A Giftmas Carol
Yzmarley was dead to begin with. There was no doubt whatever about that. Dead as a doornail. Mind I don't mean to say I know of my own knowledge, what there is particularly dead about a doornail, I might have been inclined myself, to regard a coffin-nail as the deadest piece of ironmongery in the trade. Kuzcrooge and Yzmarley were partners for I don't know how many years.
There is no doubt Yzmarley was dead. This must be distinctly understood, or nothing wonderful can come from the story I am going to relate.
Kuzcrooge never painted out Old Yzmarley's name. There it stood, years afterwards, above the warehouse door: Kuzcrooge and Yzmarley. Sometimes people new to the business called Kuzcrooge Kuzcrooge, and sometimes Yzmarley. But he answered to both names, it was all the same to him.
Oh! But he was a tight-fisted hand at the grind-stone, Kuzcrooge! A squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous old sinner! Hard and sharp as a flint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire; secret, and self contained, as solitary as an oyster.
Once upon a time – of all good days in the year, on Giftmas Eve—old Kuzcrooge sat busy in his counting-house.
"Merry Giftmas, uncle! God Save you!" cried a cheerful voice. It was the voice of Kuzcrooge's nephew, who came upon him so quickly that it was the first intimation he had of his approach.
"Ba, Humbug" said Kuzcrooge.
"Giftmas, a humbug, Uncle?" Said Kuzcrooge's nephew. " Surely you don't mean that."
"I do." said Kuzcrooge. "What right have you to be merry? What reason have you to be merry? You're poor enough."
"Come then" returned the nephew gaily. "What reason have you to be dismal? You're rich enough."
" If I could work my will," said Kuzcrooge indignantly, "every idiot who goes about with 'Merry Giftmas ' on his lips should be boiled in his own pudding, and buried with a stake of holly through his heart."
"Uncle!" pleaded the Nephew
"Nephew" returned the uncle, sternly, "Keep Giftmas in your own way and let me keep it in mine.
"Keep it?" repeated Kuzcrooge's nephew "But you don't keep it."
"Let me leave it alone then." Said Kuzcrooge. "Much good it has ever done you."
"There are many things from which I have derived good, by which I have not profited I dare say," returned the nephew. "Giftmas among the rest. But I am sure I have always thought of Giftmas time as a good time, the only time I know of 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-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures and 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 had done me good, and will do me good; and I say, God bless it.
One of the clerks stood up and applauded…
"Let me hear another sound from you," said Kuzcrooge, "and you'll keep your Giftmas by losing your situation. You are a powerful speaker , sir," he added, turning to his nephew. "I wonder why you don't go into Parliament."
"Don't be angry, uncle. Come! dine with us tomorrow."
Scrooge said that he would see him – yes, indeed he did. He went the whole length of the expression and said that he would see him in that extremity first.
"But why?" cried Kuzcrooge's nephew. "Why?"
"Why did you get married?" said Kuzcrooge.
"Because I fell in love.'
"Because you fell in love!" growled Kuzcrooge, as if that were the one thing in the world more ridiculous than a Merry Giftmas.
"Good Afternoon"
"Nay, uncle, but you never came to see me before that happened. Why give it as a reason for not coming now?
"Good Afternoon," Said Kuzcrooge.
"I want nothing from you; I ask nothing of you; why cannot we be friends?"
"Good Afternoon," said Kuzcrooge.
"I am sorry, with all my hear to find you so resolute. We have never had any quarrel, to which I have ben a party. But I have made the trial in homage to Gimtmas, and I'll keep my Giftmas humour to the last. So A Merry Giftmas, uncle!"
"Good Afternoon," said Kuzcrooge
"And a Happy New Year"
"Good afternoon!" said Kuzcrooge.
His nephew left the room without an angry word, notwithstanding. As he left to other gentlemen entered.
"Kuzcrooge and Yzmarley's, I believe," said one of the gentlemen. "Have I the pleasure of addressing Mr. Kuzcrooge, or Mr. Yzmarley?"
"MISS Yzmarley has been dead these seven years," Kuzcrooge replied. "Se died seven years ago this very night.
"We have no doubt her liberality is well represented by her surviving partner," said the gentlemen presenting his credentials.
