Keith Morrison
Appearances
Dateline NBC
Dr. Seuss' "How The Grinch Stole Christmas!" read by Keith Morrison
How the Grinch Stole Christmas by Dr. Seuss. Every Who down in Whoville liked Christmas a lot. But the Grinch, who lived just north of Whoville, did not. The Grinch hated Christmas, the whole Christmas season. Please don't ask why. No one quite knows the reason. It could be his head wasn't screwed on just right. It could be perhaps his shoes were too tight.
Dateline NBC
Dr. Seuss' "How The Grinch Stole Christmas!" read by Keith Morrison
Every Who down in Whoville, the tall and the small, would stand close together with Christmas bells ringing. They'd stand hand in hand, and the Whos would start singing. They'd sing and they'd sing. Oh, and they'd sing, sing, sing, sing. And the more the Grinch thought of the Who Christmas Sing, the more the Grinch thought, I must stop this whole thing. Why, for 53 years I've put up with it now.
Dateline NBC
Dr. Seuss' "How The Grinch Stole Christmas!" read by Keith Morrison
I must stop Christmas from coming. But how? Then he got an idea, an awful idea. The Grinch got a wonderful, awful idea. I know just what to do, the Grinch laughed in his throat. And he made a quick Santy Claus hat and a coat. And he chuckled and clucked. What a great Grinchy trick. With this coat and this hat, I'll look just like Saint Nick. All I need is a reindeer.
Dateline NBC
Dr. Seuss' "How The Grinch Stole Christmas!" read by Keith Morrison
The Grinch looked around, but since reindeer are scarce, there were none to be found. Did that stop the old Grinch? No! The Grinch simply said, if I can't find a reindeer, I'll make one instead. So he called his dog, Max. Then he took some red thread and he tied a big horn on the top of his head. Then he loaded some bags and some old empty sacks on a ramshackle sleigh and he hitched up old Max.
Dateline NBC
Dr. Seuss' "How The Grinch Stole Christmas!" read by Keith Morrison
Then the Grinch said, get up. And the sleigh started down toward the homes where the hooves lay a snooze in their town. All their windows were dark. Quiet snow filled the air. And the hooves were all dreaming sweet dreams without care. When he came to the first little house on the square, This is stop number one, the old Grinchy Claus hissed, and he climbed to the roof, empty bags in his fist.
Dateline NBC
Dr. Seuss' "How The Grinch Stole Christmas!" read by Keith Morrison
Then he slid down the chimney, a rather tight pinch, If Santa could do it, then so could the Grinch. He got stuck only once for a moment or two. Then he stuck his head out of the fireplace flue where the little Who stockings all hung in a row. These stockings, he grinned, are the first things to go.
Dateline NBC
Dr. Seuss' "How The Grinch Stole Christmas!" read by Keith Morrison
Then he slithered and slunk with a smile most unpleasant around the whole room, and he took every present, pop guns, bicycles, roller skates, drums, checkerboards, tricycles, popcorn, plums, and he stuffed them in bags. Then the Grinch, very nibbly, stuffed all the bags one by one up the chimney. Then he slunk to the icebox. He took the Who feast. He took the Who pudding. He took the roast beast.
Dateline NBC
Dr. Seuss' "How The Grinch Stole Christmas!" read by Keith Morrison
But I think that the most likely reason of all may have been that his heart was two sizes too small. But whatever the reason, his heart or his shoes, he stood there on Christmas Eve, hating the who's, staring down from his cave with a sour, grinchy frown. at the warm lighted windows below in the town. For he knew every Who down in Whoville beneath was busy now, hanging a mistletoe wreath.
Dateline NBC
Dr. Seuss' "How The Grinch Stole Christmas!" read by Keith Morrison
He cleaned out the icebox as quick as a flash, while the Grinch even took their last can of hoo-hash. Then he stuffed all the food up the chimney with glee. And now, grinned the Grinch, I will stuff up the tree. And the Grinch grabbed the tree and he started to shove. Then he heard a small sound like the coo of a dove.
Dateline NBC
Dr. Seuss' "How The Grinch Stole Christmas!" read by Keith Morrison
He turned around fast and he saw a small Who, little Cindy Lou Who, who was not more than two. The Grinch had been caught by this tiny Who daughter who'd got out of bed for a cup of cold water. She stared at the Grinch and said, Santy Claus, why? Why are you taking our Christmas tree? Why? But you know, that old Grinch was so smart and so slick, he thought up a lie, and he thought it up quick.
Dateline NBC
Dr. Seuss' "How The Grinch Stole Christmas!" read by Keith Morrison
Why, my sweet little tot, the fake Santy Claus lied. There's a light on this tree that won't light on one side, so I'm taking it home to my workshop, my dear. I'll fix it up there. Then I'll bring it back here." And his fib fooled the child. Then he patted her head and he got her a drink and he sent her to bed.
Dateline NBC
Dr. Seuss' "How The Grinch Stole Christmas!" read by Keith Morrison
And when Cindy Lou Who went to bed with her cop, he went to the chimney and stuffed the tree up. Then the last thing he took was the log for their fire. Then he went up the chimney himself, the old liar. On their walls he left nothing but hooks and some wire. And the one speck of food that he left in the house was a crumb that was even too small for a mouse.
Dateline NBC
Dr. Seuss' "How The Grinch Stole Christmas!" read by Keith Morrison
Then he did the same thing to the other hooves' houses, leaving crumbs much too small for the other hooves' mouses. It was quarter past dawn. All the hooves still abed, all the hooves still a snooze when he packed up his sled. Packed it up with their presents, the ribbons, the wrappings, the rags and the tinsel, the trimmings, the trappings.
Dateline NBC
Dr. Seuss' "How The Grinch Stole Christmas!" read by Keith Morrison
Three thousand feet up, up the side of Mount Crumpit, he rode with his load to the tip-top to dump it. Poo-poo to the hooves, he was grinchously humming. They're finding out now that no Christmas is coming. They're just waking up. I know just what they'll do. Their mouths will hang open a minute or two, and then the Who's down in Whoville will all cry, Boo-hoo!
Dateline NBC
Dr. Seuss' "How The Grinch Stole Christmas!" read by Keith Morrison
That's a noise, grinned the Grinch, that I simply must hear. So he paused, and the Grinch put his hand to his ear, And he did hear a sound rising over the snow. It started in low, then it started to grow. But the sound wasn't sad. Why, this sound sounded merry. It couldn't be so, but it was merry, very. He stared down at Whoville. The Grinch popped his eyes, then he shook.
Dateline NBC
Dr. Seuss' "How The Grinch Stole Christmas!" read by Keith Morrison
What he saw was a shocking surprise. Every Who down in Whoville, the tall and the small, was singing without any presents at all. He hadn't stopped Christmas from coming. It came. Somehow or other, it came just the same. And the Grinch, with his Grinch feet ice cold in the snow, stood puzzling and puzzling. How could it be so? It came without ribbons. It came without tags.
Dateline NBC
Dr. Seuss' "How The Grinch Stole Christmas!" read by Keith Morrison
It came without packages, boxes, or bags. And he puzzled three hours till his puzzler was sore. Then the Grinch thought of something he hadn't before. Maybe Christmas, he thought, doesn't come from a store. Maybe Christmas... Perhaps means a little bit more. And what happened then? Well, in Whoville they say that the Grinch's small heart grew three sizes that day.
Dateline NBC
Dr. Seuss' "How The Grinch Stole Christmas!" read by Keith Morrison
And the minute his heart didn't feel quite so tight, he whizzed with his load through the bright morning light, and he brought back the toys and the food for the feast. And he... He himself, the Grinch, carved the roast beast. The end.
Dateline NBC
Dr. Seuss' "How The Grinch Stole Christmas!" read by Keith Morrison
And they're hanging their stockings, he snarled with a sneer. Tomorrow is Christmas, it's practically here. Then he growled with his Grinch figures nervously drumming, I must find some way to stop Christmas from coming. For tomorrow, he knew, all the Who girls and boys would wake bright and early. They'd rush for their toys, and then, oh, the noise, oh, the noise, noise, noise, noise.
Dateline NBC
Dr. Seuss' "How The Grinch Stole Christmas!" read by Keith Morrison
That's one thing he hated, the noise, noise, noise, noise. Then the Whos, young and old, would sit down to a feast. And they'd feast, and they'd feast, and they'd feast, feast, feast, feast. They would feast on Who pudding and rare Who roast beast, which was something the Grinch couldn't stand in the least. And then they'd do something he liked least of all.
Dateline NBC
A Christmas Carol: The End of It
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. They're not torn down, cried Scrooge, folding one of his bed curtains in his arms. They're not torn down, rings and all. Here they are. I am here.
Dateline NBC
A Christmas Carol: The End of It
The redemption of a greedy, selfish old man. And perhaps Dickens' Christmas wish for all of us, because there's another story not famous like his Christmas Carol. Though he never spoke much about it, Charles Dickens' whole family, his mother, his father, and all of his siblings, were sent to debtor's prison for unpaid bills.
Dateline NBC
A Christmas Carol: The End of It
Only 12 years old at the time, the young Charles was spared, but was required to work in a rat-infested factory for 10 hours a day. A 12-year-old boy, pasting labels on jars. And maybe that's why, for the rest of his life, Charles Dickens championed the poor, the vulnerable among us, hoping to show what good it would do if we were all just a little bit kinder. I'm Keith Morrison.
Dateline NBC
A Christmas Carol: The End of It
From our NBC News family to yours, happy holidays, everyone. Morrison Mysteries is a production of Dateline and NBC News. Charmi and Ling and Liz Brown are senior producers. Carson Cummins is associate producer. Sound mixing by Bob Mallory and Catherine Anderson. Bryson Barnes is head of audio production.
Dateline NBC
A Christmas Carol: The End of It
The shadows of the things that would have been may be dispelled. They will be. I know they will be. 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. I don't know what to do, cried Scrooge, laughing and crying at the same breath. I am as light as a feather.
Dateline NBC
A Christmas Carol: The End of It
I'm as happy as an angel. I'm as merry as a schoolboy. I'm as giddy as a drunken man. A Merry Christmas to everybody. A Happy New Year to all the world. He had frisked into the sitting room and was now standing there perfectly winded. There's the saucepan the gruel was in, cried Scrooge, starting off again and going round the fireplace.
Dateline NBC
A Christmas Carol: The End of It
And there's the door by which the ghost of Jacob Marley entered. There's the corner where the ghost of Christmas present sat. There's the window where I saw the wandering spirits. It's all right. It's all true. It all happened. Woo! Really, for a man who had been out of practice for so many years, it was a splendid laugh. A most illustrious laugh.
Dateline NBC
A Christmas Carol: The End of It
I'm Keith Morrison, and this is the final episode of A Christmas Carol. It's a wonder Ebenezer Scrooge has made it this far in our story. The last ghost he met, the spirit of Christmas future, showed him terrible things. Tiny Tim was dead, and so was Scrooge, though not one single soul mourned him. All of it, Scrooge sees, could have been prevented if only he had been a better person.
Dateline NBC
A Christmas Carol: The End of It
The father of a long, long line of brilliant laughs. "'I don't know what day of the month it is,' said Scrooge. "'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.' He was checked in his transports by the churches ringing out the lustiest peals he had ever heard.
Dateline NBC
A Christmas Carol: The End of It
Running to the window, he opened it and put out his head. No fog, no mist. It was clear and bright and jovial and stirring and cold, cold. Piping for the blood to dance to. Golden sunlight, heavenly skies, sweet, fresh air. Merry bells, oh, glorious, glorious. What's today? cried Scrooge, calling downward to a boy in Sunday clothes who perhaps had loitered in to look about him. Eh?
Dateline NBC
A Christmas Carol: The End of It
returned the boy with all his might of wonder. What's today, my fine fellow? said Scrooge. Today, replied the boy, why, it's Christmas Day. It's Christmas Day, said Scrooge to himself. I haven't missed it. The spirits have done it all in one night. They can do anything they like. Of course they can. Of course they can. Hello, my fine fellow. Hello, returned the boy.
Dateline NBC
A Christmas Carol: The End of It
Do you know the butchers in the next street but one at the corner? Scrooge inquired. I should hope I did, replied the lad. An intelligent boy, said Scrooge. A remarkable boy. Do you know whether they've sold the prized turkey that was hanging up there? Not the little prized turkey. The big one. What, the one as big as me? returned the boy. It's hanging there now. It is, said Scrooge.
Dateline NBC
A Christmas Carol: The End of It
Go and buy it. I am an earnest. Go and buy it and tell them to bring it here, that I may give them the direction where to take it. Come back with that man and I'll give you a shilling. Come back with him in less than five minutes and I'll give you a half crown. The boy was off like a shot. I'll send it to Bob Cratchits, whispered Scrooge, rubbing his hands and splitting with a laugh.
Dateline NBC
A Christmas Carol: The End of It
He is tortured now, and as the last ghost disappears, Scrooge is desperate to atone for his sins. As we pick up the story, Scrooge is suddenly back in his own bedroom, everything just as it always was. It's Christmas morning. And old Ebenezer, the most hated man in all of London, is about to get the most precious gift of all. A second chance. The bed was his own. The room was his own.
Dateline NBC
A Christmas Carol: The End of It
He shan't know who sends it. It's twice the size of Tiny Tim. The hand in which he wrote the address was not a steady one, but write it he did, somehow, and went downstairs to open the street door ready for the coming of the butcher's man. As he stood there, waiting his arrival, the knocker caught his eye. I shall love it as long as I live, cried Scrooge, patting it with his hand.
Dateline NBC
A Christmas Carol: The End of It
I scarcely ever looked at it before. What an honest expression it has in its face. It's a wonderful knocker. Here's the turkey. How are you? Merry Christmas. It was a turkey. He never could have stood upon his legs, that bird. He would have snapped him short off in a minute. Why, it's impossible to carry that to Camden Town, said Scrooge. You must have a cab.
