Some Christmas Stories
by
Charles Dickens
Some Short Christmas Stories
A CHRISTMAS TREE
I
HAVE BEEN LOOKING ON, this evening, at a merry com
pany of children assembled round that pretty
German toy, a Christmas Tree. The tree was
planted in the middle of a great round table, and
towered high above their heads. It was brilliantly
lighted by a multitude of little tapers; and every-
where sparkled and glittered with bright objects.
There were rosy-cheeked dolls, hiding behind the
green leaves; and there were real watches (with
movable hands, at least, and an endless capacity of
being wound up) dangling from innumerable twigs;
there were French-polished tables, chairs, bed-
steads, wardrobes, eight-day clocks, and various
other articles of domestic furniture (wonderfully
made, in tin, at Wolverhampton), perched among the
boughs, as if in preparation for some fairy house-
keeping; there were jolly, broad-faced little men,
much more agreeable in appearance than many real
men—and no wonder, for their heads took off, and
showed them to be full of sugar-plums; there were
fiddles and drums; there were tambourines, books,
work-boxes, paint-boxes, sweetmeat-boxes, peep-
show boxes, and all kinds of boxes; there were trin-
kets for the elder girls, far brighter than any grown-
up gold and jewels; there were baskets and pincush-
ions in all devices; there were guns, swords, and
banners; there were witches standing in enchanted
rings of pasteboard, to tell fortunes; there were
teetotums, humming-tops, needle-cases, pen-wipers,
smelling-bottles, conversation-cards, bouquet-hold-
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Charles Dickens
ers; real fruit, made artificially dazzling with gold
leaf; imitation apples, pears, and walnuts, crammed
with surprises; in short, as a pretty child, before
me, delightedly whispered to another pretty child,
her bosom friend, “There was everything, and more.”
This motley collection of odd objects, clustering on
the tree like magic fruit, and flashing back the bright
looks directed towards it from every side—some of
the diamond-eyes admiring it were hardly on a level
with the table, and a few were languishing in timid
wonder on the bosoms of pretty mothers, aunts, and
nurses—made a lively realisation of the fancies of
childhood; and set me thinking how all the trees that
grow and all the things that come into existence on
the earth, have their wild adornments at that well-
remembered time.
Being now at home again, and alone, the only per-
son in the house awake, my thoughts are drawn
back, by a fascination which I do not care to resist,
to my own childhood. I begin to consider, what do we
all remember best upon the branches of the Christ-
mas Tree of our own young Christmas days, by which
we climbed to real life.
Straight, in the middle of the room, cramped in
the freedom of its growth by no encircling walls or
soon-reached ceiling, a shadowy tree arises; and,
looking up into the dreamy brightness of its top—
for I observe in this tree the singular property that
it appears to grow downward towards the earth—I
look into my youngest Christmas recollections!
All toys at first, I find. Up yonder, among the green
holly and red berries, is the Tumbler with his hands
in his pockets, who wouldn’t lie down, but whenever
he was put upon the floor, persisted in rolling his
fat body about, until he rolled himself still, and
brought those lobster eyes of his to bear upon me—
when I affected to laugh very much, but in my heart
of hearts was extremely doubtful of him. Close be-
side him is that infernal snuff-box, out of which there
sprang a demoniacal Counsellor in a black gown, with
an obnoxious head of hair, and a red cloth mouth,
wide open, who was not to be endured on any terms,
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Some Christmas Stories
but could not be put away either; for he used sud-
denly, in a highly magnified state, to fly out of Mam-
moth Snuff-boxes in dreams, when least expected.
Nor is the frog with cobbler’s wax on his tail, far
off; for there was no knowing where he wouldn’t
jump; and when he flew over the candle, and came
upon one’s hand with that spotted back—red on a
green ground—he was horrible. The cardboard lady
in a blue-silk skirt, who was stood up against the
candlestick to dance, and whom I see on the same
branch, was milder, and was beautiful; but I can’t
say as much for the larger cardboard man, who used
to be hung against the wall and pulled by a string;
there was a sinister expression in that nose of his;
and when he got his legs round his neck (which he
very often did), he was ghastly, and not a creature
to be alone with.
When did that dreadful Mask first look at me?
Who put it on, and why was I so frightened that the
sight of it is an era in my life? It is not a hideous
visage in itself; it is even meant to be droll, why then
were its stolid features so intolerable? Surely not
because it hid the wearer’s face. An apron would
have done as much; and though I should have pre-
ferred even the apron away, it would not have been
absolutely insupportable, like the mask. Was it the
immovability of the mask? The doll’s face was im-
movable, but I was not afraid of her. Perhaps that
fixed and set change coming over a real face, infused
into my quickened heart some remote suggestion
and dread of the universal change that is to come
on every face, and make it still? Nothing reconciled
me to it. No drummers, from whom proceeded a
melancholy chirping on the turning of a handle; no
regiment of soldiers, with a mute band, taken out of
a box, and fitted, one by one, upon a stiff and lazy
little set of lazy-tongs; no old woman, made of wires
and a brown-paper composition, cutting up a pie for
two small children; could give me a permanent com-
fort, for a long time. Nor was it any satisfaction to
be shown the Mask, and see that it was made of
paper, or to have it locked up and be assured that
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Charles Dickens
no one wore it. The mere recollection of that fixed
face, the mere knowledge of its existence anywhere,
was sufficient to awake me in the night all perspira-
tion and horror, with, “O I know it’s coming! O the
mask!”
I never wondered what the dear old donkey with
the panniers—there he is! was made of, then! His
hide was real to the touch, I recollect. And the great
black horse with the round red spots all over him—
the horse that I could even get upon—I never won-
dered what had brought him to that strange condi-
tion, or thought that such a horse was not commonly
seen at Newmarket. The four horses of no colour,
next to him, that went into the waggon of cheeses,
and could be taken out and stabled under the piano,
appear to have bits of fur-tippet for their tails, and
other bits for their manes, and to stand on pegs in-
stead of legs, but it was not so when they were
brought home for a Christmas present. They were
all right, then; neither was their harness unceremo-
niously nailed into their chests, as appears to be
the case now. The tinkling works of the music-cart,
I DID find out, to be made of quill tooth-picks and
wire; and I always thought that little tumbler in his
shirt sleeves, perpetually swarming up one side of a
wooden frame, and coming down, head foremost, on
the other, rather a weak-minded person—though
good-natured; but the Jacob’s Ladder, next him,
made of little squares of red wood, that went flap-
ping and clattering over one another, each develop-
ing a different picture, and the whole enlivened by
small bells, was a mighty marvel and a great delight.
Ah! The Doll’s house!—of which I was not propri-
etor, but where I visited. I don’t admire the Houses
of Parliament half so much as that stone-fronted
mansion with real glass windows, and door-steps,
and a real balcony—greener than I ever see now,
except at watering places; and even they afford but
a poor imitation. And though it did open all at once,
the entire house-front (which was a blow, I admit,
as cancelling the fiction of a staircase), it was but
to shut it up again, and I could believe. Even open,
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Some Christmas Stories
there were three distinct rooms in it: a sitting-room
and bed-room, elegantly furnished, and best of all, a
kitchen, with uncommonly soft fire-irons, a plentiful
assortment of diminutive utensils—oh, the warming-
pan!—and a tin man-cook in profile, who was always
going to fry two fish. What Barmecide justice have
I done to the noble feasts wherein the set of wooden
platters figured, each with its own peculiar delicacy,
as a ham or turkey, glued tight on to it, and gar-
nished with something green, which I recollect as
moss! Could all the Temperance Societies of these
later days, united, give me such a tea-drinking as I
have had through the means of yonder little set of
blue crockery, which really would hold liquid (it ran
out of the small wooden cask, I recollect, and tasted
of matches), and which made tea, nectar. And if the
two legs of the ineffectual little sugar-tongs did
tumble over one another, and want purpose, like
Punch’s hands, what does it matter? And if I did
once shriek out, as a poisoned child, and strike the
fashionable company with consternation, by reason
of having drunk a little teaspoon, inadvertently dis-
solved in too hot tea, I was never the worse for it,
except by a powder!
Upon the next branches of the tree, lower down,
hard by the green roller and miniature gardening-
tools, how thick the books begin to hang. Thin books,
in themselves, at first, but many of them, and with
deliciously smooth covers of bright red or green.
What fat black letters to begin with! “A was an ar-
cher, and shot at a frog.” Of course he was. He was
an apple-pie also, and there he is! He was a good
many things in his time, was A, and so were most of
his friends, except X, who had so little versatility,
that I never knew him to get beyond Xerxes or
Xantippe—like Y, who was always confined to a Yacht
or a Yew Tree; and Z condemned for ever to be a
Zebra or a Zany. But, now, the very tree itself
changes, and becomes a bean-stalk—the marvellous
bean-stalk up which Jack climbed to the Giant’s
house! And now, those dreadfully interesting,
double-headed giants, with their clubs over their
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Charles Dickens
shoulders, begin to stride along the boughs in a per-
fect throng, dragging knights and ladies home for
dinner by the hair of their heads. And Jack—how
noble, with his sword of sharpness, and his shoes of
swiftness! Again those old meditations come upon
me as I gaze up at him; and I debate within myself
whether there was more than one Jack (which I am
loth to believe possible), or only one genuine original
admirable Jack, who achieved all the recorded ex-
ploits.
Good for Christmas-time is the ruddy colour of the
cloak, in which—the tree making a forest of itself
for her to trip through, with her basket—Little Red
Riding-Hood comes to me one Christmas Eve to give
me information of the cruelty and treachery of that
dissembling Wolf who ate her grandmother, with-
out making any impression on his appetite, and then
ate her, after making that ferocious joke about his
teeth. She was my first love. I felt that if I could
have married Little Red Riding-Hood, I should have
known perfect bliss. But, it was not to be; and there
was nothing for it but to look out the Wolf in the
Noah’s Ark there, and put him late in the proces-
sion on the table, as a monster who was to be de-
graded. O the wonderful Noah’s Ark! It was not
found seaworthy when put in a washing-tub, and
the animals were crammed in at the roof, and needed
to have their legs well shaken down before they could
be got in, even there—-and then, ten to one but they
began to tumble out at the door, which was but im-
perfectly fastened with a wire latch—but what was
that against it! Consider the noble fly, a size or two
smaller than the elephant: the lady-bird, the but-
terfly—all triumphs of art! Consider the goose,
whose feet were so small, and whose balance was
so indifferent, that he usually tumbled forward, and
knocked down all the animal creation. Consider Noah
and his family, like idiotic tobacco-stoppers; and how
the leopard stuck to warm little fingers; and how
the tails of the larger animals used gradually to re-
solve themselves into frayed bits of string!
