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- [00:00]
A
Please enjoy this 3 hour version of Charles Dickens A Christmas Carol from the Merry Beggars. To listen to the 25 episode version, go to adventwithscrooge.com.
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The Merry Beggars at relevant radio present. Oh come, let us start mourning. O come, let us start. Charles Dickens a Christmas Carol episode one. Mr. Dickens.
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For your Advent enjoyment, you.
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Our radio listeners, are invited to travel back in time with us to the year 1843.
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We are in London now, in the.
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Midst of Victorian England.
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A
Can you feel the snow falling gently? We must be in the dead of winter and.
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B
Wait, what's that?
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A
Oh, yes, the carolers sing their tunes as they go from stoop to stoop. I do believe it is Christmas Eve.
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B
There go the citizens flitting from shop to shop with last minute present buying, finding small trinkets for the guest just remembered or to balance the scales of the children's gifts. Tonight is a wonderful night. The children singing, the cold, crisp air, the goodwill and friendliness of all the faces we see. It makes one glad to be alive. Grateful to be alive. Hello, my fine fellow. Excuse me. Yes, you. But what's this? A man is coming towards us. I think he's speaking to you.
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Yes, you listening to this program?
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B
He's. He's speaking to you. Wait up, please. Yes, you. Hold up. Thank you, thank you. Do you know where I might find the reading tonight? You know, the one. Single something about. What was it?
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Oh. Oh, yes.
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Having a happy Christmas. Oh, don't tell me you don't know either. Hold it one moment. Let's see if this boy knows the answer. You, boy. Yes, you. Come here, Misa.
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Yes, you.
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Come along here. Do you know where the performance is bound to be? Do you mean the Reading of Christmas? Yes, that's the one.
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Where is it?
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In the Victoria Theatre, sir, where they hold the operas. I'm on my way there now. Care to accompany me? Certainly, my boy, certainly. Say now, you, dear listener, why don't you come with this boy and me to the reading? I know you'll enjoy it.
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He's speaking to you.
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Yes, you, radio listener.
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Listening to this program.
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B
Go on, go on with him and.
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Have a lovely evening out.
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You deserve it. Besides, we don't get to visit 1843 too often. So make the most of it. Get along, listener.
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Go on with them. Enjoy yourself. There you go.
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B
You're coming. Oh, lovely. Here, hold up there, young boy. We've got a companion.
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Now hold up, but hurry along, you.
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B
Two, we're already late. They said he was due to begin at the hour and it's already five past. We're hurrying, we're hurrying. Hold your horses.
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A
Come now, dear listener, you can't afford.
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To miss this performance. Now then, here we go. It's going to be wonderful, isn't it? I've heard marvelous things about this story.
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A
Quite a corker of a tale.
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B
How far to the Royal Victoria now? Just up this road and around the curve, sir. Not two minutes walk. I don't believe. Good, good, good. Ah, yes, I see the crowd beginning to form. Quite a lot of people out tonight. Do you imagine that? This is where the whole town is headed, is it not? Say, boy, do you know who is reading tonight? Beg pardon, sir?
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Who is doing the performance tonight?
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Who is reading? Why, It's Dickens himself. Mr. Charles Dickens. Didn't you read the papers? The author himself. Come on, then. No time to lose. Mustn't be late. Up we go. Tonight is a rare night, an extraordinary night.
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Tonight, Charles Dickens will, for the first.
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Time, perform a reading of A Christmas Carol for an eager London audience.
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We've arrived just in time. We haven't missed it. 1843 on Christmas Eve. What luck.
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Come on, you two. Don't let your Christmas pudding weigh you down. Hurry up, hurry up. Can't be late. I'm coming, I'm coming. Here we are. Come on.
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Come on. But what a crowd.
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B
We'll never get through that line in time. And there won't be any seats left. Don't lose hope, boy. We mustn't miss this for the world. Dickens reading his own work. Can you imagine? Well, Louisa Alcott never did any such thing. Nor Tennyson. And the Americans could hardly get Poe to sign an autograph for Grouch. We have to get in. We simply have to get inside. But how? Wait a second. I know a way. Come on, you two. Come on. This way.
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Around the side.
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Come on. There's a side door around this way. Were you able to squeeze through this door and get inside? Coming, coming. Where's this door, then? Right here. Hold on.
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Here we go.
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Just have to pry this side door open. Lend a hand. There we are. Come in, you two. Into the theatre.
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And here, three seats.
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B
We made it just in time. Here, you sit there. And you, right there. They haven't started the reading yet. Dickens hasn't started the performance. Lucky us. But. Shh. Here comes someone on stage. Is that Charles Dickens? That's the presenter, man. He worked at a theatre. Attention. Attention. Ladies and gentlemen.
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Your attention, please.
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B
Ladies and gentlemen, it is my esteemed pleasure to bring you an author of great renown. We have all read his wonderful Pickwick Papers a few years ago. And, of course, we have been enthralled by his Oliver Twist. And most recently, his telling of Nicholas Nickleby. And, of course, we turn to his most recent publication in its fine red cover with elegant gold trimming. A Christmas Carol. That's the one. That's the one we're here for. Shh. I know now we are most privileged in hearing him speak, nay, perform tonight for the first time, a Christmas Carol. His tale of spirits and sin, of grace and redemption, will leave none of our consciences unexamined, unquestioned nor undisturbed. For in good Ebenezer Scrooge's life, there lie the pictures and shadows of our own. Stay alert, good men and fair women.
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Stay alert to.
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To the movement of the spirit in these spirits. Stay alert lest we wake one day and find ourselves called forth to judgment. But for now, for our Advent entertainment, our evening delight, our eternal edification, here is Mr. Charles John Huffam.
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Dickens.
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I do hope his voice will carry. I didn't bring my ear trumpet. If it doesn't, I'll just shout everything Dickens says into your ears, okay? Oh, that would be lovely.
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A
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Please, sit down. Sit down. Thank you. It is a greater pleasure for me to read for you than for you to listen to me read. As pleasurable as I hope that may well be, I have endeavoured in this ghostly little book to raise the ghost of an idea which shall not put you out of humour with yourselves, with each other, with the season, or, I hope, with me. May it haunt your houses pleasantly and no one wish to lay it. And now, to begin. Marley was dead. To begin with. The register of his burial was signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker and the chief mourner. Scrooge signed it, and Scrooge's name was good upon change, for anything he chose to put his hand to. Old Marley was as dead as a doornail. Mind, I don't mean to say that I know of my own knowledge what there is particularly dead about it. Or 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 hand shall not disturb it, or the country's done for. You will therefore permit me to repeat emphatically that Marley was as dead as a doornail. Scrooge knew he was dead. Of course he did. How could it be? Otherwise, Scrooge and he were partners for I don't know how many years. Scrooge was his sole executor, his sole administrator, his sole assign, his sole residuary legatee, his sole friend and sole mourner. My condolences, Mr. Ebenezer. He's gone on to his reward now he's at peace.
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B
Quiet. Quiet.
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A
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 solemnized 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 than the father's taking a stranger 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 Churchyard, for instance. Literally. To astonish his son's weak mind.
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B
Cab. Cabby. Yes, thank you.
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A
Where to, sir?
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B
Scrooge and Marley. Them? The law offices? Yes. Cabby.
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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 knew to the business called Scrooge Scrooge and sometimes Marley. But he answered to both names. It was all the same to him.
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B
Tabby. Ho. Cabbage. I'll walk from here. But it's freezing out here, sir.
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You'll catch a cold of you.
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B
Here's for the ride. Thank you. That's enough for a ride to St. James, I believe. Cheaper to walk the rest of the way. If you say so, sir. On, lads. Come on. Hey.
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A
Hey. 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 blew and spoke out truly 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 called 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.
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B
Humbug.
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A
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 warn 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 neighboring 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.
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B
God save you. Bah, humbug.
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A
Did I surprise you, Uncle? It wasn't my intention, I assure you.
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B
Bah, humbug.
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The voice of Scrooge's nephew came upon him so quickly. So quickly that this was the first intimation he had of his approach. A Merry Christmas, Uncle. God save you.
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B
Bah, humbug.
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Scrooge's nephew Fred, had so heated himself with rapid walking in the fog and frost that he was all in a glow. His face was ruddy and handsome, his eyes sparkled and his breath smoked again.
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B
Bah, humbug. This is a counting house. If you are not here to conduct financial matters, you find yourself in the wrong place. Christmas. Bah.
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A
But it is Christmas Eve, Uncle.
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B
It is. And I mean to continue operating these premises as if they still were instituted for the primary purposes of financial matters, not indulging indolence. Thank you, but.
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A
Humbug, Uncle Christmas. A humbug. You don't mean that, I am sure.
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B
Merry Christmas. What right have you to be merry? What reason have you to be merry? You're poor enough.
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A
Come, then. What right have you to be dismal? What reason have you to be morose? You're rich enough.
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B
Bah, humbug.
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A
Don't be cross, Uncle.
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B
What else can I be 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 but not an hour richer? A time for balancing your books and having every item in them through a round dozen of months presented dead against you. If I could work my will, every idiot who goes about with Merry Christmas on his lips should be boiled with his own pudding and buried with a stick of holly through his heart. He should.
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A
Uncle.
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B
Please, nephew, keep Christmas in your own way and let me keep it in mind.
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A
Keep it? But you don't keep it.
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B
Let me leave it alone, then. Much good may it do you. Much good has it ever done you.
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A
There are many things from which I might have derived good by which I have not profited. I dare say 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. Oh, hurrah.
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B
Let me hear another sound from you, Bob Cratchit, and you'll keep your Christmas by losing your situation. Well, Nephew. You're quite a powerful speaker, sir. I wonder you don't go into Parliament.
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A
Don't be angry, Uncle. Come, dine with us tomorrow.
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B
Dine with you tomorrow? I'll see you in heaven.
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A
Now, I will not use that phrase myself, nor do I desire for its use to be propagated widely. And yet Scrooge did indeed say to his nephew that he would see him in that extremity first where our Lord does not desire us to go. But, Scrooge, mind you went the whole length of the expression. But why? Why, Uncle?
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B
Why did you get married?
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A
Because I fell in love.
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B
Because you fell in love. Good afternoon.
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A
Nay, Uncle. But you never came to see me before that happened. Why give it as a reason for not coming now.
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B
Good afternoon.
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A
I want nothing from you. I ask nothing of you. Why cannot we be friends?
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B
Good afternoon.
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A
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 an homage to Christmas. And I'll keep my Christmas humor to the last. So, a merry Christmas, Uncle.
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B
Good afternoon.
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A
And to you, Mr. Cratchit. A merry Christmas, too. God bless you and your family.
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B
Thank you, sir. And a most happy Christmas to you too, sir. Most happy indeed.
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A
Stay as warm as you can in here, Mr. Cratchit, for tomorrow is Christmas Day. We must make merry.
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B
That we must, sir. God bless you, sir.
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A
Merry Christmas, dear Uncle. And a happy New Year.
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B
Good afternoon.
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A
Scrooge's nephew left the room without an angry word. Despite his Uncle Scrooge's reception, he stopped at the outer door to bestow the greetings of the Season on the clerk Bob Cratchit, who, cold as he was, was warmer than Scrooge, for he returned them cordially. Stay as warm as you can in here, Mr. Cratchit, for tomorrow is Christmas Day. We must make merry.
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B
That we must, sir. God bless you, sir. There's another fellow with 15 shillings a week and a wife and family talking about a Merry Christmas. I'll go mad and retire to Bedlam.
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A
As Bob Cratchit let Scrooge's nephew out, he 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.
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B
Scrooge and Marley's, I believe.
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A
Have we the pleasure of addressing Mr. Scrooge or Mr. Marley?
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B
Mr. Marley has been dead these seven years. He died seven years ago this very night.
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A
Oh. Well, we have no doubt his liberality is well represented by his surviving partner.
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B
Here is the organization we represent, Mr. Scrooge.
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A
Our credentials and a small brochure.
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B
Mmm.
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A
Marley's liberality was certainly well represented by Scrooge, for they had been two kindred spirits at the ominous word liberality. Scrooge frowned and shook his head. At this festive season of the year, Mr. Scrooge, 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.
- [23:58]
B
Quite, quite. Are there no prisons?
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A
Plenty of prisons, sir.
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B
And the union workhouses, are they still in operation? They are still.
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A
We wish that we could say they were not.
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B
The treadmill and the poor law are in full vigor, then?
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A
Both very busy, sir.
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B
Well, I was afraid from what you said at first that something had occurred to stop them in their useful course. I'm very glad to hear that is not the case.
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A
Under the impression that they scarcely furnish Christian cheer of mind or body to the multitude. A few of us are endeavoring 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.
- [24:50]
B
What shall we put you down for, sir? Hmm? Nothing. You wish to remain anonymous? I wish to be left alone. 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, and they cost enough. And those who are badly off must go there.
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A
Many can't go there, sir, and many would rather die.
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B
If they would rather die, they had better do it and decrease the surplus population. My words. Besides, excuse me, I don't know that.
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A
They would rather die, but you might know it.
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B
It's not my business. 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. Come, Thomas.
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A
There is no spirit here. One moment, James. Mr. Scrooge.
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B
Thomas, he's not listening.