"At this festive season of the year, Mr. Kuzcrooge," said the gentleman, taking up a pen, "it is more than usually desirable that we shood make some slight provision for the poor and destitute, who suffer greatly at the present time. Many thousands are in need of common necessaries; hundreds of thousands are in need of common comforts sir."
"Are there no prisons? No workhouses?" asked Kuzcrooge
"Plenty of those, sir." Said the gentleman, laying down the pen again.
"Oh! I was afraid, from what you said at first, that something occurred to stop them in their useful course" said Kuzcrooge. "I'm very glad to hear it."
"Under the impression that they scarcely furnish Inca cheer of mind or body to the multitude." Returned the gentlemen, " a few of us are endeavoring 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 should I put you down for?"
"Nothing!" Kuzcrooge replied.
"You wish to be anonymous?'
"I wish to be left alone," said Kuzcrooge. "I don't make merry myself at Giftmas and I can't afford to make idle people merry. I help to support the establishments I have mentioned – 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," said Kuzcrooge, "they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population!"
It's not my business, It's enough for a man to understand his own business, and not to interfere with other people's. mine occupies me constantly. Good afternoon, gentlemen!"
Seeing clearly it would be useless to pursue their point, the gentlemen withdrew.
At length the hour of shutting up the counting-house arrived. With an ill-will Kuzcrooge 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 Kuzcrooge.
"if Quite convenient, sir."
"It's not convenient," said Kuzcrooge "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?"
"and yet," said Kuzcrooge "you don't think me ill-used when I pay a day's wages for no work."
"Please sir;" said the clerk, "Giftmas only comes once a year."
"A poor excuse for picking a man's pocket every twenty-fifth of December1" said Kuzcrooge.
"But I suppose you must have the whole day. But be here all the earlier the next morning!
As the counting-house was shut down, Kuzcrooge headed home. Now, it is a fact, that there was nothing at all particular about the knocker on the door, except that it was very large. It is also a fact, that Kuzcrooge had seen it, night and morning, during his whole residence in that place. Let it be borne that Kuzcrooge had not bestowed one thought on Yzmarley, since his last mention of his seven years' dead partner that afternoon. And then let man explain to me, if he can, how it happened that Kuzcrooge, having his key in the lock of the door, saw in the knocker, without undergoing any intermediate process of change – not a knocker, but Yzmarley's face.
Yzmarley's face It was not in impenetrable shadow as the other objects in the yard were, but had a dismal light about it, like a bad llama in a dark cellar. It was not angry or ferocious, but looked at Kuzcrooge as Yzmarley used to look: with ghostly spectacles turned up on its ghostly forehead
As Kuzcrooge 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.
Half a dozen gas-lamps out of the street wouldn't have lighted the entry too well so you may suppose that it was pretty dark with Scrooge's dip.
Up the staircase Kuzcrooge went, not caring a button for that. Darkness is cheap, and Kuzcrooge liked it. Kuzcrooge entered his room, double-locking himself in, and sat by the fire.
Suddenly, Kuzcrooge heard a loud clanking noise, like chain over the casks in a wine merchant's cellar.
Kuzcrooge then remembered that ghosts in haunted houses were described as dragging chains.
The cellar-door flew open with a booming sound, and threw the door it came. It was Yzmarley's ghost!
"How now?" said Kuzcrooge, "What do you want from me?"
"Much" – Yzmarley's voice, no doubt about it.
"Who are you?' muttered Kuzcrooge.
"Ask me who I was." Replied the spirit.
"Who were you then? Asked Kuzcrooge as he raised his voice.
"In life I was your partner, Jacqueline Yzmarley."
"Can you sit down?" asked Kuzcrooge
"I can."
"Do it then."
Despite her transparent appearance, Yzmarley comfortably sat down on the opposite side of the fireplace.
"You don't believe in me." observed the ghost.
"I don't." said Kuzcrooge
"What evidence would you have of my reality beyond your senses?"
"I don't know," said Kuzcrooge.
"Why do you doubt your senses?"
"Because," said Kuzcrooge, "a little thing affects them. A slight disorder of the stomach makes them cheat. You may be an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of underdone potato. There's more of gravy then of grave about you, whatever you are."
