“All the new people have left my shop. I cannot understand it. They seem to object to me on such curious and inconsistent sort of grounds, these scientific men, and these innovators. They say that I give people superstitions and make them too visionary; they say I give people sausages and make them too coarse. They say my heavenly parts are too heavenly; they say my earthly parts are too earthly; I don’t know what they want, I’m sure. How can heavenly things be too heavenly, or earthly things too earthly? How can one be too good, or too jolly? I don’t understand. But I understand one thing well enough. These modern people are living and I am dead.” “You may be dead,” I replied. “You ought to know. But as for what they are doing, do not call it living.” ..... A silence fell suddenly between us which I somehow expected to be unbroken. But it had not fallen for more than a few seconds when, in the utter stillness, I distinctly heard a very rapid step coming nearer and nearer along the street. The next moment a figure flung itself into the shop and stood framed in the doorway. He wore a large white hat tilted back as if in impatience; he had tight black old-fashioned pantaloons, a gaudy old-fashioned stock and waistcoat, and an old fantastic coat. He had large, wide-open, luminous eyes like those of an arresting actor; he had a pale, nervous face, and a fringe of beard. He took in the shop and the old man in a look that seemed literally a flash and uttered the exclamation of a man utterly staggered. “Good lord!” he cried out; “it can’t be you! It isn’t you! I came to ask where your grave was.” “I’m not dead yet, Mr. Dickens,” said the old gentleman, with a feeble smile; “but I’m dying,” he hastened to add reassuringly. “But, dash it all, you were dying in my time,” said Mr. Charles Dickens with animation; “and you don’t look a day older.” “I’ve felt like this for a long time,” said Father Christmas. Mr. Dickens turned his back and put his head out of the door into the darkness. “Dick,” he roared at the top of his voice; “he’s still alive.” ..... Another shadow darkened the doorway, and a much larger and more full-blooded gentleman in an enormous periwig came in, fanning his flushed face with a military hat of the cut of Queen Anne. He carried his head well back like a soldier, and his hot face had even a look of arrogance, which was suddenly contradicted by his eyes, which were literally as humble as a dog’s. His sword made a great clatter, as if the shop were too small for it. “Indeed,” said Sir Richard Steele, “?’tis a most prodigious matter, for the man was dying when I wrote about Sir Roger de Coverley and his Christmas Day.” My senses were growing dimmer and the room darker. It seemed to be filled with newcomers.