she would confess she had her doubts about the quantity of flour. Everybody had something to say about it, but nobody said or thought it was at all a small pudding for a large family. It would have been flat heresy to do so. Any Cratchit would have blushed to hint at such a thing.
At last the dinner was all done, the cloth was cleared, the hearth swept, and the fire made up. The compound in the jug being tasted, and considered perfect, apples and oranges were put upon the table, and a shovel full of chestnuts on the fire. Then all the Cratchit family drew round the hearth in what Bob Cratchit called a circle, meaning half a one; and at Bob Cratchit’s elbow stood the family display of glass. Two tumblers and a custard cup without a handle.
These held the hot stuff from the jug, however, as well as golden goblets would have done; and Bob served it out with beaming looks, while the chestnuts on the fire sputtered and cracked noisily. Then Bob proposed:
‘A merry Christmas to us all, my dears. God bless us!’
Which all the family re-echoed.
‘God bless us, every one!’ said Tiny Tim, the last of all.
He sat very close to his father’s side, upon his little stool. Bob held his withered little hand to his, as if he loved the child, and wished to keep him by his side, and dreaded that he might be taken from him.
‘Spirit,’ said Scrooge, with an interest he had never felt before, ‘tell me if Tiny Tim will live.’
‘I see a vacant seat,’ replied the Ghost, ‘in the poor chimney corner, and a crutch without an owner, carefully preserved. If these shadows remain unaltered by the Future, the child will die.’
‘No, no,’ said Scrooge. ‘Oh no, kind Spirit! say he will be spared.’
‘If these shadows remain unaltered by the Future none other of my race,’ returned the Ghost, ‘will find him here. What then? If he be like to die, he had better do it, and decrease the surplus population.’
Scrooge hung his head to hear his own words quoted by the Spirit, and was overcome with penitence and grief.
‘Man,’ said the Ghost, ‘if man you be in heart, not adamant, forbear that wicked cant until you have discovered what the surplus is, and where it is. Will you decide what men shall live, what men shall die? It may be that, in the sight of Heaven, you are more worthless and less fit to live than millions like this poor man’s child. O God! to hear the insect on the leaf pronouncing on the too much life among his hungry brothers in the dust!’
Scrooge bent before the Ghost’s rebuke, and, trembling, cast his eyes upon the ground. But he raised them speedily on hearing his own name.
‘Mr Scrooge!’ said Bob. ‘I’ll give you Mr Scrooge, the Founder of the Feast!’
‘The Founder of the Feast, indeed!’ cried Mrs Cratchit, reddening. ‘I wish I had him here. I’d give him a piece of my mind to feast upon, and I hope he’d have a good appetite for it.’
‘My dear,’ said Bob, ‘the children! Christmas Day.’
‘It should be Christmas Day, I am sure,’ said she, ‘on which one drinks the health of such an odious, stingy, hard, unfeeling man as Mr Scrooge. You know he is, Robert! Nobody knows it better than you do, poor fellow!’
‘My dear!’ was Bob’s mild answer. ‘Christmas Day.’
‘I’ll drink his health for your sake and the Day’s,’ said Mrs Cratchit, ‘not for his. Long life to him! A merry Christmas and a happy New Year! He’ll be very merry and very happy, I have no doubt!’
The children drank the toast after her. It was the first of their proceedings which had no heartiness in it. Tiny Tim drank it last of all, but he didn’t care twopence for it. Scrooge was the Ogre of the family. The mention of his name cast a dark shadow on the party, which was not dispelled for full five minutes.