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A
Mr. Scrooge, we hope with most earnest feelings that you and yours have a Merry Christmas. Abundant blessings on your Christmas, sir. Merry Christmas. Saying 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 the people ran about with flaring links, proffering their services to go before horses and carriages and conduct them on their way. The ancient tower of a church, whose gruff old bell was always peeping slyly down its 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 laborers were repairing the gas pipes and had lighted a great fire and 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 brightness of the shops, where holly sprigs and berries crackled in the lamp. Heat of the windows made pale faces ruddy as they passed, foggier yet and colder, piercing, searching, biting cold. If the good Saint 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.
- [27:40]
B
God bless. Bless you, married gentlemen. May nothing you dismay remember Christ our Saviour was born on Christmas Day. Not a moment of peace, not a moment of rightful labor. Enough. Away. Begone.
- [28:08]
A
The young singer fled in terror, leaving the keyhole to the fog. An 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.
- [28:28]
B
End of day, Mr. Cratchit?
- [28:30]
A
Yes, sir?
- [28:31]
B
You'll want all day tomorrow, I suppose? If quite convenient, sir. It's not convenient 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. And yet you don't think me ill used when I pay a day's wages for no work. It is only once a year, sir, and only on Christmas Day. A poor excuse for picking a man's pocket every 25th of December. But I suppose you must have the whole. Be here all the earlier next morning.
- [29:06]
A
I promise I will, sir. I'll do the closing up, sir.
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B
See to it that you do.
- [29:12]
A
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 nothing like Scrooge's greatcoat, went down a slide on Cornhill at the end of a lane of boys 20 times in honor of its being Christmas Eve, and then ran home to Camden Town as hard as he could pelt to play at Blind Man'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.
- [29:54]
B
Cab. Cabby. Whoa.
- [29:58]
A
Where to, sir?
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B
Back to your Mrs. Lambeth Marsh and Westminster. Lambeth Marsh it is, sir. All set for Christmas.
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A
No need to make a stop near the shops.
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B
Lambeth Marsh, Cabby. Very good, sir.
- [30:08]
A
As you like it, sir. He lived in chambers which had once belonged to his deceased partner, Jacob Marley. They were a gloomy suite of rooms and 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 forgotten the way out again.
- [30:32]
B
Here, Cab. Here. Yes, sir. Whoa, lads. Steady now. Yes, just let me out of the gate.
- [30:40]
A
That'll be fourpence, sir. It was old enough now and dreary enough for nobody lived in it but Scrooge, the other rooms being all let out as offices.
- [30:52]
B
Now, where is that confounded gate key? I know it's here someplace. Oh, if that forsaken chain hadn't broken then. Oh, this is it. I think confound this fog. Can't see past the tip of my nose.
- [31:13]
A
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.
- [31:29]
B
Ah, but here's the door, I think. Yes. Where's the key? This one doesn't want to work now. Both you and Bob Cratchit don't want to work on Christmas. That makes two.
- [31:45]
A
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, alderman 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 an impenetrable shadow, as the other objects in the yard were, but had a dismal light about it, like a bad lobster in a dark cellar. It was not angry or ferocious, but looked at Scrooge as Marley used to look, with ghostly spectacles turned up on its ghostly forehead. The hair was curiously stirred, as if by breath or hot air, and though the eyes were wide open, they were perfectly motionless. That and its livid color 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. Marley, as Scrooge, looked fixedly at this phenomenon. It was anoka 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 hole. But there was nothing on the back of the door except the screws and nuts that held the knocker on.
- [33:55]
B
Pooh, pooh.
- [34:00]
A
Scrooge shut the door. 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.
- [34:16]
B
Ridiculous. Come now.
- [34:20]
A
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 broad wise 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 it was pretty dark. With Scrooge's candle 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.
- [35:15]
B
This is outrageous. Everything seems normal.
- [35:19]
A
He had just enough recollection of the face to desire to do that.
- [35:26]
B
Molly. It couldn't have been Marley. Marley's dead. Molly's dead. It was just the door knocker. Need to get it replaced now. This is outrageous. Everything seems normal. Everything seems alright. What's that? That's nothing.
- [35:48]
A
Scrooge went through the sitting room, bedroom, lumber room.
- [35:52]
B
Ridiculous.
- [35:53]
A
All as they should be. Nobody under the table, nobody under the sofa. A small fire in the grate, spoon and basin ready and a 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.
- [36:27]
B
Everything is to rights as I left it this morning.
- [36:30]
A
Quite satisfied, he closed his door and locked himself in. Double locked himself in, which was not his custom. Thus secured against surprise, he took off his cravat, put on his dressing gown and slippers and his nightcap, and sat down before the fire to take his Gruel. It was a very low fire indeed. Nothing on such a bitter night he was obliged to sit close to it and brood over it before he could extract the least sensation of warmth from such a handful of fuel. The fireplace was an old one, built by some Dutch merchant long ago and paved all round with quaint Dutch tiles designed to illustrate the Scriptures. There were Cains and Abel's, Pharaoh's daughters, Queens of Sheba, angelic messengers descending through the air on clouds like featherbeds, Abrahams, Belshazzars, apostles putting off to sea in butterboats. 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 Scrooge's thoughts, there would have been a copy of old Marley's head on every one.
- [37:49]
B
Humbug. Humbug. Humbug. Humbug.
- [37:53]
A
After several turns round his room, he sat down again before the fire.
- [37:58]
B
Come now, come now. Enough of that.
- [38:01]
A
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 the 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.
- [38:36]
B
Stop it. Stop it. Humbug to all of you.
- [38:41]
A
Stop it. 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.
- [39:07]
B
What's that? Come, enough with all of this. Enough.
- [39:11]
A
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.
- [39:30]
B
It's humbug still. I won't believe it.
- [39:34]
A
His color 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. Scrooge was still incredulous and fought against his senses.
- [40:53]
B
How now? What do you want with me? March. Who are you? Ask me who I was. Who were you then? You're particular for a shade life. I was your partner. Jacob Marley. Can you. Can you sit down? I can do it, then. There's a chair by the fire.
- [41:16]
A
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 he felt that in the event of its being impossible, it might involve the necessity of an embarrassing explanation. But the ghost sat down on the opposite side of the fireplace as if he were quite used to it.
- [41:36]
B
You don't believe in me? I don't. What evidence would you have of my reality beyond that of your senses? I don't know. Why do you doubt your senses? Because a little thing affects them. A slight disorder of the stomach makes them cheat. 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.
- [42:12]
A
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 specters, being provided with an infernal atmosphere of its 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 vapor from an oven. Scrooge wished, though it were only for a second, to divert the vision's stony gaze from himself.
- [43:03]
B
You see this toothpick?
- [43:05]
A
I do.
- [43:06]
B
You're not looking at it.
- [43:08]
A
But I see it, notwithstanding.
- [43:13]
B
Well, 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.
- [43:29]
A
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 its 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.
- [43:54]
B
Mercy. Mercy. Dreadful apparition. Why do you trouble me? Man of the worldly mind? Do you believe in me or not? I do. I must. I believe in you. But why do spirits walk the earth, and why do they come to me? It is required of every man that the spirit within him should walk abroad among his fellow men and travel far and wide. And if that spirit goes not, for 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.
- [44:43]
A
Again the spectre raised a cry and shook its chain and wrung its shadowy hand.
- [44:52]
B
It is required of every man 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. You are fettered. Tell me why. I wear the chain I forged in life.
- [45:17]
A
I made it link by link and yard by yard.
- [45:23]
B
I girded it on of my own free will. And of my own free will I wore it. Is its pattern strange to you? Or would you know the weight and length of the strong coil you bear yourself? It was all as heavy and as long as this seven crystal Christmas Eves ago. You have labored on it since.
- [45:51]
A
It is a ponderous chain. Scrooge glanced about him on the floor in the expectation of finding himself surrounded by some 50 or 60 fathoms of iron cable. But he could see nothing. He trembled more and more.
- [46:06]
B
Jacob. Oh, Jacob Marley, tell me more. Speak comfort to me, Jacob. Comfort. I have none to give. It comes from other regions, Ebenezer Scrooge, and is conveyed by other ministers to other kinds of men.
- [46:25]
A
Nor can I tell you what I would.
- [46:29]
B
A very little more is all permitted to me.
- [46:33]
A
I cannot rest. I cannot stay. I cannot linger anywhere.
- [46:41]
B
My spirit never walked beyond our counting house. Mark me.
- [46:47]
A
In life my spirit never roved beyond.
- [46:51]
B
The narrow limits of our money changing hole and weary journeys lie before me. You must have been very slow about it, Jacob. Slow. Seven years dead and traveling all the time. The whole time. No rest, no peace. Incessant torture of remorse to where did you go? Where in my life my spirit did not venture. You traveled fast, on the wings of the wind. You might have got over a great quantity of ground in seven years. You might have gone the whole length.
- [47:37]
A
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.
- [47:47]
B
Captive bound and double ironed.
- [47:51]
A
Not to know that ages of incessant.
- [47:55]
B
Labor by immortal creatures for this earth must pass into eternity before the 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's life's opportunity misused. But you were always a good man of business, Jacob. Surely that was enough business. Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business. Charity, mercy, forbearance and benevolence were all my business. But your business. Your trades financed many a poor house. The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business. Mankind was my business, neglected and abused, afraid and in need. My business was beyond the walls in which my spirit was shut up.
- [49:20]
A
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. Scrooge was very much dismayed to hear the specter going on at this rate, and began to quake exceedingly as he began to apply his words to himself.
- [49:38]
B
At this time of the rolling year, I suffer most. Why did I walk through crowds of fellow beings with my eyes 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. Hear me.
- [50:04]
A
My time is nearly gone.
- [50:06]
B
I will. But don't be hard upon me, 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. Truly, Jacob, you've been here since your death. That is no light. Part of my penance. I am here tonight to warn you that you have yet a chance and hope of escaping my fate. A chance and hope of my procuring. Ebenezer, you were always a good friend to me. Thanky, Jacob. Thank ye. You will be haunted by three spirits. Is that the chance and hope you mention, Jacob? It is. I think I'd rather not. Without their visits, you cannot hope to shun the path I tread. Expect the first tomorrow when the bell tolls 1. Couldn't I take em all at once and have it over, Jacob? Expect the second on the next night at the same hour. The third upon the next night, when the last stroke of 12 has ceased to vibrate. Look to see me no more. And look that for your own sake you remember what has passed between us. Remember what has passed between us.
- [51:41]
A
When Marley 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 specter reached it, it was wide open.
- [52:14]
B
Come.
- [52:16]
A
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 blue, 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.
- [53:19]
B
That's John Harris and Thomas Carter. No, it can't be. Charles. Charles.
- [53:29]
A
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 forever. 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.
- [54:13]
B
Still locked. Both of them. Nothing changed. Nothing disturbed. Hum. Hum.
- [54:27]
A
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 even so much as drawing the bed curtains closed without undressing, and fell asleep upon the instant.
- [54:50]
B
I don't see her.
- [54:53]
A
I can't.
- [54:56]
B
I swear. It's never. What? Who is it? Huh? It was just a terrible dream. Some. Some of that. Some of that Beef. No doubt. Spoiled. Spoiled beef.
- [55:27]
A
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 endeavoring to pierce the darkness with his ferret eyes when the chimes of a neighboring church struck the four quarters. So he listened for the. To his great astonishment, the heavy bell went on from 6 to 7 and from 7 to 8 and regularly up to 12, then stopped.
- [56:02]
B
12. 12. No, no, that can't be right. It was only past two and I went to bed. The clock must be wrong. An icicle must have got into the works. 12. Hold on, let me check it. Here we go. My clock. Let me just touch the repeater and press. And here. 1, 2, 3, 4. That's 6, 8, 10. 11. 12. It is impossible. I can't have slept through a whole day and far into another night. It's as black as pitch in here. Completely dark. It isn't possible that anything has happened to the sun. And this is 12 at noon. Ah, here's the window.
- [57:08]
A
Now 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. Scrooge went to bed again and thought and thought and thought it over and 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.
- [57:49]
B
It must be a dream and the clock must have been wrong. And I must. I must. I must have had some manner of indigestion, of irritation or discomfort from a meal. It must have. It must have.
- [58:07]
A
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?
- [58:28]
B
A quarter to one. A quarter to one. Why, that's when Jacob said the first spirit would come. But that's. That's but a dream. Enough. Enough of that. Yet. Yet. I'll just. I'll just stay awake. I'll stay awake until one and then fall asleep, just to. Just to make sure.
- [58:54]
A
Scrooge resolved to lie awake until the hour was past. 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.
- [59:16]
B
A quarter past, Half past, a quarter to it, the hour itself, and nothing else.
- [59:39]
A
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 hour itself, and nothing else, said Scrooge. Yet 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. 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, and the hands the same, as if its hold were of uncommon strength. Its legs and feet, most delicately formed, were, like those of the 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 a 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 20 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.
- [62:28]
B
Ahem. Are you the spirit, sir, whose coming was foretold to me? I am.
- [62:37]
A
The voice was soft and gentle, singularly low, as if, instead of being so close beside him, it were at a distance.
- [62:44]
B
Who and what are you?
- [62:47]
A
I am the Ghost of Christmas Past.
- [62:51]
B
Long past.
- [62:52]
A
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.
- [63:03]
B
Spirit, cover your head with that cap of yours just for a moment.
- [63:07]
A
What 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 forced me through the whole train of years to wear it low upon my brow?
- [63:24]
B
I don't remember bonneting you in any period of my life, but I did not Intend to offend you, good Spirit. What brings you here, Spirit?
- [63:34]
A
Your welfare. Scrooge expressed himself much obliged, but could not help but 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, 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. The 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 the 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 his robe in supplication.
