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Chapter: 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 door-nail.

Mind! I don't mean to say that I know, of my own knowledge, what there
is particularly dead about a door-nail. I might have been inclined,
myself, to regard a coffin-nail as the deadest piece of ironmongery in
the trade. But the wisdom of our ancestors is in the simile; and my
unhallowed hands shall not disturb it, or the Country's done for. You
will, therefore, permit me to repeat, emphatically, that Marley was as
dead as a door-nail.

Scrooge knew he was dead? Of course he did. How could it be otherwise?
Scrooge and he were partners for I don't know how many years. Scrooge
was his sole executor, his sole administrator, his sole assign, his
sole residuary legatee, his sole friend, and sole mourner. And even
Scrooge was not so dreadfully cut up by the sad event, but that he was
an excellent man of business on the very day of the funeral, and
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 any other middle-aged gentleman rashly turning
out after dark in a breezy spot--say St. Paul's Church-yard, 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 inquired the way to
such and such a place, of Scrooge. Even the blind men's dogs appeared to
know him; and, when they saw him coming on, would tug their owners into
doorways and up courts; and then would wag their tails as though they
said, "No eye at all is better than an evil eye, dark master!"

But what did Scrooge care? It was the very thing he liked. To edge his
way along the crowded paths of life, warning all human sympathy to keep
its distance, was what the knowing ones call "nuts" to Scrooge.

Once upon a time--of all the good days in the year, on Christmas
Eve--old Scrooge sat busy in his counting-house. It was cold, bleak,
biting weather: foggy withal: and he could hear the people in the court
outside go wheezing up and down, beating their hands upon their breasts,
and stamping their feet upon the pavement stones to warm them. The City
clocks had only just gone three, but it was quite dark already--it had
not been light all day--and candles were flaring in the windows of the
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.

[Illustration: _"A Merry Christmas, uncle! God save you!" cried a
cheerful voice._]

"What else can I be," returned the uncle, "when I live in such a world
of fools as this? Merry Christmas! Out upon merry Christmas! What's
Christmas-time to you but a time for paying bills without money; a time
for finding yourself a year older, 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 Christmas-time, when it
has come round--apart from the veneration due to its sacred name and
origin, if anything belonging to it can be apart from that--as a good
time; a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time; the only time I know
of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one
consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people
below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and
not another race of creatures bound on other journeys. And therefore,
uncle, though it has never put a scrap of gold or silver in my pocket, I
believe that it _has_ done me good, and _will_ do me good; and I say,
God bless it!"

The clerk in the tank involuntarily applauded. Becoming immediately
sensible of the impropriety, he poked the fire, and extinguished the
last frail spark 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 to-morrow."

Scrooge said that he would see him----Yes, indeed he did. He went the
whole length of the expression, and said that he would see him in that
extremity first.

"But why?" cried Scrooge's nephew. "Why?"

"Why did you get married?" said Scrooge.

"Because I fell in love."

"Because you fell in love!" growled Scrooge, as if that were the only
one thing in the world more ridiculous than a merry Christmas. "Good
afternoon!"

"Nay, uncle, but you never came to see me before that happened. Why give
it as a reason for not coming now?"

"Good afternoon," said Scrooge.

"I want nothing from you; I ask nothing of you; why cannot we be
friends?"

"Good afternoon!" said Scrooge.

"I am sorry, with all my heart, to find you so resolute. We have never
had any quarrel to which I have been a party. But I have made the trial
in homage to Christmas, and I'll keep my Christmas 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 sprigs and
berries crackled in the lamp heat of the windows, made pale faces ruddy
as they passed. Poulterers' and grocers' trades became a splendid joke:
a glorious pageant, with which it was next to impossible to believe that
such dull principles as bargain and sale had anything to do. The Lord
Mayor, in the stronghold of the mighty Mansion House, gave orders to his
fifty cooks and butlers to keep Christmas as a Lord Mayor's household
should; and even the little tailor, whom he had fined five shillings on
the previous Monday for being drunk and blood-thirsty in the streets,
stirred up to-morrow's pudding in his garret, while his lean wife and
the baby sallied out to buy the beef.

Foggier yet, and colder! Piercing, searching, biting cold. If the good
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 to-morrow, I suppose?" said Scrooge.

"If quite convenient, sir."