Hush! Again a forest, and somebody up in a tree—
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Some Christmas Stories
not Robin Hood, not Valentine, not the Yellow Dwarf
(I have passed him and all Mother Bunch’s wonders,
without mention), but an Eastern King with a glit-
tering scimitar and turban. By Allah! two Eastern
Kings, for I see another, looking over his shoulder!
Down upon the grass, at the tree’s foot, lies the full
length of a coal-black Giant, stretched asleep, with
his head in a lady’s lap; and near them is a glass
box, fastened with four locks of shining steel, in
which he keeps the lady prisoner when he is awake.
I see the four keys at his girdle now. The lady makes
signs to the two kings in the tree, who softly de-
scend. It is the setting-in of the bright Arabian
Nights.
Oh, now all common things become uncommon and
enchanted to me. All lamps are wonderful; all rings
are talismans. Common flower-pots are full of trea-
sure, with a little earth scattered on the top; trees
are for Ali Baba to hide in; beef-steaks are to throw
down into the Valley of Diamonds, that the precious
stones may stick to them, and be carried by the
eagles to their nests, whence the traders, with loud
cries, will scare them. Tarts are made, according to
the recipe of the Vizier’s son of Bussorah, who
turned pastrycook after he was set down in his
drawers at the gate of Damascus; cobblers are all
Mustaphas, and in the habit of sewing up people
cut into four pieces, to whom they are taken blind-
fold.
Any iron ring let into stone is the entrance to a
cave which only waits for the magician, and the little
fire, and the necromancy, that will make the earth
shake. All the dates imported come from the same
tree as that unlucky date, with whose shell the mer-
chant knocked out the eye of the genie’s invisible
son. All olives are of the stock of that fresh fruit,
concerning which the Commander of the Faithful
overheard the boy conduct the fictitious trial of the
fraudulent olive merchant; all apples are akin to the
apple purchased (with two others) from the Sultan’s
gardener for three sequins, and which the tall black
slave stole from the child. All dogs are associated
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Charles Dickens
with the dog, really a transformed man, who jumped
upon the baker’s counter, and put his paw on the
piece of bad money. All rice recalls the rice which
the awful lady, who was a ghoule, could only peck by
grains, because of her nightly feasts in the burial-
place. My very rocking-horse,—there he is, with his
nostrils turned completely inside-out, indicative of
Blood!—should have a peg in his neck, by virtue
thereof to fly away with me, as the wooden horse
did with the Prince of Persia, in the sight of all his
father’s Court.
Yes, on every object that I recognise among those
upper branches of my Christmas Tree, I see this fairy
light! When I wake in bed, at daybreak, on the cold,
dark, winter mornings, the white snow dimly beheld,
outside, through the frost on the window-pane, I
hear Dinarzade. “Sister, sister, if you are yet awake,
I pray you finish the history of the Young King of
the Black Islands.” Scheherazade replies, “If my lord
the Sultan will suffer me to live another day, sister,
I will not only finish that, but tell you a more won-
derful story yet.” Then, the gracious Sultan goes out,
giving no orders for the execution, and we all three
breathe again.
At this height of my tree I begin to see, cowering
among the leaves--it may be born of turkey, or of
pudding, or mince pie, or of these many fancies,
jumbled with Robinson Crusoe on his desert island,
Philip Quarll among the monkeys, Sandford and
Merton with Mr. Barlow, Mother Bunch, and the
Mask—or it may be the result of indigestion, assisted
by imagination and over-doctoring—a prodigious
nightmare. It is so exceedingly indistinct, that I don’t
know why it’s frightful—but I know it is. I can only
make out that it is an immense array of shapeless
things, which appear to be planted on a vast exag-
geration of the lazy-tongs that used to bear the toy
soldiers, and to be slowly coming close to my eyes,
and receding to an immeasurable distance. When it
comes closest, it is worse. In connection with it I
descry remembrances of winter nights incredibly
long; of being sent early to bed, as a punishment for
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Some Christmas Stories
some small offence, and waking in two hours, with a
sensation of having been asleep two nights; of the
laden hopelessness of morning ever dawning; and
the oppression of a weight of remorse.
And now, I see a wonderful row of little lights rise
smoothly out of the ground, before a vast green cur-
tain. Now, a bell rings—a magic bell, which still
sounds in my ears unlike all other bells—and music
plays, amidst a buzz of voices, and a fragrant smell
of orange-peel and oil. Anon, the magic bell com-
mands the music to cease, and the great green cur-
tain rolls itself up majestically, and The Play begins!
The devoted dog of Montargis avenges the death of
his master, foully murdered in the Forest of Bondy;
and a humorous Peasant with a red nose and a very
little hat, whom I take from this hour forth to my
bosom as a friend (I think he was a Waiter or an
Hostler at a village Inn, but many years have passed
since he and I have met), remarks that the
sassigassity of that dog is indeed surprising; and
evermore this jocular conceit will live in my remem-
brance fresh and unfading, overtopping all possible
jokes, unto the end of time. Or now, I learn with bit-
ter tears how poor Jane Shore, dressed all in white,
and with her brown hair hanging down, went starv-
ing through the streets; or how George Barnwell
killed the worthiest uncle that ever man had, and
was afterwards so sorry for it that he ought to have
been let off. Comes swift to comfort me, the Panto-
mime—stupendous Phenomenon!—when clowns are
shot from loaded mortars into the great chandelier,
bright constellation that it is; when Harlequins, cov-
ered all over with scales of pure gold, twist and
sparkle, like amazing fish; when Pantaloon (whom I
deem it no irreverence to compare in my own mind
to my grandfather) puts red-hot pokers in his pocket,
and cries “Here’s somebody coming!” or taxes the
Clown with petty larceny, by saying, “Now, I sawed
you do it!” when Everything is capable, with the
greatest ease, of being changed into Anything; and
“Nothing is, but thinking makes it so.” Now, too, I
perceive my first experience of the dreary sensa-
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Charles Dickens
tion—often to return in after-life—of being unable,
next day, to get back to the dull, settled world; of
wanting to live for ever in the bright atmosphere I
have quitted; of doting on the little Fairy, with the
wand like a celestial Barber’s Pole, and pining for a
Fairy immortality along with her. Ah, she comes
back, in many shapes, as my eye wanders down the
branches of my Christmas Tree, and goes as often,
and has never yet stayed by me!
Out of this delight springs the toy-theatre,—there
it is, with its familiar proscenium, and ladies in feath-
ers, in the boxes!—and all its attendant occupation
with paste and glue, and gum, and water colours, in
the getting-up of The Miller and his Men, and Eliza-
beth, or the Exile of Siberia. In spite of a few beset-
ting accidents and failures (particularly an unrea-
sonable disposition in the respectable Kelmar, and
some others, to become faint in the legs, and double
up, at exciting points of the drama), a teeming world
of fancies so suggestive and all-embracing, that, far
below it on my Christmas Tree, I see dark, dirty, real
Theatres in the day-time, adorned with these asso-
ciations as with the freshest garlands of the rarest
flowers, and charming me yet.
But hark! The Waits are playing, and they break
my childish sleep! What images do I associate with
the Christmas music as I see them set forth on the
Christmas Tree? Known before all the others, keep-
ing far apart from all the others, they gather round
my little bed. An angel, speaking to a group of shep-
herds in a field; some travellers, with eyes uplifted,
following a star; a baby in a manger; a child in a
spacious temple, talking with grave men; a solemn
figure, with a mild and beautiful face, raising a dead
girl by the hand; again, near a city gate, calling back
the son of a widow, on his bier, to life; a crowd of
people looking through the opened roof of a cham-
ber where he sits, and letting down a sick person on
a bed, with ropes; the same, in a tempest, walking
on the water to a ship; again, on a sea-shore, teach-
ing a great multitude; again, with a child upon his
knee, and other children round; again, restoring
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Some Christmas Stories
sight to the blind, speech to the dumb, hearing to
the deaf, health to the sick, strength to the lame,
knowledge to the ignorant; again, dying upon a
Cross, watched by armed soldiers, a thick darkness
coming on, the earth beginning to shake, and only
one voice heard, “Forgive them, for they know not
what they do.”
Still, on the lower and maturer branches of the Tree,
Christmas associations cluster thick. School-books
shut up; Ovid and Virgil silenced; the Rule of Three,
with its cool impertinent inquiries, long disposed of;
Terence and Plautus acted no more, in an arena of
huddled desks and forms, all chipped, and notched,
and inked; cricket-bats, stumps, and balls, left higher
up, with the smell of trodden grass and the softened
noise of shouts in the evening air; the tree is still fresh,
still gay. If I no more come home at Christmas-time,
there will be boys and girls (thank Heaven! ) while
the World lasts; and they do! Yonder they dance and
play upon the branches of my Tree, God bless them,
merrily, and my heart dancesand plays too!
And I do come home at Christmas. We all do, or we
all should. We all come home, or ought to come home,
for a short holiday—the longer, the better—from the
great boarding-school, where we are for ever work-
ing at our arithmetical slates, to take, and give a
rest. As to going a visiting, where can we not go, if
we will; where have we not been, when we would;
starting our fancy from our Christmas Tree!
