Oh! But he was a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone, was Scrooge!
A squeezing, wrenching grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous old sinner! External heat and cold had little influence on him. No warmth could warm, no cold could 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.
"A merry Christmas, uncle! God save you!" cried the cheerful voice of Scrooge's nephew.
"Bah!" said Scrooge; "humbug!"
"Out upon merry Christmas! What's Christmas time to you but a time for paying bills without money; a time for finding yourself a year older, and not an hour richer; a time for balancing your books and having every item in 'em through a round dozen of months presented dead against you? If I had my will, every idiot who goes about with 'Merry Christmas' on his lips should be boiled with his own pudding, and buried with a stake of holly through his heart. He should!"
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"At this festive season of the year, Mr Scrooge," said the gentleman, taking up a pen, "it is more than usually desirable that we should make some slight provision for the poor and destitute, who suffer greatly at the present time. Many thousands are in want of common necessaries; hundreds of thousands are in want of common comforts, sir. ,,,What shall I put you down for?"
"Nothing! "I wish to be left alone. I don't make merry myself at Christmas, and I can't afford to make idle people merry. I help to support the prisons and the workhouses, -- they cost enough, -- and those who are badly off must go there and decrease the surplus population."
Through the heavy door a spectre passed into the room before his eyes.
"What do you want with me?"
said Scrooge, caustic and cold as ever.
"Hear me! My time is nearly gone. I am here to-night to warn you that you have yet a chance and hope of escaping my fate. A chance and hope of my procuring, Ebenezer...
You will be haunted by Three Spirits."
Light flashed up in the room upon the instant, and the curtains of his bed were drawn aside by a strange figure,- like a child: yet not so like a child as like an old man. Its hair was white, yet the face had not a wrinkle in it. It held a branch of fresh green holly in its hand; yet 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.
"Who and what are you?"
"I am the Ghost of Christmas Past. Rise, and walk!"
Scrooge awoke in his own bedroom. But the walls and ceiling were so hung with living green, that it looked a perfect grove. Heaped upon the floor, to form a kind of throne, were turkeys, geese, game, great joints of meat, sucking pigs, long wreaths of sausages, mince-pies, plum-puddings, barrels of oysters, red-hot chestnuts, juicy oranges, immense twelfth-cakes, and great bowls of punch. In easy state upon this couch there sat a Giant glorious to see; who bore a glowing torch, in shape not unlike Plenty's horn, and who raised it high to shed its light on Scrooge, as he came peeping round.
"Come in,- come in! I am the Ghost of Christmas Present. Have never walked with my elder brothers?"
Scrooge read upon the stone of the neglected grave his own name, - EBENEZER SCROOGE.
No, Spirit! O no, no! Spirit! hear me! I am not the man I was. I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year.
Holding up his hands, he saw an alteration in the Phantom's hood and dress. It shrunk, collapsed, and dwindled down into a bedpost.
Running to the window, he opened it, and put out his head. "What's to-day?" cried Scrooge, calling downward to a boy.
"To-day! Why, CHRISTMAS DAY."
Scrooge 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 had no further intercourse with spirits, 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!
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With love from the
Sketchanet team
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