"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;"
inasmuch as an answer in the negative was
sufficient to have diverted their thoughts from Mr
Scrooge, supposing they had ever had any tendency
that way.
"He has given us plenty of merriment, I am sure,"
said Fred, "and it would be ungrateful not to drink
his health. Here is a glass of mulled wine ready to
our hand at the moment; and I say, "Uncle
Scrooge!""
"Well! Uncle Scrooge." they cried.
"A Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to the
old man, whatever he is!" said Scrooge's nephew.
"He wouldn't take it from me, but may he have it,
nevertheless. Uncle Scrooge!"
Uncle Scrooge had imperceptibly become so gay
and light of heart, that he would have pledged the
unconscious company in return, and thanked them in
an inaudible speech, if the Ghost had given him time.
But the whole scene passed off in the breath of the
last 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
almshouse, hospital, and jail, in misery's every
refuge, where vain man in his little brief authority
had not made fast the door and barred the Spirit
out, he left his blessing, and taught Scrooge his
precepts.
It was a long night, if it were only a night; but
Scrooge had his doubts of this, because the
Christmas Holidays appeared to be condensed into
the space of time they passed together. It was
strange, too, that while Scrooge remained unaltered
in his outward form, the Ghost grew older, clearly
older. Scrooge had observed this change, but never
spoke of it, until they left a children's Twelfth Night
party, when, looking at the Spirit as they stood
together in an open place, he noticed that its hair
was grey.
"Are spirits' lives so short?" asked Scrooge.
"My life upon this globe, is very brief," replied the
Ghost. "It ends to-night."
"To-night!" cried Scrooge.
"To-night at midnight. Hark! The time is drawing
near."
The chimes were ringing the three quarters past
eleven at that moment.
"Forgive me if I am not justified in what I ask,"
said Scrooge, looking intently at the Spirit's robe,
"but I see something strange, and not belonging to
yourself, protruding from your skirts. Is it a foot or a
claw!"
From the foldings of its robe, it brought two
children; wretched, abject, frightful, hideous,
miserable. They knelt down at its feet, and clung
upon the outside of its garment.
"Oh, Man! look here. Look, look, down here!"
exclaimed the Ghost.
They were a boy and girl. Yellow, meagre,
ragged, scowling, wolfish; but prostrate, too, in
their humility. Where graceful youth should have
filled their features out, and touched them with its
freshest tints, a stale and shrivelled hand, like that
of age, had pinched, and twisted them, and pulled
them into shreds. Where angels might have sat
enthroned, devils lurked, and glared out menacing.
No change, no degradation, no perversion of
humanity, in any grade, through all the mysteries of
wonderful creation, has monsters half so horrible and
dread.
Scrooge started back, appalled. Having them
shown to him in this way, he tried to say they were
fine children, but the words choked themselves,
rather than be parties to a lie of such enormous
magnitude.
"Spirit! are they yours?" Scrooge could say no
more.
"They are Man's," said the Spirit, looking down
upon them. "And they cling to me, appealing from
their fathers. This boy is Ignorance. This girl is
Want. Beware them both, and all of their degree,
but most of all beware this boy, for on his brow I
see that written which is Doom, unless the writing
be erased. Deny it!" cried the Spirit, stretching out
its hand towards the city. "Slander those who tell it
ye! Admit it for your factious purposes, and make it
worse! And bide the end!"
"Have they no refuge or resource?" cried
Scrooge.
"Are there no prisons?" said the Spirit, turning on
him for the last time with his own words. "Are there
no workhouses?"
The bell struck twelve.