Away into the winter prospect. There are many
such upon the tree! On, by low-lying, misty grounds,
through fens and fogs, up long hills, winding dark
as caverns between thick plantations, almost shut-
ting out the sparkling stars; so, out on broad
heights, until we stop at last, with sudden silence,
at an avenue. The gate-bell has a deep, half-awful
sound in the frosty air; the gate swings open on its
hinges; and, as we drive up to a great house, the
glancing lights grow larger in the windows, and the
opposing rows of trees seem to fall solemnly back
on either side, to give us place. At intervals, all day,
a frightened hare has shot across this whitened
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Charles Dickens
turf; or the distant clatter of a herd of deer tram-
pling the hard frost, has, for the minute, crushed
the silence too. Their watchful eyes beneath the fern
may be shining now, if we could see them, like the
icy dewdrops on the leaves; but they are still, and
all is still. And so, the lights growing larger, and the
trees falling back before us, and closing up again
behind us, as if to forbid retreat, we come to the
house.
There is probably a smell of roasted chestnuts and
other good comfortable things all the time, for we
are telling Winter Stories—Ghost Stories, or more
shame for us—round the Christmas fire; and we have
never stirred, except to draw a little nearer to it.
But, no matter for that. We came to the house, and
it is an old house, full of great chimneys where wood
is burnt on ancient dogs upon the hearth, and grim
portraits (some of them with grim legends, too) lower
distrustfully from the oaken panels of the walls. We
are a middle-aged nobleman, and we make a gener-
ous supper with our host and hostess and their
guests—it being Christmas-time, and the old house
full of company—and then we go to bed. Our room is
a very old room. It is hung with tapestry. We don’t
like the portrait of a cavalier in green, over the fire-
place. There are great black beams in the ceiling,
and there is a great black bedstead, supported at
the foot by two great black figures, who seem to
have come off a couple of tombs in the old baronial
church in the park, for our particular accommoda-
tion. But, we are not a superstitious nobleman, and
we don’t mind. Well! we dismiss our servant, lock
the door, and sit before the fire in our dressing-gown,
musing about a great many things. At length we go
to bed. Well! we can’t sleep. We toss and tumble,
and can’t sleep. The embers on the hearth burn fit-
fully and make the room look ghostly. We can’t help
peeping out over the counterpane, at the two black
figures and the cavalier—that wicked-looking cava-
lier—in green. In the flickering light they seem to
advance and retire: which, though we are not by any
means a superstitious nobleman, is not agreeable.
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Some Christmas Stories
Well! we get nervous—more and more nervous. We
say “This is very foolish, but we can’t stand this;
we’ll pretend to be ill, and knock up somebody.” Well!
we are just going to do it, when the locked door
opens, and there comes in a young woman, deadly
pale, and with long fair hair, who glides to the fire,
and sits down in the chair we have left there, wring-
ing her hands. Then, we notice that her clothes are
wet. Our tongue cleaves to the roof of our mouth,
and we can’t speak; but, we observe her accurately.
Her clothes are wet; her long hair is dabbled with
moist mud; she is dressed in the fashion of two hun-
dred years ago; and she has at her girdle a bunch of
rusty keys. Well! there she sits, and we can’t even
faint, we are in such a state about it. Presently she
gets up, and tries all the locks in the room with the
rusty keys, which won’t fit one of them; then, she
fixes her eyes on the portrait of the cavalier in green,
and says, in a low, terrible voice, “The stags know
it!” After that, she wrings her hands again, passes
the bedside, and goes out at the door. We hurry on
our dressing-gown, seize our pistols (we always
travel with pistols), and are following, when we find
the door locked. We turn the key, look out into the
dark gallery; no one there. We wander away, and
try to find our servant. Can’t be done. We pace the
gallery till daybreak; then return to our deserted
room, fall asleep, and are awakened by our servant
(nothing ever haunts him) and the shining sun. Well!
we make a wretched breakfast, and all the company
say we look queer. After breakfast, we go over the
house with our host, and then we take him to the
portrait of the cavalier in green, and then it all comes
out. He was false to a young housekeeper once at-
tached to that family, and famous for her beauty,
who drowned herself in a pond, and whose body was
discovered, after a long time, because the stags
refused to drink of the water. Since which, it has
been whispered that she traverses the house at
midnight (but goes especially to that room where
the cavalier in green was wont to sleep), trying the
old locks with the rusty keys. Well! we tell our host
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of what we have seen, and a shade comes over his
features, and he begs it may be hushed up; and so it
is. But, it’s all true; and we said so, before we died
(we are dead now) to many responsible people.
There is no end to the old houses, with resounding
galleries, and dismal state-bedchambers, and
haunted wings shut up for many years, through
which we may ramble, with an agreeable creeping
up our back, and encounter any number of ghosts,
but (it is worthy of remark perhaps) reducible to a
very few general types and classes; for, ghosts have
little originality, and “walk” in a beaten track. Thus,
it comes to pass, that a certain room in a certain
old hall, where a certain bad lord, baronet, knight,
or gentleman, shot himself, has certain planks in the
floor from which the blood will not be taken out. You
may scrape and scrape, as the present owner has
done, or plane and plane, as his father did, or scrub
and scrub, as his grandfather did, or burn and burn
with strong acids, as his great-grandfather did, but,
there the blood will still be—no redder and no paler—
no more and no less—always just the same. Thus, in
such another house there is a haunted door, that
never will keep open; or another door that never will
keep shut, or a haunted sound of a spinning-wheel,
or a hammer, or a footstep, or a cry, or a sigh, or a
horse’s tramp, or the rattling of a chain. Or else,
there is a turret-clock, which, at the midnight hour,
strikes thirteen when the head of the family is go-
ing to die; or a shadowy, immovable black carriage
which at such a time is always seen by somebody,
waiting near the great gates in the stable-yard. Or
thus, it came to pass how Lady Mary went to pay a
visit at a large wild house in the Scottish Highlands,
and, being fatigued with her long journey, retired to
bed early, and innocently said, next morning, at the
breakfast-table, “How odd, to have so late a party
last night, in this remote place, and not to tell me of
it, before I went to bed!” Then, every one asked Lady
Mary what she meant? Then, Lady Mary replied,
“Why, all night long, the carriages were driving
round and round the terrace, underneath my win-
18
Some Christmas Stories
dow!” Then, the owner of the house turned pale, and
so did his Lady, and Charles Macdoodle of Macdoodle
signed to Lady Mary to say no more, and every one
was silent. After breakfast, Charles Macdoodle told
Lady Mary that it was a tradition in the family that
those rumbling carriages on the terrace betokened
death. And so it proved, for, two months afterwards,
the Lady of the mansion died. And Lady Mary, who
was a Maid of Honour at Court, often told this story
to the old Queen Charlotte; by this token that the
old King always said, “Eh, eh? What, what? Ghosts,
ghosts? No such thing, no such thing!” And never
left off saying so, until he went to bed.
Or, a friend of somebody’s whom most of us know,
when he was a young man at college, had a particu-
lar friend, with whom he made the compact that, if
it were possible for the Spirit to return to this earth
after its separation from the body, he of the twain
who first died, should reappear to the other. In
course of time, this compact was forgotten by our
friend; the two young men having progressed in life,
and taken diverging paths that were wide asunder.
But, one night, many years afterwards, our friend
being in the North of England, and staying for the
night in an inn, on the Yorkshire Moors, happened
to look out of bed; and there, in the moonlight, lean-
ing on a bureau near the window, steadfastly re-
garding him, saw his old college friend! The appear-
ance being solemnly addressed, replied, in a kind of
whisper, but very audibly, “Do not come near me. I
am dead. I am here to redeem my promise. I come
from another world, but may not disclose its se-
crets!” Then, the whole form becoming paler, melted,
as it were, into the moonlight, and faded away.
Or, there was the daughter of the first occupier of
the picturesque Elizabethan house, so famous in our
neighbourhood. You have heard about her? No! Why,
she went out one summer evening at twilight, when
she was a beautiful girl, just seventeen years of age,
to gather flowers in the garden; and presently came
running, terrified, into the hall to her father, say-
ing, “Oh, dear father, I have met myself!” He took
19
Charles Dickens
her in his arms, and told her it was fancy, but she
said, “Oh no! I met myself in the broad walk, and I
was pale and gathering withered flowers, and I
turned my head, and held them up!” And, that night,
she died; and a picture of her story was begun,
though never finished, and they say it is somewhere
in the house to this day, with its face to the wall.
Or, the uncle of my brother’s wife was riding home
on horseback, one mellow evening at sunset, when,
in a green lane close to his own house, he saw a man
standing before him, in the very centre of a narrow
way. “Why does that man in the cloak stand there!”
he thought. “Does he want me to ride over him?”
But the figure never moved. He felt a strange sen-
sation at seeing it so still, but slackened his trot
and rode forward. When he was so close to it, as
almost to touch it with his stirrup, his horse shied,
and the figure glided up the bank, in a curious, un-
earthly manner—backward, and without seeming to
use its feet—and was gone. The uncle of my brother’s
wife, exclaiming, “Good Heaven! It’s my cousin Harry,
from Bombay!” put spurs to his horse, which was
suddenly in a profuse sweat, and, wondering at such
strange behaviour, dashed round to the front of his
house. There, he saw the same figure, just passing
in at the long French window of the drawing-room,
opening on the ground. He threw his bridle to a ser-
vant, and hastened in after it. His sister was sit-
ting there, alone. “Alice, where’s my cousin Harry?”
“Your cousin Harry, John?” “Yes. From Bombay. I met
him in the lane just now, and saw him enter here,
this instant.” Not a creature had been seen by any
one; and in that hour and minute, as it afterwards
appeared, this cousin died in India.
Or, it was a certain sensible old maiden lady, who
died at ninety-nine, and retained her faculties to the
last, who really did see the Orphan Boy; a story which
has often been incorrectly told, but, of which the
real truth is this—because it is, in fact, a story be-
longing to our family—and she was a connexion of
our family. When she was about forty years of age,
and still an uncommonly fine woman (her lover died
20
Some Christmas Stories
young, which was the reason why she never mar-
ried, though she had many offers), she went to stay
at a place in Kent, which her brother, an Indian-
Merchant, had newly bought. There was a story that
this place had once been held in trust by the guard-
ian of a young boy; who was himself the next heir,
and who killed the young boy by harsh and cruel
treatment. She knew nothing of that. It has been
said that there was a Cage in her bedroom in which
the guardian used to put the boy. There was no such
thing. There was only a closet. She went to bed, made
no alarm whatever in the night, and in the morning
said composedly to her maid when she came in, “Who
is the pretty forlorn-looking child who has been peep-
ing out of that closet all night?” The maid replied by
giving a loud scream, and instantly decamping. She
was surprised; but she was a woman of remarkable
strength of mind, and she dressed herself and went
downstairs, and closeted herself with her brother.
