|
"A merry Christmas, uncle! God save you!" cried a cheerful voice. "Bah!" said Scrooge. "Humbug!"
"At this festive season of the year, Mr Scrooge," said the gentleman, taking up a pen, "it is
more than usually desirable that we should make some slight provision for the poor and destitute,
who suffer greatly at the present time. ... We choose this time, because it is a time, of all
others, when Want is keenly felt, and Abundance rejoices."
"Out upon merry Christmas! What's Christmas time to you but a time for paying bills without
money; a time for finding yourself a year older, but not an hour richer... If I could work my
will," said Scrooge indignantly, "every idiot who goes about with 'Merry Christmas' upon his lips
should be boiled with his won pudding, and buried with a stake of holly through his heart. He
should!"
"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 than of grave about you, whatever you are!"
"Somehow he [Tim] gets thoughtful sitting by himself so much, and thinks the strangest things you
ever heard. He told me, coming home, that he hoped the people saw him in the church, because he
was a cripple, and it might be pleasant for them to remember upon Christmas Day, who made lame
beggars walk, and blind men see."
"There are some upon this earth of yours," returned the Spirit, "who lay claim to know us, and who do their deeds of passion, pride, ill-will, hatred, envy, bigotry, and selfishness in our name, who are as strange to us and all out kith and kin, as if they had never lived. Remember that, and charge their doings on themselves, not us."
"But I am sure that I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round...as a good
time; a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant 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."
"I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year."
"I am as light as a feather, I am as happy as an angel, I am as merry as a school-boy. I am as giddy as a drunken man. A merry Christmas to every-body! A happy New Year to all the world! "
...it was always said of him [Scrooge] that he knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive
possessed the knowledge. May that be truly said of us, and all of us!
"God bless us every one!" |
