"Spirit," said Scrooge submissively, "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.
Holly, mistletoe, red berries, ivy, turkeys, geese,
game, poultry, brawn, meat, pigs, sausages,
oysters, pies, puddings, fruit, and punch, all
vanished instantly. So did the room, the fire, the
ruddy glow, the hour of night, and they stood in the
city streets on Christmas morning, where (for the
weather was severe) the people made a rough, but
brisk and not unpleasant kind of music, in scraping
the snow from the pavement in front of their
dwellings, and from the tops of their houses:
whence it was mad delight to the boys to see it
come plumping down into the road below, and
splitting into artificial little snow-storms.
The house fronts looked black enough, and the
windows blacker, contrasting with the smooth white
sheet of snow upon the roofs, and with the dirtier
snow upon the ground; which last deposit had been
ploughed up in deep furrows by the heavy wheels of
carts and waggons; furrows that crossed and
recrossed each other hundreds of times where the
great streets branched off; and made intricate
channels, hard to trace in the thick yellow mud and
icy water. The sky was gloomy, and the shortest
streets were choked up with a dingy mist, half
thawed, half frozen, whose heavier particles
descended in shower of sooty atoms, as if all the
chimneys in Great Britain had, by one consent, caught fire, and were blazing away to their dear
hearts' content. There was nothing very cheerful in
the climate or the town, and yet was there an air of
cheerfulness abroad that the clearest summer air
and brightest summer sun might have endeavoured
to diffuse in vain.
For the people who were shovelling away on the
housetops were jovial and full of glee; calling out to
one another from the parapets, and now and then
exchanging a facetious snowball -- better-natured
missile far than many a wordy jest -- laughing
heartily if it went right and not less heartily if it
went wrong. The poulterers' shops were still half
open, and the fruiterers' were radiant in their glory.
There were great, round, pot-bellied baskets of
chesnuts, shaped like the waistcoats of jolly old
gentlemen, lolling at the doors, and tumbling out into
the street in their apoplectic opulence. There were
ruddy, brown-faced, broad-girthed Spanish Onions,
shining in the fatness of their growth like Spanish
Friars, and winking from their shelves in wanton
slyness at the girls as they went by, and glanced
demurely at the hung-up mistletoe. There were
pears and apples, clustered high in blooming
pyramids; there were bunches of grapes, made, in
the shopkeepers' benevolence to dangle from
conspicuous hooks, that people's mouths might
water gratis as they passed; there were piles of
filberts, mossy and brown, recalling, in their
fragrance, ancient walks among the woods, and
pleasant shufflings ankle deep through withered
leaves; there were Norfolk Biffins, squab and
swarthy, setting off the yellow of the oranges and
lemons, and, in the great compactness of their juicy
persons, urgently entreating and beseeching to be
carried home in paper bags and eaten after dinner.
The very gold and silver fish, set forth among these
choice fruits in a bowl, though members of a dull and
stagnant-blooded race, appeared to know that
there was something going on; and, to a fish, went
gasping round and round their little world in slow and
passionless excitement.
The Grocers'! oh the Grocers'! nearly closed, with
perhaps two shutters down, or one; but through
those gaps such glimpses! It was not alone that the
scales descending on the counter made a merry
sound, or that the twine and roller parted company
so briskly, or that the canisters were rattled up and
down like juggling tricks, or even that the blended
scents of tea and coffee were so grateful to the
nose, or even that the raisins were so plentiful and
rare, the almonds so extremely white, the sticks of
cinnamon so long and straight, the other spices so
delicious, the candied fruits so caked and spotted
with molten sugar as to make the coldest lookers-on
feel faint and subsequently bilious. Nor was it that
the figs were moist and pulpy, or that the French
plums blushed in modest tartness from their
highly-decorated boxes, or that everything was
good to eat and in its Christmas dress; but the
customers were all so hurried and so eager in the
hopeful promise of the day, that they tumbled up
against each other at the door, crashing their wicker
baskets wildly, and left their purchases upon the
counter, and came running back to fetch them, and
committed hundreds of the like mistakes, in the best
humour possible; while the Grocer and his people
were so frank and fresh that the polished hearts
with which they fastened their aprons behind might
have been their own, worn outside for general
inspection, and for Christmas daws to peck at if
they chose.
But soon the steeples called good people all, to
church and chapel, and away they came, flocking
through the streets in their best clothes, and with
their gayest faces. And at the same time there
emerged from scores of bye-streets, lanes, and
nameless turnings, innumerable people, carrying their
dinners to the baker' shops. The sight of these poor
revellers appeared to interest the Spirit very much,
for he stood with Scrooge beside him in a baker's
doorway, and taking off the covers as their bearers
passed, sprinkled incense on their dinners from his
torch. And it was a very uncommon kind of torch,
for once or twice when there were angry words
between some dinner-carriers who had jostled each
other, he shed a few drops of water on them from
it, and their good humour was restored directly. For
they said, it was a shame to quarrel upon Christmas
Day. And so it was! God love it, so it was!
In time the bells ceased, and the bakers' were
shut up; and yet there was a genial shadowing forth
of all these dinners and the progress of their
cooking, in the thawed blotch of wet above each
baker's oven; where the pavement smoked as if its
stones were cooking too.
"Is there a peculiar flavour in what you sprinkle
from your torch?" asked Scrooge.
"There is. My own."
"Would it apply to any kind of dinner on this day?"
asked Scrooge.
"To any kindly given. To a poor one most."
"Why to a poor one most?" asked Scrooge.
"Because it needs it most."
"Spirit," said Scrooge, after a moment's thought,
"I wonder you, of all the beings in the many worlds
about us, should desire to cramp these people's
opportunities of innocent enjoyment."
"I!" cried the Spirit.
"You would deprive them of their means of dining every seventh day, often the only day on which
they can be said to dine at all," said Scrooge.
"Wouldn't you?"
"I!" cried the Spirit.
"You seek to close these places on the Seventh
Day?" said Scrooge. "And it comes to the same
thing."
"I seek!" exclaimed the Spirit.