A Christmas Carol: Part Ii - Scrooged Again
A CHRISTMAS Carol by Charles Dickens
Stave ii: The First of the 3 Spirits
hen Scrooge awoke, it was then 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 iv quarters. So he listened for the 60 minutes.To his great astonishment the heavy bell went on from half-dozen to vii, and from seven to viii, and regularly up to twelve; then stopped. Twelve. It was past ii 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 nigh preposterous clock. Its rapid little pulse shell twelve: and stopped.
"Why, it isn't possible," said Scrooge, "that I can have slept through a whole mean solar day and far into some other night. It isn't possible that annihilation has happened to the dominicus, and this is twelve at noon."
The idea existence an alarming i, he scrambled out of bed, and groped his mode 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 run across very trivial so. All he could brand out was, that it was still very foggy and extremely common cold, and that there was no noise of people running to and fro, and making a great stir, every bit in that location unquestionably would have been if night had browbeaten off bright mean solar day, and taken possession of the world. This was a great relief, considering "three days later on sight of this First of Exchange pay to Mr. Ebenezer Scrooge or his club," and so forth, would take become a mere Us' security if there were no days to count past.
Scrooge went to bed again, and thought, and thought, and thought it over and over and over, and could make nothing of information technology. The more he idea, the more perplexed he was; and the more he endeavored not to think, the more he thought. Marley's Ghost bothered him exceedingly. Every time he resolved within himself, afterwards mature inquiry, that it was all a dream, his mind flew dorsum again, like a strong jump released, to its get-go position, and presented the same problem to exist worked all through, "Was it a dream or not?"
Scrooge lay in this state until the chimes had gone three quarters more than, when he remembered, on a sudden, that the Ghost had warned him of a visitation when the bong tolled one. He resolved to lie awake until the hour was past; and, considering that he could no more get to sleep than get to Heaven, this was perhaps the wisest resolution in his power.
The quarter was so long, that he was more than than one time convinced he must accept 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 hr itself," said Scrooge, triumphantly,
"and nothing else!"
He spoke before the hour bell sounded, which it now did with a deep, boring, hollow, melancholy Ane. Light flashed up in the room upon the instant, and the curtains of his bed were drawn.
The curtains of his bed were fatigued aside, I tell y'all, by a manus. Not the curtains at his feet, nor the curtains at his back, only those to which his face was addressed. The curtains of his bed were drawn aside; and Scrooge, starting up into a half-recumbent attitude, establish himself face to face up with the unearthly company who drew them: equally close to it as I am at present to y'all, and I am standing in the spirit at your elbow.
It was a strange figure -- like a child: even so not and so like a child equally 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 kid'due south proportions. Its hair, which hung about its neck and downwardly its dorsum, was white equally if with age; and yet the face up had not a wrinkle in it, and the tenderest bloom was on the skin. The arms were very long and muscular; the easily the aforementioned, as if its hold were of uncommon strength. Its legs and feet, nigh delicately formed, were, like those upper members, bare. It wore a tunic of the purest white, and round its waist was jump a lustrous belt, the sheen of which was cute. Information technology held a co-operative of fresh green holly in its paw; and, in singular contradiction of that wintry emblem, had its dress trimmed with summer flowers. Merely the strangest affair about it was, that from the crown of its head there sprung a vivid 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 at present held under its arm.
Fifty-fifty this, though, when Scrooge looked at it with increasing steadiness, was not its strangest quality. For as its belt sparkled and glittered now in 1 part and now in another, and what was lite i instant, at another time was dark, then the figure itself fluctuated in its distinctness: being now a thing with i arm, now with 1 leg, now with twenty legs, at present a pair of legs without a head, at present a head without a body: of which dissolving parts, no outline would exist visible in the dense gloom wherein they melted away. And in the very wonder of this, it would exist itself again; singled-out 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, equally if instead of being and then shut abreast him, information technology were at a distance.