“Now, Walter,” she said, “I have been disturbed all
night by a pretty, forlorn-looking boy, who has been
constantly peeping out of that closet in my room,
which I can’t open. This is some trick.” “I am afraid
not, Charlotte,” said he, “for it is the legend of the
house. It is the Orphan Boy. What did he do?” “He
opened the door softly,” said she, “and peeped out.
Sometimes, he came a step or two into the room.
Then, I called to him, to encourage him, and he
shrunk, and shuddered, and crept in again, and shut
the door.” “The closet has no communication, Char-
lotte,” said her brother, “with any other part of the
house, and it’s nailed up.” This was undeniably true,
and it took two carpenters a whole forenoon to get
it open, for examination. Then, she was satisfied that
she had seen the Orphan Boy. But, the wild and ter-
rible part of the story is, that he was also seen by
three of her brother’s sons, in succession, who all
died young. On the occasion of each child being taken
ill, he came home in a heat, twelve hours before, and
said, Oh, Mamma, he had been playing under a par-
ticular oak-tree, in a certain meadow, with a strange
boy—a pretty, forlorn-looking boy, who was very
21
Charles Dickens
timid, and made signs! From fatal experience, the
parents came to know that this was the Orphan Boy,
and that the course of that child whom he chose for
his little playmate was surely run.
Legion is the name of the German castles, where
we sit up alone to wait for the Spectre—where we
are shown into a room, made comparatively cheer-
ful for our reception—where we glance round at the
shadows, thrown on the blank walls by the crack-
ling fire—where we feel very lonely when the village
innkeeper and his pretty daughter have retired, af-
ter laying down a fresh store of wood upon the
hearth, and setting forth on the small table such
supper-cheer as a cold roast capon, bread, grapes,
and a flask of old Rhine wine—where the reverber-
ating doors close on their retreat, one after another,
like so many peals of sullen thunder—and where,
about the small hours of the night, we come into
the knowledge of divers supernatural mysteries.
Legion is the name of the haunted German students,
in whose society we draw yet nearer to the fire, while
the schoolboy in the corner opens his eyes wide and
round, and flies off the footstool he has chosen for
his seat, when the door accidentally blows open.
Vast is the crop of such fruit, shining on our Christ-
mas Tree; in blossom, almost at the very top; ripen-
ing all down the boughs!
Among the later toys and fancies hanging there—
as idle often and less pure—be the images once as-
sociated with the sweet old Waits, the softened
music in the night, ever unalterable! Encircled by
the social thoughts of Christmas-time, still let the
benignant figure of my childhood stand unchanged!
In every cheerful image and suggestion that the
season brings, may the bright star that rested
above the poor roof, be the star of all the Christian
World! A moment’s pause, O vanishing tree, of which
the lower boughs are dark to me as yet, and let me
look once more! I know there are blank spaces on
thy branches, where eyes that I have loved have
shone and smiled; from which they are departed.
But, far above, I see the raiser of the dead girl, and
22
Some Christmas Stories
the Widow’s Son; and God is good! If Age be hiding
for me in the unseen portion of thy downward
growth, O may I, with a grey head, turn a child’s
heart to that figure yet, and a child’s trustfulness
and confidence!
Now, the tree is decorated with bright merriment,
and song, and dance, and cheerfulness. And they
are welcome. Innocent and welcome be they ever
held, beneath the branches of the Christmas Tree,
which cast no gloomy shadow! But, as it sinks into
the ground, I hear a whisper going through the
leaves. “This, in commemoration of the law of love
and kindness, mercy and compassion. This, in re-
membrance of Me!”
WHAT CHRISTMAS IS
AS WE GROW OLDER
T
IME WAS, WITH MOST of us, when Christmas Day
encircling all our limited world like a magic
ring, left nothing out for us to miss or seek;
bound together all our home enjoyments, affections,
and hopes; grouped everything and every one around
the Christmas fire; and made the little picture shin-
ing in our bright young eyes, complete.
Time came, perhaps, all so soon, when our thoughts
over-leaped that narrow boundary; when there was
some one (very dear, we thought then, very beauti-
ful, and absolutely perfect) wanting to the fulness
of our happiness; when we were wanting too (or we
thought so, which did just as well) at the Christmas
hearth by which that some one sat; and when we
intertwined with every wreath and garland of our
life that some one’s name.
That was the time for the bright visionary Christ-
mases which have long arisen from us to show
23
Charles Dickens
faintly, after summer rain, in the palest edges of
the rainbow! That was the time for the beatified
enjoyment of the things that were to be, and never
were, and yet the things that were so real in our
resolute hope that it would be hard to say, now, what
realities achieved since, have been stronger!
What! Did that Christmas never really come when
we and the priceless pearl who was our young choice
were received, after the happiest of totally impos-
sible marriages, by the two united families previ-
ously at daggers—drawn on our account? When
brothers and sisters-in-law who had always been
rather cool to us before our relationship was ef-
fected, perfectly doted on us, and when fathers and
mothers overwhelmed us with unlimited incomes?
Was that Christmas dinner never really eaten, af-
ter which we arose, and generously and eloquently
rendered honour to our late rival, present in the com-
pany, then and there exchanging friendship and for-
giveness, and founding an attachment, not to be
surpassed in Greek or Roman story, which subsisted
until death? Has that same rival long ceased to care
for that same priceless pearl, and married for
money, and become usurious? Above all, do we re-
ally know, now, that we should probably have been
miserable if we had won and worn the pearl, and
that we are better without her?
That Christmas when we had recently achieved
so much fame; when we had been carried in triumph
somewhere, for doing something great and good;
when we had won an honoured and ennobled name,
and arrived and were received at home in a shower
of tears of joy; is it possible that that Christmas
has not come yet?
And is our life here, at the best, so constituted
that, pausing as we advance at such a noticeable
mile-stone in the track as this great birthday, we
look back on the things that never were, as natu-
rally and full as gravely as on the things that have
been and are gone, or have been and still are? If it
be so, and so it seems to be, must we come to the
conclusion that life is little better than a dream, and
24
Some Christmas Stories
little worth the loves and strivings that we crowd
into it?
No! Far be such miscalled philosophy from us, dear
Reader, on Christmas Day! Nearer and closer to our
hearts be the Christmas spirit, which is the spirit
of active usefulness, perseverance, cheerful dis-
charge of duty, kindness and forbearance! It is in
the last virtues especially, that we are, or should
be, strengthened by the unaccomplished visions of
our youth; for, who shall say that they are not our
teachers to deal gently even with the impalpable
nothings of the earth!
Therefore, as we grow older, let us be more thank-
ful that the circle of our Christmas associations and
of the lessons that they bring, expands! Let us wel-
come every one of them, and summon them to take
their places by the Christmas hearth.
Welcome, old aspirations, glittering creatures of
an ardent fancy, to your shelter underneath the
holly! We know you, and have not outlived you yet.
Welcome, old projects and old loves, however fleet-
ing, to your nooks among the steadier lights that
burn around us. Welcome, all that was ever real to
our hearts; and for the earnestness that made you
real, thanks to Heaven! Do we build no Christmas
castles in the clouds now? Let our thoughts, flut-
tering like butterflies among these flowers of chil-
dren, bear witness! Before this boy, there stretches
out a Future, brighter than we ever looked on in our
old romantic time, but bright with honour and with
truth. Around this little head on which the sunny
curls lie heaped, the graces sport, as prettily, as
airily, as when there was no scythe within the reach
of Time to shear away the curls of our first-love. Upon
another girl’s face near it—placider but smiling
bright—a quiet and contented little face, we see
Home fairly written. Shining from the word, as rays
shine from a star, we see how, when our graves are
old, other hopes than ours are young, other hearts
than ours are moved; how other ways are smoothed;
how other happiness blooms, ripens, and decays—
no, not decays, for other homes and other bands of
25
Charles Dickens
children, not yet in being nor for ages yet to be, arise,
and bloom and ripen to the end of all!
Welcome, everything! Welcome, alike what has
been, and what never was, and what we hope may
be, to your shelter underneath the holly, to your
places round the Christmas fire, where what is sits
open-hearted! In yonder shadow, do we see obtrud-
ing furtively upon the blaze, an enemy’s face? By
Christmas Day we do forgive him! If the injury he
has done us may admit of such companionship, let
him come here and take his place. If otherwise, un-
happily, let him go hence, assured that we will never
injure nor accuse him.
On this day we shut out Nothing!
“Pause,” says a low voice. “Nothing? Think!”
“On Christmas Day, we will shut out from our fire-
side, Nothing.”
“Not the shadow of a vast City where the with-
ered leaves are lying deep?” the voice replies. “Not
the shadow that darkens the whole globe? Not the
shadow of the City of the Dead?”
Not even that. Of all days in the year, we will turn
our faces towards that City upon Christmas Day,
and from its silent hosts bring those we loved, among
us. City of the Dead, in the blessed name wherein
we are gathered together at this time, and in the
Presence that is here among us according to the
promise, we will receive, and not dismiss, thy people
who are dear to us!
Yes. We can look upon these children angels that
alight, so solemnly, so beautifully among the living
children by the fire, and can bear to think how they
departed from us. Entertaining angels unawares,
as the Patriarchs did, the playful children are un-
conscious of their guests; but we can see them—can
see a radiant arm around one favourite neck, as if
there were a tempting of that child away. Among
the celestial figures there is one, a poor misshapen
boy on earth, of a glorious beauty now, of whom his
dying mother said it grieved her much to leave him
here, alone, for so many years as it was likely would
elapse before he came to her—being such a little
26
Some Christmas Stories
child. But he went quickly, and was laid upon her
breast, and in her hand she leads him.