After it had passed away they were ten times merrier than before, from the mere relief of Scrooge the Baleful being done with. Bob Cratchit told them how he had a situation in his eye for Master Peter, which would bring in, if obtained, full five-and-sixpence weekly. The two young Cratchits laughed tremendously at the idea of Peter’s being a man of business; and Peter himself looked thoughtfully at the fire from between his collars, as if he were deliberating what particular investments he should favour when he came into the receipt of that bewildering income. Martha, who was a poor apprentice at a milliner’s, then told them what kind of work she had to do, and how many hours she worked at a stretch and how she meant to lie abed 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 collar so high that you couldn’t have seen his head if you had been there. All this time the chestnuts and the jug went round and round; and by and by they had a song, about a lost child travelling in the snow, from Tiny Tim, who had a plaintive little voice, and sang it very well indeed.
There was nothing of high mark in this. They were not a handsome family; they were not well dressed; their shoes were far from being waterproof; their clothes were scanty; and Peter might have known, and very likely did, the inside of a pawnbroker’s. But they were happy, grateful, pleased with one another, and contented with the time; and when they faded, and looked happier yet in the bright sprinklings of the Spirit’s torch at parting, Scrooge had his eye upon them, and especially on Tiny Tim, until the last.
By this time it was getting dark, and snowing pretty heavily; and as Scrooge and the Spirit went along the streets, the brightness of the roaring fires in kitchens, parlours, and all sorts of rooms was wonderful Here, the flickering of the blaze showed preparations for a cosy dinner, with hot plates baking through and through before the fire, and deep red curtains, ready to be drawn to shut out cold and darkness. There, all the children of the house were running out into the snow to meet their married sisters, brothers, cousins, uncles, aunts, and be the first to greet them. Here, again, were shadows on the window-blinds of guests assembling; and there a group of handsome girls, all hooded and fur-booted, and all chattering at once, tripped lightly off to some near neighbour’s house; where, woe upon the single man who saw them enter — artful witches, well they knew it — in a glow!
But, if you had judged from the numbers of people on their way to friendly gatherings, you might have thought that no one was at home to give them welcome when they got there, instead of every house expecting company, and piling up its fires half-chimney high. Blessings on it, how the Ghost exulted! How it bared its breadth of breast, and opened its capacious palm, and floated on, outpouring with a generous hand its bright and harmless mirth on everything within its reach! The very lamplighter, who ran on before, dotting the dusky street with specks of light, and who was dressed to spend the evening somewhere, laughed out loudly as the Spirit passed, though little kenned the lamplighter that he had any company but Christmas.
And now, without a word of warning from the Ghost, they stood upon a bleak and desert moor, where monstrous masses of rude stone were cast about, as though it were the burial-place of giants; and water spread itself wheresoever it listed; or would have done so, but for the frost that held it prisoner; and nothing grew but moss and furze, and coarse, rank grass. Down in the west the setting sun had left a streak of fiery red, which glared upon the desolation for an instant, like a sullen eye, and frowning lower, lower, lower yet, was lost in the thick gloom of darkest night.
‘What place is this?’ asked Scrooge.
‘A place where miners live, who labour in the bowels of the earth,’ returned the Spirit. ‘But they know me. See!’
A light shone from the window of a hut, and swiftly they advanced towards it. Passing through the wall of mud and stone, they found a cheerful company assembled round a glowing fire. An old, old man and woman, with their children and their children’s children, and another generation beyond that, all decked out gaily in their holiday attire. The old man, in a voice that seldom rose above the howling of the wind upon the barren waste, was singing them a Christmas song; it had been a very old song when he was a boy; and from time to time they all joined in the chorus. So surely as they raised their voices, the old man got quite blithe and loud; and so surely as they stopped, his vigour sank again.
The Spirit did not tarry here, but bade Scrooge hold his robe, and, passing on above the moor, sped whither? Not to sea? To sea. To Scrooge’s horror, looking back, he saw the last of the land, a frightful range of rocks, behind them; and his ears were deafened by the thundering of water, as it rolled and roared, and raged among the dreadful caverns it had worn, and fiercely tried to undermine the earth.
Built upon a dismal reef of sunken rocks, some league or so from shore, on which the waters chafed and dashed, the wild year through, there stood a solitary lighthouse. Great heaps of seaweed clung to its base, and storm-birds — born of the wind, one might suppose, as seaweed of the water — rose and fell about it, like the waves they skimmed.