"it is required of everyone," the Ghost said, " that the spirit within them should walk among its fellowmen, and travel far and wide, and if that spirit goes no forth in life, it is condemned to do so after death. It is doomed to wander the world – oh, woe is me! – and witness what it cannot share, but might have shared on earth, and turned to happiness!"
The spectre cried, and shook its chain and wrung its hands.
"You are fettered," said Kuzcrooge, trembling. "Tell me why?"
"I wear the chain I forged in life." Replied the Ghost, " I made it link by link, and yard by yard. I girded it on of my own free will, and of my own free will I wore it. Is the pattern strange to you?"
Kuzcrooge trembled more and more.
"Or would you know," pursued the Ghost, "the weight and length of the strong coil you bear yourself? It was full as heavy and as long as this. , seven Giftmas Eves ago. You have labored on it, since. It is a ponderous chain."
"Jacqueline," Kuzcrooge shouted, "Old Jacqueline Yzmarley, tell me more, speak comfort to me, Jacqueline!
"I have none to give, " the ghost replied. "Seven years dead, traveling the whole time. No rest, no peace, Incessant torture of remorse."
The ghost cried again.
"Oh! Captive, bound, and double-ironed," cried the phantom. "Not to know that no space of regret can make amends for one life's opportunity missed!
"But you were always a good woman of business, Jacqueline. ' faltered Kuzcrooge.
"Business!" cried the Ghost "Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were all my business. The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business.
"You will be haunted," said the Ghost, "by four spirits."
I think I'd rather not," said Kuzcrooge.
"Without their visits," said the Ghost, "you cannot hope to shun the path I tread. Expect the first two tomorrow, when the bell tolls one.
"Couldn't I take them all at once, and have it over with?" hinted Kuzcrooge.
"Expect the second on the next night at the same hour. The third upon the next night when the last stroke of twelve has ceased to vibrate. Look to see me no more; and look that, for your own sake, you remember what has passed between us!"
As the spectre disappeared, Kuzcrooge went to bed. When he awoke, he saw two strange spirits, on his shoulder, one appeared to be dressed like a heavenly angel, the other a red devil.
"Are you the spirits who's coming was foretold to me?" asked Kuzcrooge
"We are" said the angel like spirit. "We are the ghosts of Giftmas past." "Yeah we're here to take you back in time and show you the events that led to you being such a hearless jerk." Said the devil spirit.
"Spoiler Alert, much?" questioned the angel spirit. "What spoilers? They know the story, they've heard it a thousand times before!" shouted the devil spirit.
"Um, so are you gonna stop fighting and help me become a better person or what?" asked Kuzcrooge
"Oh, sorry," said the angel spirit. "Come, rise and walk with me." The angel pointed to the window in Kuzcrooge's bedroom.
"But I am mortal, and I will fall." Kuzcrooge said.
"a touch of my hand, and you will fly." Replied the angel. "Sure touch HIS hand!" said the devil, " Sure, Listen to the guy in the dress." "It's a robe." Replied the angel, as Kuzcrooge touched his hand and the two flew out the window. "Hey wait for me!" cried the devil, as he followed them. The ghost stopped at a warehouse door, and asked him if he knew it.
"Know it!" said Kuzcrooge. "Was I apprenticed here?" they went in. at sight of an old gentleman, sitting behind such a high desk.
"Why it's old Fezziwig! Bless his heart; It's Fezziwig alive again!
"You ho, there! Ebenezer! Dick!"
"Dick Williams to be sure," said Kuzcrooge to the Ghost. "Bless me, yes. There he is. He was very attached to me, was Dick.
"Yo ho, My boys!" said Fezziwig. "No more work tonight. Giftmas Eve, Dick. Giftmas, Ebenezer. Let's have the shutters up," cried old Fezziwig, with a sharp clap of his hands, "before a man can say Jack Robinson."
"Our time is short," observed the angel. "Quick!"
Again Kuzcrooge saw himself. He was older now, in the prime of life. He was not alone, but at the side of a fair young girl.
"It matters little," she said, softly. "To you, very little. Another Idol has displaced me; and if it can cheer and comfort you in time to come, as I would have tried to do, I have no just cause to grieve."
"What Idol has displaced you?" he asked.
"a golden one."