- [64:24]
B
I am a mortal and liable to fall.
- [64:27]
A
Bear but a touch of my hand there on your 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, wintry day with snow upon the ground.
- [64:56]
B
Good heaven. I was bred in this place. I was a boy here.
- [65:02]
A
Scrooge clasped his hands together and looked about him. 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 odors floating in the air, each one connected with a thousand thoughts and hopes and joys and cares long, long forgotten. Your lip is trembling. 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?
- [65:38]
B
Remember it? I could walk it blindfold.
- [65:41]
A
Strange to have forgotten it for so many years. Let us go on. They walked along the road, Scrooge recognizing 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. They have no consciousness of us. The jocund travelers came on, and as they came, Scrooge knew and named them every one.
- [66:31]
B
Why, that's Tom and James. James Littleton there with his younger brother William. And there, there's Charles with Edward.
- [66:41]
A
Why was he rejoiced beyond all bounds to see them? Why did his cold eye glisten and his heart leap up as they went past? Why was he filled with gladness when he heard them give each other Merry Christmas as they parted at crossroads and byways for the 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. 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 weathercock surmounted cupola on the roof and a bell hanging in it. It was a large house, but one of broken fortunes, for the spacious offices were little used. Their walls were damp and mossy, their windows broken and their gates decayed. Fowls clucked and strutted in the stables and the coach houses and sheds were overrun with grass. Nor was it more retentive of its ancient state within for entering the dreary hall and glancing through the open doors of many rooms, they found them poorly furnished, cold and vast. There was an earthy savor in the air, a chilly bareness in the place, which associated itself somehow with too much getting up by candlelight 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.
- [68:26]
B
Is that. Is that truly, Spirit? Tell me. Is that truly me?
- [68:34]
A
It is the shadow of who you.
- [68:36]
B
Have been it.
- [68:43]
A
Scrooge sat down upon a form and wept to see his poor forgotten self as he used to be. Not a latent echo in the house, not a squeak and scuffle from the mice behind the panelling, not a drip from the half thawed waterspout in the dull yard behind. Not a sigh among the leafless boughs of one despondent poplar, not the idle swinging of an empty storehouse door. No, not a clicking in the fire, but fell upon the heart of Scrooge with a softening influence and gave a freer passage to his tears. Look. 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 out, stood outside the window with an axe stuck in his belt, and leading by the bridle, an ass laden with wood.
- [69:35]
B
Why, it's Ali Baba. It's dear old honest Ali Baba. Yes.
- [69:40]
A
To hear Scrooge expending all the earnestness of his nature on such subjects, leaping fully formed from the pages of his books 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.
- [69:58]
B
Oh, poor Robinson Crusoe. There goes Friday, running for his life to the little creek.
- [70:04]
A
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.
- [70:15]
B
I wish, but it's too late now.
- [70:19]
A
What is the matter?
- [70:21]
B
Nothing, nothing. There was a boy singing a Christmas carol at my door last night. I should have liked to have given him something, that's all.
- [70:31]
A
Let us see another Christmas. The ghost smiled thoughtfully and waved its hand. 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.
- [71:27]
B
Dear brother, I have come to bring you home.
- [71:30]
A
Dear brother, to bring you home. Home, Home.
- [71:34]
B
Home, little fan.
- [71:36]
A
Yes, home for good and all.
- [71:39]
B
Home forever and ever.
- [71:41]
A
Father so much kinder than he used.
- [71:43]
B
To be that home's like heaven.
- [71:45]
A
He spoke so gently to me one dear night when I was going to bed that I was not afraid to.
- [71:49]
B
Ask him once more if he 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 and are never to come back here. But first we're to be together all the Christmas long and have the merriest.
- [72:02]
A
Time in all the world.
- [72:03]
B
You are quite a woman, little Fan. Fan.
- [72:08]
A
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.
- [72:24]
B
Bring down Master Scrooge's box.
- [72:26]
A
There 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.
- [72:37]
B
Come now, we must toast you before you leave us, young Master Scrooge.
- [72:43]
A
He then conveyed him and his sister into the various old well of a shivering best parlour that was ever 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 installments of those dainties to the young people.
- [73:07]
B
Drink up, Master Scrooge. It is Christmas. Thank you, sir. Very great thank you, sir.
- [73:20]
A
Master Scrooge's trunk being by this time tied onto the top of the chase, the children bade the schoolmaster goodbye right willingly, and getting into it, drove gaily down the garden sweep, the quick wheels dashing the hoarfrost and snow from off the dark leaves of the evergreens like spray. Always a delicate crew creature whom a breath might have withered. But she had a large heart.
- [73:43]
B
So she had. You're right. I will not gainsay it, spirit. God forbid.
- [73:48]
A
She died a woman and had, as I think, children.
- [73:53]
B
One child.
- [73:55]
A
True. Your nephew?
- [73:58]
B
Yes.
- [74:00]
A
Scrooge seemed uneasy in his mind and answered only briefly, his brow furrowed at the thought of his nephew Fred's Christmas greeting earlier that day, wishing that he could have said a kinder word to him. Although the ghost and Scrooge 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.
- [74:42]
B
Do you know it? Know? It was I apprenticed here.
- [74:48]
A
They went in. An old gentleman in a Welsh wig sat behind a high desk, and if he had been two inches taller, he must have knocked his head against the ceiling.
- [74:56]
B
Why, it's old Fezziwig. Bless his heart. It's Fezziwig alive again.
- [75:05]
A
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 capricious 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.
- [75:37]
B
Dick Wilkins, to be sure. Bless me. Yes, there he is. He was very much attached to me, was Dick. Poor Dick. Dear, dear. Yo ho, my boys. No more work tonight. Christmas Eve, Dick.
- [75:55]
A
Christmas.
- [75:55]
B
Ebony's up. Let's have the shutters up before a man can say Jack Robinson.
- [76:02]
A
Yes, sir. Right away, sir. You wouldn't believe how those two fellows went at it. They charged into the street with the shutters. One, two, 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 12, panting like racehorses.
- [76:25]
B
Hilly ho. Clear away, my lads, and let's have lots of room here. Hilly ho, Dick. Cheer up, Ebenezer.
- [76:33]
A
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 moveable was packed off as if it were dismissed from public life forevermore. 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 ballroom as you would desire to see upon a winter's night. In came a fiddler with a music book and went up to the lofty desk and made an orchestra of it and tuned like 50 stomach aches. In came Mrs. Fezziwig one vast, substantial smile. In came the three Ms. 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 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, 20 couples at once, hands half round and back again the other way. 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.
- [78:13]
B
Well done.
- [78:14]
A
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 dances yet. As if the other fiddler had been carried home exhausted on a shutter, and he were a brand 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 fiddlers 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. 3 or 4 and 20 pair of partners, people who were not to be trifled with. People who would dance and had no notion of walking.
- [79:11]
B
1, 2, 3, up and up and up we go.
- [79:16]
A
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 have become of them next. And when old Fezziwig and Mrs. Fezziwig had gone all through the dance. Advance and retire. Both hands to your partner. Bow and curtsy. Corkscrew. Thread the needle and back again to your place, Fezziwig.
- [79:54]
B
Cut.
- [79:55]
A
Cut so deftly that he appeared to wink with his legs and came upon his feet again without a stagger. When the clock struck 11, this domestic ball 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.
- [80:19]
B
Merry Christmas. William.
- [80:21]
A
Your mother.
- [80:22]
B
We're so sad she couldn't make it. But next week she'll be round.
- [80:25]
A
Yes. When everybody had retired but the two prentices, they did the same to them. And thus the cheerful voices died away. 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 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 to make these silly folks so full of gratitude.
- [81:12]
B
Small. Listen.
- [81:15]
A
The ghost motioned Scrooge to listen to his former self and prentice as the lads were left to their beds, which were under a counter in the back shop. Did you see him?
- [81:24]
B
Did you?
- [81:25]
A
Well, I never thought I would see Fezziwig dance like that. You would never guess it, his being behind that desk all this while. I had heard stories, but never anything like that. Mr. Fezziwig. What a man of munificence. What a giant of generosity. A cornucopia of kindness. A lavisher of liberality. A good man, Mr. Fezziwig. May his name ring through our history as the personification of hospital hospitality and generosity. Why is it not a small matter? He has spent but a few pounds of your mortal money.
- [82:05]
B
Three or four, perhaps.
- [82:07]
A
Is that so much that he deserves this praise?
- [82:10]
B
It isn't that. 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 them up. What then? The happiness he gives is quite as great as if it cost a fortune.
- [82:38]
A
What is the matter?
- [82:41]
B
Nothing particular.
- [82:43]
A
Something, I think.
- [82:46]
B
No, no, I. I should like to be able to say a word or two to my clerk just now, that's all.
- [82:53]
A
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. Quick. This was not addressed to Scrooge or to anyone whom he could see. But it produced an immediate effect, for again Scrooge saw himself. He was older now, a man in the prime of his 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 morning dressed in whose eyes there were tears, which sparkled in the light that shone out of the Ghost of Christmas Past.
- [83:48]
B
It matters little to you?
- [83:50]
A
Very little.
- [83:51]
B
Another idol has displaced me, and if it can cheer and comfort you in the time to come, as I would have tried to do, I have no just cause to grieve.
- [84:01]
A
What idol has displaced you?
- [84:04]
B
A golden one.
- [84:06]
A
This is the Even handed dealing of the world, 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.
- [84:15]
B
You fear the world too much. All your other hopes have merged into the hope of being beyond the chance.
- [84:20]
A
Of its sordid reproach.
- [84:22]
B
I have seen your nobler aspirations fall off one by one until the master passion gain engrosses you.
- [84:30]
A
Have I not? What then? Even if I have grown so much wiser, what then? I am not changed towards you. Well, am I?
- [84:40]
B
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.
- [84:51]
A
You are changed. When it was made, you were another man. I was a boy.
- [84:56]
B
Your own feeling tells you that you are not what you are. I am that which promised happiness when we were one in heart is fraught.
- [85:03]
A
With misery now that we are 2.
- [85:05]
B
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.
- [85:13]
A
Have I ever sought release?
- [85:15]
B
In words? No, never.
- [85:17]
A
In what, then?
- [85:19]
B
In a changed nature? In an altered spirit? In another atmosphere of life, another hope.
- [85:25]
A
As its great end? In everything that made my love of.
- [85:29]
B
Any worth or value in your sight. If this had never been between us, tell me, would you seek me out and try to win me now? Ah, no.
- [85:39]
A
You think not?
- [85:40]
B
I would gladly think otherwise if I could. Heaven knows when I have learned a truth like this, I know how strong and irresistible it must be. But if you were free today, tomorrow, yesterday, can even I believe that you would choose a dowerless girl? You, who in your very confidence with her, weigh everything by gain or choosing her.
- [86:02]
A
If for a moment you are false enough to your one guiding principle to.
- [86:05]
B
Do so, do I not know that your repentance or regret would surely follow? I do. And I release you with a full heart for the love of him you once were. You. May the memory of what has passed 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. Spirit, show me no more. Conduct me home. Why do you delight to torture me? One shadow more. No more. No more. I don't wish to see it. Show me no more. One sh.
- [86:58]
A
Shadow more. Look. They were in another scene, in place a room not very large or Handsome, but full of comfort. Near to the winter fire sat a beautiful young girl, so like the last that Scrooge believed it was the same. Until he saw Belle, now a comely matron, sitting opposite the young girl, her daughter. The noise in this room was perfectly tumultuous, for there were more children there than Scrooge and his agitated state of mind could count. And unlike the celebrated herd in the poem, they were not 40 children conducting themselves like one. But every child was conducting itself like 40. 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. Now a knocking at the door was heard, and such a rush immediately ensued that she, with laughing face and plundered dress, was borne towards it, the center 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.
- [88:11]
B
They have come to abscond with your packages, darling. There is no hope. Hello.
- [88:17]
A
Now then, the shouting and the struggling and the onslaught that was made on the defenseless porter, the scaling him with chairs for ladders to dive into his pockets, to spoil him of brown paper parcels, hold on tight by his cravat, hug him round the neck, pommel his back and kick his legs in irrepressible affection.
- [88:35]
B
Not till Christmas. You. You must wait till Christmas to open your presents.
- [88:39]
A
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 parlor 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 as promise, might have called him Father and been a springtime in the haggard winter of his life, his sight grew very dim indeed.
- [89:39]
B
Belle, I saw an old friend of.
- [89:42]
A
Yours this afternoon who Was it?
- [89:44]
B
Guess. How can I? Don't I know? 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.
- [90:07]
A
In the world, I do believe.
- [90:09]
B
Spirit, remove me from this place.
- [90:12]
A
I told you that these were shadows of things that have been. That they are what they are. Do not blame me.
- [90:21]
B
Remove me. I cannot bear it. Leave me. Take me back. Haunt me no longer.
- [90:29]
A
He turned upon the ghost, and, seeing that it looked upon him with a face in which, some strange way there were fragments of all the faces that had shown him, wrestled with it 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 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, 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.
- [92:06]
B
It's almost one already, almost one o'clock.
- [92:12]
A
He. 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, dispatched to him through Jacob Marley's intervention. But finding that he turned uncomfortably cold when he began to wonder which of his curtains this new spectre would draw back, he put them, every one, aside with his own hands and, lying down again, established a sharp lookout all round the bed, for he wished to challenge the spirit on the moment of its appearance, and did not wish to be taken by surprise and made nervous. Scrooge 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.