Dateline NBC
A Christmas Carol: The End of It
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 until he cried. Shaving was not an easy task, for his hand continued to shake very much.
Dateline NBC
A Christmas Carol: The End of It
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 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 on Christmas present.
Dateline NBC
A Christmas Carol: The End of It
And walking with his hands behind him, Scrooge regarded everyone with a delighted smile. He looked so irresistibly pleasant, in a word, the three or four good-humored fellows said, Good morning, sir. A merry Christmas to you. And Scrooge said often afterwards that of all the happy sounds he ever heard, those were the happiest in his ears.
Dateline NBC
A Christmas Carol: The End of It
He had not gone far when, coming on towards him, he beheld the portly gentleman who had walked into his counting-house the day before and said, Scrooge and Marlies, I believe. It sent a pang across his heart to think how this old gentleman would look upon him when they met. But he knew what path lay straight before him, and he took it.
Dateline NBC
A Christmas Carol: The End of It
My dear sir, said Scrooge, quickening his pace and taking the old gentleman by both his hands. How do you do? I hope you succeeded yesterday. It was very kind of you. A Merry Christmas to you, sir. Mr. Scrooge? "'Yes,' said Scrooge, "'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?' Here Scrooge whispered in his ear.
Dateline NBC
A Christmas Carol: The End of It
"'Lord bless me!' cried the gentleman, as if his breath were taken away. "'My dear Mr. Scrooge, are you serious?' If you please," said Scrooge, not a farthing less. A great many back payments are included in it, I assure you. Will you do me that favor?" My dear sir," said the other, shaking hands with him, I don't know what to say. Don't say anything, please," retorted Scrooge. Come and see me.
Dateline NBC
A Christmas Carol: The End of It
Will you come and see me?" I will, cried the old gentleman, and it was clear he meant to do it. Thank you, said Scrooge. I am much obliged to you. I thank you fifty times. Bless you.
Dateline NBC
A Christmas Carol: The End of It
He went to church, and he walked about the streets, and he watched the people hurrying to and fro, and patted the children on the head, and questioned the 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.
Dateline NBC
A Christmas Carol: The End of It
In the afternoon he turned his steps toward his nephew's house. His nephew, the bright and sparkling young man whose optimism stood fast even in the face of Scrooge's unforgiving misery. He could turn Scrooge away, of course. And who would blame him, really? Christmas Day.
Dateline NBC
A Christmas Carol: The End of It
Scrooge is on the threshold of a whole new life, and on the doorstep of his only surviving relative, who was kind to him even when he was at his most despicable, his nephew, Fred. Now Scrooge approaches Fred's house, and, as Dickens writes, he hesitates. He passed the door a dozen times before he had the courage to go up and knock. But he made a dash and he did it. Is your master at home, my dear?
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A Christmas Carol: The End of It
said Scrooge to the girl. Nice girl, very. "'Yes, sir.' "'Where is he, my love?' said Scrooge. "'He's in the dining-room, sir, along with the mistress. I'll show you upstairs, if you please.' "'Thank you, he knows me,' said Scrooge, with his hand already on the dining-room lock. "'I'll go in here, my dear.' He turned it gently and sidled his face in, round the door."
Dateline NBC
A Christmas Carol: The End of It
They 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!' said Scrooge. "'Dear heart, alive 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.
Dateline NBC
A Christmas Carol: The End of It
"'Why, bless my soul!' cried Fred. "'Who's that?' It's I, your Uncle Scrooge. I have come to dinner. Will you let me in, Fred? Let him in? It's a mercy he didn't shake his arm off. He was at home in five minutes. Nothing could be heartier. His niece looked just the same. So did everyone when they came. Wonderful party, wonderful games, wonderful unanimity, wonderful happiness.
Dateline NBC
A Christmas Carol: The End of It
Best and happiest of all, the time before him was his own to make amends in. I will live in the past, the present, and the future, Scrooge repeated as he scrambled out of bed. 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. Oh, Jacob, on my knees.
Dateline NBC
A Christmas Carol: The End of It
But he was early at the office the next morning. Oh, he was early there. If he could only be the first there and catch Bob Cratchit coming late, that was a 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 full eighteen minutes and a half behind his time. Scrooge sat with his door wide open that he might see him come in.
Dateline NBC
A Christmas Carol: The End of It
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 nine o'clock. Hello, growled Scrooge in his accustomed voice as near as he could feign it. What do you mean by coming here at this time of day? I'm very sorry, sir, said Bob. I'm behind my time. You are? repeated Scrooge. Yes, I think you are.
Dateline NBC
A Christmas Carol: The End of It
Step this way, sir, if you please. It's only once a year, sir, pleaded Bob. It shall not be repeated. I was making rather merry yesterday, sir. Now, tell you what, my friend, said Scrooge. I'm not going to stand this sort of thing any longer. And therefore, he continued leaping from his stool and giving Bob such a dig in the waistcoat that he staggered back.
Dateline NBC
A Christmas Carol: The End of It
And therefore, I'm about to raise your salary. Bob trembled and got a little nearer to the ruler. He had a momentary idea of knocking Scrooge down with it, holding him and calling to the people in the court for help in a straitjacket. A Merry Christmas, Bob, said Scrooge, with an earnestness that could not be mistaken, as he clapped him on the back.
Dateline NBC
A Christmas Carol: The End of It
A merrier Christmas, Bob, my good fellow, than I have given you for many a year. I'll raise your salary and endeavor to assist your struggling family. 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. Scrooge was better than his word.
Dateline NBC
A Christmas Carol: The End of It
He did it all and infinitely more. And to Tiny Tim, who did not die, he became a second father. He became as good a friend, as good a master, and as good a man as the good old city knew, or 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.
Dateline NBC
A Christmas Carol: The End of It
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.
Dateline NBC
A Christmas Carol: The End of It
His own heart laughed, and that was quite enough for him." He had no further intercourse with spirits, but ever afterwards 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. And that's Charles Dickens' Christmas Carol for the Ages.
Dateline NBC
A Christmas Carol: The Last of the Spirits
He recoiled in terror till the scene had changed, and now he almost touched a bed, a bare, uncurtained bed, on which beneath a ragged sheet there lay 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.
Dateline NBC
A Christmas Carol: The Last of the Spirits
though Scrooge glanced about 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 toward the phantom. Its steady hand was pointed to the head.
Dateline NBC
A Christmas Carol: The Last of the Spirits
The cover 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. Spirit, he said, this is a fearful place. In leaving it, I shall not leave its lesson.
Dateline NBC
A Christmas Carol: The Last of the Spirits
Trust me, let us go. Still, the spirit pointed with an unmoved finger to the head. I understand you, Scrooge returned, and I would do it if I could. But I have not the power, spirit. I have not the power. If there's any person in the town who feels emotion caused by this man's death, said Scrooge, quite agonized, show that person to me, spirit. I beseech you.
Dateline NBC
A Christmas Carol: The Last of the Spirits
The sight of a dead man, unmourned, robbed of his blankets and shirt, has left Scrooge unmoored. As we return to our tale, he begs the coast to show him someone who cares that the man is dead. And there is someone, but not the way Scrooge expects.
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A Christmas Carol: The Last of the Spirits
The phantom spread its dark robe before him for a moment, like a wing, and withdrawing it, revealed a room by daylight, where a mother and her children were.
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A Christmas Carol: The Last of the Spirits
The spirit answered not, but pointed onward with its hand. You are about to show me shadows of the things that have not happened, but will happen in the time before us, Scrooge pursued. Is that so, spirit? 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.
Dateline NBC
A Christmas Carol: The Last of the Spirits
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.
Dateline NBC
A Christmas Carol: The Last of the Spirits
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. He sat down to the dinner that had been hoarding for him by the fire.
Dateline NBC
A Christmas Carol: The Last of the Spirits
And when she asked him faintly what news, which was not until after a long silence, he appeared embarrassed how to answer. Is it good, she said, or bad, to help him? Bad, he answered. We are quite ruined. No, there is hope yet, Caroline. If he relents, she said, amazed. There is. Nothing is past hope if such a miracle has happened. He is past relenting, said her husband. He is dead.
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A Christmas Carol: The Last of the Spirits
She was a mild and patient creature, if her face spoke truth. But she was thankful in her soul to hear it, and she said so with clasped hands. She prayed forgiveness in the next moment and was sorry, but the first was the emotion of her heart. To whom will our debt be transferred? I don't know.
Dateline NBC
A Christmas Carol: The Last of the Spirits
But before that time, we shall be ready with the money, and even though we were not, it would be a bad fortune indeed to find so merciless a creditor in his successor. We may sleep tonight with light hearts, Caroline." Yes, soften it as they would. Their hearts were lighter. The children's faces, hushed and clustered round to hear what they so little understood, were brighter.
Dateline NBC
A Christmas Carol: The Last of the Spirits
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 some tenderness connected with the death, said Scrooge, or that dark chamber spirit which we left just now will be forever present to me. The ghost conducted him through several streets familiar to his feet.
Dateline NBC
A Christmas Carol: The Last of the Spirits
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 around 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.
Dateline NBC
A Christmas Carol: The Last of the Spirits
The mother and her daughters were engaged in sewing, but surely they were very quiet. The mother laid her work upon the table and put her hand up to her face. "'The color hurts my eyes,' she said. "'The color? Oh, poor tiny Tim!' They're better now again, said Cratchit's wife. It makes them weak by candlelight, and I wouldn't show weak eyes to your father when he comes home for the world.
Dateline NBC
A Christmas Carol: The Last of the Spirits
It must be near his time. Past it, rather, Peter answered, shutting up his book. But I think he has walked a little slower than he used to these past evenings, mother. They were very quiet again, and at last she said, and in a steady, cheerful voice that only faltered once... I have known him walk with tiny Tim upon his shoulder very fast indeed.
Dateline NBC
A Christmas Carol: The Last of the Spirits
And so have I, cried Peter, often, and so have I, exclaimed another, and so had all. But he was very light to carry, she resumed intent upon her work, and his father loved him so that it was no trouble, no trouble. And there is your father at the door. She hurried out to meet him, and little Bob, in his comforter he had need of a poor fellow, came in.
Dateline NBC
A Christmas Carol: The Last of the Spirits
Though 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.
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A Christmas Carol: The Last of the Spirits
His tea was ready for him on the stove, and they all tried who should help him to it most. Then the two young Cratchits got upon his knees and laid each child a little cheek against his face, as if they said, Don't mind it, father, don't be grieved. Bob was very cheerful with them and spoke pleasantly to all the family.
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A Christmas Carol: The Last of the Spirits
He looked at the work upon the table and praised the industry and speed of Mrs. Cratchit and the girls. They would be done long before Sunday, he said. Sunday? You went today, then, Robert? said his wife. Yes, my dear returned Bob. I wish you could have gone. 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 Sunday.
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A Christmas Carol: The Last of the Spirits
My little, little child, cried Bob. My little child. He broke down all at once. He couldn't help it. They drew about the fire and talked, the girls and mother working still.
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A Christmas Carol: The Last of the Spirits
Bob told them of the extraordinary kindness of Mr. Scrooge's nephew, whom he had scarcely seen but once, and who, meeting him in the street that day and seeing that he looked a little, just a little down, you know, said Bob, inquired what had happened to distress him. On which, said Bob, for he is a pleasantest spoken gentleman you have ever heard, I told him.
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A Christmas Carol: The Last of the Spirits
I'm heartily sorry for it, Mr. Cratchit, he said, and heartily sorry for your good wife. If I can be of service to you in any way, he said, giving me his card, that's where I live. Pray come to me. Now it wasn't, cried Bob, for the sake of anything he might be able to do for us so much as for his kind way, and that was quite delightful.
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A Christmas Carol: The Last of the Spirits
It really seemed as if he had known our tiny Tim and felt with us. I'm sure he's a good soul, said Mrs. Cratchit. You would be sure of it, my dear, returned Bob, if you saw and spoke to him. I shouldn't be at all surprised, mark what I say, if he got Peter a better situation. Hold me here to that, Peter, said Mrs. Cratchit.
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A Christmas Carol: The Last of the Spirits
And then, cried one of the girls, Peter will be keeping company with someone and setting up for himself. Get along with you, retorted Peter, grinning. It's just as likely as not, said Bob, one of these days, though there's plenty of time for that, my dear. However, and whenever we part from one another, I am sure we shall none of us forget poor tiny Tim, shall we?
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A Christmas Carol: The Last of the Spirits
For this first parting that there was among us. Never, father, cried they all. And I know, said Bob, I know, my dears, that when we recollect how patient and how mild he was, though he was little, a little child, we shall not quarrel easily among ourselves and forget poor tiny Tim in doing it. No, never, father, they all cried again. I'm very happy, said little Bob, I'm very happy.
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A Christmas Carol: The Last of the Spirits
Mrs. Cratchit kissed him, his daughters kissed him, the two young Cratchits kissed him, and Peter and himself shook hands happily. Spectre, said Scrooge, 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. The ghost of Christmas yet to come conveyed him as before.
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A Christmas Carol: The Last of the Spirits
It thrilled him with a vague, uncertain horror to know that behind the dusky shroud there were ghostly eyes intently fixed upon him. Well, he, though he stretched his own to the utmost, could see nothing but a spectral hand and one great heap of lacquer.
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A Christmas Carol: The Last of the Spirits
This court, said Scrooge, 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. The spirit stopped. The hand was pointed elsewhere. The house is yonder, Scrooge exclaimed. Why do you point away? The inexorable finger underwent no change.
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A Christmas Carol: The Last of the Spirits
Scrooge hastened to the window of his office and looked in. It was an office still, but not his. The furniture was not the same, and the figure in the chair was not himself. The phantom pointed as before. He joined it once again, and wondering why and whether he had gone, accompanied it until they reached an iron gate. He paused to look around before entering. A churchyard?