"Who, and what are yous?" Scrooge demanded.
"I am the Ghost of Christmas Past."
"Long By?" inquired Scrooge: observant of its dwarfish stature.
"No. Your past."
Peradventure, Scrooge could not accept told anybody why, if everyone could have asked him; merely he had a special desire to see the Spirit in his cap; and begged him to exist covered.
"What!" exclaimed the Ghost, "Would you so soon put out, with worldly easily, the light I give? Is it not enough that you are one of those whose passions made this cap, and forcefulness me through whole trains of years to wear it low upon my forehead!"
Scrooge reverently disclaimed all intention to offend or any knowledge of having willfully bonneted the Spirit at any period of his life. He and so 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 residue would have been more conducive to that end. The Spirit must take heard him thinking, for it said immediately:
"Your reclamation, then. Have mind."
It put out its potent hand every bit it spoke, and clasped him gently past the arm.
"Rising. And walk with me."
Information technology would take been in vain for Scrooge to plead that the weather and the hour were non adapted to pedestrian purposes; that bed was warm, and the thermometer a long manner 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 fourth dimension. The grasp, though gentle every bit a adult female's hand, was non to be resisted. He rose: merely finding that the Spirit fabricated towards the window, clasped his robe in supplication.
"I am mortal," Scrooge remonstrated, "and liable to fall."
"Carry but a touch of my hand at that place," said the Spirit, laying information technology upon his eye, "and you shall exist upheld in more than this."
Every bit the words were spoken, they passed through the wall, and stood upon an open state road, with fields on either hand. The city had entirely vanished. Not a vestige of it was to exist seen. The darkness and the mist had vanished with information technology, for it was a articulate, common cold, winter day, with snow upon the ground.
"Good Heaven!" said Scrooge, clasping his hands together, equally he looked about him. "I was bred in this place. I was a male child here."
The Spirit gazed upon him mildly. Its gentle impact, though it had been calorie-free and instantaneous, appeared still present to the old man'southward sense of feeling. He was conscious of a thousand odours floating in the air, each one connected with a g 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 atomic number 82 him where he would.
"You recollect the fashion?" inquired the Spirit.
"Call back it!" cried Scrooge with fervour -- "I could walk it blindfold."
"Foreign to have forgotten information technology for then many years," observed the Ghost. "Let united states of america go on."
They walked along the road, Scrooge recognising every gate, and post, and tree; until a piddling market-town appeared in the distance, with its span, 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 land gigs and carts, driven past farmers. All these boys were in bully 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 merely shadows of the things that have been," said the Ghost. "They have no consciousness of u.s.a.."
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 common cold center coruscate, and his center leap upward as they went by? Why was he filled with gladness when he heard them requite each other Merry Christmas, as they parted at cross-roads and-bye means, for their several homes? What was merry Christmas to Scrooge? Out upon merry Christmas! What adept had information technology always done to him?
"The school is not quite deserted," said the Ghost. "A lonely kid, neglected past his friends, is left there notwithstanding."
Scrooge said he knew it. And he sobbed.
They left the high-road, by a well-remembered lane, and soon approached a mansion of tiresome red brick, with a little weathercock-surmounted cupola, on the roof, and a bong hanging in it. It was a large business firm, but ane of broken fortunes; for the spacious offices were picayune used, their walls were damp and mossy, their windows cleaved, and their gates rust-covered. Fowls clucked and strutted in the stables; and the motorbus-houses and sheds were over-run with grass. Nor was information technology 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 likewise much getting up by candle-light, and not likewise much to swallow.
Not a latent repeat in the house, not a squeak and scuffle from the mice behind the paneling, non a drip from the half-thawed water-spout in the boring yard backside, non a sigh among the leafless boughs of one despondent poplar, not the idle swinging of an empty store-house door, no, not a clicking in the fire, just barbarous upon the heart of Scrooge with a 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 singled-out to look at: stood exterior the window, with an ax stuck in his belt, and leading by the bridle an ass laden with forest.