- [92:55]
B
Come now. Come now. Ah. It's 1:00.
- [93:00]
A
Here it is 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.
- [93:18]
B
Where is it? Where? Where is it?
- [93:21]
A
Five minutes, ten minutes. A quarter of an hour went by, yet nothing came. All this time he lay upon his bed, the very core and centre of a blaze of ruddy light which streamed upon it when the clock proclaimed the hour, and which, being only light, was more alarming than a dozen ghosts, as he was powerless to make out what it meant or would be at, and was sometimes apprehensive that he might be at that very moment an interesting case of spontaneous combustion. Without having the consolation of knowing it. At last, however, he began to think as you or I would have thought at first, for it is always the person not in the predicament who knows what ought to have been done in it, and would unquestionably have done it too. At last, I say. He began to think that the source and secret of this ghostly light might be in the adjoining room, from whence, on further tracing it, it seemed to shoot this idea taking full possession of his mind, he got up softly and shuffled in his slippers to the door.
- [94:30]
B
Ebenezer, come.
- [94:33]
A
Enter. It was his own room, there was no doubt about that, but it had undergone a surprising transformation. The walls and ceiling were so hung with living green that it looked a perfect grove, from every part of which bright gleaming berries glistened. The crisp leaves of holly, mistletoe and ivy reflected back the light as if so many little mirrors had been scattered there. And such a mighty blaze went roaring up the chimney as that dull petrification of a hearth had never known in Scrooge's time, or Marley's, or for many and many a winter season gone. Heaped up on the floor to form a kind of throne were turkeys, geese, game, poultry, brawn, great joints of meat sucking pigs, long wreaths of sausages, mince pies, plum puddings, barrels of oysters, red hot chestnuts, cherry cheeked apples, juicy oranges, luscious pears, immense 12th cakes, and seething bowls of punch that made the chamber dim with their delicious steam. In easy state. Upon this couch there sat a jolly giant, glorious to see, who bore a glowing torch in shape not unlike Plenty's horn, and held it up high up to shed its light on Scrooge as he came peeping round the door. Come in, come in and know me better, man. Scrooge entered, timidly and hung his head before this spirit. He was not the dogged Scrooge he had been. And though the spirit's eyes were clear and kind, he did not like to meet them. I am the Ghost of Christmas Present.
- [96:20]
B
Look upon me.
- [96:21]
A
Scrooge reverently did so. It was clothed in one simple green robe, or mantle bordered with white fur. This garment hung so loosely on the figure that its capacious breast was bare, as if disdaining to be warded or concealed by any artifice. Its feet, observable beneath the ample folds of the garment, were also bare. And on its head it wore no other covering than a holly wreath set here and there with shining icicles. Its dark brown curls were long and free, free as its genial face, its sparkling eye, its open hand itself, its cheery voice, its unconstrained demeanor and its joyful air. Girded round its middle was an antique scabbard. But no sword was in it, and the ancient sheath was eaten up with rust. You have never seen the like of me before?
- [97:10]
B
Never.
- [97:11]
A
Have never walked forth with the younger members of my family. Meaning? For I am very young. My elder brothers born in these later years?
- [97:20]
B
I don't think I have. I am afraid I have not. Have you had many brothers, spirit?
- [97:26]
A
More than 1800.
- [97:28]
B
A tremendous family to provide for, Spirit. Conduct me where you will. I went forth last night on compulsion, and I learned a lesson which is working now, tonight. If you have aught to teach me, let me profit by it.
- [97:47]
A
Touch my robe.
- [97:49]
B
Your robe?
- [97:50]
A
Touch my robe. Scrooge did as he was told and held it fast. Holly, mistletoe, red berries. Ivy. Turkeys, Geese, game, poultry, brawn meat. Pigs, sausages, oysters, pies, puddings, fruit and punch. All vanished instantly. Happy Christmas. Merry Christmas. So did the room, the fire, the ruddy glow and the hour of night. And they stood in the city streets on Christmas morning. It was a great surprise to Scrooge, while listening to the moaning of the wind and the roar of the sea, to hear a hearty laugh. It was a much greater surprise to Scrooge to recognize the laugh as his own nephews, and to find himself in a bright, dry, gleaming room with a spirit standing smiling by his side and looking at that same nephew with approving affability. If you should happen by any unlikely chance to know a man more blessed in a laugh than Scrooge's nephew, all I can say is I should like to know him, too. Introduce him to me and I'll cultivate his acquaintance. It is a fair, even handed, noble Adjustment of things. That while there is infection and disease and sorrow, there is nothing in the world so irresistibly contagious as laughter and good humor. When Scrooge's nephew laughed in this way, holding his sides, rolling his head and twisting his face into the most extravagant contortions, Scrooge's niece by marriage, his dear friend Topper, and most everyone present laughed as heartily as he. He said. He said that Christmas was a humbug as I live.
- [99:41]
B
He believed it too.
- [99:43]
A
More shame for him, Fred. Oh, he's a comical old fellow, that's the truth. And not so pleasant as he might be. However, his offenses carry their own punishment, and I have nothing to say against him. I'm sure he is very rich, Fred.
- [99:57]
B
At least you always tell me so.
- [99:59]
A
What of that, my dear? His wealth is of no use. He don't do any good with it. He don't make himself comfortable with it.
- [100:06]
B
He hasn't the satisfaction of thinking that.
- [100:09]
A
He is ever going to benefit us with it. I have no patience with him.
- [100:14]
B
No, nor I.
- [100:16]
A
He was extremely rude to my mother.
- [100:18]
B
I could never have patience with him, God bless me, never.
- [100:21]
A
Oh, I have. I am sorry for him. I couldn't be angry with him if I tried. Who suffers by his ill? Whimsical? Himself. Always here he takes it into his head to dislike us, and he won't come and dine with us.
- [100:36]
B
What's the consequence?
- [100:38]
A
He don't lose much of a dinner. Indeed, I think he loses a very good dinner. Oh, yes, absolutely. A capital dinner.
- [100:44]
B
Oh, it was excellent, Mary. Truly.
- [100:47]
A
Well, I'm very glad to hear it because I haven't great faith in these young housekeepers. What do you say, Toppa?
- [100:54]
B
Oh, well, I couldn't really say, Fred. I'm a bachelor, as you all know, and, well, I have no right to express an opinion on the subject.
- [101:03]
A
Oh, I see.
- [101:04]
B
And what do you think of Jane's Housekeeping, eh, Tapper? Fred. Do go on, Fred.
- [101:10]
A
He never finishes what he begins to say. He is such a ridiculous fellow. I was only going to say that the consequence of his taking a dislike.
- [101:20]
B
Like to us and not making merry.
- [101:22]
A
With us is as I think, that he loses some pleasant moments which could do him no harm. I am sure. He loses pleasanter companions than he can find in his own thoughts, either in his mouldy old office or his dusty chambers. I mean to give him the same chance every year, whether he likes it or not, for I pity him. He may rail at Christmas till he dies, but he can't help thinking better of it. I defy him if he finds me going there in good temper year after year and saying, uncle Scrooge, how are you? If it only puts him in the vein to leave his poor clerk £50, that's something. And I think I shook him yesterday.
- [102:06]
B
Imagine Scrooge being shaken. I tell you, he was.
- [102:09]
A
Come, pass the punch. Now, after tea, they had some music, for they were a musical family and knew what they were about. Scrooge's niece played well upon the harp and played among other tunes. A simple little air, a mere nothing. You might learn to whistle it in two minutes. Which had been familiar to the child who fetched Scrooge from the boarding school. When this strain of music sounded, all the things that ghost had shown him came upon his mind. He softened more and more and thought that if he could have listened to it often years ago, he might have cultivated the kindness of life for his own happiness with his own hands, without resorting to the sexton's spade that buried Jacob Marley.
- [102:50]
B
I know that tune.
- [102:52]
A
You heard it as a boy. Your sister knew it well.
- [102:55]
B
Truly, truly. I remember.
- [102:58]
A
But they didn't devote the whole evening to music. After a while, they played at Forfeits. For it is good to be children sometimes, and never better than at Christmas, when its mighty founder was a child himself. There was first a game at Blind Man's Buff. Of course there was.
- [103:14]
B
It isn't fair. It isn't fair. Come now, Topper.
- [103:17]
A
Come now. This is Blind Man's Buff. Come now. Blind Man's Buff. Of course it is, Fred. Why are you stopping it now? Do you expect me to believe that Topper is truly blindfolded and yet he keeps miraculously finding James?
- [103:32]
B
Fred. Something wrong?
- [103:35]
A
Nothing's wrong. You just know exactly who you'd like to catch, don't you, Fred?
- [103:40]
B
I couldn't possibly know what you mean.
- [103:42]
A
You do indeed, sir.
- [103:44]
B
You do.
- [103:45]
A
Come, come. Another game? Another yes and no. Our time is short, Spirit.
- [103:55]
B
Please allow me to stay until the guests have all departed. Allow me.
- [103:59]
A
It cannot be done. Our time is short.
- [104:02]
B
Look, here is a new game. One half hour, Spirit. Only one?
- [104:07]
A
Yes and no. It is. Very good. And I'll go first. Are you thinking of an animal? Yes.
- [104:13]
B
A live animal?
- [104:15]
A
Quite alive, yes.
- [104:17]
B
An agreeable animal?
- [104:18]
A
Decidedly not. A savage animal? Most would say. Yes.
- [104:22]
B
An animal that growls?
- [104:23]
A
Well, sometimes.
- [104:26]
B
It sometimes grunts.
- [104:29]
A
Does this animal talk? Yes.
- [104:32]
B
It must be a rather strange animal.
- [104:35]
A
If it can grunt. Growl and talk. Is that your question, Mary?
- [104:39]
B
No.
- [104:40]
A
Does this animal that growls, grunts? And talks live here in London? Yes.
- [104:46]
B
Is it made a show of.
- [104:47]
A
Oh, certainly not. Most avoid this animal, in fact. Is it a horse?
- [104:51]
B
No. A bear? No.
- [104:54]
A
A tiger?
- [104:54]
B
No. A dog? A pig? A cat? One question. One question.
- [105:01]
A
I know what it is, Fred. I know what it is. What is it?
- [105:06]
B
It's your uncle's grudge.
- [105:11]
A
Why, that's unfair. That's unfair, Fred.
- [105:15]
B
That's unfair.
- [105:16]
A
How so, Mary? How so? He asked you if it was a bear. You should have said yes. You said no. And if my mind was diverted away from bears, how could it possibly arrive at Scrooge? He has given us plenty of merriment, I am sure, and it would be ungrateful not to drink his health. Here is a glass of mulled wine ready to our hand at the moment. And I say, Uncle Scrooge. Well, Uncle.
- [105:47]
B
Uncle Scrooge. Scrooge.
- [105:49]
A
Uncle Scrooge. A merry Christmas and a happy New Year to the old man. Whatever he is, he wouldn't take it from me. But may he have it nevertheless? Uncle Scrooge. Uncle Scrooge had imperceptibly become so light of heart that he would have pledged the unconscious company in return and thanked them in an inaudible speech if the ghost had given him time. But the whole scene passed off in the breath of the last words spoken by his nephew, and he and the spirit were again upon their travels. The ghost of Christmas Presents stood with Scrooge in the city streets on Christmas morning, where the people scraped the snow from the pavement in front of their dwellings. The house fronts looked black enough and the windows blacker, contrasting with the smooth white sheet of snow upon the roofs and with the dirtier snow upon the ground. The sky was gloomy and the shorter streets were choked up with a dingy mist, half thawed, half frozen, whose heavier particles descended in a shower of sooty adams, as if all the chimneys in Great Britain had by one consent caught fire and were blazing away to the dear heart content. There was nothing very cheerful in the climate or the town, and yet there was an air of cheerfulness abroad that the clearest summer air and brighter summer sun might have endeavoured to diffuse in vain, for the people were jovial and full of glee, and now and then exchanging a facetious snowball, better natured missile farr than many a wordy jest, laughing heartily if it went right, and not less heartily if it went wrong. The steeples called good people all to church and chapel, and away they came, flocking through the streets in their best clothes and with their brightest faces. And at the same time there emerged from scores of by streets, lanes and nameless turning, innumerable people who, not having ovens in their own houses, were now carrying their dinners to the baker shops to have them cooked in the baker's large ovens. The sight of these poor revellers appeared to interest the spirit very much, for he stood with Scrooge beside him in a baker's doorway, and, taking off the covers as the bearers passed, sprinkled incense on their dinners from his torch. And it was a very uncommon kind of torch. For once or twice, when there were angry words between some dinner carriers who had jostled each other, he shed a few drops of water on them from it, and their good humor was restored directly. For they said it was a shame to quarrel upon Christmas Day. And so it was. God love it, so it was.
- [108:25]
B
Is there a peculiar flavor in what you sprinkle from your torch?
- [108:29]
A
There is my own.
- [108:31]
B
Would it apply to any kind of dinner on this day?
- [108:34]
A
To any kindly given to a poor one most?
- [108:38]
B
Why to a poor one most?
- [108:40]
A
Because it needs it most. They went on invisible into the suburbs of the town. It was a remarkable quality of the ghost which Scrooge had observed at the bakers, that notwithstanding his gigantic size, he could accommodate himself to any with ease, and that he stood beneath a low roof quite as gracefully and like a supernatural creature as it was possible he could have done in any lofty hall. And perhaps it was the pleasure the good spirit had in showing off this power of his. Or else it was his own kind, generous, hearty nature and his sympathy with all poor men that led him straight to Scrooge's clerks. For there he went and took Scrooge with him, holding to his robe. And on the threshold of the door, the spirit smiled and stopped to bless Bob Cratchit's dwelling. With the sprinkling of his torch, Scrooge and the spirit went into the Cratchit's dwelling to better observe its happy inhabitants.