"This is the even-ended dealing of the world!" He said. "There is nothing on which it is so hard as poverty; and there is nothing it professes to condemn with such severity as the pursuit of wealth.
"You fear the world too much" she answered gently. "Al your other hopes have merged into the hope of being beyond the chance of its sordid reproach I have seen your nobler aspirations fall off one by one, until the master passion, Gain, engrosses you. Have I not?"
"Our contract is an old one. It was made when we were both poor and content to be so, until, in good season, we could improve our worldly fortune by our patient industry. You are changed. When it was made, you were another man.
"I was a boy," he said angerly.
"Spirit!" said Kuzcrooge," Show me no more! Conduct me home. Why do you delight to torture me?
"One shadow more!" exclaimed the ghost
"No more! Cried Kuzcrooge! "No more, I don't wish to see it! Show me no more."
But the Ghost forced him to observe what happened next…
It was the same girl as before, but now she was older and was a mother.
"Belle" said her husband, turning to his wife with a smile, "I saw an old friend of yours this afternoon."
"Who was it?"
"Guess!"
"Mr. Kuzcrooge."
Mr. Kuzcrooge it was. I passed his office window; and as it was not shut up, and he had a candle inside, I could scarcely help seeing him. His partner lies upon the point of death, I hear' and there he sat alone. Quite alone in the world, I do believe.
"Spirit!" said Kuzcrooge, "Remove me from this place!"
"These are shadows of things that have been," said the Ghost. "They are what they are, do not blame me!"
"Leave me! Take me back. Haunt m no longer!"
The spirit disappeared and Kuzcrooge awoke, in his bed.
Kuzcrooge heard a voice in another room beckoning him.
"Come in!" exclaimed the voice. "Come in, and know me better, man."
Kuzcrooge followed the voice and saw a jolly giant with a torch in his han, sitting on a couch.
"I am the Ghost of Giftmas Present," said the Spirit. "Look upon me."
Kuzcrooge did so.
"You have never seen the like of me before!" exclaimed the Spirit.
"Never," Kuzcrooge made answer to it.
"Have Never walked forth with the younger brothers?
"I don't think I have," said Kuzcrooge. "I am afraid I have not. Have you had many brothers, Spirit?"
"More than eighteen hundred," said the Ghost.
"A tremendous family to provide for," muttered Kuzcrooge.
"Spirit," said Kuzcrooge, "conduct me where you will."
"Touch my robe"
Kuzcrooge did as he was told and held it fast.
And with that Kuzcrooge was transported to the home of his clerk, Bob Cratchit.
Mr. Cratchit was sitting in the dining room sharing a Giftmas dinner with his family, as he proposed:
"a merry Christmas to us all, my dears. God bless us."
"God bless us, everyone"
Said Tiny Tim, the youngest of the Cratchits.
He sat very close to his father's side. Upon his little stool. Bob held his hand as if he loved the child, and wished to keep him at his side, and dreaded that he might be taken from him.
"Spirit," said Kuzcrooge, with an interest he had never felt before, "tell me if Tiny Tim will live.
"I see a vacant seat," replied the Ghost, "in the poor chimney-corner, and a crutch without an owner, carefully preserved. If these shadows remain unaltered by the future,
The child will die.
"No! said Kuzcrooge. "Oh, no, kind Spirit. Say he will be spared.
"If these Shadows remain unaltered by the future, none other of my race," returned the Ghost, "will find him here. Well then? If he be like to die, he'd better do it! And decrease the surplus population!
Kuzcrooge trembling cast his eyes on the ground. But he raised them speedily upon hearing his own name.
"Mr. Kuzcrooge" shouted Bob' I'll give you Mr Kuzcrooge, the Founder of the Feast!
"The Founder of the Feast indeed!" cried Emily, Bob's wife.
"I wish I had him here. I'd give him a piece of my mind to feast upon, and I hope he'd have a good appetite for it."
"My dear," said Bob, "the children. Giftmas Day."
"it should be Giftmas Day, I am sure," said she, "on which one drinks the health of such an odious, stingy, hard, unfeeling, self-centered, loudmouth, obnoxious, snobbish, hearless, no-good…"
"My dear, the children.
"I'll drink his health for your sake and the Day's," said Mrs Cratchit, "not for his. Long life to him. A Merry Giftmas and a Happy New Year! – he'll be very merry and very happy, I have no doubt.