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A Christmas Carol: The Last of the Spirits
Here, then, the wretched man 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. He advanced toward it trembling.
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A Christmas Carol: The Last of the Spirits
The phantom was exactly as it had been, but he dreaded that he saw new meaning in its solemn shape. Before I draw nearer to that stone to which you point, said Scrooge, answer me one question. Are these the shadows of the things that will be, or are they the shadows of things that may be only? Still, the ghost pointed downward to the grave by which it stood.
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A Christmas Carol: The Last of the Spirits
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. Am I that man who lay upon the bed? He cried upon his knees. The finger pointed from the grave to him and back again. No, spirit, oh no, no. The finger still was there. "'Spirit!' he cried, tight clutching at its robe. "'Hear me!
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A Christmas Carol: The Last of the Spirits
I am not the man I was. Why show me this, if I am past all hope?' For the first time, the hand appeared to shake. "'Good spirit!' he pursued, as down on the ground he fell before it. "'Your nature intercedes for me and pities me.' Assure me that I may yet change these shadows you have shown me by an altered life. The kind hand trembled.
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A Christmas Carol: The Last of the Spirits
ghost of the future he exclaimed 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 will do it with a thankful heart will you not speak to me it gave him no reply the hand was pointed straight before them Lead on, said Scrooge, lead on.
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A Christmas Carol: The Last of the Spirits
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, tell me I may sponge away the writing on this stone." In his agony, he caught the spectral hand. It sought to free itself, but he was strong in his entreaty and detained it.
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A Christmas Carol: The Last of the Spirits
The spirit, stronger still, repulsed him. Holding up his hands in a last 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. And so Charles Dickens slams the chapter shut on Scrooge as he lies in bed tormented by a vision of his own lonely death, desperate for a second chance that will not come.
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A Christmas Carol: The Last of the Spirits
I'm Keith Morrison, and this is episode four of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol. These days we'd probably call Ebenezer Scrooge a hater. What else do you call a man who doesn't like babies or Christmas? Or people, really. That is, until the ghost of Christmas passed, and the ghost of Christmas present got their hands on Scrooge.
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A Christmas Carol: The Last of the Spirits
The night is waning fast, and it is precious time to me, I know. Lead on, spirit. The phantom moved away as it had come towards him. Scrooge followed in the shadow of its dress, 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 encompassed them of its own act.
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A Christmas Carol: The Last of the Spirits
But there they were in the heart of it, 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, as Scrooge had seen them often do. The spirit stopped beside one little knot of business men,
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A Christmas Carol: The Last of the Spirits
Observing that the hand was pointed to them, Scrooge advanced to listen to their talk. "'No,' said a great fat man with a monstrous chin. "'I don't know much about it either way. I only know he's dead.' "'When did he die?' inquired another. "'Last night, I believe.' What was the matter with him? asked a third, taking a great vast quantity of snuff out of a very large snuff box.
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A Christmas Carol: The Last of the Spirits
Got him thinking about charity and kindness and what it means to be happy. And to make others happy. But as we rejoin our story, Scrooge doesn't have time to think too hard about any of that. Because heading his way is something dark. And Scrooge is seized by a cold fear. The Phantom slowly, gravely, silently approached.
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A Christmas Carol: The Last of the Spirits
I thought he'd never die. God knows, said the first, with a yawn. What has he done with his money? asked a red-faced gentleman. I haven't heard, said the man with the large chin. yawning again. Left it to his company, perhaps. If he hasn't left it to me, that's all I know. This pleasantry was received with a general laugh.
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A Christmas Carol: The Last of the Spirits
It's likely to be a very cheap funeral, said the same speaker, for upon my life I don't know of anybody to go to it. Speakers and listeners strolled away and mixed with other groups. Scrooge knew the men and looked towards the spirit for an explanation. The phantom glided on into a street. Its finger pointed to two persons meeting.
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A Christmas Carol: The Last of the Spirits
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 always of standing well in their esteem, in a business point of view, that is, strictly on a business point of view. How are you? said one. How are you? returned the other. Well, said the first.
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A Christmas Carol: The Last of the Spirits
Old Scratch has got his own at last, eh? So I'm told, returned the second. Cold, isn't it? Seasonable for Christmas time. You're not a skater, I suppose. No, no, something else to think of. Good morning. Not another word. That was their meeting, their conversation, and their parting.
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A Christmas Carol: The Last of the Spirits
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 it 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's province was the future.
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A Christmas Carol: The Last of the Spirits
Nor could he think of anyone immediately connected with himself to whom he could apply them. 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 to these riddles easy.
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A Christmas Carol: The Last of the Spirits
He looked about in that very place for his own 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 in through the porch.
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A Christmas Carol: The Last of the Spirits
It gave him little surprise, however, for he had been resolving in his mind a change of life, and thought and hoped he saw his new-born resolutions carried out in this. Quiet and dark beside him stood the Phantom, with its outstretched hand.
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A Christmas Carol: The Last of the Spirits
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. The ghost of Christmas to come has shown Scrooge a glimpse of his own future. So much of it is familiar. The gossiping man of business, the city streets.
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A Christmas Carol: The Last of the Spirits
But the dead man, he can't make sense of that or doesn't want to. As you'll hear, the ghost is far from done with Scrooge yet. Here is the writing of Charles Dickens once again. They left the busy scene and went into an obscure part of the town where Scrooge had never penetrated before, though he recognized its situation and its bad repute.
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A Christmas Carol: The Last of the Spirits
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 offenses of smell and dirt and life upon the straggling streets. And the whole quarter reeked with crime, with filth, misery.
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A Christmas Carol: The Last of the Spirits
Far in this den of infamous resort, there was a low-browed beetling shop, below a penthouse roof, where iron, old rags, bottles, bones, and greasy offal were bought. Upon the floor within were piled up heaps of rusty keys, nails, chains, hinges, files, scales, weights, and refuse iron of all kinds.
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A Christmas Carol: The Last of the Spirits
Sitting in amongst the wares he dealt in by a charcoal stove made of old bricks was a grey-haired rascal nearly seventy 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 the luxury of calm retirement.
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A Christmas Carol: The Last of the Spirits
When it came near him, Scrooge bent down upon his knee, for in the very air through which this 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.
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A Christmas Carol: The Last of the Spirits
Scrooge and the Phantom came into the presence of this man just as a woman with a heavy bundle slunk into the shop. But she had scarcely entered when another woman similarly laden came in too. And she was closely followed by a man in faded black who was no less startled by the sight of them than they had been upon the recognition of each other.
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A Christmas Carol: The Last of the Spirits
After a short period of blank astonishment, in which the old man with the pipe had joined them, they all three burst into a laugh. Look here, old Joe, here's a chance. If we haven't all three met here without meaning it, cried she who had entered first. You couldn't have met in a better place, said old Joe, removing his pipe from his mouth. Come into the parlour.
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A Christmas Carol: The Last of the Spirits
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. Well, 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 a bold defiance at the other two. "'What odds, then?
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A Christmas Carol: The Last of the Spirits
What odds, Mrs. Dilber?' said the woman. Every person has a right to take care of themselves. He always did. Who's the worst for the loss of a few things like these? Not a dead man, I suppose. No, indeed, said Mrs. Dilber, laughing. If he wanted to keep him after he was dead, wicked old miser, pursued the woman, why wasn't he kinder in his lifetime?
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A Christmas Carol: The Last of the Spirits
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 beside himself. It's the truest word that was ever spoke, said Mrs. Dilber. It's a judgment on him. I wish it was a little heavier judgment, replied the woman. And it should have been, you may depend upon it, if I could have laid my hands on anything else.
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A Christmas Carol: The Last of the Spirits
Open that bundle, old Joe, and let me know the value of it. Speak out plain. I'm not afraid to be the first, nor afraid for them to see it. We knew pretty well that we were helping ourselves before we met here, I believe. It's no sin. Open the bundle, Joe." But the gallantry of her friends would not allow this. And the man in faded black, mounting the breach first, produced his plunder.
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A Christmas Carol: The Last of the Spirits
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 chalked the sums he was disposed to give for each upon the wall. and added them up to a total when he found there was nothing more to come.
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A Christmas Carol: The Last of the Spirits
That's your account, said Joe, and I wouldn't give another sixpence if I was to be boiled for not doing it. Who's next? 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. And now undo my bundle, Joe, said the first woman.
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A Christmas Carol: The Last of the Spirits
Joe went down on his knees for the greater convenience of opening it, and having unfastened a great many knots, dragged out a large and heavy roll of some dark stuff. What do you call this? said Joe. Bed curtains. Ah, returned the woman, laughing and leaning forward on her crossed arms. Bed curtains! You don't mean to say you took him down, rings and all, with him lying there? said Joe.
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A Christmas Carol: The Last of the Spirits
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. Am I in the presence of the ghost of Christmas yet to come? said Scrooge.
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A Christmas Carol: The Last of the Spirits
Yes, I do, replied the woman. Why not? You were born to make your fortune, said Joe, and you'll certainly do it. I certainly shan't stay my hand for the sake of such a man as he was, I promise you, Joe, returned the woman coolly. Don't drop that oil upon the blankets now. His blankets? asked Joe. "'Who else do you think?' replied the woman. "'He isn't likely to take cold without him, I dare say.'
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A Christmas Carol: The Last of the Spirits
"'I hope he didn't die of anything catching, eh?' said old Joe, stopping his work and looking up. "'Don't you be afraid of that,' returned the woman. "'Ah, you may look through that shirt till your eyes ache, "'but you won't find a hole in it, not a threadbare place. "'It's the best one he had, and a fine one, too. "'He'd have wasted it if it hadn't been for me.' What do you call wasting of it?
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A Christmas Carol: The Last of the Spirits
asked old Joe. Putting it on him to be buried in, replied the woman with a laugh. Somebody was fool enough to do it, but I took it off again. Scrooge listened to this dialogue in horror.
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A Christmas Carol: The Last of the Spirits
As they sat grouped about their 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. Laughed the same woman when old Joe, producing a flannel bag with money in it, told out the several gains upon the ground. This was the end of it, you see.
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A Christmas Carol: The Last of the Spirits
He frightened everyone away from him when he was alive, to profit us when he was dead. "'Spirit,' said Scrooge, shuddering from head to foot, "'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?'
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A Christmas Carol: The Second of the Three Spirits
Bob said he didn't believe there ever was such a goose cooked. Its tenderness and flavor, size and cheapness were the themes of universal admiration. Doubt by applesauce and mashed potatoes, it was a sufficient dinner for the whole family. But now, the plates being changed by Miss Belinda, Mrs. Cratchit left the room to take the pudding up and bring it in.
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A Christmas Carol: The Second of the Three Spirits
In half a minute she entered, flushed but smiling proudly with the pudding, like a speckled cannonball, so hard and firm, blazing in half of half a quart of ignited brandy, and belighted with Christmas holly stuck into the top. "'Oh, a wonderful pudding,' Bob Cratchit said, and calmly, too, that he regarded it as the greatest success achieved by Mrs. Cratchit since their marriage."
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A Christmas Carol: The Second of the Three Spirits
Everybody had something to say about it, but nobody said or thought it was 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, the cloth was cleared, the hearth swept, and the fire made up. And then Bob proposed, "'A Merry Christmas to us all, my dears! God bless us all!'
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A Christmas Carol: The Second of the Three Spirits
which all the family re-echoed. God bless us everyone, said Tiny Tim, the last of all. He sat very close to his father's side, upon his little stool. Bob held his withered little 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. "'Spirit,' said Scrooge, with an interest he had never felt before, "'tell me if Tiny Tim will live.'
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A Christmas Carol: The Second of the Three Spirits
"'I see a vacant seat,' replied the ghost, "'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.' "'No, no,' said Scrooge, "'no, no, kind spirit, say he will be spared.' If these shadows remain unaltered by the future, none other of my race, returned the ghost, will find him here. What then?
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A Christmas Carol: The Second of the Three Spirits
Now, being prepared for almost anything, he was not by any means prepared for nothing. And consequently, when the bell struck one and no shape appeared, he was taken with a violent fit of trembling. Five minutes, ten minutes, a quarter of an hour went by, and yet nothing came.
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A Christmas Carol: The Second of the Three Spirits
If he be like to die, he had better do it and decrease the surplus population. Scrooge hung his head to hear his own words quoted by the spirit and was overcome with penitence and grief. Man, said the ghost, 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."
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A Christmas Carol: The Second of the Three Spirits
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, said Bob, I'll give you Mr. Scrooge, the founder of the feast. The founder of the feast, indeed, cried Mrs. Cratchit, reddening. I wish I had him here. I'd give him a piece of my mind to feast upon, and I hope he'd have a good appetite for it.
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A Christmas Carol: The Second of the Three Spirits
Oh, my dear, said Bob, the children, it's Christmas Day. It should be Christmas Day, I'm sure, said she, on which one drinks the health of such an odious, stingy, hard, unfeeling man as Mr. Scrooge. You know he is, Robert. Nobody knows it better than you do, poor fellow. My dear, was Bob's mild answer, Christmas Day. I'll drink to his health for your sake and the day's, said Mrs. Cratchit.
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A Christmas Carol: The Second of the Three Spirits
Not for his. Long life to him. A merry Christmas and happy New Year. You'll be very merry and very happy, I have no doubt. 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 two tuppence for it. Scrooge was the ogre of the family.
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A Christmas Carol: The Second of the Three Spirits
The mention of his name cast a dark shadow in the party, which was not dispelled for a full five minutes. After it had passed away, they were ten times merrier than before from the mere relief of Scrooge the Baleful being done with. And by and by, they had a song about a lost child traveling in the snow from Tiny Tim, who had a plaintive little voice and sang it very well indeed.
