title: a-christmas-carol.txt.
 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.

[Illustration: ON THE WINGS OF THE WIND]

'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.

[Illustration]

'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