- [109:39]
B
Come now, Belinda, help me lay this cloth. Be careful now. The edge is tearing already. But it'll do us good for another Christmas yet. Now, Master Peter, those potatoes are for dinner, not one's evening supper. Off with ye, the excellent. Off with ye, ye young rascal. Look, Mama, his shirt collar's covered with the sauce.
- [109:57]
A
Peter, I'm sorry.
- [109:59]
B
I didn't mean to.
- [110:00]
A
Peter, that's your father's collar giving special to ye today.
- [110:04]
B
If Father's going to lend ye nice things, ye best take care of Them or. Well, it's no matter now. You'll just have to wear Father's collar for the rest of the day. Stains and all, mind you. Oh, no. What's this? What's this? We smelled it. We smelled it, Mama. We smelled it.
- [110:21]
A
It was ours, Mama.
- [110:22]
B
It was ours. Now, on God's good earth. What are you two little ones talking about?
- [110:27]
A
We smelled it, Mama. We really did.
- [110:29]
B
We were outside the baker and we smelled it. Smelled what now?
- [110:32]
A
Our goose, Mama.
- [110:33]
B
Our goose. It really is ours. The baker even said so. And it smells magical, Mama. That will feed even young Master Peter.
- [110:41]
A
Indeed.
- [110:42]
B
Well, if the goose is bound to come, as you say, we had better.
- [110:45]
A
Finish the table being said.
- [110:47]
B
Mm? Yes, Mum. Now, what has ever got your precious father, then?
- [110:52]
A
And your brother? Tiny Tim And Martha weren't as late last Christmas Day by half an hour.
- [110:57]
B
Here's Martha, Mother. She's coming now.
- [111:01]
A
Why, bless your heart alive, my dear.
- [111:04]
B
How late you are.
- [111:05]
A
Sorry, Mama.
- [111:06]
B
We had a deal of work to.
- [111:07]
A
Finish up last night and had to.
- [111:09]
B
Clear away this morning. Mother.
- [111:10]
A
Well, never mind, so long as you are.
- [111:13]
B
Come, sit ye down before the fire.
- [111:15]
A
My dear, and have a warm Lord bless ye.
- [111:17]
B
No, no. There's Father coming. Hide, Martha, hide.
- [111:28]
A
So Martha hid herself behind the closet door, and in came Little Bob the Father, with at least three feet of comforter, exclusive of the fringe hanging down before him, and his threadbare clothes darned up and brushed to look seasonable. And Tiny Tim upon his shoulder. Alas for Tiny Tim, he bore a little crutch and had his limbs supported by an iron frame.
- [111:50]
B
Down you go, my boy. Down you go. There you are, Tim. Next time we go to church, you'll carry me on your shoulders, eh?
- [111:59]
A
What do you say about that?
- [112:01]
B
I'll do my best, Papa. And I dare say you'll do a most excellent job. Hello, Papa. Welcome home, Papa. Why, thank you, Edward. And welcome home yourself, Belinda. And if you haven't outdone yourself again, my love. The potatoes smell exquisite. But now, why, where's our Martha? Isn't she home yet?
- [112:23]
A
Not coming. Not coming?
- [112:26]
B
Not coming upon Christmas Day? I am home, Papa. I am home. Martha. What's this? We were surprising you, Papa, but I hate to see you disappointed, even if only in joke, I couldn't stay hidden. Well, aren't you a little rascal? I'm glad to have you home, even if jokes will happen.
- [112:46]
A
And how did Little Tim behave? As good as gold.
- [112:49]
B
And better. Somehow he gets thoughtful sitting by himself so much and thinks the strangest things.
- [112:57]
A
You ever Heard, he told me, coming.
- [113:00]
B
Home that he hoped the people saw him in the church because he was a cripple and it might be pleasant.
- [113:05]
A
To them to remember upon Christmas Day.
- [113:08]
B
Who made lame beggars walk and blind men see.
- [113:12]
A
Bob's voice was tremulous when he told them this and trembled more when he said that Tiny Tim was growing strong and hearty. His active little crutch was heard upon the floor, and back came Tiny Tim before another word was spoken, escorted by his brother and sister to his stool before the fire. And while Bob, turning up his cuffs as if, poor fellow, they were capable of being made more shabby, compounded some hot mixture in a jug with gin and lemons and stirred it round and round and put it on the hob to simmer, Master Peter and the two ubiquitous young Cratchits went to fetch the goose, with which they soon returned in high procession. At last the dishes were set on and grace was said. They were succeeded by a breathless pause as Mrs. Cratchit, looking slowly all along the carving knife, prepared to plunge it into the goose's breast.
- [114:00]
B
Cut the goose, Mama.
- [114:04]
A
There you go.
- [114:06]
B
Whoa, Mama. Hurrah.
- [114:09]
A
There was never such a goose, Bob said he didn't believe there was ever such a goose cooked. Its tenderness and flavor, size and cheapness with the themes of universal admiration eked out by applesauce and mashed potatoes. It was a sufficient dinner for the whole family.
- [114:25]
B
Now, I've never seen a goose disappear so fast. Here we are, my lovelies. Christmas pudding.
- [114:34]
A
Everybody had something to say about it, but nobody said or thought it was at all a small pudding for a large family. It would have been heresy to do so. Any Cratchit would have blushed to hint at such a thing. At last the dinner was all done.
- [114:48]
B
A merry Christmas to us all, my dears. God bless us. A merry Christmas.
- [114:53]
A
Merry Christmas.
- [114:54]
B
Happy Christmas. Happy Christmas.
- [114:56]
A
A merry Christmas, my love.
- [114:59]
B
God bless us, every one. God bless us indeed. Tim. He has blessed us, hasn't he, mum?
- [115:06]
A
That he has, love? Indeed he has. Tiny Tim sat very close to his father's side upon his little stool. Bob held his withered hand in his as if he loved the child and wished to keep him by his side and dreaded that he might be taken from him. Scrooge, invisible as he was, observed this keenly and turned to the ghost spirit.
- [115:29]
B
Tell me if Tiny Tim will live.
- [115:31]
A
I see a vacant seat in the poor chimney corner and a crutch without an owner, carefully preserved. If these shadows remain unaltered by the Future. The child will die.
- [115:46]
B
No. No. Oh, no. Kind spirit, say he will be spared.
- [115:50]
A
If these shadows remain unaltered by the future, none other of my race will find him here. What then? If he be like to die, he had better do it and decrease the surplus population.
- [116:05]
B
Spirit. No. No. I did not know then what I have seen when I said those words. I man.
- [116:11]
A
If man you be in heart, not adamant, forbear that wicked can't. Until you have discovered what the surplus is and where it is, will you decide what men shall live, what men shall die? It may be that in the sight of heaven you are more worthless and less fit to live than millions like this poor man's child. To hear the insect on the leaf pronouncing on the too much life among the hungry brothers in the dust. Scrooge bent before the ghost's rebuke and, trembling, cast his eyes upon the ground. But he raised them speedily on hearing his own name. Mr. Scrooge.
- [116:51]
B
I'll give you a toast to Mr. Scrooge, the founder of the feast. The founder of the feast, indeed. I wish I had him here. I'd give him a piece of my.
- [117:00]
A
Mind to feast upon and I hope.
- [117:02]
B
He'D have a good appetite for it. My dear, the children. Christmas Day.
- [117:05]
A
It should be Christmas Day, I am.
- [117:07]
B
Sure, on which one drinks to the.
- [117:09]
A
Health of such an odious, stingy, hard.
- [117:12]
B
Unfeeling man as Mr. Scrooge. You know he is, Robert. Nobody knows it better than you do, poor fellow. My dear, Christmas Day. I'll drink to his health for your sake and the day's, not for his. Long life to him. A Merry Christmas and an appy New Year. He'll be very merry and very happy, I have no doubt. Mr. Scrooge. Mr. Scrooge.
- [117:36]
A
The children drank the toast after her. It was the first of their proceedings which had no heartiness. Tiny Tim drank it last of all, but he didn't care 2 pence for it. Scrooge was the ogre of the family. The mention of his name cast a dark shadow on the party, which was not dispelled for full five minutes after it had passed away. There were 10 times merrier than before from the mere relief of Scrooge the baleful being done with Bob Cratchit told them how he had a situation in his eye for Master Peter, which would bring in, if obtained, the full five and sixpence weekly. The two young Cratchits laughed tremendously at the idea of Peter's being a man of business. And Peter himself looked thoughtfully at the fire from between his collars, as if he were deliberating what particular investments he should favor when he came into the receipt of that bewildering income. Martha, who was a poor apprentice at a milner's, then told them what kind of work she had to do and how many hours she worked at a stretch, and how she meant to lie abed tomorrow morning for a good long rest, tomorrow being a holiday she passed at home. Also how she had seen a countess and a lord some days before, and how the lord was much about as tall as Peter, at which Peter pulled up his collar so high that you couldn't have seen his head if you had been there all this time. The chestnuts and the jug went round and round and by and by. They had a song about a lost child traveling in the snow from tiny timing, who had a plaintive little voice and sang it very well indeed. There was nothing of high mark in this. They were not a handsome family, they were not well dressed, the shoes were far from being waterproof, the clothes were scanty, and Peter might have known, and very likely did, the inside of a pawnbroker's, but they were happy, grateful, pleased with one another and contented with the time. And when they faded and looked happier yet in the bright sprinklings of the Spirit's torch at parting, Scrooge had his eye upon them, and especially on Tiny Tim, until the last. By this time it was getting dark and snowing pretty heavily, and as Scrooge and the Spirit went along the streets, the brightness of the roaring fires in kitchens, parlors, and all sorts of rooms was wonderful. Here the flickering, the layering of the blaze, showed preparations for a cozy dinner with hot plates baking through and through before the fire, and deep red curtains ready to be drawn to shut out cold and darkness. There all the children in the house were running out into the snow to meet their married sisters, brothers, cousins, uncles, aunts, and be the first to greet them. But if you had judged from the numbers of people on their way to friendly gatherings, you might have thought that no one was at home to give them welcome when they got there, instead of every house expecting company and piling up its fires half chimney high blessings on it. How the ghost exulted, how it bared its breadth of breast and opened its capacious palm and floated on outpouring with a generous hand, its bright and harmless mirth on everything within its reach. And now, without a word of warning from the ghost, they stood upon a bleak and desert moor where monstrous masses of rude stones were cast about as though it were the burial place of giants. And water spread itself wheresoever it listed or would have done so but for the frost that held it prisoner. And nothing grew but moss and furze and coarse, rank grass. Down in the west the setting sun had left a streak of fiery red which glared upon the desolation for an instant like a sullen eye, and frowning lower, lower, lower, yet was lost in the thick gloom of darkest night.
- [121:29]
B
What place is this?
- [121:31]
A
A place where miners live who labor in the bowels of the earth. But they know me. See that light? A light shone from the window of a hut and swiftly they advanced towards it, Passing through the wall of mud and stone, they found a cheerful company assembled round a glowing fire. An old, old man and woman with their children and their children's children and another generation beyond that, all decked out gaily in their holiday attire.
- [122:00]
B
I saw three ships come sailing in On Christmas day, on Christmas day I saw three ships come sailing in On Christmas day in the morning and what was in those ships, all three on.
- [122:15]
A
Christmas day, on Christmas? The old man, in a voice that seldom rose above the howling of the wind upon the barren waste, was singing them a Christmas song. It had been a very old song when he was a boy, and from time to time they all joined in the chorus. So surely as they raised their voices, the old man got quite blithe and loud. And so surely as they stopped, his vigor sank again onward. Hold my robe. Scrooge, holding the spirit's robe, found himself passing on above the moor, sped whither not to see, to see. To Scrooge's horror, looking back, he saw the last of the land, a frightful range of rocks behind them. And his ears were deafened by the thundering of water as it rolled and and roared and raged among the dreadful caverns. It had worn and fiercely tried to undermine the earth, built upon a dismal reef of sunken rocks some league or so from shore, on which the waters chafed and dashed the wild year through, there stood a solitary lighthouse. Great heaps of seaweed clung to its base, and stormbirds born of the wind, one might suppose, the seaweed of the water rose and fell about it like the waves that they skimmed. Scrooge and the spirit passed through the lighthouse's wave beaten walls and found two men. The two men who watched the light the fire that through the loophole in the thick stone wall shed out a ray of brightness on the awful sea.
- [123:47]
B
Merry Christmas, Harry. Merry Christmas.
- [123:56]
A
Hark. How all the welkin rings Glory to.
- [124:00]
B
The King of Kings Peace on earth and mercy mild God and sinners reconciled Joyful all ye nations Rise, join the.
- [124:13]
A
Triumph of the skies Universal nature say Christ the Lord is born. Onward again. The ghost sped on above the black and heaving sea. On, on. Until, being far away from any shore, they lighted on a ship ahoy.
- [124:37]
B
Pull in the ropes, sir. Aye, aye, pull them in.
