The chest had been full to the brim, and we spent the whole day, and the

greater part of the next night, in a scrutiny of its contents. There had

been nothing like order or arrangement. Everything had been heaped in

promiscuously. Having assorted all with care, we found ourselves

possessed of even vaster wealth than we had at first supposed. In coin

there was rather more than four hundred and fifty thousand

dollars--estimating the value of the pieces, as accurately as we could,

by the tables of the period. There was not a particle of silver. All was

gold of antique date and of great variety: French, Spanish, and German

money, with a few English guineas, and some counters of which we had

never seen specimens before. There were several very large and heavy

coins, so worn that we could make nothing of their inscriptions. There

was no American money. The value of the jewels we found more difficulty

in estimating. There were diamonds--some of them exceedingly large and

fine--a hundred and ten in all, and not one of them small; eighteen

rubies of remarkable brilliancy; three hundred and ten emeralds, all

very beautiful; and twenty-one sapphires, with an opal. These stones had

all been broken from their settings and thrown loose in the chest. The

settings themselves, which we picked out from among the other gold,

appeared to have been beaten up with hammers, as if to prevent

identification. Besides all this, there was a vast quantity of solid

gold ornaments: nearly two hundred massive finger and ear-rings; rich

chains--thirty of these, if I remember; eighty-three very large and

heavy crucifixes; five gold censers of great value; a prodigious golden

punch-bowl, ornamented with richly chased vine-leaves and Bacchanalian

figures; with two sword-handles exquisitely embossed, and many other

smaller articles which I cannot recollect. The weight of these valuables

exceeded three hundred and fifty pounds avoirdupois; and in this

estimate I have not included one hundred and ninety-seven superb gold

watches; three of the number being worth each five hundred dollars, if

one. Many of them were very old, and as time-keepers valueless, the

works having suffered more or less from corrosion; but all were richly

jewelled and in cases of great worth. We estimated the entire contents

of the chest, that night, at a million and a half of dollars; and, upon

the subsequent disposal of the trinkets and jewels (a few being retained

for our own use), it was found that we had greatly undervalued the

treasure.

When, at length, we had concluded our examination, and the intense

excitement of the time had in some measure subsided, Legrand, who saw

that I was dying with impatience for a solution of this most

extraordinary riddle, entered into a full detail of all the

circumstances connected with it.

"You remember," said he, "the night when I handed you the rough sketch I

had made of the _scarabæus_. You recollect, also, that I became quite

vexed at you for insisting that my drawing resembled a death's-head.

When you first made this assertion I thought you were jesting; but

afterwards I called to mind the peculiar spots on the back of the

insect, and admitted to myself that your remark had some little

foundation in fact. Still, the sneer at my graphic powers irritated

me--for I am considered a good artist--and, therefore, when you handed

me the scrap of parchment, I was about to crumple it up and throw it

angrily into the fire."

"The scrap of paper, you mean," said I.

"No: it had much of the appearance of paper, and at first I supposed it

to be such, but when I came to draw upon it, I discovered it, at once,

to be a piece of very thin parchment. It was quite dirty, you remember.

Well, as I was in the very act of crumpling it up, my glance fell upon

the sketch at which you had been looking, and you may imagine my

astonishment when I perceived, in fact, the figure of a death's-head

just where, it seemed to me, I had made the drawing of the beetle. For a

moment I was too much amazed to think with accuracy. I knew that my

design was very different in detail from this--although there was a

certain similarity in general outline. Presently I took a candle, and,

seating myself at the other end of the room, proceeded to scrutinize the

parchment more closely. Upon turning it over, I saw my own sketch upon

the reverse, just as I had made it. My first idea, now, was mere

surprise at the really remarkable similarity of outline--at the singular

coincidence involved in the fact that, unknown to me, there should have

been a skull upon the other side of the parchment, immediately beneath

my figure of the _scarabæus_, and that this skull, not only in outline,

but in size, should so closely resemble my drawing. I say the

singularity of this coincidence absolutely stupefied me for a time. This

is the usual effect of such coincidences. The mind struggles to

establish a connection--a sequence of cause and effect--and, being

unable to do so, suffers a species of temporary paralysis. But, when I

recovered from this stupor, there dawned upon me gradually a conviction

which startled me even far more than the coincidence. I began

distinctly, positively, to remember that there had been _no_ drawing on

the parchment when I made my sketch of the _scarabæus_. I became

perfectly certain of this; for I recollected turning up first one side

and then the other, in search of the cleanest spot. Had the skull been

then there, of course I could not have failed to notice it. Here was

indeed a mystery which I felt it impossible to explain; but, even at

that early moment, there seemed to glimmer, faintly, within the most

remote and secret chambers of my intellect, a glow-worm-like conception

of that truth which last night's adventure brought to so magnificent a

demonstration. I arose at once, and, putting the parchment securely

away, dismissed all farther reflection until I should be alone.

"When you had gone, and when Jupiter was fast asleep, I betook myself to

a more methodical investigation of the affair. In the first place I

considered the manner in which the parchment had come into my

possession. The spot where we discovered the _scarabæus_ was on the

coast of the mainland, about a mile eastward of the island, and but a

short distance above high-water mark. Upon my taking hold of it, it gave

me a sharp bite, which caused me to let it drop. Jupiter, with his

accustomed caution, before seizing the insect, which had flown towards

him, looked about him for a leaf, or something of that nature, by which

to take hold of it. It was at this moment that his eyes, and mine also,

fell upon the scrap of parchment, which I then supposed to be paper. It

was lying half-buried in the sand, a corner sticking up. Near the spot

where we found it, I observed the remnants of the hull of what appeared

to have been a ship's long boat. The wreck seemed to have been there for

a very great while; for the resemblance to boat timbers could scarcely

be traced.

"Well, Jupiter picked up the parchment, wrapped the beetle in it, and

gave it to me. Soon afterwards we turned to go home, and on the way met

Lieutenant G----. I showed him the insect, and he begged me to let him

take it to the fort. On my consenting, he thrust it forthwith into his

waistcoat pocket, without the parchment in which it had been wrapped,

and which I had continued to hold in my hand during his inspection.

Perhaps he dreaded my changing my mind, and thought it best to make sure

of the prize at once--you know how enthusiastic he is on all subjects

connected with Natural History. At the same time, without being

conscious of it, I must have deposited the parchment in my own pocket.

"You remember that when I went to the table, for the purpose of making a

sketch of the beetle, I found no paper where it was usually kept. I

looked in the drawer, and found none there. I searched my pockets,

hoping to find an old letter, and then my hand fell upon the parchment.

I thus detail the precise mode in which it came into my possession; for

the circumstances impressed me with peculiar force.

"No doubt you will think me fanciful--but I had already established a

kind of _connection_. I had put together two links of a great chain.

There was a boat lying on a seacoast, and not far from the boat was a

parchment--_not a paper_--with a skull depicted on it. You will, of

course, ask 'where is the connection?' I reply that the skull, or

death's-head, is the well-known emblem of the pirate. The flag of the

death's-head is hoisted in all engagements.

"I have said that the scrap was parchment, and not paper. Parchment is

durable--almost imperishable. Matters of little moment are rarely

consigned to parchment; since, for the mere ordinary purposes of drawing

or writing, it is not nearly so well adapted as paper. This reflection

suggested some meaning--some relevancy--in the death's-head. I did not

fail to observe, also, the _form_ of the parchment. Although one of its

corners had been, by some accident, destroyed, it could be seen that the

original form was oblong. It was just such a slip, indeed, as might have

been chosen for a memorandum--for a record of something to be long

remembered and carefully preserved."

"But," I interposed, "you say that the skull was _not_ upon the

parchment when you made the drawing of the beetle. How then do you trace

any connection between the boat and the skull--since this latter,

according to your own admission, must have been designed (God only knows

how or by whom) at some period subsequent to your sketching the

_scarabæus_?"

"Ah, hereupon turns the whole mystery; although the secret, at this

point, I had comparatively little difficulty in solving. My steps were

sure, and could afford but a single result. I reasoned, for example,

thus: When I drew the _scarabæus_, there was no skull apparent on the

parchment. When I had completed the drawing I gave it to you, and

observed you narrowly until you returned it. _You_, therefore, did not

design the skull, and no one else was present to do it. Then it was not

done by human agency. And nevertheless it was done.

"At this stage of my reflections I endeavored to remember, and _did_

remember, with entire distinctness, every incident which occurred about

the period in question. The weather was chilly (O rare and happy

accident!), and a fire was blazing on the hearth. I was heated with

exercise and sat near the table. You, however, had drawn a chair close

to the chimney. Just as I placed the parchment in your hand, and as you

were in the act of inspecting it, Wolf, the Newfoundland, entered, and

leaped upon your shoulders. With your left hand you caressed him and

kept him off, while your right, holding the parchment, was permitted to

fall listlessly between your knees, and in close proximity to the fire.

At one moment I thought the blaze had caught it, and was about to

caution you, but, before I could speak, you had withdrawn it, and were

engaged in its examination. When I considered all these particulars, I

doubted not for a moment that _heat_ had been the agent in bringing to

light, on the parchment, the skull which I saw designed on it. You are

well aware that chemical preparations exist, and have existed time out

of mind, by means of which it is possible to write on either paper or

vellum, so that the characters shall become visible only when subjected

to the action of fire. Zaffre digested in _aqua regia_, and diluted with

four times its weight of water, is sometimes employed; a green tint

results. The regulus of cobalt, dissolved in spirit of nitre, gives a

red. These colors disappear at longer or shorter intervals after the

material written upon cools, but again become apparent upon the

reapplication of heat.

"I now scrutinized the death's-head with care. Its outer edges--the

edges of the drawing nearest the edge of the vellum--were far more

_distinct_ than the others. It was clear that the action of the caloric

had been imperfect or unequal. I immediately kindled a fire, and

subjected every portion of the parchment to a glowing heat. At first,

the only effect was the strengthening of the faint lines in the skull;

but, on persevering in the experiment, there became visible at the

corner of the slip, diagonally opposite to the spot in which the

death's-head was delineated, the figure of what I at first supposed to

be a goat. A closer scrutiny, however, satisfied me that it was intended

for a kid."

"Ha! ha!" said I, "to be sure I have no right to laugh at you--a million

and a half of money is too serious a matter for mirth--but you are not

about to establish a third link in your chain: you will not find any

especial connection between your pirates and a goat; pirates, you know,

have nothing to do with goats; they appertain to the farming interest."

"But I have just said that the figure was _not_ that of a goat."

"Well, a kid, then--pretty much the same thing."

