1Marley had been dead seven years, but Scrooge never painted out his partner's name. On Christmas Eve the fog was thick and it had not been light all day, while the tight-fisted old sinner sat counting his money, as cold as the weather.2Scrooge kept his door open to watch his clerk, Bob Cratchit, copying letters. Bob's fire was a single coal, and Scrooge kept the coal-box, so Bob wound his white comforter tighter and tried to warm himself at the candle.3Suddenly the door burst open. "A merry Christmas, uncle! God save you!" cried Scrooge's nephew Fred, all in a glow from hurrying through the frost, his breath smoking. Scrooge did not even look up from his books. "Bah!" he said. "Humbug!"4Fred declared Christmas a kind, forgiving, charitable time, and Bob applauded before Scrooge threatened his job. Fred begged his uncle to dine with them tomorrow, but Scrooge only snapped, "Good afternoon!" Fred left without an angry word, wishing the clerk a merry Christmas.5Next, two portly gentlemen came collecting for the poor. "Are there no prisons?" asked Scrooge. He would give nothing; if the poor would rather die, they had better do it. The gentlemen withdrew, and Scrooge went back to work, rather pleased with himself.6At closing time, Scrooge grumbled, "You'll want all day tomorrow, I suppose?" He called it picking a man's pocket, but he let Bob have Christmas Day. Scrooge stalked off, and Bob slid down the ice on Cornhill and ran home to his family.7After a gloomy tavern dinner, Scrooge went home to the dark chambers that had once been Marley's. With his key in the lock, he saw the knocker was not a knocker at all, but Marley's face, glowing faintly.8"Pooh, pooh!" said Scrooge, and he double-locked himself in. He sat by his small fire with his bowl of gruel. Then an old disused bell on the wall began to swing, softly and then loudly, until every bell in the house was ringing.9The bells stopped, and a clanking came up from the cellar, up the stairs, and to his door. "It's humbug still!" said Scrooge. But right through the locked door came Marley's Ghost, dragging a long chain of cash-boxes, keys and ledgers.10Still Scrooge would not believe his eyes; the Ghost, he said, was only a bit of undigested beef. At that the spirit gave a terrible cry and shook its chain, and Scrooge fell to his knees. "Mercy!" he said.11"I wear the chain I forged in life," said the Ghost. He had made it link by link, from years of thinking only of money. Scrooge's own chain, Marley warned, had been as long seven years ago, and he had worked on it ever since.12"You have yet a chance and hope of escaping my fate," said the Ghost. Three Spirits would haunt Scrooge, the first when the bell tolled One. Without them, Marley warned, there was no hope.13Marley floated out through the window into a night full of wailing phantoms in chains, weeping because they could no longer help anyone. When they faded, the door was double-locked. Scrooge began to say "Humbug!" but stopped at the first syllable and fell asleep.14Scrooge woke in the dark and lay counting the chimes. As the bell tolled a deep, dull One, light flashed up in the room and a hand drew back the curtains of his bed. Scrooge started up to find himself face to face with a strange, unearthly visitor.15It was like a child and yet like an old man, with long white hair, a sprig of fresh holly, and a clear jet of light springing from its head. "I am the Ghost of Christmas Past," it said softly. "Long past?" asked Scrooge. "No. Your past."16The Spirit laid its hand on Scrooge's heart, and they passed through the wall onto a snowy country road. "I was a boy here!" cried Scrooge. Merry schoolboys trotted by on ponies, and Scrooge knew them every one.17They came to a crumbling old school, where one lonely boy had been left behind at Christmas. Old Scrooge sat down and wept to see his forgotten self. Then Ali Baba stepped out of the boy's books, and Robinson Crusoe with his Parrot.18Another Christmas came, and the boy, older now, paced the room alone. Then his little sister Fan ran in and hugged him. "I have come to bring you home, dear brother!" Soon their coach was rattling away through the snow.19Next the Ghost brought Scrooge to the city warehouse where he had been an apprentice. At a high desk sat his old master, and as the clock struck seven, jolly Fezziwig laid down his pen: "Yo ho, my boys! No more work to-night!"20Young Ebenezer put up the shutters, and in a minute the room was swept and the fire heaped high. In came a fiddler, Mrs. Fezziwig with one vast smile, and a crowd of friends and servants. Soon twenty couples were dancing.21Then the fiddler struck up "Sir Roger de Coverley," and old Fezziwig led the dance with Mrs. Fezziwig, cutting