- [124:43]
A
They stood beside the helmsman at the wheel, the lookout in the bow, the officers who aired the watch, dark ghostly figures in their several stations. But every man among them hummed a Christmas tune, or at a Christmas thought, or spoke below his breath to his companions of some bygone Christmas Day with homeward hopes belonging to it. And every man on board, waking or sleeping, good or bad, had had a kinder word for another on that day than on any day in the year, and had shared to some extent in its festivities, and had remembered those he cared for at a distance, and had known that they delighted to remember him.
- [125:20]
B
Pull them in and we'll see Christmas at home.
- [125:23]
A
Yet it was a great surprise to Scrooge, while listening to the moaning of the wind, the calls of the seamen, and thinking what a solemn thing it was to move on through the lonely darkness over an unknown abyss whose depths were secrets as profound as death, it was a great surprise to Scrooge, while thus engaged, to hear a hearty laugh. The whole scene passed off in the breath of the last word spoken by Fred, his nephew. And he and the Spirit were again upon their travels. Much they saw, and far they went, and many homes they visited, but always with a happy end. The Spirit stood beside sick beds, and they were cheerful on foreign lands, and they were close at home by struggling men, and they were patient in their greater hope by poverty. And it was rich in Orme's house, hospital and jail, in misery's every refuge, where vain man in his little brief authority had not made fast the door and barred the spirit out, he left his blessing and taught Scrooge his precepts. It was a long night, if it were only a night. But Scrooge had his doubts of this, because the Christmas holidays appeared to be condensed into the space of time they passed together. It was strange, too, that while Scrooge remained unaltered in his outward form, the ghost grew older, clearly older. Scrooge had observed this change, but never spoke of it until they left a children's Twelfth Night party. When, looking at the Spirit as they stood together in an open place, he noticed that its hair was Gray.
- [127:18]
B
Are spirit's lives so short?
- [127:20]
A
My life upon this globe is very brief. It ends tonight.
- [127:25]
B
Tonight?
- [127:27]
A
Tonight at midnight. Hark. The time is drawing near.
- [127:33]
B
Forgive me if I am not justified in what I ask, but I see something strange, and not belonging to yourself, protruding from your skirts.
- [127:44]
A
Look here. From the foldings of its robe, it brought two children. Wretched, abject, frightful, hideous, miserable. They knelt down at its feet and clung upon the outside of its garment.
- [128:02]
B
Oh, man. Look here. Look. Look down here.
- [128:08]
A
They were a boy and girl. Yellow, meagre, ragged, scowling, wolfish, but prostrate too, in their humility. Where graceful youth should have filled their features out and touched them with its freshest tints, a stale and shrivelled hand, like that of age, had pinched them and twisted them and pulled them into shreds.
- [128:32]
B
They are fine, child, they are. O Spirit, are they yours?
- [128:40]
A
They are man's, and they cling to me, appealing from their fathers. This boy is ignorance. This girl is want. Beware them both, and all of their degree. But most of all, beware this boy. For on his brow I see that written, which is doom, unless the writing be erased. Deny it.
- [129:06]
B
Have they no refuge or resource?
- [129:08]
A
Are there no prisons? Are there no workhouses?
- [129:14]
B
Are there no prisons? Are there no workhouses? Please, Spirit, have mercy. Have mercy.
- [129:29]
A
Scrooge looked about him for the ghost and saw it not.
- [129:35]
B
He's gone. He's truly gone. But. But that was 12. Molly. Molly said the last would visit me at 12. It's 12 now.
- [129:52]
A
Lifting up his eyes, he beheld a solemn phantom, draped and hooded, coming like a mist along the ground towards him. The phantom slowly, gravely, silently approached.
- [130:07]
B
Spirit is. That is.
- [130:11]
A
The phantom came near, and Scrooge bent down upon his knee. For in the very air through which the spirit moved, it seemed to scatter gloom and mystery. It was shrouded in a deep black garment which concealed its head, its face, its form, and left nothing of it visible save one outstretched hand. But for this, it would have been difficult to detach its figure from the night and separate it from the darkness by which it was surrounded. He felt that it was tall and stately when it came beside him and that its mysterious presence filled him with a solemn dread. He knew no more, for the spirit neither spoke nor moved.
- [130:54]
B
I am in the presence of the Ghost of Christmas yet to Come. You point onward. You are about to show me shadows of the things that have not happened but will happen in the time before us. Is that something so, Spirit.
- [131:15]
A
The upper portion of the garment was contracted for an instant in its folds, as if the spirit had inclined its head. That was the only answer he received. Although well used to ghostly company, by this time Scrooge feared the silent shape so much that his legs trembled beneath him and he found that he could hardly stand when he prepared to follow it. The spirit paused a moment as observing his condition and giving him time to recover. But Scrooge was all the worse for this. It thrilled him with a vague, uncertain horror to know that behind the dusky shroud there were ghostly eyes intently fixed upon him, while he, though he stretched his own to the utmost, could see nothing but a spectral hand and one.
- [132:04]
B
Great heap of black ghost of the future. I fear you more than any specter I have seen. But as I know your purpose is to do me good, and as I hope to live to be another man from what I was, I am prepared to bear you company and do it with a thankful heart. Will you not speak to me then? Lead on. Lead on. The night is waning fast and it is precious time to me. I know. Lead on, spirit.
- [132:41]
A
The phantom moved away as it had come towards him. Scrooge followed in the shadow of its stress, which bore him up, he thought, and carried him along. They scarcely seemed to enter the city, for the city rather seemed to spring up about them and encompass them of its own act. But there they were in the heart of it, on the London Exchange, amongst the merchants, who hurried up and down and chinked the money in their pockets and conversed in groups and looked at their watches and trifled thoughtfully with their great gold seals and so forth. And Scrooge had seen them often. The spirit stopped beside one little knot of businessmen. Observing that the phantom's hand was pointed to them, Scrooge advanced to listen to their talk.
- [133:33]
B
Did you hear? How? The notice doesn't detail that, and I didn't hear any particulars, no. I don't know much about it either way. I only know he's dead. When did he die?
- [133:45]
A
Last night, I believe.
- [133:47]
B
Why? What was the matter with him?
- [133:49]
A
I thought he'd never die. Oh, God knows.
- [133:52]
B
What has he done with his money? I haven't heard. Left it to his company, perhaps? He hasn't left it to me, that's all I know. It's likely to be a very cheap.
- [134:05]
A
Funeral, for upon my life, I don't know of anybody to go to it. Suppose we make up a party and volunteer.
- [134:13]
B
I don't mind going if a lunch is provided, but I must be fed if I make one. Well, I am the Most disinterested among you, after all, for I never wear black gloves and I never eat lunch. But I'll off to go if anybody else will. When I come to think of it, I'm not at all sure that I wasn't his most particular friend, for we.
- [134:40]
A
Used to stop and speak whenever we met.
- [134:42]
B
Anyhow, I must be off.
- [134:45]
A
Bye now.
- [134:46]
B
Anywho, Good day to you both.
- [134:48]
A
Speakers and listeners strolled away and mixed with other groups. Scrooge knew the men and looked towards the Spirit for an explanation. He received none. The phantom glided on into a street. Its finger pointed to two persons meeting. Scrooge listened again, thinking that the explanation might lie here. He knew these men also perfectly. They were men of business, very wealthy and of great importance. He had made a point of always standing well in their esteem. In a business point of view, that is, strictly in a business point of view.
- [135:21]
B
Good day, sir. How are you?
- [135:24]
A
How are you?
- [135:25]
B
Well, old Scratch has got his own at last, eh?
- [135:29]
A
So I am told. Cold, isn't it? Seasonable for Christmas time.
- [135:36]
B
You're not a skater, I suppose.
- [135:38]
A
No, no. Something else to think of. Good morning. Not another word. That was their meeting, their conversation and their parting. Scrooge was at first inclined to be surprised that the spirit should attach importance to conversations apparently so trivial. But feeling assured that they must have some hidden purpose, he set himself to consider what was likely to be. They could scarcely be supposed to have any bearing on the death of Jacob, his old partner, for that was past and this ghost province was the future. Nor could he think of anyone immediately connected with himself to whom he could apply them. But nothing doubting that to whomsoever they applied, they had some latent moral. For his own improvement, he resolved to treasure up every word he heard and everything he saw, and especially to observe the shadow of himself when it appeared. For he had an expectation that the conduct of his future self would give him the clue he missed and would render the solution of these riddles easy.
- [136:35]
B
I do not know the import of these conversations, nor what moral I should learn, but lead on, and I will bear you company. This. This is my accustomed corner in the exchange, isn't it?
- [136:50]
A
He looked about in that very place for his own image. Image. But another man stood in his accustomed corner, and though the clock pointed to his usual time of day for being there, he saw no likeness of himself among the multitudes that poured into the porch. It gave him little surprise, however, for he had been revolving in his mind a change of life and thought and hoped he saw in his New born resolutions carried out in this quiet and dark. Beside him stood the phantom with its outstretched hand. When he roused himself from his thoughtful quest, he fancied from the turn of the hand and its situation in reference to himself that the unseen eyes were looking at him keenly. It made him shudder and feel very cold. They left the busy scene and went into an obscure part of the town where Scrooge had never penetrated before, although he recognized its situation and its bad repute. The ways were foul and narrow, the shops and houses wretched, the people half naked, drunken, slipshod, ugly alleys and archways, like so many cesspools, disgorged their offences of smell and dirt and life upon the straggling streets. And the whole quarter reeked with crime, with filth and misery. Far into this den of infamous resort, the phantom stopped in front of a low browed beetling shop, below a penthouse roof where iron, old rags, bottles, bones and greasy offal were brought. Its finger pointed to the door.
- [138:22]
B
You are halting, spirit. Your finger points towards that tattered curtain. Must I enter there? I shall do so if you command, for I know that your purpose is to aid me.
- [138:40]
A
Upon the floor within were piled up heaps of rusty keys, nails, chains, hinges, files, scales, weights and refuse. Iron of all kinds, secrets that few would like to scrutinize, were bred and hidden in mountains of unseemly rags, masses of corrupted fat and sepulchres of bones. Sitting in among the wares he dealt in by a charcoal stove made of old bricks, was Old Joe, a gray haired rascal, nearly 70 years of age, who had screened himself from the cold air without by a frowsy curtaining of miscellaneous tatters, hung upon a line and smoked his pipe in all the luxury of calm retirement.
- [139:22]
B
Spirit, I know not what you wish me to observe. My likeness has not been seen.
- [139:27]
A
I only wish that Scrooge was interrupted in his pleas to the phantom by a woman with a heavy bundle who slunk into the shop.
- [139:34]
B
Hello there, Joe. Fancy seeing you here, eh? Been a time or two since we last met. Did you? Well now, who's this? What's this?
- [139:46]
A
What's this?
- [139:47]
B
Hello. Strange company you're keeping these days, Old Joe. Company? What do you mean, incompetent?
- [140:04]
A
Scrooge and the Phantom stood in this low browed beetling shop. As Old Joe, the two women and a man burst into laughter, astonished at seeing one another.
- [140:14]
B
Let the charwoman alone to be the first. Let the laundry salon to be the. Let the undertaker's men alone to be the third. Look here, Old Joe, here's a chance. If we hadn't all three met here without meaning absolutely, and you couldn't have met in a better place. Come into the parlor. You were made free of it long ago, you know, and the other two ain't strangers. Stop till I shut the door of the shop. Ow. How it screaks. Ain't such a rusty bit of metal in this place as its own hinges, I believe. And there's no such old bones in as mine. We're all suitable to our calling. We're well matched. Come into the parlour. Come into the parlour.
- [141:04]
A
The parlour was the space behind the screen of rags. The old man raked the fire together with an old stair rod, and, having trimmed his smoky lamp, for it was night, with the stem of his pipe, put it in his mouth again. While he did this, the woman who had already spoken threw her bundle on the floor and sat down in a flaunting manner on a stool, crossing her elbows on her knees and looking with bold defiance at the other two.
- [141:26]
B
What odds, then? What odds, Mrs. Dilber? Every person has a right to take care of themselves. He always did. That's true.
- [141:34]
A
Indeed. No man more so.
- [141:37]
B
Why, then don't stand staring as if you was afraid, woman. Who's the wiser? We're not going to pick holes in.
- [141:43]
A
Each other's Colts, I suppose.
- [141:45]
B
No, indeed.
- [141:46]
A
No, indeed.
- [141:47]
B
We should hope not. Very well, then.
- [141:49]
A
That's enough.
- [141:50]
B
Who's the worse for the loss of.
- [141:52]
A
A few things like these? Not a dead man, I suppose.
- [141:59]
B
If he wanted to keep him after he was dead. A wicked old screw. Why wasn't he more natural in his lifetime? If he had been, he'd have had somebody to look after him when he was struck with death, instead of lying gasping out his last there alone by himself. It is the truest word that ever was spoke.
- [142:18]
A
It's a judgment on him. I wish it was a little heavier judgment.
- [142:22]
B
And it should have been.
- [142:23]
A
You may depend upon it.
- [142:24]
B
If I could have laid my hands on anything else. Open that bundle, O Joe, and let me know the value of it.
- [142:32]
A
Speak out plain.
- [142:33]
B
I'm not afraid to be the first, nor afraid for them to see it. We know pretty well that we were helping ourselves before we met here. I believe it's no sin. Open the bundle, Joe. Not on your life. A lady should never go first.
- [142:54]
A
The gallantry of her friends would not allow her to go first. And the man in faded black, mounting the breach, first produced his plunder. It was not extensive. A seal or two, a pencil case, a pair of sleeve buttons and a brooch of no great value were all. They were severally examined and appraised by old Joe, who chopped the sums he was disposed to give for each upon the wall and added them up into a total when he found there was nothing more to come.