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A Christmas Carol: The Second of the Three Spirits
There was nothing of high mark in this. They were not a handsome family. They were not well-dressed. Their shoes were far from being waterproof. Their clothes were scanty. But they were happy, grateful, pleased with one another, and contented with the time.
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A Christmas Carol: The Second of the Three Spirits
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. And now, without a word of warning from the ghost, they stood upon a bleak and desert moor, where monstrous masses of rude stone were cast about, as though it were the burial place of giants.
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A Christmas Carol: The Second of the Three Spirits
And nothing grew but moss and firs 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. What place is this? asked Scrooge. Ebenezer Scrooge is afraid again.
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A Christmas Carol: The Second of the Three Spirits
All this time he lay upon his bed, the very core and center 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 ever having the consolation of knowing it.
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A Christmas Carol: The Second of the Three Spirits
He finds himself in a cold and desolate land he does not recognize, standing outside a miner's hut, its inhabitants strangers. And yet there is a lesson here for Scrooge, something the ghost of Christmas present wants him to see. Christmas cheer spilling from this most humble of places and humble of hearts. Here's Charles Dickens again.
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A Christmas Carol: The Second of the Three Spirits
A light shone from the window of a hut, and swiftly they advanced toward 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.
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A Christmas Carol: The Second of the Three Spirits
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. The spirit did not tarry here, but bade Scrooge hold his robe, and passing on above the moor, sped whither, not to sea, to sea.
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A Christmas Carol: The Second of the Three Spirits
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 roared and raged among the dreadful caverns it had worn and fiercely tried to undermine the earth. Until, being far away, as he told Scrooge, from any shore, they lighted on a ship.
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A Christmas Carol: The Second of the Three Spirits
They stood beside the helmsman at the wheel, to look out in the bow, the officers who had the watch, dark ghostly figures in their several stations. But every man among them hummed a Christmas tune, or had a Christmas thought, or spoke below his breath to his companion of some bygone Christmas day, with homeward hopes belonging to it.
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A Christmas Carol: The Second of the Three Spirits
And every man on board, waking or sleeping, good or bad, had a kinder word for another on that day than any other 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. It was a great surprise to Scrooge, while listening to the moaning of the wind, to hear a hearty laugh.
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A Christmas Carol: The Second of the Three Spirits
It was a much greater surprise to Scrooge to recognize it as his own nephew's, and to find himself in a bright, dry, gleaming room, with the spirit standing smiling by his side and looking at that same nephew with approving affability. "'Ha, ha, ha!' laughed Scrooge's nephew."
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A Christmas Carol: The Second of the Three Spirits
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. 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's nothing in the world so irresistibly contagious as laughter and good humor."
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A Christmas Carol: The Second of the Three Spirits
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, laughed as heartily as he. And their assembled friends, being not a bit behind them, roared out lustily. He said that Christmas was a humbug as I live, cried Scrooge's nephew. He believed it, too.
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A Christmas Carol: The Second of the Three Spirits
More shame for him, Fred, said Scrooge's niece indignantly. He's a comical old fellow, said Scrooge's nephew. 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's very rich, Fred, hinted Scrooge's niece. At least you always tell me so. Oh, what of that, my dear, said Scrooge's nephew.
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A Christmas Carol: The Second of the Three Spirits
His wealth is of no use to him. He don't do anything good with it. He don't make himself comfortable with it. He hasn't the satisfaction of thinking that he's ever going to benefit us with it. I have no patience with him, observed Scrooge's niece. Scrooge's niece's sisters and all the other ladies expressed the same opinion. Oh, I have, said Scrooge's nephew. I'm sorry for him.
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A Christmas Carol: The Second of the Three Spirits
At last, however, 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 seemed to shine. This idea taking full possession of his mind, he got up softly and shuffled in his slippers to the door. The moment Scrooge's hand was on the lock, a strange voice called him by his name and bade him enter. He obeyed.
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A Christmas Carol: The Second of the Three Spirits
I couldn't be angry with him if I tried. Who suffers by his ill whims? Himself, always. Here he takes it into his head to dislike us and he won't come and dine with us. What's the consequence? You don't lose much of a dinner. Indeed, I think he loses a very good dinner, interrupted Scrooge's niece.
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A Christmas Carol: The Second of the Three Spirits
Everybody else said the same, and they must be allowed to have been competent judges because they just had dinner. And with the dessert upon the table were clustered around the fire by lamplight.
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A Christmas Carol: The Second of the Three Spirits
I was only going to say, said Scrooge's nephew, that the consequence of his taking a dislike to us and not making merry with us is, I think, that he loses some pleasant moments, which could do him no harm. I'm sure he loses pleasanter companions than he can find in his own thoughts, either in his moldy old office or his dusty chambers.
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A Christmas Carol: The Second of the Three Spirits
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 until 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 fifty pounds. That's something. I think I shook him yesterday.
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A Christmas Carol: The Second of the Three Spirits
It was their turn to laugh now at the notion of his shaking Scrooge. But being thoroughly good-natured, and not much caring what they laughed at so long as they laughed, he encouraged them in their merriment, and passed the bottle joyously. After tea they had some music.
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A Christmas Carol: The Second of the Three Spirits
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, as he'd been reminded by the ghost of Christmas past.
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A Christmas Carol: The Second of the Three Spirits
When this strain of music sounded, all the things that the ghost had shown them came upon his mind, and he softened more and more. But they didn't devote the whole evening to music. After a while, they played at forfeits, for it's good to be children sometimes, and never better than at Christmas, when its mighty founder was a child himself. Stop! There was first a game at Blind Man's Buff.
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A Christmas Carol: The Second of the Three Spirits
Of course there was. Scrooge's niece was not one of the Blind Man's Buff party, but was made comfortable with a large chair and a footstool in a snug corner. where the ghost and Scrooge were close behind her. But she joined in the forfeits. Likewise, at the game of how, when, and where, she was very great, and to the secret joy of Scrooge's nephew beat her sister's hollow.
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A Christmas Carol: The Second of the Three Spirits
There might have been twenty people there, young and old, but they all played... And so did Scrooge, for, wholly forgetting the interest he had in what was going on, that his voice made no sound in their ears, he sometimes came out with his guests quite loud, and very often guessed quite right, too.
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A Christmas Carol: The Second of the Three Spirits
The ghost was greatly pleased to find him in this mood, and looked on him with such favor that he begged like a boy to be allowed to stay until the guests departed. But this spirit said... That could not be done. "'Here's a new game,' said Scrooge. "'One half-hour, spirit, only one.' It was a game called Yes and No, where Scrooge's nephew had to think of something and the rest must find out what.
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A Christmas Carol: The Second of the Three Spirits
He only answered to their questions yes or no, as the case was. The brisk fire of questioning to which he was exposed elicited from him that he was thinking of an animal, A live animal, a rather disagreeable animal, a savage animal, an animal that growled and grunted sometimes and talked sometimes and lived in London and...
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A Christmas Carol: The Second of the Three Spirits
At every fresh question that was put to him, his nephew burst into a fresh roar of laughter and was so inexpressibly tickled that he was obliged to get up off the sofa and stamp his feet. At least one of the niece's sisters, falling into a similar state, cried out, I have found it out. I know what it is, Fred. I know what it is. What is it? cried Fred. It's your Uncle Scrooge.
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A Christmas Carol: The Second of the Three Spirits
which it certainly was. He's given us plenty of merriment, I'm sure, said Fred, and it would be ungrateful not to drink to his health. Here's a glass of mulled wine ready to our hand at the moment, and I say, Uncle Scrooge! Well, Uncle Scrooge, they cried. A Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to the old man, whatever he is, said Scrooge's nephew.
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A Christmas Carol: The Second of the Three Spirits
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.
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A Christmas Carol: The Second of the Three Spirits
He wouldn't take it from me, but he may have it nevertheless. Uncle Scrooge had imperceptibly become so gay and light of heart that he would have thanked them all 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 again.
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A Christmas Carol: The Second of the Three Spirits
Much they saw, and far they went, and many homes they visited, but always with a happy end. The spirits stood beside sick beds, and they were cheerful, on foreign lands, and they were close at home. Stood by struggling men, and they were patient in their greater hope.
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A Christmas Carol: The Second of the Three Spirits
by poverty, and it was rich, in almshouses, hospitals, and jails, in misery's every refuge, where vain man in his little grief 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,
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A Christmas Carol: The Second of the Three Spirits
It was strange, too, that while Scrooge remained unaltered in his outward form, the ghosts grew older, clearly older. Scrooge had observed this change, but never spoke of it until they left at Children's Twelfth Night Party. When, looking at the spirit as they stood together in an open place, he noticed that his hair was gray. "'Are spirits' lives so short?' asked Scrooge.
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A Christmas Carol: The Second of the Three Spirits
My life upon this globe is very brief, replied the ghost. It ends tonight. Tonight, cried Scrooge. Tonight at midnight. Hark, the time is drawing near. The chimes were ringing at three quarters past eleven at that moment. Forgive me if I'm not justified in what I ask, said Scrooge, looking intently at the spirit's robe.
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A Christmas Carol: The Second of the Three Spirits
But I see something strange and not belonging to yourself protruding from your skirts. Is it a foot or a claw? It might be a claw, for the flesh there is upon it, was the spirit's sorrowful reply. 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.
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A Christmas Carol: The Second of the Three Spirits
Oh man, look here, look, look down here, exclaimed the ghost. They were a boy and a girl. yellow, meager, 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 shriveled hand, like that of age, had pinched and twisted them and pulled them into shreds.
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A Christmas Carol: The Second of the Three Spirits
"'Spirit, are they yours?' Scrooge could say no more." "'They are man's,' said the spirit, looking down upon them. "'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.' "'Have they no refuge or resource?' cried Scrooge.
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A Christmas Carol: The Second of the Three Spirits
are there no prisons said the spirit turning on him for the last time with scrooge's own words are there no workhouses the bell struck 12. scrooge looked about him for the ghost and saw it not as the last stroke ceased to vibrate he remembered the prediction of old jacob marley And lifting up his eyes, beheld a solemn phantom, draped and hooded, coming like a mist along the ground, towards him.
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A Christmas Carol: The Second of the Three Spirits
And so this chapter ends, the words still ringing in Scrooge's ears. Are there no prisons? Are there no workhouses? For the first time, new feelings wash over him. Empathy. And yet, as this new phantom slinks toward him, he is consumed by dread. He's about to see the most terrifying thing of all. The future.
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A Christmas Carol: The Second of the Three Spirits
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,
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A Christmas Carol: The Second of the Three Spirits
great joints of meat, suckling pigs, long wreaths of sausages, mince pies, plum puddings, barrels of oysters, red-hot chestnuts, cherry-cheeked apples, juicy oranges, luscious pears, and seething bowls of punch that made the chamber dim with their delicious steam. In easy state, upon his couch,
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A Christmas Carol: The Second of the Three Spirits
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!' exclaimed the ghost. "'Come in and know me better, man!' Scrooge entered timidly and hung his head before the spirit." And though the spirit's eyes were clear and kind, he did not like to meet them.
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A Christmas Carol: The Second of the Three Spirits
I'm Keith Morrison, and this is episode three of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol. Ebenezer Scrooge is back in bed, weighed down by blankets and regret. He's reeling from all the ghosts of Christmas past has shown him. Memories of his boyhood and who he once was. Visions of who he has become. Sour, greedy, unlovable, alone. He falls into a troubled sleep.
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A Christmas Carol: The Second of the Three Spirits
I am the ghost of Christmas present, said the spirit. Look upon me. Scrooge reverently did so. The spirit was clothed in one simple green robe or mantle bordered with white fur. The garment hung so loosely on the figure that his capacious breast was bare, as if disdaining to be warded or concealed by any artifice.
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A Christmas Carol: The Second of the Three Spirits
His 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, its cheery voice, its unconstrained demeanor, and its joyful hair.
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A Christmas Carol: The Second of the Three Spirits
You have never seen the like of me before, exclaimed the spirit. Never! Scrooge made answer to it. the ghost of Christmas present rose. "'Spirit,' said Scrooge submissively, "'conduct me where you will.' "'Touch my robe!' Scrooge did as he was told, and held it fast.
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A Christmas Carol: The Second of the Three Spirits
Hawley, mistletoe, red berries, ivy, turkeys, geese, game, poultry, meat, pigs, sausages, oysters, pies, puddings, fruit, and punch all vanished instantly.' So did the room, the fire, the ruddy glow, the hour of night. And they stood in the city streets on Christmas morning.
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A Christmas Carol: The Second of the Three Spirits
where, when the weather was severe, the people made a rough but brisk and not unpleasant kind of music in scraping the snow from the pavement in front of their dwellings and from the tops of their houses, whence it was mad delight to the boys to see it come plumping down into the road below and splitting into artificial little snowstorms.
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A Christmas Carol: The Second of the Three Spirits
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 on the ground. There was nothing very cheerful in the climate or the town. And yet was there an air of cheerfulness abroad that the clearest summer air and brightest summer sun might have endeavored to diffuse in vain.
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A Christmas Carol: The Second of the Three Spirits
And yes, Charles Dickens writes, he's snoring. But for how long? And what terrifying specter waits to confront him now? Awakening 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.
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A Christmas Carol: The Second of the Three Spirits
For the people who were shoveling away on the housetops were jovial, full of glee, calling out to one another from the parapets, and now and then exchanging a facetious snowball. Better natured missile far than any a wordy jest. Laughing heartily if it went right by, and not less heartily if it went wrong. The poultry shops were still half open, and the fruiters were radiant in their glory.
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A Christmas Carol: The Second of the Three Spirits
There were great round pot-bellied baskets of chestnuts shaped like the waistcoats of jolly old gentlemen lolling at the doors and tumbling out into the street. There were pears and apples clustered high in blooming pyramids. There were bunches of grapes made in the shopkeeper's benevolence to dangle from conspicuous hooks that people's mouths might water gratis as they passed.