"It's not convenient," said Scrooge, "and it's not fair. If I was to
stop half-a-crown for it, you'd think yourself ill used, I'll be bound?"

The clerk smiled faintly.

"And yet," said Scrooge, "you don't think _me_ ill used when I pay a
day's wages for no work."

The clerk observed that it was only once a year.

"A poor excuse for picking a man's pocket every twenty-fifth of
December!" said Scrooge, buttoning his great-coat 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
great-coat), 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 of 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 fire-guard, old shoes, two
fish baskets, washing-stand on three legs, and a poker.

Quite satisfied, he closed his door, and locked himself in; double
locked himself in, which was not his custom. Thus secured against
surprise, he took off his cravat; put on his dressing-gown and slippers,
and his 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
fire-place was an old one, built by some Dutch merchant long ago, and
paved all round with quaint Dutch tiles, designed to illustrate the
Scriptures. There were Cains and Abels, Pharaoh's daughters, Queens of
Sheba, Angelic messengers descending through the air on clouds like
feather beds, Abrahams, Belshazzars, Apostles putting off to sea in
butter-boats, hundreds of figures to attract his thoughts; and yet that
face of Marley, seven years dead, came like the ancient Prophet's rod,
and swallowed up the whole. If each smooth tile had been a blank at
first, with power to shape some picture on its surface from the
disjointed fragments of his thoughts, there would have been a copy of
old Marley's head on every one.

"Humbug!" said Scrooge; and walked across the room.

After several turns he sat down again. As he threw his head back in the
chair, his glance happened to rest upon a bell, a disused bell, that
hung in the room, and communicated, for some purpose now forgotten, with
a chamber in the highest story of the building. It was with great
astonishment, and with a strange, inexplicable dread, that, as he
looked, he saw this bell begin to swing. It swung so softly in the
outset that it scarcely made a sound; but soon it rang out loudly, and
so did every bell in the house.

This might have lasted half a minute, or a minute, but it seemed an
hour. The bells ceased, as they had begun, together. They were succeeded
by a clanking noise, deep down below, as if some person were dragging a
heavy chain over the casks in the wine merchant's cellar. Scrooge then
remembered to have heard that ghosts in haunted houses were described as
dragging chains.

The cellar door flew open with a booming sound, and then he heard the
noise much louder on the floors below; then coming up the stairs; then
coming straight towards his door.

"It's humbug still!" said Scrooge. "I won't believe it."

His 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 fire-place, 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?"

[Illustration: _To sit staring at those fixed glazed eyes in silence,
for a moment, would play, Scrooge felt, the very deuce with him._]

"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 shape that you can see, I may
not tell. I have sat invisible beside you many and many a day."

It was not an agreeable idea. Scrooge shivered, and wiped the
perspiration from his brow.

"That is no light part of my penance," pursued the Ghost. "I am here
to-night to warn you that you have yet a chance and hope of escaping my
fate. A chance and hope of my procuring, Ebenezer."

"You were always a good friend to me," said Scrooge. "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 to-morrow when the bell tolls One."

"Couldn't I take 'em all at once, and have it over, Jacob?" hinted
Scrooge.

"Expect the second on the next night at the same hour. The third, upon
the next night when the last stroke of Twelve has ceased to vibrate.
Look to see me no more; and look that, for your own sake, you remember
what has passed between us!"

When it had said these words, the 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 emotion he had undergone, or the
fatigues of the day, or his glimpse of the Invisible World, or the dull
conversation of the Ghost, or the lateness of the hour, much in need of
repose, went straight to bed without undressing, and fell asleep upon
the instant.