- [143:18]
B
That's your account. And I wouldn't give you another sixpence if I was to be boiled for not doing it. Who's next? Oh, I'll go, I fancy.
- [143:27]
A
Mrs. Dilber was next. Sheets and towels, a little wearing apparel, two old fashioned silver teaspoons, a pair of sugar tongs and a few boots. Her account was stated on the wall in the same manner.
- [143:38]
B
I always give too much to ladies. It's a weakness of mine and that's the way I'll ruin myself. That's your account. If you asked me for another penny and made it an open question, I'd repent of being so liberal and knock off half a crown. And now undo my bundle.
- [143:54]
A
Joe.
- [143:54]
B
Come now, bring your bundle. Here we go. Come on. You've done a great nod on this one, haven't you? What do you call this? Bed curtains? A bed curtain. Don't mean to say you took them down, rings and all, with them lying there. Yes, I do. Why not? You were born to make your fortune and you'll certainly do it. I certainly shan't hold my hand when.
- [144:20]
A
I can get anything in it by.
- [144:22]
B
Reaching it out for the sake of.
- [144:24]
A
Such a man as he was.
- [144:25]
B
I promise you, Joe. Don't drop that oil upon the blankets now. His blankets?
- [144:30]
A
Who else is, do you think?
- [144:32]
B
He isn't likely to take code without my dare say. I hope he didn't die of anything catching, eh? Don't you be afraid of that.
- [144:40]
A
I ain't so fond of his company.
- [144:42]
B
That I'd loiter about him for such things if he did. Ah, you may look through that shirt till your eyes ache, but you won't find an hole in it nor a threadbare place. It's the best he had, and a fine one, too. They'd have wasted it if it hadn't been for me. What do you call the wasting of it? Putting it on him to be buried in. To be sure somebody was fool enough to do it. But I took it off again. If calico ain't good enough for such a purpose, it isn't good enough for anything. It's quite as becoming to the body. He can't look uglier than he did in that one.
- [145:19]
A
Scrooge listened to this dialogue in horror as they sat grouped about this spoil in the scanty light afforded by the old man's lamp. He viewed them with a detestation and disgust which could hardly have been greater, though they had been obscene demons marketing the corpse itself.
- [145:35]
B
There you'll see the proper amount. In there, too. Not a sixpence more. Thank you kindly. This is the end of it, you see.
- [145:45]
A
He frightened everyone away from him when.
- [145:47]
B
He was alive to profit us when he was dead. Spirit. I see, I see. The case of this unhappy man might be my own. My life tends that way now. Merciful heaven, what is this?
- [146:06]
A
He recoiled in terror, for the scene had changed and now he almost touched a bed. A bare, uncurtained bed, on which, beneath a ragged sheet there lay a something covered up, which, though it was dumb, announced itself in awful language. The room was very dark, too dark to be observed with any accuracy, though Scrooge glanced round it in obedience to a secret impulse, anxious to know what kind of room it was. A pale light, rising in the outer air, fell straight upon the bed, and on it, plundered and bereft, unwatched, unwept, uncared for, was the body of this man. Scrooge glanced towards the phantom. Its steady hand was pointed to the head. The COVID was so carelessly adjusted that the slightest raising of it, the motion of a finger upon Scrooge's part, would have disclosed the face. He thought of it, felt how easy it would be to do, and longed to do it, but had no more power to withdraw the veil than to dismiss the spectre at his side. And Scrooge thought, if this man could be raised up now, what would be in his foremost thoughts? Avarice, hard dealing, griping, cares? They have brought him to a rich end. Truly, no voice pronounced these questions in Scrooge's ears, and yet he heard them when he looked upon the bed. The body lay in the dark, empty house with not a man, not a woman or a child. To say that he was kind to me in this or that, or for the memory of one kind word, I would be kind to him. A cat was tearing at the door and there was a sound of gnawing rats beneath the hearthstone. What they wanted in the room of death, and why they were so restless and disturbed, Scrooge did not dare think.
- [147:51]
B
Spirit, this is a fearful place. In leaving it, I shall not leave its lesson. Trust me. Let us go.
- [148:00]
A
Still the ghost pointed with an unmoved finger to the head.
- [148:04]
B
I understand you And I would draw that veil from upon that body's head if I could. But I have not the power, spirit. I have not the power. If there is any person in the town who feels emotion caused by this man's death, show that person to me, Spirit. I beseech you.
- [148:28]
A
The phantom spread its dark robe before him for a moment, like a wing covering the scene before Scrooge's eyes, before withdrawing it. The scene, with all its terror and dread, evaporated instantly. The phantom spread its dark robe before him for a moment like a wing covering the scene before Scrooge's eyes. Withdrawing it, the phantom revealed the room by daylight where a mother and her children were. She was expecting someone. And with anxious eagerness, for she walked up and down the room, started at every sound, looked out from the window, glanced at the clock, tried but in vain to work with her needle, and could hardly bear the voices of the children in their play. At length the long expected knock was heard. She hurried to the door and met her husband, a man whose face was careworn and depressed though he was young. There was a remarkable expression in it now, a kind of serious delight of which he felt ashamed and which he struggled to repress.
- [149:26]
B
Come in, James, Come in. You were gone so long, I thought.
- [149:31]
A
But never mind.
- [149:32]
B
Come, sit down. Sit Here. Here's dinner. I've tried to keep it warm for you. Thank you, my love.
- [149:37]
A
Thank you, James. What news?
- [149:40]
B
I don't know how to say.
- [149:44]
A
Is it good or bad?
- [149:46]
B
Bad.
- [149:48]
A
We are quite ruined.
- [149:49]
B
No. There is hope yet, Caroline. If he relents. There is nothing is past hope. If such a miracle has happened. He is past relenting. He is dead. Oh, James. Oh, James, I. I am thankful.
- [150:06]
A
I pray forgiveness for this.
- [150:08]
B
It is wrong of me to feel so. I know what the half drunken woman whom I told you of last night said to me when I tried to.
- [150:14]
A
See him and obtain a week's delay.
- [150:16]
B
And what I thought was a mere.
- [150:17]
A
Excuse to avoid me turns out to.
- [150:19]
B
Have been quite true. He was not only very ill, but dying. Then to whom will our debt be transferred?
- [150:26]
A
I don't know. But before that time we shall be ready with the money.
- [150:30]
B
And even though we were not, it would be a bad fortune indeed to find so merciless a creditor and his successor. We may sleep tonight with light hearts, Caroline.
- [150:39]
A
Yes. Soften it as they would. Their hearts were lighter. The children's faces hush and clustered round to hear what they so little understood were brighter. And it was a happier house for this man's Death. The only emotion that the ghost could show him caused by the event, was one of pleasure. Let me see.
- [150:57]
B
Some tenderness connected with a death or that dark chamber spirit, which we left just now will be forever present to me. Whither do you point? I shall follow, spirit.
- [151:12]
A
The ghost conducted him through several streets familiar to his feet. And as they went along, Scrooge looked here and there to find himself, but nowhere was he to be seen. They entered poor Bob Cratchit's house, the dwelling he had visited before, and found the mother and the children seated round the fire. Quiet, Very quiet. The noisy little Cratchits were as still as statues in one corner and sat looking up at Peter, who had a book before him. The mother and her daughters were engaged in sewing, but surely they were very quiet.
- [151:47]
B
And he took a child and set him in the midst of them.
- [151:50]
A
Where had Scrooge heard these words? He had not dreamed them. The boy must have read them out as he and the spirit crossed the threshold. Why did he not go on? The mother laid her work upon the table and put her hand up to her face. Mama, you're crying.
- [152:08]
B
The color hurts my eyes. They're better now again.
- [152:12]
A
It makes them weak by candlelight.
- [152:14]
B
And I wouldn't show weak eyes to.
- [152:16]
A
Your father when he comes home. For the world it must be near.
- [152:20]
B
His time passed it, rather. But I think he walked a little.
- [152:24]
A
Slower than he used these last few evenings.
- [152:26]
B
Mother. I have known him walk with Tiny.
- [152:28]
A
Tim upon his shoulder very fast indeed.
- [152:31]
B
And so have I. Often. And so have I. And I. But he was very light to carry, and his father loved him so, that it was no trouble.
- [152:42]
A
No trouble. Hello. Hello.
- [152:47]
B
Oh, tea is ready, is it? I can serve it, Papa.
- [152:50]
A
Thank you, Martha.
- [152:51]
B
Thank you. Here you are, Papa. I can take your coat. Thank you, Peter. Do sit down, my dear.
- [152:57]
A
Sit down.
- [152:58]
B
Thank you, my love. Ah, thank you. Ah, now, is that the same sewing.
- [153:05]
A
You started this morning, love?
- [153:06]
B
Why, you and the girls are the most industrious in the village. I dare say you'll be done long before Sunday. Sunday? You went today, then, Robert? Yes, my dear.
- [153:16]
A
I wish you could have gone.
- [153:17]
B
It would have done you good to see how green a place it is. But you'll see it often. I promised him that I would walk there on a Sunday. My little.
- [153:30]
A
Little child.
- [153:31]
B
My little child. My little child.
- [153:36]
A
He broke down all at once. He couldn't help it. If he could have helped it, he and his child would have been farther apart, perhaps, than they were. He left the room and went upstairs into the room above, which was lighted cheerfully and hung with Christmas. There was a chair set close beside the child, and there were signs of someone having been there lately. Poor Bob sat down in it, and when he had thought a little and composed himself, he kissed the little face.
- [154:05]
B
My poor little Timothy. My poor, poor Timothy.
- [154:11]
A
I love you.
- [154:13]
B
I love you, Timothy.
- [154:15]
A
He was reconciled to what had happened and went down again quite happy. They drew about the fire and talked, the girls and mother working. Still now I have seen Fred Scrooge's.
- [154:27]
B
Nephew but once, hardly more, and yet.
- [154:30]
A
When I saw him in the street this morning, he stopped me by and inquired after me, saying, you look a.
- [154:35]
B
Little down, you know, and what is.
- [154:37]
A
It that has got you so on.
- [154:39]
B
Which for he is the pleasantest spoken gentleman you ever heard, I told him.
- [154:44]
A
I am heartily sorry for it, Mr. Cratchit, he said, and heartily sorry for your good wife. By the bye, how he ever knew.
- [154:52]
B
That, I don't know.
- [154:54]
A
Knew what, my dear? Why, that you were a good wife.
- [154:57]
B
Everybody knows that. Very well observed, my boy.
- [155:01]
A
I hope they do. Heartily sorry, he said, for your good wife.
- [155:05]
B
If I can be of service to you in any way, he said, giving me his card, that's where I live.
- [155:10]
A
Pray come to me now.
- [155:12]
B
It wasn't for the sake of anything.
- [155:13]
A
He might be able to do for.
- [155:14]
B
Us so much as for his kind.
- [155:16]
A
Way that this was quite delightful.
- [155:18]
B
It really seemed as if he had known our tiny timing and felt with us. I'm sure he's a good soul. You would be sure of it, my dear, if you saw and spoke to him. I shouldn't be at all surprised, mark.
- [155:29]
A
What I say, if he got Peter a better situation.
- [155:32]
B
And then Peter will be keeping company.
- [155:34]
A
With someone and setting up for himself.
- [155:36]
B
Get along with you. It's just as likely as not one of these days, though there's plenty of time for that, my dear. But however and whenever we part from one another, I am sure we shall none of us forget poor Tiny Tim, shall we? Or this first parting that there was among us. Never, Father. Never, Father.
- [155:56]
A
And I know. I know, my dears, that when we recollect how patient and how mild he was, although he was a little, little.
- [156:04]
B
Child, we shall not quarrel easily among ourselves and forget poor Tiny Tim in doing it. No, never, Father.
- [156:12]
A
I am very happy.
- [156:14]
B
I am very happy.
- [156:16]
A
Mrs. Cratchit kissed him, his daughters kissed him, the two young Cratchits kissed him, and Peter and himself shook hands. Spirit of Tiny Tim, thy childish essence was from God the Ghost of Christmas yet to Come conveyed Scrooge as before, though at a different time, he thought. Indeed, there seemed no order in these latter visions, save that they were in the future into the resorts of businessmen, but showed him not himself.
- [156:44]
B
Spectre, something informs me that our parting moment is at hand. I know it, but I know not how. Tell me what man that was whom we saw lying dead.
- [156:56]
A
The spirit did not answer, nor stay for anything, but went straight on as to the end just now desired, until the by Scrooge, to tarry for a moment.
- [157:06]
B
This course through which we hurry now is where my place of occupation is, and has been for a length of time. I see the house. Let me behold what I shall be in days to come. Spirit, the house is yonder. Why do you point away?
- [157:21]
A
The spirit stopped. The hand was pointed elsewhere. The inexorable finger underwent no change yet Scrooge went to the window approach his former office.
- [157:31]
B
Come, I shall look in here. This is my office. But the furniture is not the same, and that figure in the chair is not myself. Spirit, lead on. I do not know the way.
- [157:47]
A
The phantom pointed as before, he joined it once again, and, wondering why and whether he had gone, accompanied it until they reached reached an iron gate. He paused to look round before entering a churchyard. Here then, the wretched man, the man whose body had lain veiled, whose name he had now to learn, lay underneath the ground. It was a worthy place, walled in by houses overrun by grass and weeds, the growth of vegetation's death, not life choked up with too much burying, fat with repleted appetite. A worthy place. The spirit stood among the graves and pointed down to one. Scrooge advanced towards it, trembling. The phantom was exactly as it had been, but he dreaded that he saw new meaning in its solemn shape.