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A Christmas Carol: The Second of the Three Spirits
The grocers, oh, the grocers, nearly closed with perhaps two shutters down or one, but through these gaps such glimpses. It was not just that everything was good to eat and in its Christmas dress.
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A Christmas Carol: The Second of the Three Spirits
But the customers were all so hurried and so eager in the hopeful promise of the day that they tumbled up against each other at the door, crashing their wicker baskets wildly, and left their purchases upon the counter, and came running back to fetch them, and committed hundreds of like mistakes in the best humor possible.
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A Christmas Carol: The Second of the Three Spirits
But soon 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 gayest faces. And at the same time there emerged from scores of by-streets and lanes and nameless turnings innumerable people carrying their dinners.
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A Christmas Carol: The Second of the Three Spirits
The sight of these poor revelers appeared to interest the spirit very much, for he stood with Scrooge and, taking off the covers as their 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.
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A Christmas Carol: The Second of the Three Spirits
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. "'Is there a particular flavor in what you sprinkle from your torch?' asked Scrooge. "'There is. My own.' "'Would it apply to any kind of dinner on this day?' asked Scrooge." To any kindly given, to a poor one most. Why to a poor person most?
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A Christmas Carol: The Second of the Three Spirits
asked Scrooge. Because that person needs it most. And they went on, invisible as they had been before, into the suburbs of the town. And perhaps it was his own kind, generous, hearty nature and his sympathy with all poor men that led the spirit straight to Scrooge's clerk. There he went and took Scrooge with him, holding to his robe.
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A Christmas Carol: The Second of the Three Spirits
And that's where we'll leave Ebenezer Scrooge, standing outside Bob Cratchit's door. the lowly clerk whom he had begrated just hours earlier for taking off Christmas Day. He has unexpectedly become Cratchit's invisible Christmas guest. It's a Christmas dinner he'll never forget. The ghost of Christmas present has spirited Scrooge to Bob Cratchit's home.
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A Christmas Carol: The Second of the Three Spirits
The clerk Scrooge overworks and underpays, and regularly humiliates. Before they enter the house, the spirit blesses it with his torch. Then up rose Mrs. Cratchit, Cratchit's wife, dressed out but poorly in a twice-turned gown, but brave in ribbons, which are cheap.
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A Christmas Carol: The Second of the Three Spirits
And she laid the cloth, assisted by Belinda Cratchit, second of her daughters, also brave in ribbons, while Master Peter Cratchit plunged a fork into the saucepan of potatoes.
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A Christmas Carol: The Second of the Three Spirits
And now two smaller Cratchits, boy and girl, came tearing in, screaming that outside the baker's they had smelt the goose and known it for their own, and basking in luxurious thoughts of sage and onion, these young Cratchits danced about the table. What has ever got your precious father, then, said Mrs. Cratchit, and your brother, Tiny Tim?
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A Christmas Carol: The Second of the Three Spirits
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.
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A Christmas Carol: The Second of the Three Spirits
And Martha wasn't as late last Christmas Day by half an hour. Here's Martha, mother, said a girl, appearing as she spoke. Why, bless your heart alive, my dear, how late you are, said Mrs. Cratchit, kissing her a dozen times, taking off her shawl and bonnet for her with a vicious zeal. We'd a deal of work to finish up last night, replied the girl, and had to clear away this morning, mother.
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A Christmas Carol: The Second of the Three Spirits
Well, never mind, so long as you are come, said Mrs. Cratchit. Sit you down before the fire, my dear, and have a warm. Lord bless you. No, no, there's father coming, cried the two young Cratchits who were everywhere at once. Hide, Martha, hide. So Martha hid herself. And in came Bob, the father, and Tiny Tim upon his shoulder.
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A Christmas Carol: The Second of the Three Spirits
Alas for Tiny Tim, he bore a little crutch and had his limbs supported by an iron frame. Why, where's our Martha? cried Bob Cratchit, looking round. Not coming, said Mrs. Cratchit. "'Not coming,' said Bob, with a sudden declension in his high spirits, for he had been Tim's horse all the way from church. "'Not coming upon Christmas Day?'
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A Christmas Carol: The Second of the Three Spirits
Martha didn't like to see him disappointed if it were only a joke, so she came out prematurely from behind the closet door and ran into his arms while the two young Cratchits hustled Tiny Tim and bore him off to the wash house that he might hear the Christmas pudding singing while it cooked. "'And how did little Tim behave?' asked Mrs. Cratchit." As good as gold, said Bob, and better.
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A Christmas Carol: The Second of the Three Spirits
But finding that he turned uncomfortably cold when he began to wonder which of his curtains his new spectre would draw back, he put every one of them aside with his own hands, and lying down again established a sharp lookout all around 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.
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A Christmas Carol: The Second of the Three Spirits
Somehow he gets thoughtful sitting by himself so much and thinks the strangest things you ever heard. He told me coming home that he hoped the people saw him in the church because he was a cripple, and it might be pleasant to them to remember upon Christmas Day who made lame beggars walk and blind men see.
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A Christmas Carol: The Second of the Three Spirits
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.
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A Christmas Carol: The Second of the Three Spirits
And the two ubiquitous young Cratchits went to fetch the goose, with which they soon returned in high procession. Such a bustle ensued. You might have thought a goose the rarest of all birds. Mrs. Cratchit made the gravy, ready beforehand in a little saucepan, hissing hot. Master Peter mashed the potatoes with incredible vigor. Bob took Tiny Tim beside him in a tiny corner at the table.
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A Christmas Carol: The Second of the Three Spirits
The two young cratchits set chairs for everybody, not forgetting themselves, and mounting guard upon their posts, crammed spoons into their mouths, lest they should shriek for goose before their turn came to be helped. At last the dishes were set on, and grace was said. It was succeeded by a breathless pause."
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A Christmas Carol: The Second of the Three Spirits
as Mrs. Cratchit, looking slowly all along the carving knife, prepared to plunge it in the breast. But when she did, and when the long-expected gush of stuffing issued forth, one murmur of delight rose all around the board, and even Tiny Tim, excited by the two young Cratchits, beat on the table with the handle of his knife and cried feebly, Hurrah! Hurrah!
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A Christmas Carol: The First of the Three Spirits
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 toward the door, and he accompanied her. A terrible voice in the hall cried, "'Bring down Master Scrooge's box there!'
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A Christmas Carol: The First of the Three Spirits
And 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. Master Scrooge's trunk, being by this time tied to the top of the carriage, the children bade the schoolmaster goodbye, right willingly.
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A Christmas Carol: The First of the Three Spirits
Always a delicate creature, whom a breath might have withered, said the ghost, but she had a large heart. So she had, cried Scrooge. You're right. She died a woman, said the ghost, and had, as I think, children. One child, Scrooge returned. True, said the ghost, your nephew. Scrooge seemed uneasy in his mind and answered briefly, yes.
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A Christmas Carol: The First of the Three Spirits
Although they 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.
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A Christmas Carol: The First of the Three Spirits
But it was evening, and the streets were lighted up The ghost stopped at a certain warehouse door and asked Scrooge if he knew it. "'Know it?' said Scrooge. "'I was apprenticed here.' They went in. At sight of an old gentleman in a Welsh wig, sitting behind such a high desk that if he had been two inches taller he must have knocked his head against the ceiling, Scrooge cried in great excitement.
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A Christmas Carol: The First of the Three Spirits
Why, it's old Fezziwig! Bless his heart, it's Fezziwig alive again! 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 capacious 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!
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A Christmas Carol: The First of the Three Spirits
Scrooge's former self, now grown a young man, came briskly in, accompanied by his fellow apprentice. "'Dick Wilkins, to be sure,' said Scrooge to the ghost. "'Bless me, yes, there he is. He was very much attached to me, was Dick. Poor Dick, dear, dear.'" Yo-ho, my boys, said Fezzerwig. No more work tonight. Christmas Eve, Dick. Christmas, Ebenezer.
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A Christmas Carol: The First of the Three Spirits
It isn't possible that anything has happened to the sun, and this is twelve at noon. The idea being an alarming one, he scrambled out of bed and groped his way to the window. He was obliged to rub the frost off with the sleeve of his dressing gown before he could see anything, and he could see very little then.
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A Christmas Carol: The First of the Three Spirits
Let's have the shutters up, cried old Fezzerwig with a sharp clap of his hands. You wouldn't believe how those two fellows went at it. They charged into the street with the shutters. One, two, three. They had them up in their places. Four, five, six. Barred them and pinned them. Seven, eight, nine. and came back before you could have got to twelve panting like racehorses. "'Hilly-ho!'
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A Christmas Carol: The First of the Three Spirits
cried old Fezziwig, skipping down from the high desk with wonderful agility. "'Clear away, my lads, and let's have lots of room here.' "'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."
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A Christmas Carol: The First of the Three Spirits
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 of all room as you would desire to see on a winter's night. In came a fiddler with a music book. In came Mrs. Fezzerwig, one vast substantial smile. In came the three Miss Fezzerwigs, beaming and lovable.
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A Christmas Carol: The First of the Three Spirits
In came the six young followers whose hearts they stole. In came all the young men and women employed in the business. In came the housemaid with her cousin, the baker. In came the cook with her brother's particular friend, the milkman.
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A Christmas Carol: The First of the Three Spirits
In came the boy from over the way, who was suspected of not having bored enough from his master, trying to hide himself behind the girl from next door, but one who was proved to have had her ears pulled by her mistress. In they all came, one after another, some shyly, some boldly, some gracefully, some awkwardly, some pushing, some pulling. In they all came, anyhow and everyhow.
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A Christmas Carol: The First of the Three Spirits
And away they all went, twenty couples at once, hand half round and back again the other way, down the middle and up again, round and round. There were more dances and more dances, and there was cake, and there was a great piece of cold roast, and there were mince pies and plenty of beer. But the great effect of the evening came after the roast.
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A Christmas Carol: The First of the Three Spirits
When the clock struck eleven, this domestic ball broke up. Mr. and Mrs. Fezzerwig took their stations, one on either side of the door, and shaking hands with every person individually as he or she went out, wished him or her a Merry Christmas. When everybody had retired but the two apprentices, they did the same to them.
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A Christmas Carol: The First of the Three Spirits
And thus the cheerful voices died away, and the lads were left to their beds, which were under a counter in the back shop. During the whole of this time, Scrooge had acted like a man out of his wits. His heart and soul were in the scene, and with his former self, he remembered everything, enjoyed everything, and underwent the strangest agitation ever.
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A Christmas Carol: The First of the Three Spirits
It was not until now, when the bright faces of his former self and Dick 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,' said the ghost, to make these silly folks so full of gratitude. "'Small!' echoed Scrooge.
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A Christmas Carol: The First of the Three Spirits
All he could make out was that it was still foggy and extremely cold, and that there was no noise of people running to and fro, 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.
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A Christmas Carol: The First of the Three Spirits
The Spirit signed to him to listen to the two apprentices, who were pouring out their hearts in praise of Fezziwig. And when he had done so, said, Why is it not he has spent but a few pounds of your mortal money, three or four perhaps? Is that so much that he deserves this praise? "'It isn't that,' said Scrooge, heated by the remark and speaking unconsciously like his former, not his latter self.
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A Christmas Carol: The First of the Three Spirits
"'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. He felt the spirit's glance and stopped.
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A Christmas Carol: The First of the Three Spirits
What is the matter? asked the ghost. Nothing particular, said Scrooge. Something, I think, the ghost insisted. No, said Scrooge. No, I should like to be able to say a word or two to my clerk just now. That's all. His former self turned down the lamps, and Scrooge and the ghost again stood side by side in the open air. My time grows short, observed the spirit. Quick!
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A Christmas Carol: The First of the Three Spirits
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 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.
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A Christmas Carol: The First of the Three Spirits
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. Oh, there would be no more Fezziwig now. What Ebenezer is going to see now is not nearly as heartwarming. Oh no, not at all. The spirit from the past is about to show Ebenezer himself as a young adult. He's with a young woman named Belle.
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A Christmas Carol: The First of the Three Spirits
His fiancée, in fact. She had once loved him. But she is going to tell him he has changed. For he has a new mistress. Money. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Here again, the words of Charles Dickens. He was not alone, but sat by the side of a fair young girl in a mourning dress, in whose eyes there were tears which sparkled in the light that shone out of the ghost of Christmas past.
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A Christmas Carol: The First of the Three Spirits
It matters little, she said softly, to you very little. Another idol has displaced me, and if it can cheer and comfort you in time to come, as I would have tried to do, I have no just cause to grieve. What idol has displaced you, he rejoined? A golden one. This is the even-handed dealing of the world, he said.
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A Christmas Carol: The First of the Three Spirits
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. You fear the world too much, she answered gently. All your other hopes have merged into the hope of being beyond the chance of its sordid reproach.
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A Christmas Carol: The First of the Three Spirits
The more he thought, the more perplexed he was, and the more he endeavored not to think, the more he thought. Marley's ghost bothered him exceedingly. Every time he resolved within himself 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?
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A Christmas Carol: The First of the Three Spirits
I have seen your nobler aspirations fall off one by one until the master passion gain engrosses you, have I not? What then, he retorted, even if I have grown so much wiser, what then? I am not changed toward you. She shook her head. Am I? Our contract is an old one.
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A Christmas Carol: The First of the Three Spirits
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. You are changed. When it was made, you were another man. I was a boy, he said impatiently. Your own feeling tells you that you were not what you are, she returned. I am?
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A Christmas Carol: The First of the Three Spirits
That which promised happiness when we were one in heart is fraught with misery now that we are two. How often and how keenly have I thought of this, I will not say. It is enough that I have thought of it and can release you. Have I ever sought release? In words, no, never. In what, then? In a changed nature, in an altered spirit, in another atmosphere of life, another hope as its great end.