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: Jacob Marley, the business partner of Ebenezer Scrooge, died seven years ago. On a dingy Christmas Eve, Scrooge, a cold, unfriendly miser, works in his counting-house while keeping an eye on his clerk, a small man named Bob Cratchit. Scrooge's nephew wishes Scrooge a merry Christmas, but Scrooge answers him with a disdainful "Bah! Humbug!" He believes Christmas is the same as any day of the year, a day in which one must still pay bills. His nephew, Fred, thinks of Christmas as a "kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time." He invites Scrooge to dine with him tomorrow, but his uncle rejects the offer. Two portly gentlemen enter and ask Scrooge for charity for the poor. Scrooge believes that prisons and workhouses are sufficient, and he dismisses them. Outside, it gets colder. A Christmas caroler tries to sing at Scrooge's door, but the old man scares him away. Scrooge closes up the counting-house and tells Cratchit he expects him to work on Christmas day. Cratchit goes home. Scrooge goes through his dreary routine of dinner in a tavern, then goes to his gloomy home. Scrooge sees the dead Marley's face in the knocker of his door until it turns back into a knocker. It gives Scrooge pause, but he resolves not to be frightened. He thinks he sees a locomotive hearse going up the stairs before him. He walks through his rooms to make sure no one is there. After, he warms himself by a small fire. A bell in the room starts to ring, and soon all the other bells in the house do. After some time, the bells stop, and Scrooge hears the cellar-door open. Marley's ghosttransparent and bound in a long chain made of cash-boxes, keys, padlocks, ledgers, deeds, and heavy pursesenters the room. Scrooge claims he does not believe the ghost exists, but soon he admits he does. Marley says his spirit has been wandering since he died as punishment for being consumed with business and not with people while alive. He has come to warn Scrooge and perhaps save him from the same fate. He tells him Three Spirits will come to him over the next three nights. Marley makes incoherent, sorrowful sounds, then leaves. Scrooge looks out the window and sees the sky filled with other chained spirits, some familiar to him, who cry about their inability to connect with others. He goes to sleep.


prompt:
Chapter: 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 inquiry, that it was all a dream, his mind flew
back again, like a strong spring released, to its first position, and
presented the same problem to be worked all through, "Was it a dream or
not?"

Scrooge lay in this state until the chime had gone three quarters more,
when he remembered, on a sudden, that the Ghost had warned him of a
visitation when the bell tolled one. He resolved to lie awake until the
hour was passed; and, considering that he could no more go to sleep than
go to Heaven, this was, perhaps, the wisest resolution in his power.

The quarter was so long, that he was more than once convinced he must
have sunk into a doze unconsciously, and missed the clock. At length it
broke upon his listening ear.

"Ding, dong!"

"A quarter past," said Scrooge, counting.

"Ding, dong!"

"Half past," said Scrooge.

"Ding, dong!"

"A quarter to it," said Scrooge.

"Ding, dong!"

"The hour itself," said Scrooge triumphantly, "and nothing else!"

He spoke before the hour bell sounded, which it now did with a deep,
dull, hollow, melancholy ONE. Light flashed up in the room upon the
instant, and the curtains of his bed were drawn.

The curtains of his bed were drawn aside, I tell you, by a hand. Not the
curtains at his feet, nor the curtains at his back, but those to which
his face was addressed. The curtains of his bed were drawn aside; and
Scrooge, starting up into a half-recumbent attitude, found himself face
to face with the unearthly visitor who drew them: as close to it as I am
now to you, and I am standing in the spirit at your elbow.

It was a strange figure--like a child: yet not so like a child as like
an old man, viewed through some supernatural medium, which gave him the
appearance of having receded from the view, and being diminished to a
child's proportions. Its hair, which hung about its neck and down its
back, was white, as if with age; and yet the face had not a wrinkle in
it, and the tenderest bloom was on the skin. The arms were very long and
muscular; the hands the same, as if its hold were of uncommon strength.
Its legs and feet, most delicately formed, were, like those upper
members, bare. It wore a tunic of the purest white; and round its waist
was bound a lustrous belt, the sheen of which was beautiful. It held a
branch of fresh green holly in its hand: and, in singular contradiction
of that wintry emblem, had its dress trimmed with summer flowers. But
the strangest thing about it was, that from the crown of its head there
sprung a bright clear jet of light, by which all this was visible; and
which was doubtless the occasion of its using, in its duller moments, a
great extinguisher for a cap, which it now held under its arm.

Even this, though, when Scrooge looked at it with increasing steadiness,
was _not_ its strangest quality. For, as its belt sparkled and
glittered, now in one part and now in another, and what was light one
instant at another time was dark, so the figure itself fluctuated in its
distinctness: being now a thing with one arm, now with one leg, now with
twenty legs, now a pair of legs without a head, now a head without a
body: of which dissolving parts no outline would be visible in the dense
gloom wherein they melted away. And, in the very wonder of this, it
would be itself again; distinct and clear as ever.

"Are you the Spirit, sir, whose coming was foretold to me?" asked
Scrooge.

"I am!"

The voice was soft and gentle. Singularly low, as if, instead of being
so close beside him, it were at a distance.