- [158:45]
B
Before I draw nearer to that stone to which you point, answer me one question. Are these the shadows of the things that will be? Or are they shadows of things that may be only? Men's courses will foreshadow certain ends to which, if persevered in, they must lead. But if the courses be departed from, the ends will change. Say it is thus with what you show me.
- [159:12]
A
Still the ghost pointed downward to the grave by which it stood, immovable as ever. Scrooge crept towards it, trembling as he went, and following the finger, read upon the stone of the neglected grave his own name, Ebenezer Scrooge.
- [159:32]
B
Am I that man who lay upon the bed?
- [159:36]
A
The finger pointed from the grave to him and back again.
- [159:40]
B
No, spirit. Oh, no, no.
- [159:43]
A
The finger was still there.
- [159:45]
B
Spirit, hear me. I am not the man I was. I will not be the man I must have been before this intercourse. Why show me this if I am past all hope?
- [159:55]
A
For the first time, the hand appeared to shake.
- [159:58]
B
Good spirit, your nature intercedes from me and pities me. Assure me that I yet may change these shadows you have shown me by an altered life.
- [160:06]
A
The kind hand trembled.
- [160:08]
B
I will honor Christmas in my heart and try to keep it all the year. I will live in the past, the present, and the future. The spirits of all three shall strive within me. I will not shut out the lessons that they teach. Oh. Oh, tell me I may sponge away the writing on the stone.
- [160:29]
A
In his agony, he caught the spectral hand. It sought to free itself, but he was strong in his entreaty and detained it. The spirit, stronger yet, repulsed him. Holding up his hands in a last, desperate prayer to have his fate reversed, he saw an alteration in the phantom's hood and dress. It shrunk, collapsed and dwindled down into a bedpost. It is.
- [160:58]
B
It is my own bed. My old bedpost. My curtains.
- [161:03]
A
Yes, and the bedpost was his own. The bed was his own. The room was his own. Best and happiest of all. The time before him was his own. To make amends in.
- [161:14]
B
I will live in the past, the present and the future. The spirits of all three shall strive within me. Oh, Jacob Marley. Heaven and the Christmas time be praised for this. I say it on my knees, old Jacob, on my knees.
- [161:32]
A
He was so fluttered and so glowing with his good intentions that his broken voice would scarcely answer to his call. He had been sobbing violently in his conflict with the spirit, and his face was wet with tears.
- [161:43]
B
They are not torn down. They are not torn down. Rings and all. They are here. I am here. The shadows of the things that would have been may be dispelled. They will be. I know they will.
- [161:56]
A
His hands were busy with his garments all this time, turning them inside out, putting them on upside down, tearing them, mislaying them, making them parties to every kind of extravagance. And making a perfect lacun of himself with his stockings.
- [162:10]
B
I don't know what to do. I'm as light as a feather. I'm as happy as an angel. I'm as merry as a schoolboy. I'm as giddy as a drunken man. Oh. A merry Christmas to everybody. A happy New Year to all the world. Hello here.
- [162:31]
A
Whoop.
- [162:31]
B
Hello. Ha ha.
- [162:33]
A
He had frisked into the sitting room and was now standing there perfectly winded.
- [162:38]
B
There's the saucepan that the gruel was in. And there's the door by which the ghost of Jacob Marley entered. There's the corner where the ghost of Crispa's present sat. There's the window where I saw the wandering spirits. It's all right. It's all true. It all happened.
- [163:03]
A
Really. For a man who had been out of practice for so many years, it was a splendid laugh. A most illustrious laugh. The father of a long, long line of brilliant laughs.
- [163:15]
B
I don't know what day of the month it is. I don't know how long I've been among the spirits. I don't know anything. I'm quite a baby. Never mind. I don't care. I'd rather be a baby. Hello. Whoop. Hello.
- [163:31]
A
Here he was, checked in his transports by the church's ringing out of the lustiest peals he'd ever heard. Clash, clang, hammer, ding, dong bell, bell dong, ding hammer, clang, clash. Oh, glorious, Glorious. Running to the window, he opened it and put out his head. No fog, no mist. Clear, bright, jovial, stirring. Cold, cold piping for the blood to dance to. Golden sunlight. Heavenly, sweet, fresh air. Merry bells. Oh, glorious. Glorious.
- [164:09]
B
There's a good lad down on the street below. He looks as if he's dressed in his Sunday best. Hello, boy. What's today? Eh? What's today, my fine fellow? Today? Why, Christmas Day. It's Christmas Day. I haven't missed it. The spirits have done it all in one night. Well, they can do anything they like. Of course they can. Of course they can. Hello, my fine fellow. Hello. Do you know the poulterers in the next street but one at the corner? I should hope I did. An intelligent boy. A remarkable boy. Do you know whether they've sold the prize turkey that was hanging up there and not the little prize turkey, the big one. What? The one as big as me?
- [164:59]
A
What a delightful boy.
- [165:01]
B
It's a pleasure to talk to him. Yes, my buck, it's hanging there now. Is it? Go and buy it. Buy it? Walker, you're pulling me leg. No, no, no. I am in earnest. Go and buy it and tell him to bring it here, that I may give them the direction where to take it. Come back with the man and I'll give you a shilling. Come back with him in less than five minutes and I'll give you half a crown. Yes, sir. I'll be back in three. I'll send it to Bob Cratchitz. He shan't know who sends it. It's twice the size of Tiny Tim. Joe Miller never made such a joke as sending it to Bob's will be. Where is the paper? Hello. Here we are. I'll write down the address where they should take the turkey. My hands. They won't stop shaking. But shake away. I don't care. They'll have to read it anyhow. Oh, where is that wonderful boy? That intelligent boy? Three minutes. Well, no matter. He'll have half a crown anyway. Ah, the knocker. The wonderful door knocker. Jacob Marley, may your soul be at rest. I have never had nor ever shall have a better friend than thee. Thank ye, Jacob, thank ye. I shall love it as long as I live. I scarcely ever looked at it before. What an honest expression it has in its face. It's a wonderful knocker. Use the boy. Here's the turkey. Hello.
- [166:41]
A
Whoop.
- [166:41]
B
How are you? Merry Christmas. Here's the turkey, sir. And here's the butcher, sir. Yes, sir. Mighty strange to be cold here, sir. But the boy said. Are you good, sir? Merry Christmas to you both. What a turkey. Why, he could stand upon his own legs. But you two, it's impossible to carry that to Camden Town. You must have a cab. Cabbie.
- [167:05]
A
Cab. The chuckle with which he said this and the chuckle with which he paid for the turkey, and the chuckle with which he paid for the cab, and the chuckle with which he recompensed the boy were only to be exceeded by the chuckle with which he sat down breathless in his chair again and chuckled till he cried. Shaving was not an easy task, for his hand continued to shake very much. And shaving requires attention even when you don't dance while you're at it. But if he had cut the end of his nose nose off, he would have put a piece of sticking plaster over it and been quite satisfied. He dressed himself all in his best and at last got out into the streets. The people were by this time pouring forth as he had seen them with the ghost of Christmas present. And walking with his hands behind him, Scrooge regarded every one with a delighted smile. He looked so irresistibly pleasant in a word, that three or four good humoured fellows said, good morning, sir, a Merry Christmas to you. And Scrooge often said afterwards that of all the blithe sounds he had ever heard, those were the blithest in his ears. Scrooge had not gone far into the outside air, when, coming towards him, he beheld the two portly gentlemen who had walked into his counting house the day before and said, scrooge and Marley's, I believe it set a pang across his heart to think how these gentlemen would look upon him when they met. But he knew what path lay straight before him, and he took it.
- [168:27]
B
My dear sirs. How do you do? How do you do? I hope you succeeded yesterday. It was very kind of you. A merry Christmas to you both, good sirs. Mr. Scrooge? Yes, that is my name, and I fear it may not be pleasant to you. Allow me to ask your pardon. And will you have the goodness to accept. To accept a contribution?
- [168:50]
A
A contribution, Mr. Scrooge?
- [168:52]
B
Yes, I would like to make a contribution to your fine fund providing for the poor, if that would be acceptable. But, Mr. Scrooge, when? Last week. Please, please, I would like to. Well, come. We are in the open street. But let me whisper in your ear. Would you have the goodness to accept a thousand crowns? Lord bless me. My dear Mr. Scrooge, are you serious? If you please. Not a farthing less. A great many back payments are included in it, I assure you. Will you do me that favor?
- [169:26]
A
My dear sir, I don't know what to say to such municipal.
- [169:28]
B
Don't. Don't say anything, please. But come and see me. Will you come and see me? Mr. Thomas, wasn't it? And Mr. James. Yes, Thomas, sir.
- [169:41]
A
Indeed I will, sir.
- [169:43]
B
We will. Thank ye. I am much obliged to you both. I thank you 50 times. Bless you both. And a merry, merry Christmas.
- [169:55]
A
He went to church and walked about the streets and watched the people hurrying to and fro and patted children on the head and questioned beggars and looked down into the kitchens of houses and up to the windows, and found that everything could yield him pleasure. He had never dreamed that any walk, that anything, could give him so much happiness. In the afternoon he turned his steps towards his nephew's house. He passed the door a dozen times before he had the courage to go up and knock. But he made a dash and did it. Yes, sir.
- [170:31]
B
May I help you? Is your master at home, my dear?
- [170:34]
A
Yes, sir.
- [170:35]
B
Where is he, my love?
- [170:36]
A
He's in the dining room, sir, along with Mother. I'll show you upstairs, if you please.
- [170:41]
B
Thank you. He knows me. I'll go in here, my dear.
- [170:51]
A
He turned the dining room lock gently and sidled his face in round the door. The assembled friends and family were looking at the table which was spread out in great array. For these young housekeepers are always nervous on such points and like to see that everything is right. Fred, dear heart. Alive. How the sisters and their friends started. How his niece by marriage started. Scrooge had forgotten for the moment about her sitting in the corner with the footstool. Or he wouldn't have done it on any account. Why, bless my soul. Who's that?
- [171:23]
B
It's I, your Uncle Scrooge. I've come to dinner. Will you let me in? Fred? Scrooge.
- [171:33]
A
Mr. Ebenezer Scrooge. My dear uncle. My dear, dear, dear Uncle Scrooge.
- [171:40]
B
You've come at last. Come in, come in and be merry and merry.
- [171:46]
A
Merry. Is the kettle on for tea? Here, let me take your coat and scarf. We'll do up the fire. No need to keep them on in here. Let him in. It is a mercy Fred didn't shake Scrooge's arm off. He was at home in five minutes. Nothing could be heartier. His niece looked just the same. So did Topper when he came. So did the plump sister when she came. So did everyone when they came. Wonderful party, wonderful games, wonderful unanimity. Wonderful happy. But he was early at the office next morning. Oh, he was early there. If he could only be there first and catch Bob Cratchit coming late. That was the thing he had set his heart upon. And he did it. Yes, he did. The clock struck nine. No Bob. A quarter past. No Bob. He was a full 18 minutes and a half behind his time. Scrooge sat with his door wide open that he might see him come into his own dismal little cell. A sort of tank. His hat was off before he opened the door. His comforter, too. He was on his stool in a jiffy, driving away with his pen as if he were trying to overtake 9:00.
- [173:02]
B
Hello. What do you mean by coming in here at this time of day? I am very sorry, sir. I'm behind my time. You are? Yes, I think you are. Step this way, sir, if you please. It's only once a year, sir. It shall not be repeated. I was making rather merry yesterday, sir. Now, I'll tell you what, my friend. I'm not going to stand this sort of thing any longer. And therefore. And therefore I am about to raise your salary. S, sir. A merry Christmas, Bob. A merry Christmas. You are serious, sir? Oh, most serious. Most serious indeed, Bob. I'll raise your salary and endeavor to assist your struggling family. And we will discuss your affairs this very afternoon over a Christmas bowl of smoking bishop. Bob, make up the fires and buy another coal scuttle before you dot another. I, Bob Cratchit. A merry Christmas, Bob. A merrier Christmas, Bob, my good fellow, than I have given you for many a year, Scrooge.
- [174:16]
A
Was better than his word. He did it all and infinitely more. And to Tiny Tim, who did not die, he was a second father. He became as good a friend, as good a master, and as good a man as as the good old city knew, or as any other good old city, town or borough in the good old world. Some people laughed to see the alteration in him, but he let them laugh, and little heeded them. For he was wise enough to know that nothing ever happened on this globe for good, at which some people did not have their fill of laughter in the outset. And knowing that such as these would be blind anyway, he thought it quite as well that they should wrinkle up their eyes and grins as have the malady in less attractive forms. His own heart laughed, and that was quite enough for him. He had no further intercourse with spirits, but lived upon the total abstinence principle ever afterwards. And it was always said of him that he knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge. May that be truly said of us and all of us. And so, as Tiny Tim observed, God bless us, every one. Thank you so much for listening to.
- [175:42]
B
Charles Dickens A Christmas Carol.
- [175:44]
A
To hear the 25 episode version go to adventwithscrooge.com and if you want to hear more shows from the Merry Beggars, like the Saints or on the Night Train, we have hundreds and hundred of episodes, all for free at themrrybaggers.com Merry Christmas, everybody.