"Pretty much, but not altogether," said Legrand. "You may have heard of

one _Captain_ Kidd. I at once looked on the figure of the animal as a

kind of punning or hieroglyphical signature. I say signature, because

its position on the vellum suggested this idea. The death's-head at the

corner diagonally opposite had, in the same manner, the air of a stamp,

or seal. But I was sorely put out by the absence of all else--of the

body to my imagined instrument--of the text for my context."

"I presume you expected to find a letter between the stamp and the

signature."

"Something of that kind. The fact is, I felt irresistibly impressed with

a presentiment of some vast good fortune impending. I can scarcely say

why. Perhaps, after all, it was rather a desire than an actual

belief;--but do you know that Jupiter's silly words, about the bug being

of solid gold, had a remarkable effect on my fancy? And then the series

of accidents and coincidences--these were so _very_ extraordinary. Do

you observe how mere an accident it was that these events should have

occurred on the _sole_ day of all the year in which it has been, or may

be, sufficiently cool for fire, and that without the fire, or without

the intervention of the dog at the precise moment in which he appeared,

I should never have become aware of the death's-head, and so never the

possessor of the treasure?"

"But proceed--I am all impatience."

"Well; you have heard, of course, the many stories current--the thousand

vague rumors afloat about money buried, somewhere on the Atlantic coast,

by Kidd and his associates. These rumors must have had some foundation

in fact. And that the rumors have existed so long and so continuously,

could have resulted, it appeared to me, only from the circumstance of

the buried treasure still _remaining_ entombed. Had Kidd concealed his

plunder for a time, and afterwards reclaimed it, the rumors would

scarcely have reached us in their present unvarying form. You will

observe that the stories told are all about money-seekers, not about

money-finders. Had the pirate recovered his money, there the affair

would have dropped. It seemed to me that some accident--say the loss of

a memorandum indicating its locality--had deprived him of the means of

recovering it, and that this accident had become known to his followers,

who otherwise might never have heard that treasure had been concealed at

all, and who, busying themselves in vain, because unguided, attempts to

regain it, had given first birth, and then universal currency, to the

reports which are now so common. Have you ever heard of any important

treasure being unearthed along the coast?"

"Never."

"But that Kidd's accumulations were immense is well known. I took it for

granted, therefore, that the earth still held them; and you will

scarcely be surprised when I tell you that I felt a hope, nearly

amounting to certainty, that the parchment so strangely found involved a

lost record of the place of deposit."

"But how did you proceed?"

"I held the vellum again to the fire, after increasing the heat, but

nothing appeared. I now thought it possible that the coating of dirt

might have something to do with the failure; so I carefully rinsed the

parchment by pouring warm water over it, and, having done this, I placed

it in a tin pan, with the skull downwards, and put the pan upon a

furnace of lighted charcoal. In a few minutes, the pan having become

thoroughly heated, I removed the slip, and, to my inexpressible joy,

found it spotted, in several places, with what appeared to be figures

arranged in lines. Again I placed it in the pan, and suffered it to

remain another minute. Upon taking it off, the whole was just as you see

it now."

Here, Legrand, having reheated the parchment, submitted it to my

inspection. The following characters were rudely traced, in a red tint,

between the death's-head and the goat:--

53$$+305))6*;4826)4$.)4$);806*;48+8¶60))85;;]8*;:$*8+83(88)5*+;

46(;88*96*?;8)*$(:485);5*+2:*$(;4956*2(5*--4)8¶8*;4069285);)6+8)4

$$;1($9;48081;8:8$1;48+85;4)485+528806*81($9;48;(88;4($?34;48)4$

;161;:188;$?;

"But," said I, returning him the slip, "I am as much in the dark as

ever. Were all the jewels of Golconda awaiting me on my solution of this

enigma, I am quite sure that I should be unable to earn them."

"And yet," said Legrand, "the solution is by no means so difficult as

you might be led to imagine from the first hasty inspection of the

characters. These characters, as any one might readily guess, form a

cipher--that is to say, they convey a meaning; but then, from what is

known of Kidd, I could not suppose him capable of constructing any of

the more abstruse cryptographs. I made up my mind, at once, that this

was of a simple species--such, however, as would appear, to the crude

intellect of the sailor, absolutely insoluble without the key."

"And you really solved it?"

"Readily; I have solved others of an abstruseness ten thousand times

greater. Circumstances, and a certain bias of mind, have led me to take

interest in such riddles, and it may well be doubted whether human

ingenuity can construct an enigma of the kind which human ingenuity may

not, by proper application, resolve. In fact, having once established

connected and legible characters, I scarcely gave a thought to the mere

difficulty of developing their import.

"In the present case--indeed in all cases of secret writing--the first

question regards the _language_ of the cipher; for the principles of

solution, so far, especially, as the more simple ciphers are concerned,

depend on, and are varied by, the genius of the particular idiom. In

general, there is no alternative but experiment (directed by

probabilities) of every tongue known to him who attempts the solution,

until the true one be attained. But, with the cipher now before us, all

difficulty is removed by the signature. The pun upon the word 'Kidd' is

appreciable in no other language than the English. But for this

consideration I should have begun my attempts with the Spanish and

French, as the tongues in which a secret of this kind would most

naturally have been written by a pirate of the Spanish Main. As it was,

I assumed the cryptograph to be English.

"You observe there are no divisions between the words. Had there been

divisions, the task would have been comparatively easy. In such case I

should have commenced with a collation and analysis of the shorter

words, and, had a word of a single letter occurred, as is most likely

(_a_ or _I_, for example), I should have considered the solution as

assured. But, there being no division, my first step was to ascertain

the predominant letters, as well as the least frequent. Counting all, I

constructed a table, thus:

Of the character 8 there are 33

; " 26

4 " 19

$) " 16

* " 13

5 " 12

6 " 11

+1 " 8

0 " 6

92 " 5

:3 " 4

? " 3

¶ " 2

]--. " 1

"Now, in English, the letter which most frequently occurs is _e_.

Afterwards the succession runs thus: _a o i d h n r s t u y c f g l m w

b k p q x z. E_ predominates, however, so remarkably that an individual

sentence of any length is rarely seen, in which it is not the prevailing

character.

"Here, then, we have, in the very beginning, the groundwork for

something more than a mere guess. The general use which may be made of

the table is obvious--but, in this particular cipher, we shall only very

partially require its aid. As our predominant character is 8, we will

commence by assuming it as the _e_ of the natural alphabet. To verify

the supposition, let us observe if the 8 be seen often in couples--for

_e_ is doubled with great frequency in English--in such words, for

example, as 'meet,' 'fleet,' speed,' 'seen,' 'been,' 'agree,' etc. In

the present instance we see it doubled no less than five times, although

the cryptograph is brief.

"Let us assume 8, then, as _e_. Now of all _words_ in the language,

'the' is most usual; let us see, therefore, whether there are not

repetitions of any three characters, in the same order of collocation,

the last of them being 8. If we discover repetitions of such letters, so

arranged, they will most probably represent the word 'the.' On

inspection, we find no less than seven such arrangements, the characters

being ;48. We may, therefore, assume that the semicolon represents _t_,

that 4 represents _h_, and that 8 represents _e_--the last being now

well confirmed. Thus a great step has been taken.

"But, having established a single word, we are enabled to establish a

vastly important point; that is to say, several commencements and

terminations of other words. Let us refer, for example, to the last

instance but one, in which the combination ;48 occurs--not far from the

end of the cipher. We know that the semicolon immediately ensuing is the

commencement of a word, and, of the six characters succeeding this

'the,' we are cognizant of no less than five. Let us set these

characters down, thus, by the letters we know them to represent, leaving

a space for the unknown--

t eeth.

"Here we are enabled, at once, to discard the '_th_,' as forming no

portion of the word commencing with the first _t_; since, by experiment

of the entire alphabet for a letter adapted to the vacancy, we perceive

that no word can be formed of which this _th_ can be a part. We are thus

narrowed into

t ee,

and, going through the alphabet, if necessary, as before, we arrive at

the word 'tree' as the sole possible reading. We thus gain another

letter, _r_, represented by (, with the words 'the tree' in

juxtaposition.

"Looking beyond these words, for a short distance, we again see the

combination ;48, and employ it by way of _termination_ to what

immediately precedes. We have thus this arrangement:

the tree;4($?34 the,

or, substituting the natural letters, where known, it reads thus:

the tree thr$?3h the.

"Now, if, in place of the unknown characters, we leave blank spaces, or

substitute dots, we read thus:

the tree thr...h the,

when the word '_through_' makes itself evident at once. But this

discovery gives us three new letters, _o, u_, and _g_, represented by $,

? and 3.

"Looking now, narrowly, through the cipher for combinations of known

characters, we find, not very far from the beginning, this arrangement:

83(88, or egree,

which, plainly, is the conclusion of the word 'degree,' and gives us

another letter, _d_, represented by +.

"Four letters beyond the word 'degree,' we perceive the combination,

;46(;88*.

"Translating the known characters, and representing the unknown by dots,

as before, we read thus:

th.rtee.

an arrangement immediately suggestive of the word 'thirteen,' and again

furnishing us with two new characters, _i_ and_n_, represented by 6 and

*.

"Referring, now, to the beginning of the cryptograph, we find the

combination,

53$$+.

"Translating as before, we obtain

good,

which assures us that the first letter is _A_, and that the first two

words are 'A good.'

"To avoid confusion, it is now time that we arrange our key, as far as

discovered, in a tabular form. It will stand thus:

5 represents a

+ " d

8 " e

3 " g

4 " h

6 " i

* " n

$ " o

( " r

; " t

"We have, therefore, no less than ten of the most important letters

represented, and it will be unnecessary to proceed with the details of

the solution. I have said enough to convince you that ciphers of this

nature are readily soluble, and to give you some insight into the

rationale of their development. But be assured that the specimen before

us appertains to the very simplest species of cryptograph. It now only

remains to give you the full translation of the characters upon the

parchment, as unriddled. Here it is:

"'_A good glass in the bishop's hostel in the devil's seat twenty one

degrees and thirteen minutes northeast and by north main branch seventh

limb east side shoot from the left eye of the death's-head a bee line

from the tree through the shot fifty feet out_.'"

"But," said I, "the enigma seems still in as bad a condition as ever.

How is it possible to extort a meaning from all this jargon about

'devil's seats,' 'death's-head,' and 'bishop's hostel'?"

"I confess," replied Legrand, "that the matter still wears a serious

aspect, when regarded with a casual glance. My first endeavor was to

divide the sentence into the natural division intended by the

cryptographist."

"You mean, to punctuate it?"

"Something of that kind."

"But how is it possible to effect this?"