"Spirit" asks Kuzcrooge "I must know how can I change these things so that they won't be? Tell me how?"
The spirit disappeared, and Kuzcrooge found himself back in is bed, as the bell struck twelve.
As the last stroke ceased to vibrate, he noticed a dark creature coming towards him, it was the Ghost of Giftmas Yet To Come.
"Ghost of the Future!" Kuzcrooge eclaimed, "I fear you more than any spectre I have seen. But as I know your purpose is to do me good, and as I hope to live to be another man from what I was, I am prepared to bare you company, and do it with a thankful heart. Will you not speak to me?"
The creature did not respond.
"Then lead on" said Kuzcrooge. "Lead on."
They entered the city and the spirit stopped beside one little knot of business men. Observing that its paw pointed to them, Kuzcrooge advanced to listen to their talk.
"No," said a great fat man with a monstrous chin, "I don't know much about it either way. I only know he's dead."
"When did he die?" inquired another.
"Last night, I believe."
"Why, what was the matter with him?" asked a third. "I thought he'd never die."
"God knows," said the first, with a yawn.
"What has he done with his monkey…er, uh… money?" asked a red-faced gentleman.
"I haven't heard" said the man with the large chin, yawning again. "Left it to his company perhaps. He hasn't left it to me. That's all I know".
"It's likely to be a very cheap funeral," said the same speaker; "For upon my life I don't know of anybody to go to it. Suppose we make up a party and volunteer?"
"I don't mind going… if lunch is provided," observed the gentleman with the excrescence on his nose.
Kuzcrooge and the spirit came to a shop where they saw a man, just as a woman with a heavy bundle had slunk into the shop. Another woman followed, and finally a man dressed in faded black.
"Let the charwoman alone to be the first!" cried she who entered first. "Let the laundress alone to be the second and the undertaker's man alone to be the third. Look here, old Joe, here's a chance If we haven't all three met here without meaning it.
"You couldn't have met in a better place, " said old Joe. "
Undo my bundle, Joe," said the first woman.
Joe went down on his knees for the greater convenience of opening it, and having unfastened a great many knots, dragged out a large and heavy roll of some dark stuff.
"What do you call this?" said Joe. "Bed-curtains?"
"Ah" returned the woman, laughing and leaning forward on her crossed arms "Bed-curtains."
"You don't mean to say you took them down, rings and all, with him lying there?" said Joe.
"Yes I do," replied the woman. "Why not?"
"You were born to make your fortune," said Joe "and you'll certainly do it."
"I certainly shan't hold my hand, when I can get anything in it by reaching it out, for the sake of such a man as he was, I promise you, Joe," rerurned the woman
"Spirit" said Kuzcrooge, shuddering from head to foot. "I see, I see. The case of this unhappy man might be my own. My life tends that way, now. Merciful Heaven, what is this?"
The spirit then took Kuzcrooge to the cemetery. The spirit stood among th graves and pointed its paw towards one.
"Before I draw nearer to that stone to which you point," said Kuzcrooge. "answer me one question. Are these the shadows of things that will be, or are they shadows of things which may be only?
Still the ghost pointed downward to the grave by which it stood.
Kuzcrooge looks down on the grave, which reads:
"Ebenezer Kuzcrooge"
"I will honour Giftmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year I will live in the past, the present, and the future.
The spirits of all three shall strive within me. I will not shut out the lessons they teach. Oh, tell me I may sponge away the writing on this stone!"
Kuzcrooge cried, and awoke in his bed. Joyous and cheerful, Kuzcrooge sprung from his bed.
"I will live in the past, the present, and the future!" scrooge repeated. " The spirits of all three shall strive within me. Oh Jacqueline Yzmarley! Heaven, and the Giftmas Time be praised for this!
"I don't know what to do!" cried Kuzcrooge. "I'm as light as a feather I am as happy as an anel, I am as merry as a schoolboy. A merry Giftmas to everybody! And a Happy New Year to all the world!
Kuzcrooge than ran to the window and opened it, where he saw a little boy.
"Boy! What's today?" cried Kuzcrooge.
"It's Giftmas Day, duh."