"Why, it'due south Ali Baba!" Scrooge exclaimed in ecstasy. "It's honey old honest Ali Baba. Yes, yes, I know. One Christmas fourth dimension, when yonder solitary kid 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 get. And what's his name, who was put downwardly in his drawers, asleep, at the Gate of Damascus; don't you run across him? And the Sultan's Groom turned upside down by the Genii; there he is upon his head. Serve him right. I'thou glad of information technology. 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; in that location he is! Poor Robin Crusoe, he called him, when he came home over again afterward sailing round the island. "Poor Robin Crusoe, where have y'all been, Robin Crusoe?" The man idea he was dreaming, simply he wasn't. Information technology was the Parrot, yous know. There goes Friday, running for his life to the lilliputian creek! Halloa! Hoop! Hallo!"
Then, with a rapidity of transition very foreign to his usual grapheme, he said, in pity for his former self, "Poor boy!" and cried once more.
"I wish," Scrooge muttered, putting his hand in his pocket, and looking almost him, subsequently drying his optics with his gage: "but it's too late now."
"What is the matter?" asked the Spirit.
"Cypher," said Scrooge. "Nothing. There was a boy singing a Christmas Ballad at my door final nighttime. I should similar to accept given him something: that's all."
The Ghost smiled thoughtfully, and waved its hand: maxim as it did so, "Allow us see another Christmas!"
Scrooge's former self grew larger at the words, and the room became a fiddling 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; only how all this was brought about, Scrooge knew no more than y'all exercise. He only knew that it was quite right; that everything had happened so; that there he was, lone over again, when all the other boys had gone home for the jolly holidays.
He was not reading at present, only walking up and downwards despairingly. Scrooge looked at the Ghost, and with a mournful shaking of his head, glanced anxiously towards the door.
It opened; and a petty daughter, much younger than the male child, came darting in, and putting her arms about his neck, and ofttimes kissing him, addressed him as her "Beloved, honey brother."
"I take come to bring you dwelling house, honey brother!" said the kid, clapping her tiny hands, and bending down to laugh. "To bring you home, domicile, home!"
"Dwelling house, fiddling Fan?" returned the male child.
"Yes!" said the child, brimful of glee. "Habitation, for expert and all. Home, for e'er and always. Father is and then much kinder than he used to be, that home's like Heaven! He spoke so gently to me i dear night when I was going to bed, that I was non agape to ask him once again if you might come up home; and he said Aye, you should; and sent me in a coach to bring you. And you're to be a homo!" said the child, opening her eyes, "and are never to come dorsum here; but first, we're to be together all the Christmas long, and accept the merriest time in all the earth."
"You are quite a woman, fiddling Fan!"exclaimed the boy.
She clapped her hands and laughed, and tried to touch his head; just existence likewise little, laughed once again, and stood on tiptoe to embrace him. Then she began to drag him, in her childish eagerness, towards the door; and he, zilch loth 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 Principal 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 former well of a shivering all-time-parlour that always was seen, where the maps upon the wall, and the angelic and terrestrial globes in the windows, were waxy with cold. Hither he produced a decanter of curiously light wine, and a cake of curiously heavy cake, and administered installments of those dainties to the young people: at the same time, sending out a meagre retainer 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 skillful-bye right willingly; and getting into it, drove gaily downwardly the garden-sweep: the quick wheels dashing the hoar-frost and snow from off the night leaves of the evergreens like spray.
"E'er a frail creature, whom a breath might accept withered," said the Ghost. "But she had a big heart!"
"So she had," cried Scrooge. "You're right. I'll non combat it, Spirit. God prevent!"