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A Christmas Carol: The First of the Three Spirits
In everything that made my love any worth or value in your sight, if this had never been between us, said the girl, looking mildly but with steadiness upon him. Tell me, would you seek me out and try to win me now? Oh, no. He seemed to yield to the justice of this supposition in spite of himself, but he said, with a struggle, You think not. I would gladly think otherwise if I could, she answered.
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A Christmas Carol: The First of the Three Spirits
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, weighing everything by gain, or choosing her, if for a moment you were false enough to your one guiding principle to do so?
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A Christmas Carol: The First of the Three Spirits
Do I not know that your repentance and regret would surely follow? I do. and I release you with a full heart for the love of him you once were." He was about to speak, but with her head turned from him, she resumed.
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A Christmas Carol: The First of the Three Spirits
You may, in the memory of what is past, have, 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've chosen. She left him, and they parted. Spirit, said Scrooge, show me no more.
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A Christmas Carol: The First of the Three Spirits
Why do you delight to torture me? One shadow more, exclaimed the ghost.
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A Christmas Carol: The First of the Three Spirits
But the relentless ghost pinioned him in both his arms and forced him to observe what happened next. They were in another scene and place, a room not very large or handsome, but full of comfort. Near to the winter fire sat a beautiful young girl, so like that last that Scrooge believed it was the same, until he saw her, now a comely matron, sitting opposite her daughter.
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A Christmas Carol: The First of the Three Spirits
The noise in this room was perfectly tumultuous, for there were more children there than Scrooge in his agitated state of mind could count. 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.
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A Christmas Carol: The First of the Three Spirits
And the latter, soon beginning to mingle in the sports, got pillaged by the young brigands most ruthlessly. but I would not have given to be one of them.
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A Christmas Carol: The First of the Three Spirits
But now a knocking at the door was heard, and such a rush immediately ensued that she, with laughing face and plundered dress, was borne toward it in 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.
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A Christmas Carol: The First of the Three Spirits
Scrooge lay in this state until the chime had gone three quarters more, when he remembered, on a sudden, that the ghost had warned him of a visitation when the bell tolled one. He resolved to lie awake until the hour was past. He was more than once convinced he must have sunk into a doze unconsciously and missed the clock, but at length it broke upon his listening ear.
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A Christmas Carol: The First of the Three Spirits
I'm Keith Morrison, and this is episode two of A Christmas Carol. Old Ebenezer Scrooge has just had the fright of his life. He's been visited by the ghost of his old business partner, Jacob Marley. Miley tells Scrooge he's been roaming the earth since the very day of his death, haunted by his own story of stinginess and greed. He'd like to change it all, but it's too late now.
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A Christmas Carol: The First of the Three Spirits
Then the shouting and the struggling and the onslaught that was made on that 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 his neck, pummel his back, kick his legs in irrepressible affection.
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A Christmas Carol: The First of the Three Spirits
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 was a false alarm.
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A Christmas Carol: The First of the Three Spirits
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 stare at a time up to the top of the house where they went to bed and so subsided.
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A Christmas Carol: The First of the Three Spirits
And now Scrooge looked on more attentively than ever when the master of the house, having his daughter leaning fondly on him, sat down with her and her mother at his own fireside. And when he thought that such another creature quite as graceful and as full of promise might have called him father, and had been a springtime in the haggard winter of his life, his sight grew very dim indeed.
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A Christmas Carol: The First of the Three Spirits
"'Bell,' said the husband, turning to his wife with a smile, "'I saw an old friend of yours this afternoon.' "'Who was it?' "'Guess.' How can I? I don't know, she added in the same breath, laughing as he laughed. Mr. Scrooge! Mr. Scrooge it was. I passed his office window, as it was not shut up, and he had a candle inside. I could scarcely help seeing him.
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A Christmas Carol: The First of the Three Spirits
His partner lies upon the point of death, I hear. And there he sat, alone, quite alone in the world, I do believe. Spirit, said Scrooge in a broken voice, remove me from this place. I told you these were shadows of the things that have been, said the ghost. That they are what they are, do not blame me. Remove me, Scrooge exclaimed. I cannot bear it.
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A Christmas Carol: The First of the Three Spirits
He turned upon the ghost, and seeing that it looked upon him with a face in which, in some strange way, there were fragments of all the faces it had shown him, wrestled with it. Leave me. Take me back. Haunt me no more. He was conscious of being exhausted and overcome by an irresistible drowsiness. and further, of being in his own bedroom.
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A Christmas Carol: The First of the Three Spirits
His hand relaxed and had barely time to reel to bed before he sank into a heavy sleep. He sees it now, to Scrooge, the happiness that could have been his if only he thought less of his wallet and more of his heart. But his torments are not over. They are just beginning.
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A Christmas Carol: The First of the Three Spirits
The hour itself, said Scrooge triumphantly, and nothing else. He spoke before the hour bell sounded, which now it 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 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.
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A Christmas Carol: The First of the Three Spirits
The curtains of his bed were drawn aside, and Scrooge 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.
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A Christmas Carol: The First of the Three Spirits
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, the hands the same, as if its hold were of uncommon strength. It wore a tunic of the purest white, and round its waist was bound a lustrous belt, the sheen of which was beautiful.
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A Christmas Carol: The First of the Three Spirits
And he warns Scrooge that he, too, is destined for a tortured afterlife if he doesn't mend his ways. As if all that isn't enough, the ghost of Marley announces that Scrooge will be visited again by three more ghosts, beginning when the clock strikes one. We pick up our story as Ebenezer wakes from a fitful sleep, confused, and, as Dickens writes, with one eye on the clock.
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A Christmas Carol: The First of the Three Spirits
It held a branch of fresh green holly in its hand, and 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. Even this, though, when Scrooge looked at it with increasing steadiness, was not its strangest quality.
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A Christmas Carol: The First of the Three Spirits
for as its belt sparkled and glittered, now in one part and now in another, and what was light one instant and 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 twenty legs, now a pair of legs without a head,
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A Christmas Carol: The First of the Three Spirits
no head without a body, of which dissolving parts no outline would be visible in the dense bloom wherein they melted away. And in the very wonder of this, it would be itself again, distinct and clear as ever.
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A Christmas Carol: The First of the Three Spirits
asked Scrooge. "'I am.' The voice was soft and gentle, singularly low, as if instead of being so close beside him, it were at a distance.
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A Christmas Carol: The First of the Three Spirits
Scrooge demanded. "'I am the Ghost of Christmas Past.' "'Long past?' inquired Scrooge. "'No, your past.' It put out its strong hand as it spoke and clasped him gently by the arm. 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, that bed was warm and the thermometer a long way below freezing.
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A Christmas Carol: The First of the Three Spirits
that he was clad but lightly in his slippers and dressing gown and nightcap, and that he had a cold upon him at that time. The grass, 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. "'I am a mortal,' Scrooge remonstrated, "'and liable to fall.'
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A Christmas Carol: The First of the Three Spirits
Bear but a touch of my hand there, said the spirit, laying it upon his 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.
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A Christmas Carol: The First of the Three Spirits
The darkness and the mist had vanished with it, for it was a clear, cold winter day with snow upon the ground. "'Good heaven!' said Scrooge, clasping his hands together as he looked about him. "'I was bred in this place. I was a boy here.' 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.
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A Christmas Carol: The First of the Three Spirits
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,' said the ghost. "'And what is that upon your cheek?' Scrooge muttered with an unusual catching in his voice that it was a pimple, and begged the ghost to lead him where he would.
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A Christmas Carol: The First of the Three Spirits
You recollect the way, inquired the spirit. Remember it, cried Scrooge with fervor. I could walk it blindfolded. Could it be that Ebenezer actually possesses feelings after all, and a visit to his boyhood home would suddenly warm the coldest of hearts? Oh, if only it were that simple. They walked along the road, Scrooge recognizing every gate and post and tree.
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A Christmas Carol: The First of the Three Spirits
until a little market town appeared in the distance with its bridge, its church, and winding river. Some shaggy ponies now were seen trotting toward them with boys on their backs who called to other boys in country gigs in 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.
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A Christmas Carol: The First of the Three Spirits
These are but shadows of the things that have been, said the ghost. They have no consciousness of us. The happy travelers came on, and as they came Scrooge knew and named every one of them. 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?
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A Christmas Carol: The First of the Three Spirits
Why was he filled with gladness when he heard them give each other Merry Christmas as they parted at crossroads and byways for their several homes? What was Merry Christmas to Scrooge? What good had it ever done to him? The school is not quite deserted, said the ghost. A solitary child, neglected by his friends, is left there still, Scrooge said he knew it, and he sobbed.
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A Christmas Carol: The First of the Three Spirits
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 chimes of a neighboring church struck the four quarters. So he listened for the hour.
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A Christmas Carol: The First of the Three Spirits
They left the high road by a well-remembered lane and soon approached a mansion of dull red brick with a little weather-cock surmounted tubula on the roof and a bell hanging in it. It was a large house, but one of broken fortunes, for the spacious rooms were little used, their walls were damp and mossy, their windows broken, and their gates decayed.
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A Christmas Carol: The First of the Three Spirits
Fowls clucked and strutted in the stables, and the coach-houses and sheds were overrun with grass. Entering the dreary hall, and glancing through the open doors of many rooms, they found them poorly furnished, cold, vast. There was an earthy savour 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.
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A Christmas Carol: The First of the Three Spirits
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. A lonely boy was reading near a feeble fire. and Scrooge wept to see his poor, forgotten self as he used to be.
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A Christmas Carol: The First of the Three Spirits
The spirit touched him on the arm and pointed to his younger self, intent upon his reading, and suddenly a man in foreign garments, wonderfully real and distinct to look at, stood outside the window with an axe stuck in his belt and, leading by the bridle, a donkey laden with wood. Why, it's Ali Baba, Scrooge exclaimed in ecstasy. It's dear old honest Ali Baba. Yes, yes, I know.
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A Christmas Carol: The First of the Three Spirits
One Christmas time when yonder solitary child was left here all alone, he did come for the first time just like that. To hear Scrooge expending all the earnestness of his nature on such subjects in a most extraordinary voice between laughing and crying... And to see his heightened and excited face would have been a surprise to his business friends in the city, indeed. "'There's the parrot!'
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A Christmas Carol: The First of the Three Spirits
cried Scrooge, green body and yellow tail, with a thing like a lettuce growing out of the top of its head. "'There he is!' "'Poor Robin Crusoe,' he called him, when he came home again after sailing round the island.' Then, with a rapidity of transition very foreign to his usual character, he said, in pity of his former self, Poor boy! and cried again.
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A Christmas Carol: The First of the Three Spirits
I wish... Scrooge muttered, putting his hand in his pocket and looking about him after drying his eyes with his cuff. But it's too late now. "'What is the matter?' asked the spirit. "'Nothing,' said Scrooge, "'nothing. There was a boy singing a Christmas carol at my door last night, and I should like to have given him something, that's all.'
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A Christmas Carol: The First of the Three Spirits
The ghost smiled thoughtfully and waved its hand, saying as it did so, "'Let us see another Christmas.' 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. How all this was brought about Scrooge knew no more than you do.
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A Christmas Carol: The First of the Three Spirits
To his great astonishment, the heavy bell went on from six to seven and from seven to eight, and regularly up to twelve, and then stopped. Twelve? It was past two when he went to bed. The clock was wrong. An icicle must have gotten into the works. Twelve? Why, it isn't possible, said Scrooge, that I can have slept through a whole day and far into another night.
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A Christmas Carol: The First of the Three Spirits
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 toward the door. It opened.
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A Christmas Carol: The First of the Three Spirits
And the little girl, much younger than the boy, came darting in and putting her arms about his neck and often kissing him, addressed him as her dear, dear brother. I have come to bring you home, dear brother, said the child, clapping her tiny hands and bending down to laugh, to bring you home, home, home.
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A Christmas Carol: The First of the Three Spirits
returned the boy. "'Yes,' said the child, brimful of glee. "'Home for good and all, home for ever and ever. Father is so much kinder than he used to be, that home's like heaven.' He spoke to me gently one dear night when I was going to bed, that I was not afraid to ask him once more if you might come home, and he said, "'Yes, you should.'
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A Christmas Carol: The First of the Three Spirits
and sent me and a coach to bring you, and you're to be a man," said the child, opening her eyes, and are never to come back here again. But first we're to be together all the Christmas long and have the merriest time in the world." "'You are quite a woman, little fan,' exclaimed the boy."
Dateline NBC
A Christmas Carol: Marley’s Ghost
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. It was not in impenetrable shadow, as the other objects in the yard were, but had a dismal light about it.
Dateline NBC
A Christmas Carol: Marley’s Ghost
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. As Scrooge looked fixedly at this phenomenon, it was a knocker again.
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A Christmas Carol: Marley’s Ghost
To say that he was not startled or that his blood was not conscious of a terrible sensation would be untrue. But he put his hand upon the key he had relinquished, turned it sturdily, walked in and lighted his candle.
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A Christmas Carol: Marley’s Ghost
He did pause for the moment's irresolution before he shut the door, and he did look cautiously behind at first as if he had expected to be terrified with the sight of Marley's pigtail sticking out into the hall. But there was nothing on the back of the door except the screws and nuts that held the knocker on. So he said, poo-poo, and closed it with a bang.
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A Christmas Carol: Marley’s Ghost
The sound resounded through the house like thunder. But Scrooge was not a man to be frightened by echoes. He fastened the door and walked across the hall and up the stairs, slowly too, trimming his candle as he went. Darkness is cheap, and Scrooge liked it. But he walked through his rooms to see that all was right. He had just enough recollection of the face to desire to do that.
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A Christmas Carol: Marley’s Ghost
Sitting room, bedroom, lumber room, all as they should be. Nobody under the table, nobody under the sofa. A small fire in the grate, spoon and basin ready, and the little saucepan of gruel upon the stove. Nobody under the bed. Nobody in the closet. Nobody in his dressing gown, which was hanging up in a suspicious attitude against the wall. Quite satisfied, he closed his door and locked himself in.
