Awaking in the middle of a prodigiously tough snore, and sitting up in bed to get his thoughts

together, Scrooge had no occasion to be told that the bell was again upon the stroke of

One. He felt that he was restored to consciousness in the right nick of time, for the especial

purpose of holding a conference with the second messenger despatched to him through Jacob

Marley’s intervention. But finding that he turned uncomfortably cold when he began

to wonder which of his curtains this new spectre would draw back, he put them every one aside

with his own hands; and lying down again, established a sharp look-out all round the

bed. For he wished to challenge the Spirit on the moment of its appearance, and did not

wish to be taken by surprise, and made nervous.

Gentlemen of the free-and-easy sort, who plume themselves on being acquainted with a move

or two, and being usually equal to the time-of-day, express the wide range of their capacity for

adventure by observing that they are good for anything from pitch-and-toss to manslaughter;

between which opposite extremes, no doubt, there lies a tolerably wide and comprehensive

range of subjects. Without venturing for Scrooge quite as hardily as this, I don’t mind calling

on you to believe that he was ready for a good broad field of strange appearances, and

that nothing between a baby and rhinoceros would have astonished him very much.

Now, being prepared for almost anything, he was not by any means prepared for nothing;

and, consequently, when the Bell struck One, and no shape appeared, he was taken with a

violent fit of trembling. Five minutes, ten minutes, a quarter of an hour went by, yet

nothing came. All this time, he lay upon his bed, the very core and centre of a blaze of

ruddy light, which streamed upon it when the clock proclaimed the hour; and which, being

only light, was more alarming than a dozen ghosts, as he was powerless to make out what

it meant, or would be at; and was sometimes apprehensive that he might be at that very

moment an interesting case of spontaneous combustion, without having the consolation

of knowing it. At last, however, he began to think — as you or I would have thought

at first; for it is always the person not in the predicament who knows what ought to

have been done in it, and would unquestionably have done it too — at last, I say, he began

to think that the source and secret of this ghostly light might be in the adjoining room,

from whence, on further tracing it, it seemed to shine. This idea taking full possession

of his mind, he got up softly and shuffled in his slippers to the door.

The moment Scrooge’s hand was on the lock, a strange voice called him by his name, and

bade him enter. He obeyed.

It was his own room. There was no doubt about that. But it had undergone a surprising transformation.

The walls and ceiling were so hung with living green, that it looked a perfect grove; from

every part of which, bright gleaming berries glistened. The crisp leaves of holly, mistletoe,

and ivy reflected back the light, as if so many little mirrors had been scattered there;

and such a mighty blaze went roaring up the chimney, as that dull petrification of a hearth

had never known in Scrooge’s time, or Marley’s, or for many and many a winter season gone.

Heaped up on the floor, to form a kind of throne, were turkeys, geese, game, poultry,

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 seething bowls of punch, that made the chamber dim with their delicious

steam. In easy state upon this couch, there sat a jolly Giant, glorious to see; who bore

a glowing torch, in shape not unlike Plenty’s horn, and held it up, high up, to shed its

light on Scrooge, as he came peeping round the door.

“Come in!” exclaimed the Ghost. “Come in! and know me better, man!”

Scrooge entered timidly, and hung his head before this Spirit. He was not the dogged

Scrooge he had been; and though the Spirit’s eyes were clear and kind, he did not like

to meet them.

“I am the Ghost of Christmas Present,” said the Spirit. “Look upon me!”

Scrooge reverently did so. It was clothed in one simple green robe, or mantle, bordered

with white fur. This garment hung so loosely on the figure, that its capacious breast was

bare, as if disdaining to be warded or concealed by any artifice. Its feet, observable beneath

the ample folds of the garment, were also bare; and on its head it wore no other covering

than a holly wreath, set here and there with shining icicles. Its dark brown curls were

long and free; free as its genial face, its sparkling eye, its open hand, its cheery voice,

its unconstrained demeanour, and its joyful air. Girded round its middle was an antique

scabbard; but no sword was in it, and the ancient sheath was eaten up with rust.

“You have never seen the like of me before!” exclaimed the Spirit.

“Never,” Scrooge made answer to it.

“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,” said Scrooge. “I am afraid I have not. Have you had many

brothers, Spirit?”

“More than eighteen hundred,” said the Ghost.

“A tremendous family to provide for!” muttered Scrooge.

The Ghost of Christmas Present rose.

“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 re-crossed 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 a 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 chestnuts, 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 bakers’ 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.

“Forgive me if I am wrong. It has been done in your name, or at least in that of your

family,” said Scrooge.

“There are some upon this earth of yours,” returned the Spirit, “who lay claim to know

us, and who do their deeds of passion, pride, ill-will, hatred, envy, bigotry, and selfishness

in our name, who are as strange to us and all our kith and kin, as if they had never

lived. Remember that, and charge their doings on themselves, not us.”

Scrooge promised that he would; and they went on, invisible, as they had been before, into

the suburbs of the town. It was a remarkable quality of the Ghost (which Scrooge had observed

at the baker’s), that notwithstanding his gigantic size, he could accommodate himself

to any place with ease; and that he stood beneath a low roof quite as gracefully and

like a supernatural creature, as it was possible he could have done in any lofty hall.

And perhaps it was the pleasure the good Spirit had in showing off this power of his, or else

it was his own kind, generous, hearty nature, and his sympathy with all poor men, that led

him straight to Scrooge’s clerk’s; for there he went, and took Scrooge with him,

holding to his robe; and on the threshold of the door the Spirit smiled, and stopped

to bless Bob Cratchit’s dwelling with the sprinkling 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