Schwartz, I'm the Director. And tonight you're invited to sit back, relax, andenjoy a great

holiday favorite, Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol."

Charles Dickens actually created this piece for readers theater, which is what you'll

hear tonight. Readers theater has very few props. It's not acting per se, but it's just

using the voice in order to create a sense of the character.

Given this holiday season is a time for family and friends to reconnect to old memories and

create new ones. We know that Christmas Past is a great tradition in this town, and we

hope that this will become a new addition to that.

We also know that this is a time to think of others less fortunate. And we provide a

box out front for collecting can goods for those in need. There will be opportunities

for those of you coming tomorrow for other actvities that will bring an end to this weekend

of celebration.

so, if you'll turn off your cell phones, we'd appreciate that. And we'd also like to welcome

you afterwards, if you'd like to meet the cast and enjoy some treats we have some in

the reading room. Those of you who don't plan to do that, the Library will be closing around

8 o'clock.

So please, sit back, welcome, thank you for coming, and enjoy.

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, and 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, but he answered to both names. It was all the same to him.

Oh! But he was a tight-fisted at the grind-stone, 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 his

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, on 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!"

"Bah! 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, but 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!" pleaded the nephew.

"Oh 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, 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-travelers 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!"

"Let me hear another sound from you Bob Cratchitt, and you'll keep your Christmas by losing your

situation! Nephew, you're quite a powerful speaker, sir," I wonder you don't go into

Parliament."

"Don't be angry, uncle. Come! Dine with us tomorrow."

"Good afternoon,"

"I am sorry, with all my heart, to find you so resolute. But 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 humour 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

Scroges's newpew 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. 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, 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 necessities; 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 unauthentic multitude, a few of us are endeavouring 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 remain 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 work houses--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 dismounted

from his stool, and 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 tomorrow, I suppose?" said Scrooge.

"If quite convenient, sir."

"It is not convenient,and it's not fair. If I was to stop half-a-crown for it, you'd

think yourself ill-used, I'll be bound?"

"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.

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. 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 hsi 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 looked at Scrooge as Marley used to look: with ghostly

spectacles turned up on its ghostly forehead.

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

To say that he was not startled, or that his blood was not conscious of a terrible sensation

to which it had been a stranger from infancy, would be untrue. But he put his hand upon

the key he had relinquished, turned it sturdily, walked in, and lighted his candle.

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, 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 that. But before he shut his heavy door, he walked through his rooms

to see that all was all 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 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.