a caper so deftly that he seemed to wink with his legs. Old Scrooge watched and laughed, remembering everything with his whole heart.22When the ball broke up, the Ghost called it a small matter of a few pounds. But Scrooge said the happiness Fezziwig gave was worth a fortune, then fell quiet. "I should like to say a word or two to my clerk just now."23The Ghost showed Scrooge himself in his prime, already greedy and restless. Belle, the girl he was to marry, wept. "Another idol has displaced me," she said, "a golden one." For love of the man he had been, she set him free.24"No more!" begged Scrooge, but the Ghost showed him one shadow more: Belle, years later, a happy mother in a parlour full of romping children. When a knock came, they all rushed to greet their father, laden with Christmas parcels.25By the fire, Belle's husband told her he had seen Mr. Scrooge. "His partner lies dying, and there he sat alone. Quite alone in the world." Watching their daughter, Scrooge thought she might have called him father, and his eyes grew dim.26"Remove me! I cannot bear it!" cried Scrooge, pressing the extinguisher-cap down over the Spirit. But its light poured out from underneath in an unbroken flood. Worn out and back in his own bedroom, he sank into a heavy sleep.27When the bell struck One again, Scrooge sat bolt upright, but no ghost appeared. Instead a blaze of ruddy light poured from the next room. At last he shuffled to the door, where a strange voice called his name and bade him enter.28His room had become a green grove of holly and ivy, with a mighty fire roaring. On a throne of Christmas feasting sat a jolly Giant with a glowing torch. "I am the Ghost of Christmas Present," he cried. "Look upon me!"29Humbled, Scrooge asked to be led wherever the Spirit wished. "Touch my robe!" said the Ghost, and the room vanished. They stood unseen in the snowy streets on Christmas morning, among cheerful crowds hurrying to the fruiterers' and grocers' shops.30When the bells rang, poor families carried their Christmas dinners to the bakers' ovens. The Spirit sprinkled blessings on each dish from his torch, and when two carriers began to quarrel, a few drops restored their good humour, for it was Christmas Day.31The Spirit led Scrooge to the four-roomed house of his clerk, and blessed it, though Bob earned only fifteen shillings a week. Inside, Mrs. Cratchit laid the cloth, and Master Peter, proud in his father's great collar, poked the bubbling potatoes.32Martha came home late from the milliner's and hid for a joke. In came Bob with Tiny Tim, crutch and all, on his shoulder. "Why, where's our Martha?" cried Bob, and out she ran into his arms.33The goose was small, but nobody had ever seen such a goose, and even Tiny Tim cried Hurrah! Then Mrs. Cratchit, too nervous to be watched, went out and came back flushed and proud with the pudding, like a speckled cannon-ball blazing in brandy.34When dinner was cleared, the family drew round the fire, and Bob poured the hot drink into tumblers and a custard-cup. After Bob's toast, Tiny Tim, holding his father's hand, added last of all: "God bless us every one!"35Scrooge asked whether Tiny Tim would live. The Ghost saw an empty seat and an ownerless crutch: unless things changed, the child would die. "Oh, no, kind Spirit!" begged Scrooge, and hung his head when the Ghost threw back his cruel words about surplus population.36Scrooge looked up at his own name. "I'll give you Mr. Scrooge, the Founder of the Feast!" said Bob. Mrs. Cratchit longed to give the stingy man a piece of her mind, but drank to him for Bob's sake. Then the family cheered up again.37As darkness fell, the Spirit carried Scrooge far beyond the town: to miners singing on a bleak moor, to two lighthouse keepers shaking hands over their grog, and to a ship far out at sea where every sailor hummed a Christmas tune.38A hearty laugh, and Scrooge found himself in his nephew Fred's parlour, where the guests played Yes and No. Scrooge shouted guesses too, forgetting no one could hear him, until someone guessed Fred's growling London animal: "It's your Uncle Scro-o-o-oge!"39"A Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to the old man, whatever he is!" said Fred, raising his glass. Unseen beside the Spirit, Scrooge felt so light of heart he would have toasted them back, but the scene faded away.40The night wore on and the Spirit grew old. From under its robe it drew two starved children, Ignorance and Want. When Scrooge asked if they had no refuge, it threw back his own words: "Are there no workhouses?" Then the bell struck twelve.41As the second Spirit faded, a black-robed Phantom glided toward Scrooge, slowly, gravely, silently, one hand outstretched. Scrooge