"I reflected that it had been a _point_ with the writer to run his words

together without division, so as to increase the difficulty of solution.

Now, a not over-acute man, in pursuing such an object, would be nearly

certain to overdo the matter. When, in the course of his composition, he

arrived at a break in his subject which would naturally require a pause,

or a point, he would be exceedingly apt to run his characters, at this

place, more than usually close together. If you will observe the MS., in

the present instance, you will easily detect five such cases of unusual

crowding. Acting on this hint, I made the division thus:

"'_A good glass in the Bishop's hostel in the devil's seat--twenty-one

degrees and thirteen minutes--northeast and by north--main branch

seventh limb east side--shoot from the left eye of the death's-head--a

bee-line from the tree through the shot fifty feet out_.'"

"Even this division," said I, "leaves me still in the dark."

"It left me also in the dark," replied Legrand, "for a few days; during

which I made diligent inquiry, in the neighborhood of Sullivan's Island,

for any building which went by the name of the 'Bishop's Hotel'; for, of

course, I dropped the obsolete word 'hostel.' Gaining no information on

the subject, I was on the point of extending my sphere of search, and

proceeding in a more systematic manner, when one morning it entered into

my head, quite suddenly, that this 'Bishop's Hostel' might have some

reference to an old family, of the name of Bessop, which, time out of

mind, had held possession of an ancient manor-house, about four miles to

the northward of the island. I accordingly went over to the plantation,

and reinstituted my inquiries among the older negroes of the place. At

length one of the most aged of the women said that she had heard of such

a place as _Bessop's Castle_, and thought that she could guide me to it,

but that it was not a castle, nor a tavern, but a high rock.

"I offered to pay her well for her trouble, and, after some demur, she

consented to accompany me to the spot. We found it without much

difficulty, when, dismissing her, I proceeded to examine the place. The

'castle' consisted of an irregular assemblage of cliffs and rocks--one

of the latter being quite remarkable for its height as well as for its

insulated and artificial appearance. I clambered to its apex, and then

felt much at a loss as to what should be next done.

"While I was busied in reflection, my eyes fell on a narrow ledge in the

eastern face of the rock, perhaps a yard below the summit upon which I

stood. This ledge projected about eighteen inches, and was not more than

a foot wide, while a niche in the cliff just above it gave it a rude

resemblance to one of the hollow-backed chairs used by our ancestors. I

made no doubt that here was the 'devil's seat' alluded to in the MS.,

and now I seemed to grasp the full secret of the riddle.

"The 'good glass,' I knew, could have reference to nothing but a

telescope; for the word 'glass' is rarely employed in any other sense by

seamen. Now here, I at once saw, was a telescope to be used, and a

definite point of view, _admitting no variation_, from which to use it.

Nor did I hesitate to believe that the phrases 'twenty-one degrees and

thirteen minutes,' and 'northeast and by north,' were intended as

directions for the levelling of the glass. Greatly excited by these

discoveries, I hurried home, procured a telescope, and returned to the

rock.

"I let myself down to the ledge, and found that it was impossible to

retain a seat on it unless in one particular position. This fact

confirmed my preconceived idea. I proceeded to use the glass. Of course,

the 'twenty-one degrees and thirteen minutes' could allude to nothing

but elevation above the visible horizon, since the horizontal direction

was clearly indicated by the words, 'northeast and by north.' This

latter direction I at once established by means of a pocket-compass;

then, pointing the glass as nearly at an angle of twenty-one degrees of

elevation as I could do it by guess, I moved it cautiously up or down,

until my attention was arrested by a circular rift or opening in the

foliage of a large tree that overtopped its fellows in the distance. In

the centre of this rift I perceived a white spot, but could not, at

first, distinguish what it was. Adjusting the focus of the telescope, I

again looked, and now made it out to be a human skull.

"On this discovery I was so sanguine as to consider the enigma solved;

for the phrase 'main branch, seventh limb, east side,' could refer only

to the position of the skull on the tree, while 'shoot from the left eye

of the death's-head' admitted, also, of but one interpretation, in

regard to a search for buried treasure. I perceived that the design was

to drop a bullet from the left eye of the skull, and that a bee-line, or

in other words, a straight line, drawn from the nearest point of the

trunk through 'the shot' (or the spot where the bullet fell), and thence

extended to a distance of fifty feet, would indicate a definite

point--and beneath this point I thought it at least _possible_ that a

deposit of value lay concealed."

"All this," I said, "is exceedingly clear, and, although ingenious,

still simple and explicit. When you left the Bishop's Hotel, what then?"

"Why, having carefully taken the bearings of the tree, I turned

homewards. The instant that I left 'the devil's seat,' however, the

circular rift vanished; nor could I get a glimpse of it afterwards, turn

as I would. What seems to me the chief ingenuity in this whole business,

is the fact (for repeated experiment has convinced me it _is_ a fact)

that the circular opening in question is visible from no other

attainable point of view than that afforded by the narrow ledge on the

face of the rock.

"In this expedition to the 'Bishop's Hotel' I had been attended by

Jupiter, who had no doubt observed, for some weeks past, the abstraction

of my demeanor, and took especial care not to leave me alone. But on the

next day, getting up very early, I contrived to give him the slip, and

went into the hills in search of the tree. After much toil I found it.

When I came home at night my valet proposed to give me a flogging. With

the rest of the adventure I believe you are as well acquainted as

myself."

"I suppose," said I, "you missed the spot, in the first attempt at

digging, through Jupiter's stupidity in letting the bug fall through the

right instead of through the left eye of the skull."

"Precisely. This mistake made a difference of about two inches and a

half in the 'shot'--that is to say, in the position of the peg nearest

the tree; and had the treasure been _beneath_ the 'shot' the error would

have been of little moment; but the 'shot,' together with the nearest

point of the tree, were merely two points for the establishment of a

line of direction; of course the error, however trivial in the

beginning, increased as we proceeded with the line, and, by the time we

had gone fifty feet, threw us quite off the scent. But for my

deep-seated convictions that treasure was here somewhere actually

buried, we might have had all our labor in vain."

"I presume the fancy of _the skull_--of letting fall a bullet through

the skull's eye--was suggested to Kidd by the piratical flag. No doubt

he felt a kind of poetical consistency in recovering his money through

this ominous insignium."

"Perhaps so; still, I cannot help thinking that common-sense had quite

as much to do with the matter as poetical consistency. To be visible

from the Devil's seat, it was necessary that the object, if small,

should be _white_; and there is nothing like your human skull for

retaining and even increasing its whiteness under exposure to all

vicissitudes of weather."

"But your grandiloquence, and your conduct in swinging the beetle--how

excessively odd! I was sure you were mad. And why did you insist on

letting fall the bug, instead of a bullet, from the skull?"

"Why, to be frank, I felt somewhat annoyed by your evident suspicions

touching my sanity, and so resolved to punish you quietly, in my own

way, by a little bit of sober mystification. For this reason I swung the

beetle, and for this reason I let it fall from the tree. An observation

of yours about its great weight suggested the latter idea."

"Yes, I perceive; and now there is only one point which puzzles me. What

are we to make of the skeletons found in the hole?"

"That is a question I am no more able to answer than yourself. There

seems, however, only one plausible way of accounting for them--and yet

it is dreadful to believe in such atrocity as my suggestion would imply.

It is clear that Kidd--if Kidd indeed secreted this treasure, which I

doubt not--it is clear that he must have had assistance in the labor.

But, the worst of this labor concluded, he may have thought it expedient

to remove all participants in his secret. Perhaps a couple of blows with

a mattock were sufficient, while his coadjutors were busy in the pit;

perhaps it required a dozen--who shall tell?"

V. A CHRISTMAS CAROL (1843)

BY CHARLES DICKENS (1812-1870)

[_Setting_. In this most famous of Christmas stories Dickens gives us

the very atmosphere of the season with all the contrasts that poverty

and wealth, miserliness and charity, the past and the future can

suggest. Though he had London in mind, any great industrial center would

have served as well, for Dickens was thinking primarily of the relations

between employer and employee. That Christmas is better kept in England

now than when Dickens wrote is a triumph due more to "A Christmas Carol"

than to any other one piece of prose or verse.

_Plot_. The story was planned rather than plotted. By calling it a carol

and dividing it into staves, Dickens would have us think of it not as a

narrative but as a song, full of the joy and good will that Christmas

ought to diffuse. It is a rill from the fountain of the first great

Christmas chant, "On earth peace, good will toward men." The theme is

not so much the duty of service as the joy of service, the happiness

that we feel in making others happy; and the four carols mark the four

stages in the conversion of Scrooge from solitary selfishness to social

good will. The plan is simple but it is suffused with a love and

sympathy that no one but Dickens or O. Henry could have given it. If

"The Gold-Bug" is a triumph of the analytic intellect, this story is a

triumph of the social impulses that make the world better. "It seems to

me," said Thackeray, "a national benefit, and to every man and woman who

reads it a personal kindness." While writing it Dickens said: "I wept

and laughed and wept again." And yet the psychology of the plot is as

soundly intellectual as the style is emotional. Dickens knew that a

flint-hearted man like Scrooge could not be changed by forces brought to

bear from without. The appeal must come from within. He must himself see

his past, his present, and his probable future, but in a new light and

from a wider angle of vision. The dream is only a means to this end. A

man moves to a higher realm of thought and action not by learning new

truths but by seeing the old truths differently related.

_Characters_. Scrooge is, of course, the central character. He is also a

perfect example of the changing character as contrasted with the

stationary character. In fact all the other characters remain

essentially the same, while Scrooge, who at the beginning is unfriendly

and friendless, becomes at the end "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." It is difficult to create any

kind of character, whether stationary or changing, but the latter is the

more difficult. Both demand rare powers of observation and

interpretation, but the ascending or descending character demands a

knowledge of the chemistry of conduct that only the masters have.

The Cratchits must not be overlooked. Tiny Tim's "God bless us every

one" has at least become the symbol of Christmas benevolence wherever

Christmas is celebrated in English-speaking lands.]

STAVE ONE

MARLEY'S GHOST

Marley was dead, to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that.

The register of his burial was signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the

undertaker, and the chief mourner. Scrooge signed it. And Scrooge's name

was good upon 'Change for anything he chose to put his hand to.

Old Marley was as dead as a door-nail.

Scrooge knew he was dead? Of course he did. How could it be otherwise?

Scrooge and he were partners for I don't know how many years. Scrooge

was his sole executor, his sole administrator, his sole assign, his sole

residuary legatee, his sole friend, his sole mourner.

Scrooge never painted out old Marley's name, however. There it yet

stood, years afterwards, above the warehouse door,--Scrooge and Marley.