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A Christmas Carol: Marley’s Ghost
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.
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A Christmas Carol: Marley’s Ghost
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 the way around with quaint Dutch tiles designed to illustrate the scriptures.
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A Christmas Carol: Marley’s Ghost
There were canes and ables and pharaoh's daughters, queens of Sheba, 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. Humbug, said Scrooge, and walked across the room. After several turns, he sat down again.
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A Christmas Carol: Marley’s Ghost
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. It was with great astonishment now, 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.
Dateline NBC
A Christmas Carol: Marley’s Ghost
In fact, it's thoughts of Marley that begin Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol. Marley was dead, to begin with. There was no doubt whatever about that. The register of his burial was signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker, the chief mourner. Scrooge signed it. And Scrooge's name was good for anything he chose to put his hand to. Old Marley was as dead as a doornail.
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A Christmas Carol: Marley’s Ghost
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. 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 toward his door.
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A Christmas Carol: Marley’s Ghost
It's humbug still, said Scrooge. I won't believe it. 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, waistcoat, tights, and boots,
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A Christmas Carol: Marley’s Ghost
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.
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A Christmas Carol: Marley’s Ghost
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, he was still incredulous and fought against his senses. How now, said Scrooge, caustic and cold as ever, what do you want with me? Much? Marley's voice, no doubt about it. Who are you? Ask me who I was? Who were you then, said Scrooge, raising his voice.
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A Christmas Carol: Marley’s Ghost
In life, I was your partner, Jacob Marley. Christmas Eve, and Ebenezer Scrooge is face to face with the ghost of his old partner, Jacob Marley. The ghost is weighed down with the paraphernalia of their greedy money lending business. Old ledgers and money boxes and padlocks and keys. In life, Marley had been every bit as cheap and nasty as Scrooge. What could he want now in death?
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A Christmas Carol: Marley’s Ghost
Our story continues. "'Shall you sit down?' asked Scrooge, looking doubtfully at him. "'I can.' "'Do it, then.' 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 felt that in the event of its being impossible it might involve the necessity of an embarrassing explanation."
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A Christmas Carol: Marley’s Ghost
but the ghost sat down on the opposite side of the fireplace as if he was quite used to it. You don't believe in me, observed the ghost. I don't, said Scrooge. What evidence would you have of my reality beyond that of your senses? I don't know, said Scrooge. Why do you doubt your senses? Because, said Scrooge, A little thing affects them. A slight disorder of the stomach makes them cheat.
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A Christmas Carol: Marley’s Ghost
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. 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.
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A Christmas Carol: Marley’s Ghost
The ghost's voice disturbed the very marrow of 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 spectres being provided with an infernal atmosphere of its own.
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A Christmas Carol: Marley’s Ghost
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 all still agitated as if by the hot vapour from an oven. Do you see this toothpick?
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A Christmas Carol: Marley’s Ghost
said Scrooge, returning quickly to the charge for the reason just assigned, and wishing, though it were only for a second, to divert Division's stony gaze from himself. "'I do,' replied the ghost. "'You're not looking at it,' said Scrooge. "'But I see it,' said the ghost, notwithstanding. "'Well,' returned Scrooge,
Dateline NBC
A Christmas Carol: Marley’s Ghost
I have to but 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!" 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.
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A Christmas Carol: Marley’s Ghost
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 friend, and his sole mourner. And even Scrooge was not so dreadfully cut up by the sad event. Scrooge never painted out old Marley's name. There it stood, years afterwards, above the warehouse door, Scrooge and Marley,
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A Christmas Carol: Marley’s Ghost
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. Mercy, he said. Dreadful apparition, why do you trouble me? Man of the worldly mind, replied the ghost. or not?" "'I do,' said Scrooge. "'I must.
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A Christmas Carol: Marley’s Ghost
But why do spirits walk the earth, and why do they come to me?' "'It is required of every man,' the ghost returned, "'that the spirit within him should walk abroad among his fellow men, and travel far and wide. And if that spirit does not go forth in life, it is condemned to do so after death.' It is doomed to wander through the world.
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A Christmas Carol: Marley’s Ghost
Oh, woe is me, and witness what it cannot share, but might have shared on earth and turned to happiness. Again the spectre raised a cry and shook its chain and wrung its shadowy hands. You are fettered, said Scrooge, trembling. Tell me why. I wear the chain I forged in life, replied the ghost. I made it, link by link, and yard by yard.
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A Christmas Carol: Marley’s Ghost
I girded it on of my own free will, and of my own free will I wore it. Is its pattern strange to you?" Scrooge trembled more and more. Or would you know, pursued the Ghost, the weight and length of the strong coil you bear yourself? It was full, as heavy, and as long as this, seven Christmas Eves ago. You've labored on it since. It's a ponderous chain.
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A Christmas Carol: Marley’s Ghost
Scrooge glanced about him on the floor, in the expectation of finding himself surrounded by some fifty or sixty fathoms of iron cable. But he could see nothing. Jacob, he said imploringly, old Jacob Marley, tell me more. Speak comfort to me, Jacob. I have none to give, the ghost replied. I cannot rest. I cannot stay. I cannot linger anywhere. My spirit never walked beyond our counting house.
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A Christmas Carol: Marley’s Ghost
Mark me. In my life, my spirit never roved beyond the narrow limits of our money-changing hole. And weary journeys lie before me. It was a habit with Scrooge, whenever he became thoughtful, to put his hands in his pants' pockets. Wondering on what the ghost had said, he did so now, but without lifting up his eyes or getting off his knees.
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A Christmas Carol: Marley’s Ghost
You must have been very slow about it, Jacob, Scrooge observed in a businesslike manner, though with humility and deference. Slow, the ghost repeated. Seven years dead, used Scrooge, and traveling all the time. The whole time, said the ghost, no rest, no peace, incessant torture of remorse.
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A Christmas Carol: Marley’s Ghost
Oh, captive-bound and double-ironed, cried the phantom, no space of regret can make amends for one's life's opportunity misused. Yet such was I, oh, such was I. But you were always a good man of business, Jacob, faltered Scrooge, who now began to apply this to himself. Business, cried the ghost, wringing his hands again. Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business.
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A Christmas Carol: Marley’s Ghost
Charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence were all my business. The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business." It held up its chain at arm's length, as if that were the cause of all its unavailing grief, and flung it heavily upon the ground again. At this time of the rolling year, the ghost said, I suffer most.
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A Christmas Carol: Marley’s Ghost
Sometimes people new to the business called Scrooge Scrooge, and sometimes Marley. But he answered to both names. It was all the same to him. Oh, but he was a tight-fisted hand to the grindstone, Scrooge. A squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous old sinner. Hard and sharp as flint. Secret and self-contained and solitary as an oyster.
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A Christmas Carol: Marley’s Ghost
Why did I walk through crowds of fellow beings with my eyes turned down and never raise them to that blessed star which led the wise men to a poor abode? were there no poor homes to which its light would have conducted me. Scrooge was very much dismayed to hear the spectre going on at this rate, and began to quake exceedingly. Hear me, cried the Ghost, my time is nearly gone.
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A Christmas Carol: Marley’s Ghost
I will, said Scrooge, but don't be hard upon me, don't be flowery, Jacob, pray. How is it that I appear before you in a shape you can see I may not tell? I have sat invisible beside you many and many a day. It was not an agreeable idea. Scrooge shivered and wiped the perspiration from his brow.
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A Christmas Carol: Marley’s Ghost
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,' said Scrooge. "'Thank you.' "'You will be haunted,' resumed the Ghost by three spirits." Scrooge's countenance fell almost as low as the Ghost's had done. Is that the chance and hope you mentioned, Jacob?
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A Christmas Carol: Marley’s Ghost
he demanded in a faltering voice. It is. I think I'd rather not, said Scrooge. Without their visit, said the ghost, you cannot hope to shun the path I tread. Expect the first tomorrow when the bell tolls one. Couldn't I take them all at once and have it over, Jacob? ended Scrooge.
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A Christmas Carol: Marley’s Ghost
Expect the second on the next night at the same hour, the third upon the next night when the last stroke of twelve has ceased to vibrate. Look to see me no more, and look that for your own sake you remember what has passed between us. When it had said these words, the spectre took its wrapper from the table and bound it round its head as before.
Dateline NBC
A Christmas Carol: Marley’s Ghost
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.
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A Christmas Carol: Marley’s Ghost
The apparition walked backward from him and at every step it took the window raised itself a little so that when the ghost reached it it was wide open 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.
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A Christmas Carol: Marley’s Ghost
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 bleak, dark night. Scrooge followed to the window.
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A Christmas Carol: Marley’s Ghost
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 freed. Many had been personally known to Scrooge in their lives.
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A Christmas Carol: Marley’s Ghost
He had been quite familiar with one old ghost in a white waistcoat with a monstrous iron safe attached to his 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.
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A Christmas Carol: Marley’s Ghost
The cold within him froze his old features, nipped his pointed nose, shriveled his cheek, stiffened his gait, made his eyes red, his thin lips blue, and spoke out shrewdly in his grating voice. 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.
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A Christmas Carol: Marley’s Ghost
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. It was double-locked, as he had locked it with his own hands, and the bolts were undisturbed. He tried to say, "'A bug!'
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A Christmas Carol: Marley’s Ghost
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— He went straight to bed without undressing and fell asleep upon the instant. Exhausted by his ghostly encounter, Scrooge has collapsed into bed.
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A Christmas Carol: Marley’s Ghost
You'll need his rest because the most stubbornly mean man in all of London is about to take a journey to a terrible place, his own life.
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A Christmas Carol: Marley’s Ghost
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. 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.
Dateline NBC
A Christmas Carol: Marley’s Ghost
Once upon a time, of all the good days of the year on Christmas Eve, old Scrooge sat busy in his counting house. It was cold, bleak, biting weather, foggy, 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 warm them.
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A Christmas Carol: Marley’s Ghost
The city clocks had only just gone three, but it was quite dark already, 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 that although the court was the narrowest, the houses opposite were mere phantoms. The door of Scrooge's counting house was open.
Dateline NBC
A Christmas Carol: Marley’s Ghost
that he might keep his eye upon his clerk, who in a dismal little cell beyond 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. Wherefore, the clerk put on his white comforter and tried to warm himself at the candle.
Dateline NBC
A Christmas Carol: Marley’s Ghost
This nasty piece of work will get his comeuppance in the most unexpected and satisfying way. I'm speaking, of course, of Ebenezer Scrooge. I'm Keith Morrison, and this is Season 2 of Morrison Mysteries. Our story is set in the 1840s, London, England. It's winter, cold and bleak, but it's Christmas Eve.
Dateline NBC
A Christmas Carol: Marley’s Ghost
in which effort, not being a man of strong imagination, he failed. A Merry Christmas, Uncle! God save you! cried a cheerful voice. It was the voice of Scrooge's nephew, who came upon him so quickly that this was the first intimation he had of his approach. Bah! said Scrooge. Humbug! He had so heated himself with rapid walking in the fog and frost, this nephew of Scrooge's, that he was all aglow.
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A Christmas Carol: Marley’s Ghost
His face was ruddy and handsome. His eyes sparkled. "'Christmas a humbug, uncle,' said Scrooge's nephew. "'You don't mean that, I'm sure.' "'I do,' said Scrooge. "'Merry Christmas? What right have you to be merry? What reason have you to be merry? You're poor enough.' Come then, returned the nephew gaily, what right have you to be dismal? What reason have you to be morose? You're rich enough.
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A Christmas Carol: Marley’s Ghost
He may just be the meanest Christmas villain of all time. A man who counts his money while children starve. Who mocks the sick and begrudges his most loyal friends even the tiniest bit of happiness. Oh, yes, he's the OG of bad guys. All right. Darth Vader, the Grinch Voldemort, all rolled into one evil lump of a man. But just you wait.
Dateline NBC
A Christmas Carol: Marley’s Ghost
Scrooge, having no better answer ready on the spur of the moment, said, Bah! again, and followed it up with a bug. Don't be cross, uncle, said the nephew. What else can I be, returned the uncle, when I live in such a world of fools as this? Merry Christmas? Out with Merry Christmas!
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A Christmas Carol: Marley’s Ghost
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? If I could work my will, said Scrooge indignantly, 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. Uncle, pleaded the nephew.
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A Christmas Carol: Marley’s Ghost
Nephew, returned the uncle sternly. Keep Christmas in your own way and let me keep it in mine. But I have always thought of Christmas, said the nephew, 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.
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A Christmas Carol: Marley’s Ghost
To think of people below them as if they really were a fellow passenger to the grave and not just 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 it's done me good and will do me good. And I say, God bless it. The clerk, involuntarily, applauded.
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A Christmas Carol: Marley’s Ghost
And then, becoming immediately sensible of the impropriety, he poked the fire and extinguished the last frail spark forever. Let me hear another sound from you, said Scrooge, and you'll keep your Christmas by losing your situation. Don't be angry, Uncle. Come, dine with us tomorrow, said the nephew. Why did you get married, said Scrooge? Because I fell in love.
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A Christmas Carol: Marley’s Ghost
Because you fell in love, growled Scrooge, as if that were the only one thing in the world more ridiculous than a Merry Christmas. Good afternoon. Nay, uncle, but you never came to see me before that happened. Why give it as a reason for not coming now? Good afternoon, said Scrooge. I want nothing from you. I ask nothing of you. Why can't we be friends? Good afternoon, said Scrooge.
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A Christmas Carol: Marley’s Ghost
I am sorry with all my heart to find you so resolute. We've never had any quarrel, to which I've been a party. But I've made the trial an homage to Christmas. and I'll keep my Christmas humor to the last. So, a Merry Christmas, Uncle. Good afternoon, said Scrooge. And a Happy New Year. Good afternoon, said Scrooge. His nephew left the room without an angry word, notwithstanding.
