1. |
Dead To Begin With
08:46
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Oh! But he was a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone, Scrooge!
A squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous old sinner!
Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire;
Secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster.
The cold within him froze his old features, made his eyes red, his thin lips blue;
And spoke out shrewdly in his grating voice.
He carried his own low temperature always about with him;
He iced his office in the dog-days; and didn’t thaw it one degree at Christmas.
I wish to be left alone.
Every idiot who goes about with Merry Christmas on his lips should be boiled with his own pudding,
And buried with a stake of holly through his heart.
I wish to be left alone.
I don’t make merry myself at Christmas.
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2. |
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Darkness is cheap, and Scrooge liked it.
There were Cains and Abels; Pharoah’s daughters, Queens of Sheba,
Angelic messengers descending through the air on clouds like feather beds,
Abrahams, Belshazzars, Apostles putting off to sea in butter-boats,
hundreds of figures, to attract his thoughts;
And yet the face of Marley,
seven years dead, came like the ancient Prophet’s rod, and swallowed up the whole.
Dreadful apparition, why do you trouble me?
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!
Slow!
No rest, no peace.
Business!
Business!
Business!
Business!
Captive, bound, and double-ironed
I wear the chain I forged in life
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3. |
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A solitary child, neglected by his friends, is left there still.
Scrooge said he knew it. And he sobbed.
Poor boy!
Spirit! show me no more!
Why do you delight to torture me?
Spirit! remove me from this place.
His face had not the harsh and rigid lines of his later years;
But it had begun to wear the signs of care and avarice.
There was an eager, greedy, restless motion in the eye,
Which showed the passion that had taken root,
And where are the shadow of the growing tree would fall.
I have seen your nobler aspirations fall off one by one,
Until the master-passion, Gain, engrosses you.
That which promised happiness when we were one in heart,
Is fraught with misery now that we are two.
An unprofitable dream
May you be happy in the life you have chosen!
But the relentless Ghost pinioned him in both his arms, and forced him to observe what happened next.
I was a boy here!
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4. |
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Look upon me!
Touch my robe!
I see a vacant seat in the poor chimney corner, and a crutch without an owner, carefully preserved.
If he be like to die, he had better do it, and decrease the surplus population.
Forbear that wicked cant until you have discovered What surplus is, and Where it is.
Will you decide what men shall live, what men shall die?
I’d give him a piece of my mind to feast upon, and I hope he’d have a good appetite for it.
Two children; wretched, abject, frightful, hideous, miserable.
They knelt down at its feet, and clung upon the outside of its garment.
“Oh man! Look here. Look, look down here!” exclaimed the ghost.
A stale and shriveled hand, like that of age, had pinched, and twisted them, and pulled them into shreds.
Where angels might have sat enthroned, devils lurked.
The boy is Ignorance. The girl is Want. Beware them both, and all of their degree.
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5. |
I Thought He'd Never Die
10:16
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A solemn Phantom, draped and hooded, coming, like a mist on the ground, towards him.
The Phantom slowly, gravely, silently approached.
For in the very air through which this sprit moved it seemed to scatter gloom and mystery.
What has he done with his money?
It’s likely to be a very cheap funeral.
Old Scratch has got his own at last, hey?
I wish it were a heavier judgement, and it should have been.
Open the bundle, Joe.
A pale light rising in the outer air, fell straight upon the bed;
And on it, plundered and bereft, unwatched, unwept, uncared for, was the body of this man.
Oh cold, cold, rigid, dreadful Death, set up thine altar here,
And dress it with such terrors as thou hast at thy command: for this is thy dominion!
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