The firm was known as Scrooge and Marley. Sometimes people new to the

business called Scrooge Scrooge, and sometimes Marley. He answered to

both names. It was all the same to him.

Oh! But he was a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone, was Scrooge! a

squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous old

sinner! External heat and cold had little influence on him. No warmth

could warm, no cold could chill him. No wind that blew was bitterer than

he, no falling snow was more intent upon its purpose, no pelting rain

less open to entreaty. Foul weather didn't know where to have him. The

heaviest rain and snow and hail and sleet could boast of the advantage

over him in only one respect,--they often "came down" handsomely, and

Scrooge never did.

Nobody ever stopped him in the street to say, with gladsome looks, "My

dear Scrooge, how are you? When will you come to see me?" No beggars

implored him to bestow a trifle, no children asked him what it was

o'clock, no man or woman ever once in all his life inquired the way to

such and such a place, of Scrooge. Even the blind men's dogs appeared to

know him; and when they saw him coming on, would tug their owners into

doorways and up courts; and then would wag their tails as though they

said: "No eye at all is better than an evil eye, dark master!"

But what did Scrooge care! It was the very thing he liked. To edge his

way along the crowded paths of life, warning all human sympathy to keep

its distance, was what the knowing ones call "nuts" to Scrooge.

Once upon a time--of all the good days in the year, upon a Christmas

eve--old Scrooge sat busy in his counting-house. It was cold, bleak,

biting, foggy weather; and the city clocks had only just gone three, but

it was quite dark already.

The door of Scrooge's counting-house was open, that he might keep his

eye upon his clerk, who, in a dismal little cell beyond, a sort of tank,

was copying letters. Scrooge had a very small fire, but the clerk's fire

was so very much smaller that it looked like one coal. But he couldn't

replenish it, for Scrooge kept the coal-box in his own room; and so

surely as the clerk came in with the shovel the master predicted that it

would be necessary for them to part. Wherefore the clerk put on his

white comforter, and tried to warm himself at the candle; in which

effort, not being a man of a 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 Scrooge had of his approach.

"Bah!" said Scrooge; "humbug!"

"Christmas a humbug, uncle! You don't mean that, I am sure?"

"I do. Out upon merry Christmas! What's Christmas time to you but a time

for paying bills without money; a time for finding yourself a year

older, and not an hour richer; a time for balancing your books and

having every item in 'em through a round dozen of months presented dead

against you? If I had my will, every idiot who goes about with 'Merry

Christmas' on his lips should be boiled with his own pudding, and buried

with a stake of holly through his heart! He should!"

"Uncle!"

"Nephew, keep Christmas in your own way, and let me keep it in mine."

"Keep it! But you don't keep it."

"Let me leave it alone, then. Much good may it do you! Much good it has

ever done you!"

"There are many things from which I might have derived good, by which I

have not profited, I dare say, Christmas among the rest. But I am sure I

have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round,--apart

from the veneration due to its sacred origin, if anything belonging to

it _can_ be apart from that,--as a good time; a kind, forgiving,

charitable, pleasant time; the only time I know of, in the long calendar

of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their

shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they

really were fellow-travellers to the grave, and not another race of

creatures bound on other journeys. And therefore, uncle, though it has

never put a scrap of gold or silver in my pocket, I believe that it

_has_ done me good, and _will_ do me good; and I say, God bless it!"

The clerk in the tank involuntarily applauded.

"Let me hear another sound from _you_" said Scrooge, "and you'll keep

your Christmas by losing your situation!--You're quite a powerful

speaker, sir," he added, turning to his nephew, "I wonder you don't go

into Parliament."

"Don't be angry, uncle. Come! Dine with us, to-morrow."

Scrooge said that he would see him--yes, indeed he did. He went the

whole length of the expression, and said that he would see him in that

extremity first.

"But why?" cried Scrooge's nephew. "Why?"

"Why did you get married?"

"Because I fell in love."

"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."

"I want nothing from you; I ask nothing of you; why cannot we be

friends?"

"Good afternoon."

"I am sorry, with all my heart, to find you so resolute. We have never

had any quarrel, to which I have been a party. But I have made the trial

in homage to Christmas, and I'll keep my Christmas humor to the last.

So, A Merry Christmas, uncle!"

"Good afternoon!"

"And A Happy New Year!"

"Good afternoon!"

His nephew left the room without an angry word, notwithstanding. The

clerk, in letting Scrooge's nephew out, had let two other people in.

They were portly gentlemen, pleasant to behold, and now stood, with

their hats off, in Scrooge's office. They had books and papers in their

hands, and bowed to him.

"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. 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 destitute, who suffer greatly at

the present time. Many thousands are in want of common necessaries;

hundreds of thousands are in want of common comforts, sir."

"Are there no prisons?"

"Plenty of prisons. But under the impression that they scarcely furnish

Christian cheer of mind or body to the unoffending multitude, a few of

us are endeavoring to raise a fund to buy the poor some meat and drink,

and means of warmth. We choose this time, because it is a time of all

others when Want is keenly felt and Abundance rejoices. What shall I put

you down for?"

"Nothing!"

"You wish to be anonymous?"

"I wish to be left alone. Since you ask me what I wish, gentlemen, that

is my answer. I don't make merry myself at Christmas, and I can't afford

to make idle people merry. I help to support the prisons and the

workhouses,--they cost enough,--and those who are badly off must go

there."

"Many can't go there; and many would rather die."

"If they would rather die, they had better do it, and decrease the

surplus population."

At length the hour of shutting up the counting-house arrived. With an

ill-will Scrooge, dismounting from his stool, tacitly admitted the fact

to the expectant clerk in the Tank, who instantly snuffed his candle

out, and put on his hat.

"You'll want all day to-morrow, I suppose?"

"If quite convenient, sir."

"It's not convenient, and it's not fair. If I was to stop half a crown

for it, you'd think yourself mightily ill-used, I'll be bound?"

"Yes, sir."

"And yet you don't think _me_ ill-used, when I pay a day's wages for no

work."

"It's only once a year, sir."

"A poor excuse for picking a man's pocket every twenty-fifth of

December! But I suppose you must have the whole day. Be here all the

earlier _next_ morning."

The clerk promised that he would; and Scrooge walked out with a growl.

The office was closed in a twinkling, and the clerk, with the long ends

of his white comforter dangling below his waist (for he boasted no

great-coat), went down a slide, at the end of a lane of boys, twenty

times, in honor of its being Christmas eve, and then ran home as hard as

he could pelt, to play at blind-man's-buff.

Scrooge took his melancholy dinner in his usual melancholy tavern; and

having read all the newspapers, and beguiled the rest of the evening

with his banker's book, went home to bed. He lived in chambers which had

once belonged to his deceased partner. They were a gloomy suite of

rooms, in a lowering pile of building up a yard. The building was old

enough now, and dreary enough; for nobody lived in it but Scrooge, the

other rooms being all let out as offices.

Now it is a fact, that there was nothing at all particular about the

knocker on the door of this house, except that it was very large; also,

that Scrooge had seen it, night and morning, during his whole residence

in that place; also, that Scrooge had as little of what is called fancy

about him as any man in the city of London. And yet Scrooge, having his

key in the lock of the door, saw in the knocker, without its undergoing

any intermediate process of change, not a knocker, but Marley's face.

Marley's face, with a dismal light about it, like a bad lobster in a

dark cellar. It was not angry or ferocious, but it looked at Scrooge as

Marley used to look,--with ghostly spectacles turned up upon its ghostly

forehead.

As Scrooge looked fixedly at this phenomenon, it was a knocker again. He

said, "Pooh, pooh!" and closed the door with a bang.

The sound resounded through the house like thunder. Every room above,

and every cask in the wine-merchant's cellars below, appeared to have a

separate peal of echoes of its own. Scrooge was not a man to be

frightened by echoes. He fastened the door, and walked across the hall,

and up the stairs. Slowly, too, trimming his candle as he went.

Up Scrooge went, not caring a button for its being very dark. Darkness

is cheap, and Scrooge liked it. But before he shut his heavy door, he

walked through his rooms to see that all was right. He had just enough

recollection of the face to desire to do that.

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 (Scrooge had a cold in his

head) upon the hob. Nobody under the bed; nobody in the closet; nobody

in his dressing-gown, which was hanging up in a suspicious attitude

against the wall. Lumber-room as usual. Old fire-guard, old shoes, two

fish-baskets, washing-stand on three legs, and a poker.

Quite satisfied, he closed his door, and locked himself in;

double-locked himself in, which was not his custom. Thus secured against

surprise, he took off his cravat, put on his dressing-gown and slippers

and his night-cap, and sat down before the very low fire to take his

gruel.

As he threw his head back in the chair, his glance happened to rest upon

a bell, a disused bell, that hung in the room, and communicated, for

some purpose now forgotten, with a chamber in the highest story of the

building. It was with great astonishment, and with a strange,

inexplicable dread, that, as he looked, he saw this bell begin to swing.

Soon it rang out loudly, and so did every bell in the house.

This was succeeded by a clanking noise, deep down below, as if some

person were dragging a heavy chain over the casks in the wine-merchant's

cellar.

Then he heard the noise much louder, on the floors below; then coming up

the stairs; then coming straight towards his door.

It came on through the heavy door, and a spectre passed into the room

before his eyes. And upon its coming in, the dying flame leaped up, as

though it cried, "I know him! Marley's ghost!"

The same face, the very same. Marley in his pigtail, usual waistcoat,

tights, and boots. His body was transparent; so that Scrooge, observing

him, and looking through his waistcoat, could see the two buttons on his

coat behind.

Scrooge had often heard it said that Marley had no bowels, but he had

never believed it until now.

No, nor did he believe it even now. Though he looked the phantom through

and through, and saw it standing before him,--though he felt the

chilling influence of its death-cold eyes, and noticed the very texture

of the folded kerchief bound about its head and chin,--he was still

incredulous.

"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?"

"In life I was your partner, Jacob Marley."

"Can you--can you sit down?"

"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. But the ghost sat down on the

opposite side of the fireplace, as if he were quite used to it.

"You don't believe in me."

"I don't."

"What evidence would you have of my reality beyond that of your senses?"

"I don't know."

"Why do you doubt your senses?"

"Because a little thing affects them. A slight disorder of the stomach

makes them cheats. 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

horror.

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 in-doors, its

lower jaw dropped down upon its breast!

"Mercy! Dreadful apparition, why do you trouble me? Why do spirits walk

the earth, and why do they come to me?"

