Name: A Christmas Carol | Stave III: The Second of the Three Spirits | Charles Dickens
Uploaded: 2023-07-17T19:33:25.000Z
Duration: 58 min 10 s
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Stave III: The Second of the Three Spirits

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

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

“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.

“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

“More than eighteen hundred,” said the Ghost.

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

“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

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

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A Christmas Carol | Stave III: The Second of the Three Spirits | Charles Dickens

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