title: a-christmas-carol.txt.

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 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.

[Illustration: _Laden with Christmas toys and presents_]

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.

[Illustration]


STAVE THREE


[Illustration]




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 look-out all round the
bed. For he wished to challenge the Spirit on the moment of its
appearance, and did not wish to be taken by surprise and made nervous.

Gentlemen of the free-and-easy sort, who plume themselves on being
acquainted with a move or two, and being usually equal to the time of
day, express the wide range of their capacity for adventure by observing
that they are good for anything from pitch-and-toss to manslaughter;
between which opposite extremes, no doubt, there lies a tolerably wide
and comprehensive range of subjects. Without venturing for Scrooge quite
as hardily as this, I don't mind calling on you to believe that he was
ready for a good broad field of strange appearances, and that nothing
between a baby and 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