"It is required of every man, that the spirit within him should walk

abroad among his fellow-men, and travel far and wide; and if that spirit

goes not forth in life, it is condemned to do so after death. I cannot

tell you all I would. A very little more is permitted to me. I cannot

rest, I cannot stay, I cannot linger anywhere. My spirit never walked

beyond our counting-house,--mark me!--in life my spirit never roved

beyond the narrow limits of our money-changing hole; and weary journeys

lie before me!"

"Seven years dead. And travelling all the time? You travel fast?"

"On the wings of the wind."

"You might have got over a great quantity of ground in seven years."

"O blind man, blind man! not to know that ages of incessant labor by

immortal creatures for this earth must pass into eternity before the

good of which it is susceptible is all developed. Not to know that any

Christian spirit working kindly in its little sphere, whatever it may

be, will find its mortal life too short for its vast means of

usefulness. Not to know that no space of regret can make amends for one

life's opportunities misused! Yet I was like this man; I once was like

this man!"

"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 its hands again. "Mankind was my

business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy,

forbearance, benevolence, were all my business. The dealings of my trade

were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business."

Scrooge was very much dismayed to hear the spectre going on at this

rate, and began to quake exceedingly.

"Hear me! My time is nearly gone."

"I will. But don't be hard upon me! Don't be flowery, Jacob! Pray!"

"I am here to-night to warn you that you have yet a chance and hope of

escaping my fate. A chance and hope of my procuring, Ebenezer."

"You were always a good friend to me. Thank'ee!"

"You will be haunted by Three Spirits."

"Is that the chance and hope you mentioned, Jacob? I--I think I'd rather

not."

"Without their visits, you cannot hope to shun the path I tread. Expect

the first to-morrow night, when the bell tolls One. 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!"

It walked backward from him; and at every step it took, the window

raised itself a little, so that, when the apparition reached it, it was

wide open.

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. Scrooge tried to say, "Humbug!" but

stopped at the first syllable. And being, from the emotion he had

undergone, or the fatigues of the day, or his glimpse of the invisible

world, or the dull conversation of the Ghost, or the lateness of the

hour, much in need of repose, he went straight to bed, without

undressing, and fell asleep on the instant.

STAVE TWO

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, until suddenly the church clock tolled a deep, dull, hollow,

melancholy ONE.

Light flashed up in the room upon the instant, and the curtains of his

bed were drawn aside by a strange figure,--like a child: yet not so like

a child as like an old man, viewed through some supernatural medium,

which gave him the appearance of having receded from the view, and being

diminished to a child's proportions. Its hair, which hung about its neck

and down its back, was white as if with age; and yet the face had not a

wrinkle in it, and the tenderest bloom was on the skin. It held a branch

of fresh green holly in its hand; and, in singular contradiction of that

wintry emblem, had its dress trimmed with summer flowers. But the

strangest thing about it was, that from the crown of its head there

sprung a bright clear jet of light, by which all this was visible; and

which was doubtless the occasion of its using, in its duller moments, a

great extinguisher for a cap, which it now held under its arm.

"Are you the Spirit, sir, whose coming was foretold to me?"

"I am!"

"Who and what are you?"

"I am the Ghost of Christmas Past."

"Long past?"

"No. Your past. The things that you will see with me are shadows of the

things that have been; they will have no consciousness of us."

Scrooge then made bold to inquire what business brought him there.

"Your welfare. 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 the bed was warm, and

the thermometer a long way below freezing; that he was clad but lightly

in his slippers, dressing-gown, and night-cap; and that he had a cold

upon him at that time. The grasp, though gentle as a woman's hand, was

not to be resisted. He rose; but, finding that the Spirit made towards

the window, clasped its robe in supplication.

"I am a mortal, and liable to fall."

"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 in the

busy thoroughfares of a city. It was made plain enough by the dressing

of the shops that here, too, it was Christmas time.

The Ghost stopped at a certain warehouse door, and asked Scrooge if he

knew it.

"Know it! Was I 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: "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!"

A living and moving picture of Scrooge's former self, a young man, came

briskly in, accompanied by his fellow-'prentice.

"Dick Wilkins, to be sure!" said Scrooge to the Ghost. "My old

fellow-'prentice, bless me, yes. There he is. He was very much attached

to me, was Dick. Poor Dick! Dear, dear!"

"Yo ho, my boys!" said Fezziwig. "No more work to-night. Christmas eve,

Dick. Christmas, Ebenezer! Let's have the shutters up, before a man can

say Jack Robinson! 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. Every movable was packed off, as if it were dismissed from

public life forevermore; the floor was swept and watered, the lamps were

trimmed, fuel was heaped upon the fire; and the warehouse was as snug

and warm and dry and bright a ball-room as you would desire to see upon

a winter's night.

In came a fiddler with a music-book, and went up to the lofty desk, and

made an orchestra of it, and tuned like fifty stomachaches. In came Mrs.

Fezziwig, one vast substantial smile. In came the three Miss Fezziwigs,

beaming and lovable. In came the six young followers whose hearts they

broke. In came all the young men and women employed in the business. In

came the housemaid, with her cousin the baker. In came the cook, with

her brother's particular friend the milkman. In they all came one after

another; some shyly, some boldly, some gracefully, some awkwardly, some

pushing, some pulling; in they all came, anyhow and everyhow. Away they

all went, twenty couple at once; hands half round and back again the

other way; down the middle and up again; round and round in various

stages of affectionate grouping; old top couple always turning up in the

wrong place; new top couple starting off again, as soon as they got

there; all top couples at last, and not a bottom one to help them. When

this result was brought about, old Fezziwig, clapping his hands to stop

the dance, cried out, "Well done!" and the fiddler plunged his hot face

into a pot of porter especially provided for that purpose.

There were more dances, and there were forfeits, and more dances, and

there was cake, and there was negus, and there was a great piece of Cold

Roast, and there was a great piece of Cold Boiled, and there were

mince-pies, and plenty of beer. But the great effect of the evening came

after the Roast and Boiled, when the fiddler struck up "Sir Roger de

Coverley." Then old Fezziwig stood out to dance with Mrs. Fezziwig. Top

couple, too; with a good stiff piece of work cut out for them; three or

four and twenty pair of partners; people who were not to be trifled

with; people who _would_ dance, and had no notion of walking.

But if they had been twice as many,--four times,--old Fezziwig would

have been a match for them, and so would Mrs. Fezziwig. As to _her_, she

was worthy to be his partner in every sense of the term. A positive

light appeared to issue from Fezziwig's calves. They shone in every part

of the dance. You couldn't have predicted, at any given time, what would

become of 'em next. And when old Fezziwig and Mrs. Fezziwig had gone all

through the dance,--advance and retire, turn your partner, bow and

courtesy, cockscrew, thread the needle, and back again to your

place,--Fezziwig "cut,"--cut so deftly, that he appeared to wink with

his legs.

When the clock struck eleven this domestic ball broke up. Mr. and Mrs.

Fezziwig took their stations, one on either side 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

'prentices, they did the same to them; and thus the cheerful voices died

away, and the lads were left to their beds, which were under a counter

in the back shop.

"A small matter," said the Ghost, "to make these silly folks so full of

gratitude. 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,--"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 'em 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.

"What is the matter?"

"Nothing particular."

"Something, I think?"

"No, no. I should like to be able to say a word or two to my clerk just

now. That's all."

"My time grows short," observed the Spirit. "Quick!"

This was not addressed to Scrooge, or to any one whom he could see, but

it produced an immediate effect. For again he saw himself. He was older

now; a man in the prime of life.

He was not alone, but sat by the side of a fair young girl in a black

dress, in whose eyes there were tears.

"It matters little," she said softly to Scrooge's former self. "To you,

very little. Another idol has displaced me; and if it can 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?"

"A golden one. You fear the world too much. I have seen your nobler

aspirations fall off one by one, until the master-passion, Gain,

engrosses you. Have I not?"

"What then? Even if I have grown so much wiser, what then? I am not

changed towards you. Have I ever sought release from our engagement?"

"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. If you were free to-day, to-morrow,

yesterday, can even I believe that you would choose a dowerless girl;

or, choosing her, 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."

"Spirit! 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! Leave me! Take me

back. Haunt me no longer!"

As he struggled with the Spirit he was conscious of being exhausted, and

overcome by an irresistible drowsiness; and, further, of being in his

own bedroom. He had barely time to reel to bed before he sank into a

heavy sleep.

STAVE THREE

THE SECOND OF THE THREE SPIRITS

Scrooge awoke in his own bedroom. There was no doubt about that. But it

and his own adjoining sitting-room, into which he shuffled in his

slippers, attracted by a great light there, had undergone a surprising

transformation. The walls and ceiling were so hung with living green,

that it looked a perfect grove. The leaves of holly, mistletoe, and ivy

reflected back the light, as if so many little mirrors had been

scattered there; and such a mighty blaze went roaring up the chimney, as

that petrifaction of a hearth had never known in Scrooge's time, or

Marley's, or for many and many a winter season gone. Heaped upon the

floor, to form a kind of throne, were turkeys, geese, game, brawn, great

joints of meat, sucking pigs, long wreaths of sausages, mince-pies,

plum-puddings, barrels of oysters, red-hot chestnuts, cherry-cheeked

apples, juicy oranges, luscious pears, immense twelfth-cakes, and great

bowls of punch. In easy state upon this couch there sat a Giant glorious

to see; who bore a glowing torch, in shape not unlike Plenty's horn, and

who raised it high to shed its light on Scrooge, as he came peeping

round the door.

"Come in,--come in! and know me better, man! I am the Ghost of Christmas

Present. Look upon me! You have never seen the like of me before!"

"Never."

"Have never walked forth with the younger members of my family; meaning

(for I am very young) my elder brothers born in these later years?"

pursued the Phantom.

"I don't think I have, I am afraid I have not. Have you had many

brothers, Spirit?"

"More than eighteen hundred."

"A tremendous family to provide for! Spirit, conduct me where you will.

I went forth last night on compulsion, and I learnt a lesson which is

working now. To-night, if you have aught to teach me, let me profit by

it."

"Touch my robe!"

Scrooge did as he was told, and held it fast.

The room and its contents all vanished instantly, and they stood in the

city streets upon a snowy Christmas morning.

Scrooge and the Ghost passed on, invisible, straight to Scrooge's

clerk's; and on the threshold of the door the Spirit smiled, and stopped

to bless Bob Cratchit's dwelling with the sprinklings of his torch.

Think of that! Bob had but fifteen "Bob"[*] a week himself; he pocketed

on Saturdays but fifteen copies of his Christian name; and yet the Ghost

of Christmas Present blessed his four-roomed house!

[* Shillings.]