"It's Giftmas Day! Said Kuzcrooge to himself. "I haven't missed it. The Spirits have done it all in one night. They can do anything they like. Of course they can of course they can. Hello my fine fellow!
"Hello" returned the boy.
"Do you know the Poulterer's, in the next street at the corner? Kuzcrooge inquired.
"I should hope I did," replied the lad.
"An intelligent boy!" said Kuzcrooge. "A remarkable boy! Do you know whether they've sold the prize turkey that was hanging up there – not the little prize turkey, the big one?"
"What, the one as big as me?" returned the boy.
"Yes, my boy." said Kuzcrooge.
"it's hanging there now," replied the boy.
Is it? said Kuzcrooge. "Go and buy it. Go and buy it, and tell them to bring it here, that I may give them the direction where to take it. Come back with the man, and I'll give you a shilling. Come back with him in less than five minutes and I'll give you half-a-crown."
The boy was off like a shot. He must have had a steady hand at a trigger who could have got a shot off half so fast.
"I'll send it to Bob Cratchit's!" whispered Kuzcrooge, rubbing his hands. "He shan't know who sends it. It's twice the size of Tiny Tim. Joe Miller never made such a joke as sending it to Bob's will be.
Kuzcrooge ran down to see the turkey. And wrote the address to the Cratchits' house and informed him to send it there. He then got dressed in his best clothes and walked down the street.
"Mr. Kuzcrooge?" said a familiar face, it was the two gentlemen who hoped to raise money for the less fortunate.
"Yes," said Kuzcrooge. "That is my name, and I fear it may not be pleasant to you. Allow me to ask your pardon. And will you have the goodness" – Kuzcrooge whispered in the gentleman's ear.
"Lord bless me!" cried the gentleman, as if his breath were taken away. "My dear Mr. Kuzcrooge, are you serious?"
"If you please," said Kuzcrooge. "Not a farting less. A great many back-payments are included in it, I assure you. Will you do me that favor?"
"My dear sir," said the other gentleman. "I don't know what to say to such munificence."
"Don't say anything please," retorted Kuzcrooge. "Come and see me. Will you come and see me?"
"I will" cried the gentleman.
"Thank You," said Kuzcrooge. "I am much obliged to you. I thank you fifty times. Bless you!"
That evening Kuzcrooge went to dinner with his nephew, Fred, just as Fred had asked him to.
The next day Bob was eighteen and a half minutes behind his time. When Bob finally arrived, Kuzcrooge muttered "What do you mean by coming here at this time of day?"
"I'm very sorry, sir," said Bob. "I am behind my time."
"You are?" repeated Kuzcrooge. "Yes. I think you are. Step this way if you please."
"It's only once a year, sir," pleaded Bob. "It shall not be repeated. I was making rather merry yesterday, sir."
"Now, I'll tell you what, my friend," said Kuzcrooge, "I am not going to stand for this sort of thing any longer. And therefore, and therefore I am about to raise your salary.
Merry Giftmas, Bob," said Kuzcrooge, with an earnestness that could not be mistaken. "A merrier Giftmas, Bob, my good fellow, then I have given you for many a year. I'll raise your salary, and endeavor to assist your struggling family, and we will discuss your affairs this afternoon, over a Giftmas bowl of smoking bishop, Bob. Make up the fires, and buy another coal-scuttle before you dot another I, Bob Cratchit!"
Kuzcrooge was better than his word. He did it all, and infinitely more; and to Tiny Tim, who did not die he was a second father. He became as good a friend, as good a master, and as good a man, as the good old city knew, or any other good old city, town, or borough, in the good old world. Some people laughed to see the alteration in him, but he let them laugh, and little heeded them; for he was wise enough to know that nothing ever happened on this globe, for good, at which some people did not have their fill of laughter in the outset; and knowing that such as these would be blind anyway, he thought it quite as well that they should wrinkle up their eyes in grins, as have the malady in less attractive forms. His own heart laughed: and that was quite enough for him.
He had no further encounters with Spirits, but lived upon the Total Abstinence Principle, ever afterwards; and it was always said to him, that he knew how to keep Giftmas well if any man alive possessed the knowledge. May that be truly said of us, and all of us! And so, as Tiny Tim observed God Bless Us, Every One!
THE END