There was a gallant boy, who fell, far away, upon a
burning sand beneath a burning sun, and said, “Tell
them at home, with my last love, how much I could
have wished to kiss them once, but that I died con-
tented and had done my duty!” Or there was an-
other, over whom they read the words, “Therefore
we commit his body to the deep,” and so consigned
him to the lonely ocean and sailed on. Or there was
another, who lay down to his rest in the dark shadow
of great forests, and, on earth, awoke no more. O
shall they not, from sand and sea and forest, be
brought home at such a time!
There was a dear girl—almost a woman—never to
be one—who made a mourning Christmas in a house
of joy, and went her trackless way to the silent City.
Do we recollect her, worn out, faintly whispering
what could not be heard, and falling into that last
sleep for weariness? O look upon her now! O look
upon her beauty, her serenity, her changeless youth,
her happiness! The daughter of Jairus was recalled
to life, to die; but she, more blest, has heard the same
voice, saying unto her, “Arise for ever!”
We had a friend who was our friend from early
days, with whom we often pictured the changes that
were to come upon our lives, and merrily imagined
how we would speak, and walk, and think, and talk,
when we came to be old. His destined habitation in
the City of the Dead received him in his prime. Shall
he be shut out from our Christmas remembrance?
Would his love have so excluded us? Lost friend, lost
child, lost parent, sister, brother, husband, wife, we
will not so discard you! You shall hold your cherished
places in our Christmas hearts, and by our Christ-
mas fires; and in the season of immortal hope, and
on the birthday of immortal mercy, we will shut out
Nothing!
The winter sun goes down over town and village;
on the sea it makes a rosy path, as if the Sacred
tread were fresh upon the water. A few more mo-
ments, and it sinks, and night comes on, and lights
27
Charles Dickens
begin to sparkle in the prospect. On the hill-side be-
yond the shapelessly-diffused town, and in the quiet
keeping of the trees that gird the village-steeple,
remembrances are cut in stone, planted in common
flowers, growing in grass, entwined with lowly
brambles around many a mound of earth. In town
and village, there are doors and windows closed
against the weather, there are flaming logs heaped
high, there are joyful faces, there is healthy music
of voices. Be all ungentleness and harm excluded
from the temples of the Household Gods, but be
those remembrances admitted with tender encour-
agement! They are of the time and all its comfort-
ing and peaceful reassurances; and of the history
that re-united even upon earth the living and the
dead; and of the broad beneficence and goodness
that too many men have tried to tear to narrow
shreds.
THE POOR RELATION’S STORY
H
E WAS VERY RELUCTANT to take precedence of
so many respected members of the family,
by beginning the round of stories they were
to relate as they sat in a goodly circle by the Christ-
mas fire; and he modestly suggested that it would
be more correct if “John our esteemed host” (whose
health he begged to drink) would have the kindness
to begin. For as to himself, he said, he was so little
used to lead the way that really— But as they all
cried out here, that he must begin, and agreed with
one voice that he might, could, would, and should
begin, he left off rubbing his hands, and took his legs
out from under his armchair, and did begin.
I have no doubt (said the poor relation) that I shall
surprise the assembled members of our family, and
particularly John our esteemed host to whom we
are so much indebted for the great hospitality with
which he has this day entertained us, by the con-
fession I am going to make. But, if you do me the
28
Some Christmas Stories
honour to be surprised at anything that falls from
a person so unimportant in the family as I am, I can
only say that I shall be scrupulously accurate in all
I relate.
I am not what I am supposed to be. I am quite an-
other thing. Perhaps before I go further, I had bet-
ter glance at what I am supposed to be.
It is supposed, unless I mistake—the assembled
members of our family will correct me if I do, which
is very likely (here the poor relation looked mildly
about him for contradiction); that I am nobody’s
enemy but my own. That I never met with any par-
ticular success in anything. That I failed in business
because I was unbusiness-like and credulous—in not
being prepared for the interested designs of my
partner. That I failed in love, because I was ridicu-
lously trustful—in thinking it impossible that
Christiana could deceive me. That I failed in my ex-
pectations from my uncle Chill, on account of not
being as sharp as he could have wished in worldly
matters. That, through life, I have been rather put
upon and disappointed in a general way. That I am
at present a bachelor of between fifty-nine and sixty
years of age, living on a limited income in the form
of a quarterly allowance, to which I see that John
our esteemed host wishes me to make no further
allusion.
The supposition as to my present pursuits and hab-
its is to the following effect.
I live in a lodging in the Clapham Road—a very clean
back room, in a very respectable house—where I am
expected not to be at home in the day-time, unless
poorly; and which I usually leave in the morning at
nine o’clock, on pretence of going to business. I take
my breakfast—my roll and butter, and my half-pint
of coffee—at the old-established coffee-shop near
Westminster Bridge; and then I go into the City—I
don’t know why—and sit in Garraway’s Coffee House,
and on ‘Change, and walk about, and look into a few
offices and counting-houses where some of my rela-
tions or acquaintance are so good as to tolerate me,
and where I stand by the fire if the weather hap-
29
Charles Dickens
pens to be cold. I get through the day in this way
until five o’clock, and then I dine: at a cost, on the
average, of one and threepence. Having still a little
money to spend on my evening’s entertainment, I
look into the old-established coffee-shop as I go
home, and take my cup of tea, and perhaps my bit of
toast. So, as the large hand of the clock makes its
way round to the morning hour again, I make my way
round to the Clapham Road again, and go to bed
when I get to my lodging—fire being expensive, and
being objected to by the family on account of its giv-
ing trouble and making a dirt.
Sometimes, one of my relations or acquaintances
is so obliging as to ask me to dinner. Those are holi-
day occasions, and then I generally walk in the Park.
I am a solitary man, and seldom walk with anybody.
Not that I am avoided because I am shabby; for I
am not at all shabby, having always a very good suit
of black on (or rather Oxford mixture, which has the
appearance of black and wears much better); but I
have got into a habit of speaking low, and being
rather silent, and my spirits are not high, and I am
sensible that I am not an attractive companion.
The only exception to this general rule is the child
of my first cousin, Little Frank. I have a particular
affection for that child, and he takes very kindly to
me. He is a diffident boy by nature; and in a crowd
he is soon run over, as I may say, and forgotten. He
and I, however, get on exceedingly well. I have a fancy
that the poor child will in time succeed to my pecu-
liar position in the family. We talk but little; still, we
understand each other. We walk about, hand in
hand; and without much speaking he knows what I
mean, and I know what he means. When he was very
little indeed, I used to take him to the windows of
the toy-shops, and show him the toys inside. It is
surprising how soon he found out that I would have
made him a great many presents if I had been in
circumstances to do it.
Little Frank and I go and look at the outside of the
Monument—he is very fond of the Monument—and
at the Bridges, and at all the sights that are free.
30
Some Christmas Stories
On two of my birthdays, we have dined on e-la-mode
beef, and gone at half-price to the play, and been
deeply interested. I was once walking with him in
Lombard Street, which we often visit on account of
my having mentioned to him that there are great
riches there—he is very fond of Lombard Street—
when a gentleman said to me as he passed by, “Sir,
your little son has dropped his glove.” I assure you,
if you will excuse my remarking on so trivial a cir-
cumstance, this accidental mention of the child as
mine, quite touched my heart and brought the fool-
ish tears into my eyes.
When Little Frank is sent to school in the country,
I shall be very much at a loss what to do with my-
self, but I have the intention of walking down there
once a month and seeing him on a half holiday. I am
told he will then be at play upon the Heath; and if
my visits should be objected to, as unsettling the
child, I can see him from a distance without his see-
ing me, and walk back again. His mother comes of a
highly genteel family, and rather disapproves, I am
aware, of our being too much together. I know that I
am not calculated to improve his retiring disposi-
tion; but I think he would miss me beyond the feel-
ing of the moment if we were wholly separated.
When I die in the Clapham Road, I shall not leave
much more in this world than I shall take out of it;
but, I happen to have a miniature of a bright-faced
boy, with a curling head, and an open shirt-frill wav-
ing down his bosom (my mother had it taken for me,
but I can’t believe that it was ever like), which will
be worth nothing to sell, and which I shall beg may
he given to Frank. I have written my dear boy a little
letter with it, in which I have told him that I felt
very sorry to part from him, though bound to con-
fess that I knew no reason why I should remain here.
I have given him some short advice, the best in my
power, to take warning of the consequences of be-
ing nobody’s enemy but his own; and I have endeav-
oured to comfort him for what I fear he will consider
a bereavement, by pointing out to him, that I was
only a superfluous something to every one but him;
31
Charles Dickens
and that having by some means failed to find a place
in this great assembly, I am better out of it.
Such (said the poor relation, clearing his throat
and beginning to speak a little louder) is the gen-
eral impression about me. Now, it is a remarkable
circumstance which forms the aim and purpose of
my story, that this is all wrong. This is not my life,
and these are not my habits. I do not even live in the
Clapham Road. Comparatively speaking, I am very
seldom there. I reside, mostly, in a—I am almost
ashamed to say the word, it sounds so full of pre-
tension—in a Castle. I do not mean that it is an old
baronial habitation, but still it is a building always
known to every one by the name of a Castle. In it, I
preserve the particulars of my history; they run
thus:
It was when I first took John Spatter (who had
been my clerk) into partnership, and when I was still
a young man of not more than five-and-twenty, re-
siding in the house of my uncle Chill, from whom I
had considerable expectations, that I ventured to
propose to Christiana. I had loved Christiana a long
time. She was very beautiful, and very winning in all
respects. I rather mistrusted her widowed mother,
who I feared was of a plotting and mercenary turn
of mind; but, I thought as well of her as I could, for
Christiana’s sake. I never had loved any one but
Christiana, and she had been all the world, and O
far more than all the world, to me, from our child-
hood!