Then up rose Mrs. Cratchit, Cratchit's wife, dressed out but poorly in a

twice-turned gown, but brave in ribbons, which are cheap and make a

goodly show for sixpence; 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, and,

getting the corners of his monstrous shirt-collar (Bob's private

property, conferred upon his son and heir in honor of the day) into his

mouth, rejoiced to find himself so gallantly attired, and yearned to

show his linen in the fashionable Parks. 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, and exalted Master Peter Cratchit to the skies, while he (not

proud, although his collars nearly choked him) blew the fire, until the

slow potatoes, bubbling up, knocked loudly at the saucepan-lid to be let

out and peeled.

"What has ever got your precious father, then?" said Mrs. Cratchit. "And

your brother Tiny Tim! And Martha warn't as late last Christmas day by

half an hour!"

"Here's Martha, mother!" said a girl, appearing as she spoke.

"Here's Martha, mother!" cried the two young Cratchits. "Hurrah! There's

_such_ a goose, Martha!"

"Why, bless your heart alive, my dear, how late you are?" said Mrs.

Cratchit, kissing her a dozen times, and taking off her shawl and bonnet

for her.

"We'd a deal of work to finish up last night," replied the girl, "and

had to clear away this morning, mother!"

"Well! Never mind so long as you are come," said Mrs. Cratchit. "Sit ye

down before the fire, my dear, and have a warm, Lord bless ye!"

"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 little Bob, the father, with at least

three feet of comforter, exclusive of the fringe, hanging down before

him; and his threadbare clothes darned up and brushed, to look

seasonable; and Tiny Tim upon his shoulder. Alas for Tiny Tim, he bore a

little crutch, and had his limbs supported by an iron frame!

"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 blood-horse all the way from church, and had come

home rampant,--"not coming upon Christmas day!"

Martha didn't like to see him disappointed, if it were only in 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

into the wash-house that he might hear the pudding singing in the

copper.

"And how did little Tim behave?" asked Mrs. Cratchit, when she had

rallied Bob on his credulity, and Bob had hugged his daughter to his

heart's content.

"As good as gold," said Bob, "and better. 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."

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 beside the fire; and while Bob, turning up his cuffs,--as

if, poor fellow, they were capable of being made more shabby,

--compounded some hot mixture in a jug with gin and lemons, and

stirred it round and round and put it on the hob to simmer, Master Peter

and the two ubiquitous young Cratchits went to fetch the goose, with

which they soon returned in high procession.[*]

[* The goose had been cooked in the baker's oven, for economy.]

Mrs. Cratchit made the gravy (ready beforehand in a little saucepan)

hissing hot; Master Peter mashed the potatoes with incredible vigor;

Miss Belinda sweetened up the apple-sauce; Martha dusted the hot plates;

Bob took Tiny Tim beside him in a tiny corner at the table; 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, 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 arose all round the board, and even Tiny Tim, excited by the two

young Cratchits, beat on the table with the handle of his knife, and

feebly cried, Hurrah!

There never was such a goose. 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. Eked out by apple-sauce and mashed

potatoes, it was a sufficient dinner for the whole family; indeed, as

Mrs. Cratchit said with great delight (surveying one small atom of a

bone upon the dish), they hadn't ate it all at last! Yet every one had

had enough, and the youngest Cratchits in particular were steeped in

sage and onion to the eyebrows! But now, the plates being changed by

Miss Belinda, Mrs. Cratchit left the room alone,--too nervous to bear

witnesses,--to take the pudding up, and bring it in.

Suppose it should not be done enough! Suppose it should break in turning

out! Suppose somebody should have got over the wall of the back yard,

and stolen it, while they were merry with the goose,--a supposition at

which the two young Cratchits became livid! All sorts of horrors were

supposed.

Hallo! A great deal of steam! The pudding was out of the copper. A smell

like a washing-day! That was the cloth. A smell like an eating-house and

a pastry-cook's next door to each other, with a laundress's next door to

that! That was the pudding! In half a minute Mrs. Cratchit entered,--

flushed but smiling proudly,--with the pudding, like a speckled

cannon-ball, so hard and firm, blazing in half of half a quartern of

ignited brandy, and bedight with Christmas holly stuck into the top.

O, a wonderful pudding! Bob Cratchit said, and calmly, too, that he

regarded it as the greatest success achieved by Mrs. Cratchit since

their marriage. Mrs. Cratchit said that now the weight was off her mind,

she would confess she had had her doubts about the quantity of flour.

Everybody had something to say about it, but nobody said or thought it

was at all a small pudding for a large family. 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. The compound in the jug being tasted and

considered perfect, apples and oranges were put upon the table, and a

shovelful of chestnuts on the fire.

Then all the Cratchit family drew round the hearth, in what Bob Cratchit

called a circle, and at Bob Cratchit's elbow stood the family display of

glass,--two tumblers, and a custard-cup without a handle.

These held the hot stuff from the jug, however, as well as golden

goblets would have done; and Bob served it out with beaming looks, while

the chestnuts on the fire sputtered and crackled noisily. Then Bob

proposed:--

"A Merry Christmas to us all, my dears. God bless us!"

Which all the family re-echoed.

"God bless us every one!" 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.

Scrooge raised his head 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."

"My dear," said Bob, "the children! Christmas day."

"It should be Christmas day, I am 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 his health for your sake and the day's," said Mrs. Cratchit,

"not for his. Long life to him. A merry Christmas and a happy New Year!

He'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 in it. Tiny Tim drank it last of

all, but he didn't care twopence for it. Scrooge was the Ogre of the

family. The mention of his name cast a dark shadow on the party, which

was not dispelled for full five minutes.

After it had passed away, they were ten times merrier than before, from

the mere relief of Scrooge the Baleful being done with. Bob Cratchit

told them how he had a situation in his eye for Master Peter, which

would bring in, if obtained, full five and sixpence weekly. The two

young Cratchits laughed tremendously at the idea of Peter's being a man

of business; and Peter himself looked thoughtfully at the fire from

between his collars, as if he were deliberating what particular

investments he should favor when he came into the receipt of that

bewildering income. Martha, who was a poor apprentice at a milliner's,

then told them what kind of work she had to do, and how many hours she

worked at a stretch, and how she meant to lie abed to-morrow morning for

a good long rest; to-morrow being a holiday she passed at home. Also how

she had seen a countess and a lord some days before, and how the lord

"was much about as tall as Peter"; at which Peter pulled up his collars

so high that you couldn't have seen his head if you had been there. All

this time the chestnuts and the jug went round and round; and by and by

they had a song, about a lost child travelling in the snow, from Tiny

Tim, who had a plaintive little voice, and sang it very well indeed.

There was nothing of high mark in this. They were not a handsome family;

they were not well dressed; their shoes were far from being water-proof;

their clothes were scanty; and Peter might have known, and very likely

did, the inside of a pawnbroker's. But they were happy, grateful,

pleased with one another, and contented with the time; and when they

faded, and looked happier yet in the bright sprinklings of the Spirit's

torch at parting, Scrooge had his eye upon them, and especially on Tiny

Tim, until the last.

It was a great surprise to Scrooge, as this scene vanished, to hear a

hearty laugh. 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.

It is a fair, even-handed, noble adjustment of things, that while there

is infection in disease and sorrow, there is nothing in the world so

irresistibly contagious as laughter and good-humor. When Scrooge's

nephew laughed, Scrooge's niece by marriage laughed as heartily as he.

And their assembled friends, being not a bit behindhand, laughed out

lustily.

"He said that Christmas was a humbug, as I live!" cried Scrooge's

nephew. "He believed it too!"

"More shame for him, Fred!" said Scrooge's niece, indignantly. Bless

those women! they never do anything by halves. They are always in

earnest.

She was very pretty, exceedingly pretty. With a dimpled,

surprised-looking, capital face; a ripe little mouth that seemed made to

be kissed,--as no doubt it was; all kinds of good little dots about her

chin, that melted into one another when she laughed; and the sunniest

pair of eyes you ever saw in any little creature's head. Altogether she

was what you would have called provoking, but satisfactory, too. O,

perfectly satisfactory!

"He's a comical old fellow," said Scrooge's nephew, "that's the truth;

and not so pleasant as he might be. However, his offences carry their

own punishment, and I have nothing to say against him. 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?

He don't lose much of a dinner."

"Indeed, I think he loses a very good dinner," interrupted Scrooge's

niece. Everybody else said the same, and they must be allowed to have

been competent judges, because they had just had dinner; and, with the

dessert upon the table, were clustered round the fire, by lamplight.

"Well, I am very glad to hear it," said Scrooge's nephew, "because I

haven't any great faith in these young housekeepers. What do _you_ say,

Topper?"

Topper clearly had his eye on one of Scrooge's niece's sisters, for he

answered that a bachelor was a wretched outcast, who had no right to

express an opinion on the subject. Whereat Scrooge's niece's sister--the

plump one with the lace tucker, not the one with the roses--blushed.

After tea they had some music. For they were a musical family, and knew

what they were about, when they sung a Glee or Catch, I can assure

you,--especially Topper, who could growl away in the bass like a good

one, and never swell the large veins in his forehead, or get red in the

face over it.

But they didn't devote the whole evening to music. After a while they

played at forfeits; for it is good to be children sometimes, and never

better than at Christmas, when its mighty Founder was a child himself.

There was first a game at blind-man's-buff, though. And I no more

believe Topper was really blinded than I believe he had eyes in his

boots. Because the way in which he went after that plump sister in the

lace tucker was an outrage on the credulity of human nature. Knocking

down the fire-irons, tumbling over the chairs, bumping up against the

piano, smothering himself among the curtains, wherever she went there

went he! He always knew where the plump sister was. He wouldn't catch

anybody else. If you had fallen up against him, as some of them did, and

stood there, he would have made a feint of endeavoring to seize you,

which would have been an affront to your understanding, and would

instantly have sidled off in the direction of the plump sister.

"Here is 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; he only answering to their

questions yes or no, as the case was. The fire of questioning to which

he was exposed elicited from him that he was thinking of an animal, a

live animal, rather a disagreeable animal, a savage animal, an animal

that growled and grunted sometimes, and talked sometimes, and lived in

London, and walked about the streets, and wasn't made a show of, and

wasn't led by anybody, and didn't live in a menagerie, and was never

killed in a market, and was not a horse, or an ass, or a cow, or a bull,

or a tiger, or a dog, or a pig, or a cat, or a bear. At every new

question put to him, this 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. At last the plump sister 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 Scro-o-o-o-oge!"

Which it certainly was. Admiration was the universal sentiment, though

some objected that the reply to "Is it a bear?" ought to have been

"Yes."