"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 at present in the busy thoroughfares of a city, where shadowy passengers passed and repassed; where shadowy carts and coaches battle for the mode, and all the strife and tumult of a real city were. It was fabricated plain enough, past the dressing of the shops, that here too it was Christmas time again; just it was evening, and the streets were lighted up.
The Ghost stopped at a sure warehouse door, and asked Scrooge if he knew it.
"Know information technology!" 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-bound, that if he had been ii inches taller he must have knocked his head against the ceiling, Scrooge cried in peachy excitement:
"Why, information technology's one-time Fezziwig! Bless his heart; it's Fezziwig alive once more!"
Former Fezziwig laid down his pen, and looked up at the clock, which pointed to the 60 minutes of seven. He rubbed his hands; adjusted his capacious waistcoat; laughed all over himself, from his shows to his organ of benignancy; and called out in a comfortable, oily, rich, fatty, jovial vocalism:
"Yo ho, there! Ebenezer! Dick!"
Scrooge'southward old self, at present grown a immature man, came briskly in, accompanied past his young man-prentice.
"Dick Wilkins, to be sure," said Scrooge to the Ghost. "Anoint 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'southward have the shutters upwards," cried old Fezziwig, with a sharp clap of his hands, "earlier a human being tin can say Jack Robinson."
You wouldn't believe how those two fellows went at it. They charged into the street with the shutters -- ane, ii, iii -- had them up in their places -- four, five, six -- barred them and pinned then -- seven, viii, ix -- and came dorsum before yous could have got to twelve, panting similar race-horses.
"Hilli-ho!" cried former Fezziwig, skipping downwards from the high desk, with wonderful agility. "Clear away, my lads, and let's have lots of room hither. Hilli-ho, Dick! Chirrup, Ebenezer."
Clear away! At that place was zilch they wouldn't have cleared away, or couldn't take cleared away, with old Fezziwig looking on. It was done in a infinitesimal. Every movable was packed off, equally if information technology were dismissed from public life for evermore; the floor was swept and watered, the lamps were trimmed, fuel was heaped upon the burn; and the warehouse was equally snug, and warm, and dry, and bright a ball-room, as you would desire to see upon a wintertime's night.
In came a fiddler with a music-volume, and went up to the lofty desk, and fabricated an orchestra of it, and tuned like fifty stomach-aches. In came Mrs Fezziwig, 1 vast substantial smile. In came the three Miss Fezziwigs, effulgent and lovable. In came the six young followers whose hearts they broke. In came all the immature men and women employed in the business. In came the housemaid, with her cousin, the baker. In came the cook, with her brother'due south particular friend, the milkman. In came the boy from over the way, who was suspected of non having lath plenty from his main; trying to hide himself backside the girl from adjacent door but one, who was proved to take had her ears pulled past 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 everyhow. Away they all went, twenty couple at once; easily half round and dorsum again the other way; down the centre and upward again; round and circular in various stages of affectionate grouping; old top couple e'er turning up in the wrong place; new top couple starting off once again, equally before long as they got there; all top couples at terminal, and not a bottom one to help them. When this consequence was brought near, 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, peculiarly provided for that purpose. But scorning rest, upon his reappearance, he instantly began once more, though there were no dancers notwithstanding, equally if the other fiddler had been carried home, exhausted, on a shutter, and he were a bran-new homo resolved to shell him out of sight, or perish.
There were more dances, and in that location were forfeits, and more dances, and there was cake, and there was negus, and there was a not bad piece of Cold Roast, and in that location was a corking piece of Cold Boiled, and there were mince-pies, and plenty of beer. But the great issue of the evening came later the Roast and Boiled, when the fiddler (an artful dog, mind! The sort of man who knew his business meliorate than you or I could take told information technology him!) struck upwards "Sir Roger de Coverley." So old Fezziwig stood out to dance with Mrs Fezziwig. Meridian couple too; with a good strong piece of piece of work cutting 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 equally many -- ah, four times -- quondam Fezziwig would have been a lucifer for them, and and then would Mrs Fezziwig. Equally to her, she was worthy to exist his partner in every sense of the term. If that's not high praise, tell me higher, and I'll use it. A positive lite appeared to issue from Fezziwig'south calves. They shone in every part of the trip the light fantastic similar moons. You couldn't have predicted, at any given time, what would have become of them adjacent. And when old Fezziwig and Mrs Fezziwig had gone all through the dance; accelerate and retire, both hands to your partner, bow and curtsey, corkscrew, thread-the-needle, and back again to your identify; Fezziwig cutting -- cut so deftly, that he appeared to flash with his legs, and came upon his anxiety again without a stagger.