Dateline NBC
A Christmas Carol: Marley’s Ghost
He stopped at the outer door to bestow the greetings of the season on the clerk, who, cold as he was, was warmer than Scrooge, for he returned them cordially. There's another fellow, muttered Scrooge, who overheard him. My clerk was fifteen shillings a week and a wife and family, talking about a merry Christmas. The clerk, in letting Scrooge's nephew out, had let two other people in.
Dateline NBC
A Christmas Carol: Marley’s Ghost
They were porkly gentlemen, pleasant to behold, and now stood with their hats off in Scrooge's office. They had books and papers in their hands, and they bowed to him. Scrooge and Marley's, I believe, said one of the gentlemen, referring to his list. Have I the pleasure of addressing Mr. Scrooge or Mr. Marley? Mr. Marley has been dead these seven years, Scrooge replied.
Dateline NBC
A Christmas Carol: Marley’s Ghost
He died seven years ago this very night. "'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 the destitute who suffer greatly at the present time. Many thousands are in want of common necessities. Hundreds of thousands are in want of common comforts, sir.'
Dateline NBC
A Christmas Carol: Marley’s Ghost
The warmth and joy of the season of giving permeate the gray fog of the city in all places, but one, the tiny shriveled heart of Ebenezer Scrooge. As we begin, Scrooge is sitting in his office, barking orders at his kind-hearted clerk, Bob Cratchit, who's only hoping to have Christmas Day off to spend time with his family, especially his desperately ill son, Tiny Tim.
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A Christmas Carol: Marley’s Ghost
"'Are there no prisons?' asked Scrooge. "'Plenty of prisons,' said the gentleman, laying down the pen again.' "'And the union workhouses?' demanded Scrooge. "'Are they still in operation?' "'They are. Still,' returned the gentleman. "'I wish I could say they were not. "'A few of us are endeavoring to raise a fund "'to buy the poor some meat and drink, and means of warmth.'
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A Christmas Carol: Marley’s Ghost
We choose this time because it's a time of all others when want is keenly felt and abundance rejoices. What shall I put you down for?" "'Nothing,' Scrooge replied. "'You wish to be anonymous?' "'I wish to be left alone,' said Scrooge. "'Since you ask me what I wish, gentlemen, that is my answer. I don't make myself merry at Christmas, and I can't afford to make idle people merry.'
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A Christmas Carol: Marley’s Ghost
I help to support the establishments I have mentioned, and they cost enough. Those who are badly off must go there. Many can't go there, and many would rather die. If they would rather die, said Scrooge, they'd better do it and decrease the surplus population. It's not my business. It's enough for a man to understand his own business and not to interfere with other people's.
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A Christmas Carol: Marley’s Ghost
Mine occupies me constantly. Good afternoon, gentlemen. Seeing clearly that it would be useless to pursue their point, the gentlemen withdrew. Meanwhile, the fog and darkness thickened. The cold became intense. Piercing, searching, biting cold. The owner of one cold young nose stooped down at Scrooge's keyhole to regale him with a Christmas carol.
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A Christmas Carol: Marley’s Ghost
But at the first sound of, God bless you, merry gentlemen, let nothing you dismay, Scrooge seized the ruler with such an energy of action that the singer fled in terror, leaving the keyhole to the fog and the frost. At length, the hour of shutting up the counting house arrived.
Dateline NBC
A Christmas Carol: Marley’s Ghost
With an ill will, Scrooge dismounted from his stool and tacitly admitted the fact to the expectant clerk, who instantly snuffed his candle out and put on his hat. "'You'll want all day to-morrow, I suppose,' said Scrooge. "'If quite convenient, sir.' "'It's not convenient,' said Scrooge, "'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.'
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A Christmas Carol: Marley’s Ghost
Clerk smiled faintly. And yet, said Scrooge, you don't think me ill-used when I pay a day's wages for no work? Clerk observed that that was only once a year. A poor excuse for picking a man's pocket every 25th of December, said Scrooge, buttoning his great coat to the chin. But I suppose you must have the whole day. Be here all the earlier the next morning.
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A Christmas Carol: Marley’s Ghost
The clerk promised that he would, and Scrooge walked out with a growl. And so kindly Bob Cratchit has been given Christmas Day off and rushes home to be with his family. Scrooge is also on his way home, miserable as ever. But if he thinks Christmas has made him unhappy, well, he has no idea.
Dateline NBC
A Christmas Carol: Marley’s Ghost
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. He lived in chambers which had once belonged to his deceased partner.
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A Christmas Carol: Marley’s Ghost
They were a gloomy suite of rooms in 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 hide-and-seek with other houses, and forgotten the way out again. It was old enough now. and dreary enough, for nobody lived in it but Scrooge.
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A Christmas Carol: Marley’s Ghost
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. Now, it's a fact that there was nothing at all particular about the knocker on the door, except that it was very large.
Dateline NBC
A Christmas Carol: Marley’s Ghost
But loathsome Scrooge doesn't give a thought to any of that, no. Cratchit's family means nothing to Scrooge, and Christmas... a passing annoyance, a waste of valuable time. Yes, in meanness, Scrooge was second to none, except just possibly to his old business partner, the greedy Jacob Marley, who'd pinched his last penny and died seven years before the Christmas Eve of our story.
Dateline NBC
A Christmas Carol: Marley’s Ghost
It's also a fact that Scrooge had seen it night and morning during his whole residency in that place. 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.
Dateline NBC
"Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer" read by Keith Morrison
The original Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer by Robert L. May. "'Twas the day before Christmas, and all through the hills the reindeer were playing, enjoying the spills of skating and coasting and climbing the willows and hopscotching and leapfrogging." protected by pillows. Well, every so often they'd stop to call names of one little deer, not allowed in their games.
Dateline NBC
"Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer" read by Keith Morrison
Well, way, way up north, on this same foggy night, old Santa was packing his sleigh for the flight. This fog, he complained, will be hard to get through. He shook his round head and his tummy shook too. Without any stars or a moon as our compass, this extra dark night is quite likely to swamp us. To keep from collisions, we'll have to fly slow. To keep our direction, we'll have to fly low.
Dateline NBC
"Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer" read by Keith Morrison
We'll steer by street lamps and houses tonight in order to finish before it gets light. Just think how the boys' and girls' faith would be shaken if we didn't reach them before they awakened. Come Dasher, come Dancer, come Prancer and Vixen, come Comet, come Cupid, come Donner and Blitzen. Be quick with your suppers, get hitched in a hurry. You too will find fog and delay in a worry.
Dateline NBC
"Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer" read by Keith Morrison
And Santa was right, as he usually is. The fog was as thick as a soda's white fizz. Just not getting lost needed all Santa's skill, with street signs and numbers more difficult still. He tangled in treetops again and again and barely missed hitting a tri-motor plane. He still made good speed with much twisting and turning as long as the street lights and house lights were burning.
Dateline NBC
"Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer" read by Keith Morrison
At each house, first noting the people who lived there, he'd quickly select the right presents to give there. By midnight, however, the last light had fled, for even big people had then gone to bed. Because it might waken them, a match was denied him. Oh my, how he wished he had just one star to guide him. Through dark streets and houses, old Santa fared poorly.
Dateline NBC
"Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer" read by Keith Morrison
He now picked the presents more slowly, less surely. He really was worried. For what would he do if folks started waking before he was through? The air was still foggy, the night dark and drear, when Santa arrived at the home of the deer. Alleged that he tripped down while seeking the chimney, gave Santa a spill, a painfully skinned knee. The room he came down in was blacker than ink.
Dateline NBC
"Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer" read by Keith Morrison
He went for a chair and then found it to be a sink. The first reindeer bedroom was so very black, he tripped on the rug and fell flat on his back. So dark, he had to move close to the bed and squint very hard at the sleeping deer's head. before he could choose the right kind of toy, a doll for a girl or a train for a boy.
Dateline NBC
"Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer" read by Keith Morrison
But all this took time and filled Santa with gloom while slowly he groped toward the next reindeer's room, the door he'd just opened, when to his surprise, a dim but quite definite light met his eyes. The lamp wasn't burning. The glow came instead from something that lay at the head of the bed. And there lay, but wait now, what would you suppose?
Dateline NBC
"Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer" read by Keith Morrison
The glowing, you've guessed it, was Rudolph's red nose. So this room was easy. This one little light let Santa pick quickly the gifts that were just right. How happy he was. till he went out the door and the rest of the house was as black as before. So black that it made every step a dark mystery. And then came the greatest idea in all history.
Dateline NBC
"Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer" read by Keith Morrison
Ha ha, look at Rudolph, his nose is a sight. It's red as a beet, twice as big, twice as bright. Well, Rudolph just wept. What else could he do? He knew that the things they were saying were true. where most reindeer's noses were brownish and tiny. Poor Rudolph's was red, very large, and quite shiny. In daylight, it dazzled. The picture shows that.
Dateline NBC
"Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer" read by Keith Morrison
He went back to Rudolph and started to shake him, of course, very gently in order to wake him. And Rudolph could scarcely believe his own eyes. You can just imagine his joy and surprise at seeing who stood there so real and so near Well, telling the tale we've already told here. Poor Santa's tale of distress and delay, the fog and the darkness of losing his way.
Dateline NBC
"Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer" read by Keith Morrison
The horrible fear that some children might waken before his complete Christmas trip had been taken. And you, he told Rudolph, may yet save the day. Your wonderful forehead may yet pave the way for a wonderful triumph. It actually might. Old Santa, you know, was extra polite to Rudolph regarding his wonderful forehead. To call it a shiny big nose would be horrid.
Dateline NBC
"Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer" read by Keith Morrison
I need you, said Santa, to help me tonight, to lead all my deer on the rest of our flight. And Rudolph broke out into such a big grin, it almost connected his ears and his chin. And note for his folks, he dashed off in a hurry. "'I've gone to help Santa,' he wrote. "'Do not worry,' said Santa. "'My sleigh I'll bring down to the lawn. You'd stick in the chimney.' And flash, he was gone."
Dateline NBC
"Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer" read by Keith Morrison
The Rudolph pranced out through the door, very gay, and took his proud place at the head of the sleigh. And the rest of the night, well, what would you guess? Old Santa's idea was a brilliant success. And brilliant was almost no word for the way that Rudolph directed the deer and the sleigh.
Dateline NBC
"Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer" read by Keith Morrison
In spite of the fog, they flew quickly and low and made such good use of the wonderful glow from Rudolph's forehead at each intersection, but not even once did they lose their direction. Well, as for the houses and streets with a sign on them, they merely flew close so that Rudolph could shine on them.
Dateline NBC
"Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer" read by Keith Morrison
To tell who lived there and just what to give whom, they'd fly by each window and peek at the room. Old Santa always knew which children were good in mind of their parents, ate as they should. So Santa selected the gift that was right, while Rudolph's forehead gave just enough light It all went so fast that before it was day, the very last present was given away.
Dateline NBC
"Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer" read by Keith Morrison
The very last stocking was filled to the top, just as the sun was preparing to pop. This sun woke the reindeer in Rudolph's hometown. They found the short message he'd written down. Then they gathered outside to await his return.
Dateline NBC
"Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer" read by Keith Morrison
And were they excited, astonished, to learn that Rudolph, the ugliest deer of them all, Rudolph the Red Nose, so bashful and small, the funny-faced fellow they always called names and practically never allowed in their games, was now to be envied by all far and near. for no greater honor can come to a deer than riding with Santa and guiding his sleigh, the number one job on the number one day.
Dateline NBC
"Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer" read by Keith Morrison
The sleigh and its reindeer soon came into view, and Rudolph still led them. As downward they flew, and oh boy was he proud as they came to a landing, right where his handsomer playmates were standing. These bad deer who used to do nothing but tease him would now have done anything only to please him. They felt even sorrier.
Dateline NBC
"Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer" read by Keith Morrison
They had been bad when Santa said, Rudolph, I never have had a deer quite so brave or brilliant as you at fighting black fog and at guiding me through. By you, last night's journey was actually bossed. Without you, I'm certain we'd all have been lost. I hope you'll continue to keep us from grief on future dark trips as Commander-in-Chief.
Dateline NBC
"Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer" read by Keith Morrison
But Rudolph just blushed from his head to his toes until his whole fur was as red as his nose. The crowd, first applauded, then started to screech. Hooray for our Rudolph! And we want a speech! But Rudolph was bashful despite being a hero and tired. His sleep on the trip totaled zero. And that's why his speech was just brief and not bright. Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night.
Dateline NBC
"Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer" read by Keith Morrison
At nighttime, it glowed like the eyes of a cat, and putting dirt on it just made it look muddy. Oh boy, was he mad when they nicknamed him Ruddy. And though he was lonesome, he always was good, obeying his parents, as a good reindeer should. And that's why, on this day, Rudolph almost felt playful.
Dateline NBC
"Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer" read by Keith Morrison
And that's why, whenever it's foggy and gray, it's Rudolph the Red Nose who guides Santa's sleigh. Be listening this Christmas. Don't make a peep, because that late at night, children should be asleep. The very first sound that you'll hear on the roof, provided there's fog, will be Rudolph's small hoof.
Dateline NBC
"Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer" read by Keith Morrison
And soon after that, if you're still as a mouse, you may hear a swish as he flies around the house and gives enough light to give Santa a view of you and your room. And when they're all through, you may hear them call as they drive out of sight. Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night. And that's Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.
Dateline NBC
"Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer" read by Keith Morrison
He hoped that from Santa, soon driving his sleigh full of presents and candy and dollies and toys for good little animals, good girls and boys, he'd get just as much, and this is what pleased him, as the happier, handsomer reindeer who teased him. So as night and a fog hid the world like a hood, He went to bed hopeful. He knew he'd been good.