Uncle Scrooge had imperceptibly become so gay and light of heart, that

he would have drunk to the unconscious company in an inaudible speech.

But the whole scene passed off in the breath of the last word spoken by

his nephew; and he and the Spirit were again upon their travels.

Much they saw, and far they went, and many homes they visited, but

always with a happy end. The Spirit stood beside sick-beds, and they

were cheerful; on foreign lands, and they were close at home; by

struggling men, and they were patient in their greater hope; by poverty,

and it was rich. In alms-house, hospital, and jail, in misery's every

refuge, where vain man in his little brief authority had not made fast

the door, and barred the Spirit out, he left his blessing, and taught

Scrooge his precepts. Suddenly, as they stood together in an open place,

the bell struck twelve.

Scrooge looked about him for the Ghost, and saw it no more. 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.

STAVE FOUR

THE LAST OF THE SPIRITS

The Phantom slowly, gravely, silently approached. When it came near him,

Scrooge bent down upon his knee; for in the 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. He knew no more, for the Spirit neither spoke nor moved.

"I am in the presence of the Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come? Ghost of

the Future! I fear you more than any spectre I have seen. But as I know

your purpose is to do me good, and as I hope to live to be another man

from what I was, I am prepared to bear you company, and do it with a

thankful heart. Will you not speak to me?"

It gave him no reply. The hand was pointed straight before them.

"Lead on! Lead on! The night is waning fast, and it is precious time to

me, I know. Lead on, Spirit!"

They scarcely seemed to enter the city; for the city rather seemed to

spring up about them. But there they were in the heart of it; on

'Change, amongst the merchants.

The Spirit stopped beside one little knot of business men. 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 he's dead."

"When did he die?" inquired another.

"Last night, I believe."

"Why, what was the matter with him? 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. "Company, perhaps.

He hasn't left it to me. That's all I know. By, by!"

Scrooge was at first inclined to be surprised that the Spirit should

attach importance to conversation apparently so trivial; but feeling

assured that it must have some hidden purpose, he set himself to

consider what it was likely to be. It 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.

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. It gave him little

surprise, however; for he had been revolving in his mind a change of

life, and he thought and hoped he saw his new-born resolutions carried

out in this.

They left this busy scene, and went into an obscure part of the town, to

a low shop where iron, old rags, bottles, bones, and greasy offal were

bought. A gray-haired rascal, of great age, sat smoking his pipe.

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. 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.

"Let the charwoman alone to be the first!" cried she who had entered

first. "Let the laundress alone to be the second; and let the

undertaker's man alone to be the third. Look here, old Joe, here's a

chance! If we haven't all three met here without meaning it!"

"You couldn't have met in better place. You were made free of it long

ago, you know; and the other two ain't strangers. What have you got to

sell? What have you got to sell?"

"Half a minute's patience, Joe, and you shall see."

"What odds then! What odds, Mrs. Dilber?" said the woman. "Every person

has a right to take care of themselves. _He_ always did! Who's the worse

for the loss of a few things like these? Not a dead man, I suppose."

Mrs. Dilber, whose manner was remarkable for general propitiation, said,

"No, indeed, ma'am."

"If he wanted to keep 'em after he was dead, a wicked old screw, why

wasn't he natural in his lifetime? If he had been, he'd have had

somebody to look after him when he was struck with Death, instead of

lying gasping out his last there, alone by himself."

"It's the truest word that ever was spoke; it's a judgment on him."

"I wish it was a little heavier judgment, and it should have been, you

may depend upon it, if I could have laid my hands on anything else. 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."

Joe went down on his knees for the greater convenience of opening the

bundle, and dragged out a large and heavy roll of some dark stuff.

"What do you call this? Bed-curtains!"

"Ah! Bed-curtains! Don't drop that oil upon the blankets, now."

"_His_ blankets?"

"Whose else's, do you think? He isn't likely to take cold without 'em, I

dare say. Ah! You may look through that shirt till your eyes ache; but

you won't find a hole in it, nor a threadbare place. It is the best he

had, and a fine one too. They'd have wasted it by dressing him up in it,

if it hadn't been for me."

Scrooge listened to this dialogue in horror.

"Spirit! I see, I see. The case of this unhappy man might be my own. My

life tends that way now. Merciful Heaven, what is this?"

The scene had changed, and now he almost touched a bare, uncurtained

bed. A pale light, rising in the outer air, fell straight upon this bed;

and on it, unwatched, unwept, uncared for, was the body of this

plundered unknown man.

"Spirit, let me see some tenderness connected with a death, or this dark

chamber, Spirit, will be forever present to me."

The Ghost conducted him to poor Bob Cratchit's house,--the dwelling he

had visited before,--and found the mother and the children seated round

the fire.

Quiet. Very quiet. The noisy little Cratchits were as still as statues

in one corner, and sat looking up at Peter, who had a book before him.

The mother and her daughters were engaged in needlework. But surely they

were very quiet!

"'And he took a child, and set him in the midst of them.'"

Where had Scrooge heard those words? He had not dreamed them. The boy

must have read them out, as he and the Spirit crossed the threshold. Why

did he not go on?

The mother laid her work upon the table, and put her hand up to her

face.

"The color hurts my eyes," she said.

The color? Ah, poor Tiny Tim!

"They're better now again. It makes them weak by candle-light; and I

wouldn't show weak eyes to your father when he comes home, for the

world. 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, these few last evenings,

mother."

"I have known him walk with--I have known him walk with Tiny Tim upon

his shoulder, very fast indeed."

"And so have I," cried Peter. "Often."

"And so have I," exclaimed another. So had all.

"But he was very light to carry, 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 it, poor fellow--came in. His tea was ready for him on the hob,

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.

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 to-day, then, Robert?"

"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 a Sunday. My little, little

child! My little child!"

He broke down all at once. He couldn't help it. If he could have helped

it, he and the child would have been farther apart, perhaps, than they

were.

"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,

with the covered face, whom we saw lying dead?"

The Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come conveyed him to a dismal, wretched,

ruinous churchyard.

The Spirit stood among the graves, and pointed down to One.

"Before I draw nearer to that stone to which you point, answer me one

question. Are these the shadows of the things that Will be, or are they

shadows of the things that May be only?"

Still the Ghost pointed downward to the grave by which it stood.

"Men's courses will foreshadow certain ends, to which, if persevered in,

they must lead. But if the courses be departed from, the ends will

change. Say it is thus with what you show me!"

The Spirit was immovable as ever.

Scrooge crept towards it, trembling as he went; and, following the

finger, read upon the stone of the neglected grave his own

name,--EBENEZER SCROOGE.

"Am _I_ that man who lay upon the bed? No, Spirit! O no, no! Spirit!

hear me! I am not the man I was. I will not be the man I must have been

but for this intercourse. Why show me this, if I am past all hope?

Assure me that I yet may change these shadows you have shown me by an

altered life."

For the first time the kind hand faltered.

"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. O, tell me I may sponge away the writing on this stone!"

Holding up his hands in one 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.

Yes, and the bedpost was his own. The bed was his own, the room was his

own. Best and happiest of all, the Time before him was his own, to make

amends in!

He was checked in his transports by the churches ringing out the

lustiest peals he had ever heard.

Running to the window, he opened it, and put out his head. No fog, no

mist, no night; clear, bright, stirring, golden day!

"What's to-day?" cried Scrooge, calling downward to a boy in Sunday

clothes, who perhaps had loitered in to look about him.

"Eh?"

"What's to-day, my fine fellow?"

"To-day! Why, CHRISTMAS DAY."

"It's Christmas day! I haven't missed it. Hallo, my fine fellow!"

"Hallo!"

"Do you know the Poulterer's, in the next street but one, at the

corner?"

"I should hope I did."

"An intelligent boy! A remarkable boy! Do you know whether they've sold

the prize Turkey that was hanging up there? Not the little prize

Turkey,--the big one?"

"What, the one as big as me?"

"What a delightful boy! It's a pleasure to talk to him. Yes, my buck!"

"It's hanging there now."

"Is it? Go and buy it."

"Walk-ER!"[*] exclaimed the boy.

[* "Walker!" or "Hookey Walker!" means "What a story!"]

"No, no, I am in earnest. Go and buy it, and tell 'em to bring it here,

that I may give them the direction where to take it. Come back with the

man, and I'll give you a shilling. Come back with him in less than five

minutes, and I'll give you half a crown!"

The boy was off like a shot.

"I'll send it to Bob Cratchit's! He sha'n't know who sends it. It's

twice the size of Tiny Tim. Joe Miller never made such a joke as sending

it to Bob's will be!"

The hand in which he wrote the address was not a steady one; but write

it he did, somehow, and went down stairs to open the street door, ready

for the coming of the poulterer's man.

It _was_ a Turkey! He never could have stood upon his legs, that bird.

He would have snapped 'em short off in a minute, like sticks of

sealing-wax.

Scrooge dressed himself "all in his best," and at last got out into the

streets. The people were by this time pouring forth, as he had seen them

with the Ghost of Christmas Present; and, walking with his hands behind

him, Scrooge regarded every one with a delighted smile. He looked so

irresistibly pleasant, in a word, that three or four good-humored

fellows said: "Good morning, sir! A merry Christmas to you!" and Scrooge

said often afterwards, that, of all the blithe sounds he had ever heard,

those were the blithest in his ears.

In the afternoon, he turned his steps towards his nephew's house.

He passed the door a dozen times, before he had the courage to go up and

knock. But he made a dash, and did it.

"Is your master at home, my dear?" said Scrooge to the girl. Nice girl!

Very.

"Yes, sir."

"Where is he, my love?"

"He's in the dining-room, sir, along with mistress."

"He knows me," said Scrooge, with his hand already on the dining-room

lock. "I'll go in here, my dear."

"Fred!"

"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 is 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 Topper when _he_ came. So did the plump sister when _she_ came.

So did every one when _they_ came. Wonderful party, wonderful games,

wonderful unanimity, won-der-ful happiness!

But he was early at the office next morning. O, he was early there! If

he could only be there first, and catch Bob Cratchit coming late! That

was the thing he had set his heart upon.

And he did it. The clock struck nine. No Bob. A quarter past. No Bob.

Bob was full eighteen minutes and a half behind his time. Scrooge sat

with his door wide open, that he might see him come into the Tank.

Bob's 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.

"Hallo!" 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 am very sorry, sir. I _am_ behind my time."

"You are? Yes. I think you are. Step this way, if you please."

"It's only once a year, sir. It shall not be repeated. I was making

rather merry yesterday, sir."