"Who and what are you?" Scrooge demanded.

"I am the Ghost of Christmas Past."

"Long Past?" inquired Scrooge; observant of its dwarfish stature.

"No. Your past."

Perhaps Scrooge could not have told anybody why, if anybody could have
asked him; but he had a special desire to see the Spirit in his cap; and
begged him to be covered.

"What!" exclaimed the Ghost, "would you so soon put out, with worldly
hands, the light I give? Is it not enough that you are one of those
whose passions made this cap, and force me through whole trains of years
to wear it low upon my brow?"

Scrooge reverently disclaimed all intention to offend or any knowledge
of having wilfully "bonneted" the Spirit at any period of his life. He
then made bold to inquire what business brought him there.

"Your welfare!" said the Ghost.

Scrooge expressed himself much obliged, but could not help thinking that
a night of unbroken rest would have been more conducive to that end. The
Spirit must have heard him thinking, for it said immediately:

"Your reclamation, then. Take heed!"

It put out its strong hand as it spoke, and clasped him gently by the
arm.

"Rise! and walk with me!"

It would have been in vain for Scrooge to plead that the weather and the
hour were not adapted to pedestrian purposes; that 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 the
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?" inquired 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."

[Illustration: _"You recollect the way?" inquired the spirit. "Remember
it!" cried Scrooge with fervour; "I could walk it blindfold."_]

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 every one. Why was he rejoiced beyond all bounds to see them? Why
did his cold eye glisten, and his heart leap up as they went past? Why
was he filled with gladness when he heard them give each other Merry
Christmas, as they parted at cross-roads and by-ways for their several
homes? What was merry Christmas to Scrooge? Out upon merry Christmas!
What good had it ever done to him?

"The school is not quite deserted," said the Ghost. "A solitary child,
neglected by his friends, is left there still."

Scrooge said he knew it. And he sobbed.

They left the high-road by a well-remembered lane, and soon approached a
mansion of dull red brick, with a little weather-cock surmounted cupola
on the roof and a bell hanging in it. It was a large house, but one of
broken fortunes: for the spacious offices were little used, their walls
were damp and mossy, their windows broken, and their gates decayed.
Fowls clucked and strutted in the stables; and the coach-houses and
sheds were overrun with grass. Nor was it more retentive of its ancient
state within; for, entering the dreary hall, and glancing through the
open doors of many rooms, they found them poorly furnished, cold, and
vast. There was an earthly 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 water-spout in the
dull yard behind, not a sigh among the leafless boughs of one despondent
poplar, not the idle swinging of an empty 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 Christmas-time when yonder
solitary child was left here all alone, he _did_ come, for the first
time, just like that. Poor boy! And Valentine," said Scrooge, "and his
wild brother, Orson; there they go! And what's his name, who was put
down in his drawers, asleep, at the gate of Damascus; don't you see him?
And the Sultan's Groom turned upside down by the Genii: there he is upon
his head! Serve him right! I'm glad of it. What business had _he_ to be
married to the Princess?"

To hear Scrooge expending all the earnestness of his nature on such
subjects, in a most extraordinary voice between laughing and crying; and
to see his heightened and excited face; would have been a surprise to
his business friends in the City, indeed.

[Illustration: _"Why, it's Ali Baba!" Scrooge exclaimed in ecstasy.
"It's dear old honest Ali Baba."_]

"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 good-bye right willingly;
and, getting into it, drove gaily down the garden sweep; the quick
wheels dashing the hoar frost and snow from off the dark leaves of the
evergreens like spray.

"Always a delicate creature, whom a breath might have withered," said
the Ghost. "But she had a large heart!"

"So she had," cried Scrooge. "You're right. I will not gainsay it,
Spirit. God forbid!"

"She died a woman," said the Ghost, "and had, as I think, children."

"One child," Scrooge returned.

"True," said the Ghost. "Your nephew!"

Scrooge seemed uneasy in his mind; and answered briefly, "Yes."

Although they had but that moment left the school behind them, they were
now in the busy thoroughfares of a city, where shadowy passengers passed
and repassed; where shadowy carts and coaches battled for the way, and
all the strife and tumult of a real city were. It was made plain enough,
by the dressing of the shops, that here, too, it was Christmas-time
again; but it was evening, and the streets were lighted up.

The Ghost stopped at a certain warehouse door, and asked Scrooge if he
knew it.