But, even here, two men who watched the light had made a fire, that through the loophole in the thick stone wall shed out a ray of brightness on the awful sea. Joining their horny hands over the rough table at which they sat, they wished each other Merry Christmas in their can of grog; and one of them — the elder too, with his face all damaged and scarred with hard weather, as the figurehead of an old ship might be — struck up a sturdy song that was like a gale in itself.
Again the Ghost sped on, above the black and heaving sea — on, on — until being far away, as he told Scrooge, from any shore, they lighted on a ship. They stood beside the helmsman at the wheel, the lookout in the bow, the officers who had the watch; dark, ghostly figures in their several stations; but every man among them hummed a Christmas tune, or had a Christmas thought, or spoke below his breath to his companion of some bygone Christmas Day, with homeward hopes belonging to it. And every man on board, waking or sleeping, good or bad, had had a kinder word for one another on that day than on any day in the year; and had shared to some extent in its festivities; and had remembered those he cared for at a distance, and had known that they delighted to remember him.
It was a great surprise to Scrooge, while listening to the moaning of the wind, and thinking what a solemn thing it was to move on through the lonely darkness over an unknown abyss, whose depths were secrets as profound as death: it was a great surprise to Scrooge, while thus engaged, to hear a hearty laugh. It was a much greater surprise to Scrooge to recognise it as his own nephew’s and to find himself in a bright, dry, gleaming room, with the Spirit standing smiling by his side, and looking at that same nephew with approving affability!
‘Ha, ha!’ laughed Scrooge’s nephew. ‘Ha, ha, ha!’
If you should happen, by any unlikely chance, to know a man more 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, noble adjustment of things, that while there is infection in disease and sorrow, there is nothing in the world so irresistibly contagious as laughter and good-humour. When Scrooge’s nephew laughed in this way — holding his sides, rolling his head, and twisting his face into the most extravagant contortions — Scrooge’s niece, by marriage, laughed as heartily as he. And their assembled friends, being not a bit behindhand, roared out lustily.
‘Ha, ha! Ha, ha, ha, ha!’
‘He said that Christmas was a humbug, as I live!’ cried Scrooge’s nephew. ‘He believed it, too!’
‘More shame for him, Fred!’ said Scrooge’s niece indignantly. ‘Bless those women! they never do anything by halves. They are always in earnest.’
She was very pretty; exceedingly pretty. With a dimpled, surprised-looking, capital face; a ripe little mouth, that seemed made to be kissed — as no doubt it was; all kinds of good little dots about her chin, that melted into one another when she laughed; and the sunniest pair of eyes you ever saw in any little creature’s head. Altogether she was what you would have called provoking, you know; but satisfactory, 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 offences carry their own punishment, and I have nothing to say against him.’
‘I’m sure he is very rich, Fred,’ hinted Scrooge’s niece. ‘At least, you always tell me so.’
‘What of that, my dear?’ said Scrooge’s nephew. ‘His wealth is of no use to him. He don’t do any good with it. He don’t make himself comfortable with it. He hasn’t the satisfaction of thinking — ha, ha, ha! — that he is ever going to benefit Us with it.’
‘I have no patience with him,’ observed Scrooge’s niece. Scrooge’s niece’s sisters, and all the other ladies, expressed the same opinion.
‘Oh, I have!’ said Scrooge’s nephew. ‘I am sorry for him; I couldn’t be angry with him if I tried. Who suffers by his ill whims? Himself always. Here he takes it into his head to dislike us, and he won’t come and dine with us. What’s the consequence? He don’t lose much of a dinner.’
‘Indeed, I think he loses a very good dinner,’ interrupted Scrooge’s niece. Everybody else said the same, and they must be allowed to have been competent judges, because they had just had dinner; and with the dessert upon the table, were clustered round the fire, by lamplight.