"Now, I'll tell you what, my friend. I am not going to stand this sort

of thing any longer. And therefore," Scrooge continued, leaping from his

stool, and giving Bob such a dig in the waistcoat that he staggered back

into the Tank again,--"and therefore I am about to raise your salary!"

Bob trembled, and got a little nearer to the ruler.

"A merry Christmas, Bob!" said Scrooge, with an earnestness that could

not be mistaken, as he clapped him on the back. "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, and we will

discuss your affairs this very afternoon, over a Christmas bowl of

smoking bishop, Bob! Make up the fires, and buy a second coal-scuttle

before you dot another i, Bob Cratchit!"

Scrooge was better than his word. He did it all, and infinitely more;

and to Tiny Tim, who did NOT die, he was a second father. He 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 his own

heart laughed, and that was quite enough for him.

He had no further intercourse with spirits, but lived in that respect

upon the total-abstinence principle ever afterward; and it was always

said of him, that he knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive

possessed the knowledge. May that be truly said of us, and all of us!

And so, as Tiny Tim observed, God bless us every one!

VI. THE GREAT STONE FACE[*] (1850)

[* From "The Snow Image, and Other Twice-Told Tales." Used by permission

of, and by special arrangement with, Houghton Mifflin Company,

publishers of Hawthorne's Works.]

BY NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE (1804-1864)

[_Setting_. The Profile Mountain, a huge "work of Nature in her mood of

majestic playfulness," seems to have given the suggestion. The Profile

Mountain is a part of Cannon Mountain, which is one of the White

Mountains of New Hampshire. But the larger background is to be sought in

the interplay of the spiritual and physical forces which Hawthorne has

here staged in allegory. The mountain is the symbol of a lofty ideal

that blesses those that follow its beckoning and marks the degree of

failure of those that slight or ignore it.

_Plot_. The plan of the story is as simple and beautiful as the teaching

is profound and helpful. "Mr. Hawthorne," writes Mrs. Hawthorne, "says

he is rather ashamed of the mechanical structure of the story, the moral

being so plain and manifest." But what is the "plain and manifest" moral

that the structure of the story is designed to bring out? One

interpreter says, "That the last shall be first"; another, "That success

is not to be measured by human standards." The central thought seems to

me to be larger than either of these and to include both. It is rather

the assimilative power of a lofty ideal and is best phrased in 2

Corinthians iii, 18: "But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass

the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to

glory." By setting his ideal high and by looking and longing, Ernest

grew daily in spiritual stature and was saved from being the victim of

the popular and passing allurements of war, money, and politics,

allurements to which his neighbors succumbed because they did not live

in vital communion with the Great Stone Face. The poet, it is true, felt

the appeal of the Great Stone Face but only afar off, for his life did

not correspond with his thought. It is one of the finest touches in the

story that, though Ernest meets the double requirement of thought and

act, he still hoped "that some wiser and better man than himself would

by and by appear." If a man once catches up with his ideal, it ceases to

be an ideal. Ernest did not think that he had attained.

_Characters_. Ernest, like Scrooge, is a developing character. He did

not have as far to go as Scrooge and his development was differently

wrought; but both passed from weakness to strength and from isolation to

service, the one through the ministry of a single profound experience,

the other through the constant challenge of a high ideal. The other

characters fall below Ernest because they did not relate themselves as

whole-heartedly to the influence of the Great Stone Face. Mr.

Gathergold, type of the merely rich man, Old Blood-and-Thunder, type of

the merely military hero, Old Stony Phiz, type of the merely eloquent

statesman, the easily satisfied people, type of the fickle crowd, and at

last the gifted poet, type of the discord between words and works, all

were natives of the same valley of opportunity. But the Great Stone Face

was the measure of their defect rather than the means of their

attainment because, unlike Esther and Scrooge and Ernest, they were

"disobedient unto the heavenly vision."]

One afternoon, when the sun was going down, a mother and her little boy

sat at the door of their cottage, talking about the Great Stone Face.

They had but to lift their eyes, and there it was plainly to be seen,

though miles away, with the sunshine brightening all its features.

And what was the Great Stone Face?

Embosomed amongst a family of lofty mountains, there was a valley so

spacious that it contained many thousand inhabitants. Some of these good

people dwelt in log huts, with the black forest all around them, on the

steep and difficult hillsides. Others had their homes in comfortable

farm-houses, and cultivated the rich soil on the gentle slopes or level

surfaces of the valley. Others, again, were congregated into populous

villages, where some wild, highland rivulet, tumbling down from its

birthplace in the upper mountain region, had been caught and tamed by

human cunning, and compelled to turn the machinery of cotton-factories.

The inhabitants of this valley, in short, were numerous, and of many

modes of life. But all of them, grown people and children, had a kind of

familiarity with the Great Stone Face, although some possessed the gift

of distinguishing this grand natural phenomenon more perfectly than many

of their neighbors.

The Great Stone Face, then, was a work of Nature in her mood of majestic

playfulness, formed on the perpendicular side, of the mountain by some

immense rocks, which had been thrown together in such a position as,

when viewed at a proper distance, precisely to resemble the features of

the human countenance. It seemed as if an enormous giant, or a Titan,

had sculptured his own likeness on the precipice. There was the broad

arch of the forehead, a hundred feet in height; the nose, with its long

bridge; and the vast lips, which, if they could have spoken, would have

rolled their thunder accents from one end of the valley to the other.

True it is, that if the spectator approached too near, he lost the

outline of the gigantic visage, and could discern only a heap of

ponderous and gigantic rocks, piled in chaotic ruin one upon another.

Retracing his steps, however, the wondrous features would again be seen;

and the farther he withdrew from them, the more like a human face, with

all its original divinity intact, did they appear; until, as it grew dim

in the distance, with the clouds and glorified vapor of the mountains

clustering about it, the Great Stone Face seemed positively to be alive.

It was a happy lot for children to grow up to manhood or womanhood with

the Great Stone Face before their eyes, for all the features were noble,

and the expression was at once grand and sweet, as if it were the glow

of a vast, warm heart, that embraced all mankind in its affections, and

had room for more. It was an education only to look at it. According to

the belief of many people, the valley owed much of its fertility to this

benign aspect that was continually beaming over it, illuminating the

clouds, and infusing its tenderness into the sunshine.

As we began with saying, a mother and her little boy sat at their

cottage-door, gazing at the Great Stone Face, and talking about it. The

child's name was Ernest.

"Mother," said he, while the Titanic visage smiled on him, "I wish that

it could speak, for it looks so very kindly that its voice must needs be

pleasant. If I were to see a man with such a face, I should love him

dearly."

"If an old prophecy should come to pass," answered his mother, "we may

see a man, some time or other, with exactly such a face as that."

"What prophecy do you mean, dear mother?" eagerly inquired Ernest. "Pray

tell me all about it!"

So his mother told him a story that her own mother had told to her, when

she herself was younger than little Ernest; a story, not of things that

were past, but of what was yet to come; a story, nevertheless, so very

old that even the Indians, who formerly inhabited this valley, had heard

it from their forefathers, to whom, as they affirmed, it had been

murmured by the mountain streams, and whispered by the wind among the

treetops. The purport was, that, at some future day, a child should be

born hereabouts, who was destined to become the greatest and noblest

personage of his time, and whose countenance, in manhood, should bear an

exact resemblance to the Great Stone Face. Not a few old-fashioned

people, and young ones likewise, in the ardor of their hopes, still

cherished an enduring faith in this old prophecy. But others, who had

seen more of the world, had watched and waited till they were weary, and

had beheld no man with such a face, nor any man that proved to be much

greater or nobler than his neighbors, concluded it to be nothing but an

idle tale. At all events, the great man of the prophecy had not yet

appeared.

"O mother, dear mother!" cried Ernest, clapping his hands above his

head, "I do hope that I shall live to see him?"

His mother was an affectionate and thoughtful woman, and felt that it

was wisest not to discourage the generous hopes of her little boy. So

she only said to him, "Perhaps you may."

And Ernest never forgot the story that his mother told him. It was

always in his mind, whenever he looked upon the Great Stone Face. He

spent his childhood in the log-cottage where he was born, and was

dutiful to his mother, and helpful to her in many things, assisting her

much with his little hands, and more with his loving heart. In this

manner, from a happy yet often pensive child, he grew up to be a mild,

quiet, unobtrusive boy, and sunbrowned with labor in the fields, but

with more intelligence brightening his aspect than is seen in many lads

who have been taught at famous schools. Yet Ernest had had no teacher,

save only that the Great Stone Face became one to him. When the toil of

the day was over, he would gaze at it for hours, until he began to

imagine that those vast features recognized him, and gave him a smile of

kindness and encouragement, responsive to his own look of veneration. We

must not take upon us to affirm that this was a mistake, although the

Face may have looked no more kindly at Ernest than at all the world

besides. But the secret was, that the boy's tender and confiding

simplicity discerned what other people could not see; and thus the love,

which was meant for all, became his peculiar portion.

About this time, there went a rumor throughout the valley, that the

great man, foretold from ages long ago, who was to bear a resemblance to

the Great Stone Face, had appeared at last. It seems that, many years

before, a young man had migrated from the valley and settled at a

distant seaport, where, after getting together a little money, he had

set up as a shopkeeper. His name--but I could never learn whether it was

his real one, or a nickname that had grown out of his habits and success

in life--was Gathergold. Being shrewd and active, and endowed by

Providence with that inscrutable faculty which develops itself in what

the world calls luck, he became an exceedingly rich merchant, and owner

of a whole fleet of bulky-bottomed ships. All the countries of the globe

appeared to join hands for the mere purpose of adding heap after heap to

the mountainous accumulation of this one man's wealth. The cold regions

of the north, almost within the gloom and shadow of the Arctic Circle,

sent him their tribute in the shape of furs; hot Africa sifted for him

the golden sands of her rivers, and gathered up the ivory tusks of her

great elephants out of the forests; the East came bringing him the rich

shawls, and spices, and teas, and the effulgence of diamonds, and the

gleaming purity of large pearls. The ocean, not to be behindhand with

the earth, yielded up her mighty whales, that Mr. Gathergold might sell

their oil, and make a profit on it. Be the original commodity what it

might, it was gold within his grasp. It might be said of him, as of

Midas in the fable, that whatever he touched with his finger immediately

glistened, and grew yellow, and was changed at once into sterling metal,

or, which suited him still better, into piles of coin. And, when Mr.

Gathergold had become so very rich that it would have taken him a

hundred years only to count his wealth, he bethought himself of his

native valley, and resolved to go back thither, and end his days where

he was born. With this purpose in view, he sent a skilful architect to

build him such a palace as should be fit for a man of his vast wealth to

live in.