sank to his knees. "I fear you more than any spectre I have seen," he said. It gave no answer, but pointed onward.42The city sprang up around them, and on the Exchange a fat merchant yawned that someone had died last night. "It's likely to be a very cheap funeral," he said, and his friends laughed. Scrooge knew these men, but not whom they meant.43Next the Phantom led him down a foul back street to old Joe's rag-and-bone shop. A charwoman, Mrs. Dilber the laundress and an undertaker's man slunk in with bundles. The man went first, and Joe chalked his prices on the wall.44Last came the charwoman's bundle: bed-curtains, taken down with the dead man lying there, and even his burial shirt. "He frightened every one away from him when he was alive, to profit us when he was dead!" she laughed. Scrooge watched in horror.45"The case of this unhappy man might be my own," Scrooge shuddered. Now he stood by a bare bed where the dead man lay alone, unwatched and unwept. The Phantom pointed to the covered face, but Scrooge had not the power to lift the sheet.46Scrooge begged to see anyone moved by the man's death, and the Phantom showed him a poor young couple. "He is past relenting," the husband told Caroline. "He is dead." Their cruel creditor was gone, and they could sleep with light hearts that night.47Longing for some tenderness tied to a death, Scrooge followed the Spirit to Bob Cratchit's house. The noisy family was very still now. Peter read aloud, and Mrs. Cratchit hid her wet eyes, for Tiny Tim's stool stood empty by the fire.48At last Bob came in and tried hard to be cheerful. He had been to the green place where Tim was buried, and promised to go every Sunday. "My little, little child!" he cried, breaking down all at once, and his wife held him close.49Scrooge begged to know who the dead man was. The Phantom led him past his own office, now someone else's, to an iron gate and a weedy, crowded churchyard. It pointed down at one neglected grave. Trembling, Scrooge crept closer and read the name on the stone: EBENEZER SCROOGE.50Falling to his knees, Scrooge clutched the Phantom's robe. "I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year!" he cried, begging to wipe away the writing on that stone. The hand trembled; the Phantom dwindled into his bedpost.51Scrooge woke in his own bed, with time still his own to make amends. Laughing and crying at once, he hugged his bed-curtains and tumbled into his clothes. "I am as light as a feather, I am as happy as an angel!"52Church bells rang out the lustiest peals he had ever heard. Scrooge flung open the window to golden sunshine and sweet, cold air, and called down to a boy in Sunday clothes. "What's to-day, my fine fellow?" "To-day? Why, Christmas Day!" The Spirits had done it all in one night.53Scrooge sent the boy running to the poulterer's for the prize turkey, promising him half-a-crown if he was quick. Soon the poulterer's man came staggering up with a bird so huge it could never have stood upon its legs.54Such a bird could never be carried to Camden Town, so Scrooge paid for a cab and sent the turkey to Bob Cratchit's. "He sha'n't know who sends it. It's twice the size of Tiny Tim!" Then he chuckled till he cried.55Dressed in his best, Scrooge walked out and met the portly gentleman he had turned away the day before. Taking his hands, Scrooge begged his pardon and whispered a sum that made him gasp. "Not a farthing less," said Scrooge.56In the afternoon Scrooge set off for his nephew's house. He passed the door a dozen times before he found the courage to knock, but at last he made a dash and did it.57Scrooge sidled his face round the dining-room door. "It's I. Your uncle Scrooge. I have come to dinner. Will you let me in, Fred?" It was a mercy Fred didn't shake his arm off. Then came wonderful games, won-der-ful happiness!58Next morning Scrooge was early at the office, set on catching Bob Cratchit coming late. Bob came in eighteen and a half minutes behind time. "What do you mean by coming here at this time of day?" growled Scrooge, as gruffly as he could.59"I am not going to stand this sort of thing any longer," said Scrooge, "and therefore I am about to raise your salary!" Bob trembled, thinking his master had gone mad, but Scrooge clapped him on the back and wished him a merry Christmas.60Scrooge was better than his word. To Tiny Tim, who did not die, he was a second father, and it was always said of him that he knew how to keep Christmas well. And so, as Tiny Tim observed, God bless Us, Every One!
Adapted from A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens, public domain. Pictures are AI illustrations drawn for this edition.
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