The Junior Classics, Volume 6: Old-Fashioned Tales
General
The Junior Classics, Volume 6: Old-Fashioned Tales
Children's literature
"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
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!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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