When the clock struck 11, this domestic brawl broke up. Mr and Mrs Fezziwig took their stations, one on either side of the door, and shaking hands with every person individually as he or she went out, wished him or her a Merry Christmas. When everybody had retired but the ii 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 human being 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. Information technology was non until now, when the vivid faces of his old self and Dick were turned from them, that he remembered the Ghost, and became conscious that it was looking total upon him, while the light upon its head burnt very clear.
"A pocket-size matter," said the Ghost, "to brand these lightheaded folks and so full of gratitude."
"Pocket-size!" echoed Scrooge.
The Spirit signed to him to heed to the two apprentices, who were pouring out their hearts in praise of Fezziwig: and when he had done then, said,
"Why! Is it not! He has spent but a few pounds of your mortal coin: 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 onetime, not his latter, cocky. "It isn't that, Spirit. He has the power to render the states happy or unhappy; to brand our service light or crushing; a pleasure or a toil. Say that his power lies in words and looks; in things then slight and insignificant that it is impossible to add together and count them upwardly: what then? The happiness he gives, is quite as groovy every bit if it price a fortune."
He felt the Spirit's glance, and stopped.
"What is the affair?" asked the Ghost.
"Goose egg in particular," said Scrooge.
"Something, I think?" the Ghost insisted.
"No," said Scrooge, "No. I should like to exist able to say a discussion or two to my clerk simply now! That's all."
His former cocky turned down the lamps as he gave utterance to the wish; and Scrooge and the Ghost again stood adjacent in the open air.
"My time grows brusque," observed the Spirit. "Quick!"
This was not addressed to Scrooge, or to whatsoever one whom he could see, but it produced an firsthand outcome. For again Scrooge saw himself. He was older now; a man in the prime number of life. His confront had not the harsh and rigid lines of afterward years; but information technology 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 lonely, but sabbatum 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 By.
"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 crusade to grieve."
"What Idol has displaced you?" he rejoined.
"A gilt one."
"This is the even-handed dealing of the earth!" he said. "There is nothing on which it is and so hard as poverty; and at that place is nada it professes to condemn with such severity as the pursuit of wealth!"
"You lot fear the globe too much," she answered, gently. "All your other hopes have merged into the hope of being across the hazard of its sordid reproach. I take seen your nobler aspirations fall off one by one, until the chief-passion, Gain, engrosses you. Accept I not?"
"What so?" he retorted. "Fifty-fifty if I have grown then much wiser, what and so? 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 flavour, we could improve our worldly fortune by our patient manufacture. You are changed. When it was made, you lot were some other human being."
"I was a boy," he said impatiently.
"Your own feeling tells you that you were non what you lot are," she returned. "I am. That which promised happiness when nosotros were one in eye, is fraught with misery at present that we are two. How ofttimes and how keenly I have thought of this, I will not say. Information technology is enough that I accept idea of it, and can release yous."
"Have I ever sought release?"
"In words? No. Never."
"In what, and so?"
"In a changed nature; in an altered spirit; in another atmosphere of life; some other Hope every bit its great terminate. In everything that made my love of any worth or value in your sight. If this had never been between us," said the daughter, looking mildly, merely with steadiness, upon him; "tell me, would you seek me out and attempt 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 recollect not?"