Christiana accepted me with her mother’s con-
sent, and I was rendered very happy indeed. My life
at my uncle Chill’s was of a spare dull kind, and my
garret chamber was as dull, and bare, and cold, as
an upper prison room in some stern northern for-
tress. But, having Christiana’s love, I wanted noth-
ing upon earth. I would not have changed my lot with
any human being.
Avarice was, unhappily, my uncle Chill’s master-
vice. Though he was rich, he pinched, and scraped,
and clutched, and lived miserably. As Christiana had
no fortune, I was for some time a little fearful of
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confessing our engagement to him; but, at length I
wrote him a letter, saying how it all truly was. I put
it into his hand one night, on going to bed.
As I came down-stairs next morning, shivering in
the cold December air; colder in my uncle’s
unwarmed house than in the street, where the win-
ter sun did sometimes shine, and which was at all
events enlivened by cheerful faces and voices pass-
ing along; I carried a heavy heart towards the long,
low breakfast-room in which my uncle sat. It was a
large room with a small fire, and there was a great
bay window in it which the rain had marked in the
night as if with the tears of houseless people. It
stared upon a raw yard, with a cracked stone pave-
ment, and some rusted iron railings half uprooted,
whence an ugly out-building that had once been a
dissecting-room (in the time of the great surgeon
who had mortgaged the house to my uncle), stared
at it.
We rose so early always, that at that time of the
year we breakfasted by candle-light. When I went
into the room, my uncle was so contracted by the
cold, and so huddled together in his chair behind the
one dim candle, that I did not see him until I was
close to the table.
As I held out my hand to him, he caught up his
stick (being infirm, he always walked about the house
with a stick), and made a blow at me, and said, “You
fool!”
“Uncle,” I returned, “I didn’t expect you to be so
angry as this.” Nor had I expected it, though he was
a hard and angry old man.
“You didn’t expect!” said he; “when did you ever
expect? When did you ever calculate, or look for-
ward, you contemptible dog?”
“These are hard words, uncle!”
“Hard words? Feathers, to pelt such an idiot as
you with,” said he. “Here! Betsy Snap! Look at him!”
Betsy Snap was a withered, hard-favoured, yellow
old woman—our only domestic—always employed, at
this time of the morning, in rubbing my uncle’s legs.
As my uncle adjured her to look at me, he put his
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Charles Dickens
lean grip on the crown of her head, she kneeling be-
side him, and turned her face towards me. An invol-
untary thought connecting them both with the Dis-
secting Room, as it must often have been in the
surgeon’s time, passed across my mind in the midst
of my anxiety.
“Look at the snivelling milksop!” said my uncle.
“Look at the baby! This is the gentleman who, people
say, is nobody’s enemy but his own. This is the gentle-
man who can’t say no. This is the gentleman who
was making such large profits in his business that
he must needs take a partner, t’other day. This is
the gentleman who is going to marry a wife without
a penny, and who falls into the hands of Jezabels
who are speculating on my death!”
I knew, now, how great my uncle’s rage was; for
nothing short of his being almost beside himself
would have induced him to utter that concluding
word, which he held in such repugnance that it was
never spoken or hinted at before him on any account.
“On my death,” he repeated, as if he were defying
me by defying his own abhorrence of the word. “On
my death—death—Death! But I’ll spoil the specula-
tion. Eat your last under this roof, you feeble wretch,
and may it choke you!”
You may suppose that I had not much appetite for
the breakfast to which I was bidden in these terms;
but, I took my accustomed seat. I saw that I was
repudiated henceforth by my uncle; still I could bear
that very well, possessing Christiana’s heart.
He emptied his basin of bread and milk as usual,
only that he took it on his knees with his chair turned
away from the table where I sat. When he had done,
he carefully snuffed out the candle; and the cold,
slate-coloured, miserable day looked in upon us.
“Now, Mr. Michael,” said he, “before we part, I
should like to have a word with these ladies in your
presence.”
“As you will, sir,” I returned; “but you deceive your-
self, and wrong us, cruelly, if you suppose that there
is any feeling at stake in this contract but pure, dis-
interested, faithful love.”
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To this, he only replied, “You lie!” and not one other
word.
We went, through half-thawed snow and half-fro-
zen rain, to the house where Christiana and her
mother lived. My uncle knew them very well. They
were sitting at their breakfast, and were surprised
to see us at that hour.
“Your servant, ma’am,” said my uncle to the
mother. “You divine the purpose of my visit, I dare
say, ma’am. I understand there is a world of pure,
disinterested, faithful love cooped up here. I am
happy to bring it all it wants, to make it complete. I
bring you your son-in-law, ma’am—and you, your hus-
band, miss. The gentleman is a perfect stranger to
me, but I wish him joy of his wise bargain.”
He snarled at me as he went out, and I never saw
him again.
IT IS ALTOGETHER a mistake (continued the poor rela-
tion) to suppose that my dear Christiana, over-per-
suaded and influenced by her mother, married a rich
man, the dirt from whose carriage wheels is often,
in these changed times, thrown upon me as she rides
by. No, no. She married me.
The way we came to be married rather sooner than
we intended, was this. I took a frugal lodging and
was saving and planning for her sake, when, one day,
she spoke to me with great earnestness, and said:
“My dear Michael, I have given you my heart. I have
said that I loved you, and I have pledged myself to be
your wife. I am as much yours through all changes of
good and evil as if we had been married on the day
when such words passed between us. I know you well,
and know that if we should be separated and our
union broken off, your whole life would be shadowed,
and all that might, even now, be stronger in your char-
acter for the conflict with the world would then be
weakened to the shadow of what it is!”
“God help me, Christiana!” said I. “You speak the
truth.”
“Michael!” said she, putting her hand in mine, in
all maidenly devotion, “let us keep apart no longer.
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Charles Dickens
It is but for me to say that I can live contented upon
such means as you have, and I well know you are
happy. I say so from my heart. Strive no more alone;
let us strive together. My dear Michael, it is not right
that I should keep secret from you what you do not
suspect, but what distresses my whole life. My
mother: without considering that what you have
lost, you have lost for me, and on the assurance of
my faith: sets her heart on riches, and urges an-
other suit upon me, to my misery. I cannot bear this,
for to bear it is to be untrue to you. I would rather
share your struggles than look on. I want no better
home than you can give me. I know that you will as-
pire and labour with a higher courage if I am wholly
yours, and let it be so when you will!”
I was blest indeed, that day, and a new world
opened to me. We were married in a very little while,
and I took my wife to our happy home. That was the
beginning of the residence I have spoken of; the
Castle we have ever since inhabited together, dates
from that time. All our children have been born in it.
Our first child—now married—was a little girl, whom
we called Christiana. Her son is so like Little Frank,
that I hardly know which is which.
THE CURRENT IMPRESSION as to my partner’s dealings
with me is also quite erroneous. He did not begin to
treat me coldly, as a poor simpleton, when my uncle
and I so fatally quarrelled; nor did he afterwards
gradually possess himself of our business and edge
me out. On the contrary, he behaved to me with the
utmost good faith and honour.
Matters between us took this turn:- On the day of
my separation from my uncle, and even before the
arrival at our counting-house of my trunks (which
he sent after me, not carriage paid), I went down to
our room of business, on our little wharf, overlook-
ing the river; and there I told John Spatter what
had happened. John did not say, in reply, that rich
old relatives were palpable facts, and that love and
sentiment were moonshine and fiction. He addressed
me thus:
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Some Christmas Stories
“Michael,” said John, “we were at school together,
and I generally had the knack of getting on better
than you, and making a higher reputation.”
“You had, John,” I returned.
“Although” said John, “I borrowed your books and
lost them; borrowed your pocket-money, and never
repaid it; got you to buy my damaged knives at a
higher price than I had given for them new; and to
own to the windows that I had broken.”
“All not worth mentioning, John Spatter,” said I,
“but certainly true.”
“When you were first established in this infant
business, which promises to thrive so well,” pursued
John, “I came to you, in my search for almost any
employment, and you made me your clerk.”
“Still not worth mentioning, my dear John Spat-
ter,” said I; “still, equally true.”
“And finding that I had a good head for business,
and that I was really useful to the business, you did
not like to retain me in that capacity, and thought
it an act of justice soon to make me your partner.”
“Still less worth mentioning than any of those
other little circumstances you have recalled, John
Spatter,” said I; “for I was, and am, sensible of your
merits and my deficiencies.”
“Now, my good friend,” said John, drawing my arm
through his, as he had had a habit of doing at school;
while two vessels outside the windows of our count-
ing-house—which were shaped like the stern win-
dows of a ship—went lightly down the river with the
tide, as John and I might then be sailing away in
company, and in trust and confidence, on our voy-
age of life; “let there, under these friendly circum-
stances, be a right understanding between us. You
are too easy, Michael. You are nobody’s enemy but
your own. If I were to give you that damaging char-
acter among our connexion, with a shrug, and a
shake of the head, and a sigh; and if I were further
to abuse the trust you place in me—”
“But you never will abuse it at all, John,” I observed.
“Never!” said he; “but I am putting a case—I say,
and if I were further to abuse that trust by keeping
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Charles Dickens
this piece of our common affairs in the dark, and
this other piece in the light, and again this other
piece in the twilight, and so on, I should strengthen
my strength, and weaken your weakness, day by day,
until at last I found myself on the high road to for-
tune, and you left behind on some bare common, a
hopeless number of miles out of the way.”
“Exactly so,” said I.
“To prevent this, Michael,” said John Spatter, “or
the remotest chance of this, there must be perfect
openness between us. Nothing must be concealed,
and we must have but one interest.”
“My dear John Spatter,” I assured him, “that is
precisely what I mean.”
“And when you are too easy,” pursued John, his
face glowing with friendship, “you must allow me to
prevent that imperfection in your nature from be-
ing taken advantage of, by any one; you must not
expect me to humour it—”
“My dear John Spatter,” I interrupted, “I don’t
expect you to humour it. I want to correct it.”
“And I, too,” said John.
“Exactly so!” cried I. “We both have the same end
in view; and, honourably seeking it, and fully trust-
ing one another, and having but one interest, ours
will be a prosperous and happy partnership.”