"Know it!" said Scrooge. "Was I apprenticed here?"

They went in. At sight of an old gentleman in a Welsh wig, sitting
behind such a high desk, that if he had been two inches taller, he must
have knocked his head against the ceiling, Scrooge cried in great
excitement:

"Why, it's old Fezziwig! Bless his heart, it's Fezziwig alive again!"

Old Fezziwig laid down his pen, and looked up at the clock, which
pointed to the hour of seven. He rubbed his hands; adjusted his
capacious waistcoat; laughed all over himself, from his shoes to his
organ of benevolence; and called out, in a comfortable, oily, rich, fat,
jovial voice:

"Yo ho, there! Ebenezer! Dick!"

Scrooge's former self, now grown a young man, came briskly in,
accompanied by his fellow-'prentice.

"Dick Wilkins, to be sure!" said Scrooge to the Ghost. "Bless me, yes.
There he is. He was very much attached to me, was Dick. Poor Dick! Dear,
dear!"

"Yo ho, my boys!" said Fezziwig. "No more work to-night. Christmas-eve,
Dick. Christmas, Ebenezer! Let's have the shutters up," cried old
Fezziwig with a sharp clap of his hands, "before a man can say Jack
Robinson!"

You wouldn't believe how those two fellows went at it! They charged into
the street with the shutters--one, two, three--had 'em up in their
places--four, five, six--barred 'em and pinned 'em--seven, eight,
nine--and came back before you could have got to twelve, panting like
race-horses.

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

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

In came a fiddler with a music-book, and went up to the lofty desk, and
made an orchestra of it, and tuned like fifty 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, any how 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
mince-pies, and plenty of beer. But the great effect of the evening came
after the Roast and Boiled, when the fiddler (an artful dog, mind! The
sort of man who knew his business better than you or I could have told
it him!) struck up "Sir Roger de Coverley." Then old Fezziwig stood out
to dance with Mrs. Fezziwig. Top couple, too; with a good stiff piece of
work cut out for them; three or four and twenty pair of partners; people
who were not to be trifled with; people who _would_ dance, and had no
notion of walking.

But if they had been twice as many--ah! four times--old Fezziwig would
have been a match for them, and so would Mrs. Fezziwig. As to _her_, she
was worthy to be his partner in every sense of the term. If that's not
high praise, tell me higher, and I'll use it. A positive light appeared
to issue from Fezziwig's calves. They shone in every part of the dance
like moons. You couldn't have predicted, at any given time, what would
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, cork-screw, thread-the-needle, and back again to your
place; Fezziwig "cut"--cut so deftly, that he appeared to wink with his
legs, and came 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 any one whom he could see, but
it produced an immediate effect. For again Scrooge saw himself. He was
older now; a man in the prime of life. His face had not the harsh and
rigid lines of later years; but it had begun to wear the signs of care
and avarice. There was an eager, greedy, restless motion in the eye,
which showed the passion that had taken root, and where the shadow of
the growing tree would fall.

He was not alone, but sat by the side of a fair young girl in a mourning
dress: in whose eyes there were tears, which sparkled in the light that
shone out of the Ghost of Christmas Past.

"It matters little," she said softly. "To you, very little. Another idol
has displaced me; and, if it can cheer and comfort you in time to come
as I would have tried to do, I have no just cause to grieve."

"What Idol has displaced you?" he rejoined.

"A golden one."

"This is the even-handed dealing of the world!" he said. "There is
nothing on which it is so hard as poverty; and there is nothing it
professes to condemn with such severity as the pursuit of wealth!"

"You fear the world too much," she answered gently. "All your other
hopes have merged into the hope of being beyond the chance of its sordid
reproach. I have seen your nobler aspirations fall off one by one, until
the master passion, Gain, engrosses you. Have I not?"

"What then?" he retorted. "Even if I have grown so much wiser, what
then? I am not changed towards you."

She shook her head.

"Am I?"

"Our contract is an old one. It was made when we were both poor, and
content to be so, until, in good season, we could improve our worldly
fortune by our patient industry. You _are_ changed. When it was made you
were another man."

"I was a boy," he said impatiently.

"Your own feeling tells you that you were not what you are," she
returned. "I am. That which promised happiness when we were one in heart
is fraught with misery now that we are two. How often and how keenly I
have thought of this I will not say. It is enough that I _have_ thought
of it, and can release you."