"I would gladly think otherwise if I could," she answered, "Heaven knows. When I accept learned a Truth like this, I know how strong and irresistible information technology must be. But if you were free to-solar 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 Proceeds: or, choosing her, if for a moment you were faux enough to your one guiding principle to do and then, do I non 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 lot in one case were."
He was virtually to speak; just with her head turned from him, she resumed.
"You may -- the memory of what is past half makes me promise you will -- have pain in this. A very, very cursory time, and you volition dismiss the recollection of it, gladly, every bit an unprofitable dream, from which information technology happened well that you awoke. May y'all be happy in the life you have chosen."
She left him, and they parted.
"Spirit!" said Scrooge, "show me no more! Deport me home. Why do you delight to torture me?"
"1 shadow more!" exclaimed the Ghost.
"No more!" cried Scrooge! "No more, I don't wish to see information technology! Evidence me no more!"
Just the relentless Ghost pinioned him in both his artillery, and forced him to observe what happened adjacent.
They were in another scene and place; a room, not very large or handsome, merely full of comfort. Nearly to the winter fire sat a cute young girl, and so like that terminal 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 than children there, than Scrooge in his agitated state of listen could count; and, unlike the celebrated herd in the poem, they were not forty children conducting themselves similar one, but every kid was conducting itself like forty. The consequences were uproarious beyond belief; merely no one seemed to care; on the opposite, the mother and daughter laughed heartily, and enjoyed it very much; and the latter, shortly beginning to mingle in the sports, got pillaged by the young brigands most ruthlessly. What would I not have given to one of them. Though I never could accept been so rude, no, no! I wouldn't for the wealth of all the world have crushed that braided hair, and torn information technology downwards; and for the precious piddling shoe, I wouldn't have plucked it off, God anoint my soul! to save my life. As to measuring her waist in sport, as they did, bold young brood, I couldn't have done information technology; I should have expected my arm to take grown round it for a punishment, and never come straight again. And yet I should have dearly liked, I own, to accept touched her lips; to have questioned her, that she might have opened them; to accept looked upon the lashes of her downcast eyes, and never raised a blush; to have permit loose waves of hair, an inch of which would be a keepsake beyond cost: in short, I should accept liked, I do confess, to take 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 clothes was borne towards it the centre of a flushed and bouncy group, just in fourth dimension to greet the father, who came home attended past a man laden with Christmas toys and presents. And then the shouting and the struggling, and the onslaught that was fabricated on the defenceless porter. The scaling him with chairs for ladders to swoop into his pockets, despoil him of brown-paper parcels, hold on tight past his cravat, hug him round his neck, pommel 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 simulated warning. 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 acme 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 female parent at his own fireside; and when he idea that such another animate being, quite every bit graceful and as full of promise, might have chosen him father, and been a jump-time in the haggard winter of his life, his sight grew very dim indeed.
"Belle," said the husband, turning to his wife with a grin, "I saw an old friend of yours this afternoon."
"Who was it?"
"Gauge!"
"How tin can I? Tut, don't I know," she added in the same breath, laughing every bit he laughed. "Mr. Scrooge."
"Mr. Scrooge it was. I passed his function window; and equally 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 at that place he sabbatum alone. Quite lonely in the earth, I do believe."
"Spirit!" said Scrooge in a cleaved 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, practise not blame me!"
"Remove me!" Scrooge exclaimed, "I cannot conduct 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 information technology had shown him, wrestled with it.
"Leave me! Take me dorsum. 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 office was undisturbed past whatsoever endeavour 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 caput.
The Spirit dropped beneath information technology, so that the extinguisher covered its whole form; only though Scrooge pressed information technology down with all his force, he could not hibernate the light, which streamed from under information technology, 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, earlier he sank into a heavy sleep.
A Christmas Carol: Part Ii - Scrooged Again
Source: http://www.stormfax.com/2dickens.htm
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