“I am sure of it!” returned John Spatter. And we
shook hands most affectionately.
I took John home to my Castle, and we had a very
happy day. Our partnership throve well. My friend
and partner supplied what I wanted, as I had fore-
seen that he would, and by improving both the busi-
ness and myself, amply acknowledged any little rise
in life to which I had helped him.
I AM NOT (said the poor relation, looking at the fire as
he slowly rubbed his hands) very rich, for I never
cared to be that; but I have enough, and am above
all moderate wants and anxieties. My Castle is not
a splendid place, but it is very comfortable, and it
has a warm and cheerful air, and is quite a picture
of Home.
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Some Christmas Stories
Our eldest girl, who is very like her mother, mar-
ried John Spatter’s eldest son. Our two families are
closely united in other ties of attachment. It is very
pleasant of an evening, when we are all assembled
together—which frequently happens—and when
John and I talk over old times, and the one interest
there has always been between us.
I really do not know, in my Castle, what loneliness
is. Some of our children or grandchildren are always
about it, and the young voices of my descendants
are delightful—O, how delightful!—to me to hear. My
dearest and most devoted wife, ever faithful, ever
loving, ever helpful and sustaining and consoling, is
the priceless blessing of my house; from whom all
its other blessings spring. We are rather a musical
family, and when Christiana sees me, at any time, a
little weary or depressed, she steals to the piano
and sings a gentle air she used to sing when we were
first betrothed. So weak a man am I, that I cannot
bear to hear it from any other source. They played
it once, at the Theatre, when I was there with Little
Frank; and the child said wondering, “Cousin
Michael, whose hot tears are these that have fallen
on my hand!”
Such is my Castle, and such are the real particu-
lars of my life therein preserved. I often take Little
Frank home there. He is very welcome to my grand-
children, and they play together. At this time of the
year—the Christmas and New Year time—I am sel-
dom out of my Castle. For, the associations of the
season seem to hold me there, and the precepts of
the season seem to teach me that it is well to be
there.
“AND THE C ASTLE IS—” observed a grave, kind voice
among the company.
“Yes. My Castle,” said the poor relation, shaking
his head as he still looked at the fire, “is in the Air.
John our esteemed host suggests its situation ac-
curately. My Castle is in the Air! I have done. Will
you be so good as to pass the story?”
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Charles Dickens
THE CHILD’S STORY
ONCE UPON A TIME, a good many years ago, there was a
traveller, and he set out upon a journey. It was a
magic journey, and was to seem very long when he
began it, and very short when he got half way
through.
He travelled along a rather dark path for some
little time, without meeting anything, until at last
he came to a beautiful child. So he said to the child,
“What do you do here?” And the child said, “I am
always at play. Come and play with me!”
So, he played with that child, the whole day long,
and they were very merry. The sky was so blue, the
sun was so bright, the water was so sparkling, the
leaves were so green, the flowers were so lovely, and
they heard such singing-birds and saw so many but-
teries, that everything was beautiful. This was in
fine weather. When it rained, they loved to watch
the falling drops, and to smell the fresh scents.
When it blew, it was delightful to listen to the wind,
and fancy what it said, as it came rushing from its
home—where was that, they wondered!—whistling
and howling, driving the clouds before it, bending
the trees, rumbling in the chimneys, shaking the
house, and making the sea roar in fury. But, when it
snowed, that was best of all; for, they liked nothing
so well as to look up at the white flakes falling fast
and thick, like down from the breasts of millions of
white birds; and to see how smooth and deep the
drift was; and to listen to the hush upon the paths
and roads.
They had plenty of the finest toys in the world,
and the most astonishing picture-books: all about
scimitars and slippers and turbans, and dwarfs and
giants and genii and fairies, and blue-beards and
bean-stalks and riches and caverns and forests and
Valentines and Orsons: and all new and all true.
But, one day, of a sudden, the traveller lost the
child. He called to him over and over again, but got
no answer. So, he went upon his road, and went on
for a little while without meeting anything, until at
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Some Christmas Stories
last he came to a handsome boy. So, he said to the
boy, “What do you do here?” And the boy said, “I am
always learning. Come and learn with me.”
So he learned with that boy about Jupiter and
Juno, and the Greeks and the Romans, and I don’t
know what, and learned more than I could tell—or
he either, for he soon forgot a great deal of it. But,
they were not always learning; they had the merri-
est games that ever were played. They rowed upon
the river in summer, and skated on the ice in winter;
they were active afoot, and active on horseback; at
cricket, and all games at ball; at prisoner’s base,
hare and hounds, follow my leader, and more sports
than I can think of; nobody could beat them. They
had holidays too, and Twelfth cakes, and parties
where they danced till midnight, and real Theatres
where they saw palaces of real gold and silver rise
out of the real earth, and saw all the wonders of the
world at once. As to friends, they had such dear
friends and so many of them, that I want the time
to reckon them up. They were all young, like the hand-
some boy, and were never to be strange to one an-
other all their lives through.
Still, one day, in the midst of all these pleasures,
the traveller lost the boy as he had lost the child,
and, after calling to him in vain, went on upon his
journey. So he went on for a little while without see-
ing anything, until at last he came to a young man.
So, he said to the young man, “What do you do
here?” And the young man said, “I am always in love.
Come and love with me.”
So, he went away with that young man, and pres-
ently they came to one of the prettiest girls that
ever was seen—just like Fanny in the corner there—
and she had eyes like Fanny, and hair like Fanny, and
dimples like Fanny’s, and she laughed and coloured
just as Fanny does while I am talking about her. So,
the young man fell in love directly—just as Somebody
I won’t mention, the first time he came here, did with
Fanny. Well! he was teased sometimes—just as
Somebody used to be by Fanny; and they quarrelled
sometimes—just as Somebody and Fanny used to
41
Charles Dickens
quarrel; and they made it up, and sat in the dark,
and wrote letters every day, and never were happy
asunder, and were always looking out for one an-
other and pretending not to, and were engaged at
Christmas-time, and sat close to one another by the
fire, and were going to be married very soon—all ex-
actly like Somebody I won’t mention, and Fanny!
But, the traveller lost them one day, as he had lost
the rest of his friends, and, after calling to them to
come back, which they never did, went on upon his
journey. So, he went on for a little while without see-
ing anything, until at last he came to a middle-aged
gentleman. So, he said to the gentleman, “What are
you doing here?” And his answer was, “I am always
busy. Come and be busy with me!”
So, he began to be very busy with that gentleman,
and they went on through the wood together. The
whole journey was through a wood, only it had been
open and green at first, like a wood in spring; and
now began to be thick and dark, like a wood in sum-
mer; some of the little trees that had come out ear-
liest, were even turning brown. The gentleman was
not alone, but had a lady of about the same age with
him, who was his Wife; and they had children, who
were with them too. So, they all went on together
through the wood, cutting down the trees, and mak-
ing a path through the branches and the fallen
leaves, and carrying burdens, and working hard.
Sometimes, they came to a long green avenue that
opened into deeper woods. Then they would hear a
very little, distant voice crying, “Father, father, I am
another child! Stop for me!” And presently they
would see a very little figure, growing larger as it
came along, running to join them. When it came up,
they all crowded round it, and kissed and welcomed
it; and then they all went on together.
Sometimes, they came to several avenues at once,
and then they all stood still, and one of the children
said, “Father, I am going to sea,” and another said,
“Father, I am going to India,” and another, “Father, I
am going to seek my fortune where I can,” and an-
other, “Father, I am going to Heaven!” So, with many
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Some Christmas Stories
tears at parting, they went, solitary, down those
avenues, each child upon its way; and the child who
went to Heaven, rose into the golden air and van-
ished.
Whenever these partings happened, the traveller
looked at the gentleman, and saw him glance up at
the sky above the trees, where the day was begin-
ning to decline, and the sunset to come on. He saw,
too, that his hair was turning grey. But, they never
could rest long, for they had their journey to per-
form, and it was necessary for them to be always
busy.
At last, there had been so many partings that
there were no children left, and only the traveller,
the gentleman, and the lady, went upon their way in
company. And now the wood was yellow; and now
brown; and the leaves, even of the forest trees, be-
gan to fall.
So, they came to an avenue that was darker than
the rest, and were pressing forward on their jour-
ney without looking down it when the lady stopped.
“My husband,” said the lady. “I am called.”
They listened, and they heard a voice a long way
down the avenue, say, “Mother, mother!”
It was the voice of the first child who had said, “I
am going to Heaven!” and the father said, “I pray
not yet. The sunset is very near. I pray not yet!”
But, the voice cried, “Mother, mother!” without
minding him, though his hair was now quite white,
and tears were on his face.
Then, the mother, who was already drawn into the
shade of the dark avenue and moving away with her
arms still round his neck, kissed him, and said, “My
dearest, I am summoned, and I go!” And she was
gone. And the traveller and he were left alone to-
gether.
And they went on and on together, until they came
to very near the end of the wood: so near, that they
could see the sunset shining red before them
through the trees.
Yet, once more, while he broke his way among the
branches, the traveller lost his friend. He called and
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Charles Dickens
called, but there was no reply, and when he passed
out of the wood, and saw the peaceful sun going
down upon a wide purple prospect, he came to an
old man sitting on a fallen tree. So, he said to the
old man, “What do you do here?” And the old man
said with a calm smile, “I am always remembering.
Come and remember with me!”
So the traveller sat down by the side of that old
man, face to face with the serene sunset; and all
his friends came softly back and stood around him.
The beautiful child, the handsome boy, the young
man in love, the father, mother, and children: every
one of them was there, and he had lost nothing. So,
he loved them all, and was kind and forbearing with
them all, and was always pleased to watch them all,
and they all honoured and loved him. And I think the
traveller must be yourself, dear Grandfather, be-
cause this what you do to us, and what we do to
you.