"Have I ever sought release?"

"In words. No. Never."

"In what, then?"

"In a changed nature; in an altered spirit; in another atmosphere of
life; another Hope as its great end. In everything that made my love of
any worth or value in your sight. If this had 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 to-day, to-morrow,
yesterday, can even I believe that you would choose a dowerless
girl--you who, in your very confidence with her, weigh everything by
Gain: or, choosing her, if for a moment you were false enough to your
one guiding principle to do so, do I not know that your repentance and
regret would surely follow? I do; and I release you. With a full heart,
for the love of him you once were."

He was about to speak; but, with her head turned from him, she resumed.

"You may--the memory of what is past half makes me hope you will--have
pain in this. A very, very brief time, and you will dismiss the
recollection of it gladly, as an unprofitable dream, from which it
happened well that you awoke. May you be happy in the life you have
chosen!"

She left him, and they parted.

"Spirit!" said Scrooge, "show me no more! Conduct me home. Why do you
delight to torture me?"

"One shadow more!" exclaimed the Ghost.

"No more!" cried Scrooge. "No more! I don't wish to see it. Show me no
more!"

But the relentless Ghost pinioned him in both his arms, and forced him
to observe what happened next.

They were in another scene and place; a room, not very large or
handsome, but full of comfort. Near to the winter fire sat a beautiful
young girl, so like that last that Scrooge believed it was the same,
until he saw _her_, now a comely matron, sitting opposite her daughter.
The noise in this room was perfectly tumultuous, for there were more
children there than Scrooge in his agitated state of mind could count;
and, unlike the celebrated herd in the poem, 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 in 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 the
neck, pummel his back, and kick his legs in irrepressible affection! The
shouts of wonder and delight with which the development of every package
was received! 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 spring-time 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.

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: Scrooge wakes up, and the bell of a neighborhood church rings from six until twelve, then stops. He wonders if he slept through the day and into another night. He looks out the window to an empty scene. He worries over Marley's ghost and wonders if it was a dream. He remembers the ghost's warning of a visit at one at night, and waits. The hour arrives, a flash of light comes in the room, his bed-curtains are drawn aside, and the figure of a small old man appears. The old man introduces himself as the Ghost of Christmas Past. He says he is there for Scrooge's "welfare" and "reclamation," then puts Scrooge's hand on his heart. They instantly reappear on a wintry country road around Scrooge's childhood home. Scrooge is deeply affected by the memory, and he walks with the Ghost to the town. They see schoolboys, and the Ghost explains that the people they see are shadows of their former selves, and are unaware of him and Scrooge. The boys run out of school and wish merry Christmas to each other. The Ghost reminds Scrooge that one boy, ignored by the others, remains in school alone, and Scrooge weeps. They walk into the dilapidated schoolhouse, where they see the young Scrooge reading alone by a small fire. The older Scrooge cries again, and says he wishes he had given something to the boy caroling at his door last night. The Ghost says they will see another Christmas, and the young Scrooge grows larger as the room becomes dirtier. Scrooge's younger sister, Fan, enters the room and joyfully announces she is bringing him home for Christmas, as their father is much kinder than he used to be. After they eat and drink with the intimidating schoolmaster, they go off. The Ghost reminds Scrooge that his sister died after having had Scrooge's nephew. The Ghost and Scrooge travel to the warehouse of Scrooge's apprenticeship. Fezziwig, an old, jolly man, gives Scrooge and another worker the night off for Christmas Eve. Scrooge and his friend quickly clean up and build a cozy fire. Several more people come in and a party ensues. Scrooge enjoys himself immensely until the party ends, when he remembers he is merely revisiting the scene with the Ghost. Scrooge tells the Ghost that Fezziwig's gift of happiness to his friends far outweighs the money he spent on the party. He mentions he would like to say something to his clerk. Scrooge now sees an older version of himself in the prime of life. His face shows the first signs of greed as he sits by a crying girl, Belle. She breaks off their romance, reproaching him for replacing his love for her with the pursuit of money. The scene changes and Belle is now the mother of a raucous, affectionate brood of children. Her husband comes home and tells her he saw Scrooge sitting alone in his office. Scrooge begs the Ghost to take him back to his own time, and takes it upon himself to pull the Ghost's cap over its brightly-lit head. The light cannot be obscured, however, and Scrooge eventually falls into his own bed out of exhaustion.