THE SCHOOLBOY’S STORY
BEING RATHER YOUNG at present—I am getting on in
years, but still I am rather young—I have no particu-
lar adventures of my own to fall back upon. It
wouldn’t much interest anybody here, I suppose, to
know what a screw the Reverend is, or what a grif-
fin she is, or how they do stick it into parents—par-
ticularly hair-cutting, and medical attendance. One
of our fellows was charged in his half’s account
twelve and sixpence for two pills—tolerably profit-
able at six and threepence a-piece, I should think—
and he never took them either, but put them up the
sleeve of his jacket.
As to the beef, it’s shameful. It’s not beef. Regular
beef isn’t veins. You can chew regular beef. Besides
which, there’s gravy to regular beef, and you never
see a drop to ours. Another of our fellows went home
ill, and heard the family doctor tell his father that he
couldn’t account for his complaint unless it was the
beer. Of course it was the beer, and well it might be!
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Some Christmas Stories
However, beef and Old Cheeseman are two differ-
ent things. So is beer. It was Old Cheeseman I meant
to tell about; not the manner in which our fellows
get their constitutions destroyed for the sake of
profit.
Why, look at the pie-crust alone. There’s no flaki-
ness in it. It’s solid—like damp lead. Then our fellows
get nightmares, and are bolstered for calling out
and waking other fellows. Who can wonder!
Old Cheeseman one night walked in his sleep, put
his hat on over his night-cap, got hold of a fishing-
rod and a cricket-bat, and went down into the
parlour, where they naturally thought from his ap-
pearance he was a Ghost. Why, he never would have
done that if his meals had been wholesome. When
we all begin to walk in our sleeps, I suppose they’ll
be sorry for it.
Old Cheeseman wasn’t second Latin Master then;
he was a fellow himself. He was first brought there,
very small, in a post-chaise, by a woman who was
always taking snuff and shaking him—and that was
the most he remembered about it. He never went
home for the holidays. His accounts (he never learnt
any extras) were sent to a Bank, and the Bank paid
them; and he had a brown suit twice a-year, and went
into boots at twelve. They were always too big for
him, too.
In the Midsummer holidays, some of our fellows
who lived within walking distance, used to come back
and climb the trees outside the playground wall, on
purpose to look at Old Cheeseman reading there by
himself. He was always as mild as the tea—and
that’s pretty mild, I should hope!—so when they
whistled to him, he looked up and nodded; and when
they said, “Halloa, Old Cheeseman, what have you
had for dinner?” he said, “Boiled mutton;” and when
they said, “An’t it solitary, Old Cheeseman?” he said,
“It is a little dull sometimes:” and then they said,
“Well good-bye, Old Cheeseman!” and climbed down
again. Of course it was imposing on Old Cheeseman
to give him nothing but boiled mutton through a
whole Vacation, but that was just like the system.
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Charles Dickens
When they didn’t give him boiled mutton, they gave
him rice pudding, pretending it was a treat. And
saved the butcher.
So Old Cheeseman went on. The holidays brought
him into other trouble besides the loneliness; be-
cause when the fellows began to come back, not
wanting to, he was always glad to see them; which
was aggravating when they were not at all glad to
see him, and so he got his head knocked against
walls, and that was the way his nose bled. But he
was a favourite in general. Once a subscription was
raised for him; and, to keep up his spirits, he was
presented before the holidays with two white mice,
a rabbit, a pigeon, and a beautiful puppy. Old
Cheeseman cried about it—especially soon after-
wards, when they all ate one another.
Of course Old Cheeseman used to be called by the
names of all sorts of cheeses—Double Glo’sterman,
Family Cheshireman, Dutchman, North
Wiltshireman, and all that. But he never minded it.
And I don’t mean to say he was old in point of years—
because he wasn’t—only he was called from the first,
Old Cheeseman.
At last, Old Cheeseman was made second Latin
Master. He was brought in one morning at the be-
ginning of a new half, and presented to the school
in that capacity as “Mr. Cheeseman.” Then our fel-
lows all agreed that Old Cheeseman was a spy, and
a deserter, who had gone over to the enemy’s camp,
and sold himself for gold. It was no excuse for him
that he had sold himself for very little gold—two
pound ten a quarter and his washing, as was re-
ported. It was decided by a Parliament which sat
about it, that Old Cheeseman’s mercenary motives
could alone be taken into account, and that he had
“coined our blood for drachmas.” The Parliament
took the expression out of the quarrel scene between
Brutus and Cassius.
When it was settled in this strong way that Old
Cheeseman was a tremendous traitor, who had
wormed himself into our fellows’ secrets on purpose
to get himself into favour by giving up everything
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he knew, all courageous fellows were invited to come
forward and enrol themselves in a Society for mak-
ing a set against him. The President of the Society
was First boy, named Bob Tarter. His father was in
the West Indies, and he owned, himself, that his fa-
ther was worth Millions. He had great power among
our fellows, and he wrote a parody, beginning —
“Who made believe to be so meek
That we could hardly hear him speak,
Yet turned out an Informing Sneak?
Old Cheeseman.”
— and on in that way through more than a dozen
verses, which he used to go and sing, every morn-
ing, close by the new master’s desk. He trained one
of the low boys, too, a rosy-cheeked little Brass who
didn’t care what he did, to go up to him with his
Latin Grammar one morning, and say it so:
nominativus pronominum —Old Cheeseman, raro
exprimitur —was never suspected, nisi distinctionis —
of being an informer, aut emphasis gratia—until he
proved one. Ut—for instance, vos damnastis—when
he sold the boys. Quasi—as though, dicat—he should
say, pretaerea nemo—I’m a Judas! All this produced
a great effect on Old Cheeseman. He had never had
much hair; but what he had, began to get thinner
and thinner every day. He grew paler and more worn;
and sometimes of an evening he was seen sitting at
his desk with a precious long snuff to his candle,
and his hands before his face, crying. But no mem-
ber of the Society could pity him, even if he felt in-
clined, because the President said it was Old
Cheeseman’s conscience.
So Old Cheeseman went on, and didn’t he lead a mis-
erable life! Of course the Reverend turned up his nose
at him, and of course she did—because both of them
always do that at all the masters—but he suffered
from the fellows most, and he suffered from them con-
stantly. He never told about it, that the Society could
find out; but he got no credit for that, because the
President said it was Old Cheeseman’s cowardice.
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Charles Dickens
He had only one friend in the world, and that one
was almost as powerless as he was, for it was only
Jane. Jane was a sort of wardrobe woman to our
fellows, and took care of the boxes. She had come
at first, I believe, as a kind of apprentice—some of
our fellows say from a Charity, but I don’t know—
and after her time was out, had stopped at so much
a year. So little a year, perhaps I ought to say, for it
is far more likely. However, she had put some pounds
in the Savings’ Bank, and she was a very nice young
woman. She was not quite pretty; but she had a very
frank, honest, bright face, and all our fellows were
fond of her. She was uncommonly neat and cheer-
ful, and uncommonly comfortable and kind. And if
anything was the matter with a fellow’s mother, he
always went and showed the letter to Jane.
Jane was Old Cheeseman’s friend. The more the
Society went against him, the more Jane stood by
him. She used to give him a good-humoured look out
of her still-room window, sometimes, that seemed
to set him up for the day. She used to pass out of
the orchard and the kitchen garden (always kept
locked, I believe you!) through the playground, when
she might have gone the other way, only to give a
turn of her head, as much as to say “Keep up your
spirits!” to Old Cheeseman. His slip of a room was
so fresh and orderly that it was well known who
looked after it while he was at his desk; and when
our fellows saw a smoking hot dumpling on his plate
at dinner, they knew with indignation who had sent
it up.
Under these circumstances, the Society resolved,
after a quantity of meeting and debating, that Jane
should be requested to cut Old Cheeseman dead; and
that if she refused, she must be sent to Coventry
herself. So a deputation, headed by the President,
was appointed to wait on Jane, and inform her of
the vote the Society had been under the painful ne-
cessity of passing. She was very much respected
for all her good qualities, and there was a story
about her having once waylaid the Reverend in his
own study, and got a fellow off from severe punish-
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ment, of her own kind comfortable heart. So the
deputation didn’t much like the job. However, they
went up, and the President told Jane all about it.
Upon which Jane turned very red, burst into tears,
informed the President and the deputation, in a way
not at all like her usual way, that they were a parcel
of malicious young savages, and turned the whole
respected body out of the room. Consequently it was
entered in the Society’s book (kept in astronomical
cypher for fear of detection), that all communica-
tion with Jane was interdicted: and the President
addressed the members on this convincing instance
of Old Cheeseman’s undermining.
But Jane was as true to Old Cheeseman as Old
Cheeseman was false to our fellows—in their opin-
ion, at all events—and steadily continued to be his
only friend. It was a great exasperation to the Soci-
ety, because Jane was as much a loss to them as
she was a gain to him; and being more inveterate
against him than ever, they treated him worse than
ever. At last, one morning, his desk stood empty, his
room was peeped into, and found to be vacant, and
a whisper went about among the pale faces of our
fellows that Old Cheeseman, unable to bear it any
longer, had got up early and drowned himself.
The mysterious looks of the other masters after break-
fast, and the evident fact that old Cheeseman was not
expected, confirmed the Society in this opinion. Some
began to discuss whether the President was liable to
hanging or only transportation for life, and the
President’s face showed a great anxiety to know which.
However, he said that a jury of his country should find
him game; and that in his address he should put it to
them to lay their hands upon their hearts and say
whether they as Britons approved of informers, and how
they thought they would like it themselves. Some of the
Society considered that he had better run away until
he found a forest where he might change clothes with a
wood-cutter, and stain his face with blackberries; but
the majority believed that if he stood his ground, his
father—belonging as he did to the West Indies, and be-
ing worth millions—could buy him off.
49
Charles Dickens
All our fellows’ hearts beat fast when the Rever-
end came in, and made a sort of a Roman, or a Field
Marshal, of himself with the ruler; as he always did
before delivering an address. But their fears were
nothing to their astonishment when he came out
with the story that Old Cheeseman, “so long our
respected friend and fellow-pilgrim in the pleasant
plains of knowledge,” he called him—O yes! I dare
say! Much of that!—was the orphan child of a disin-
herited young lady who had married against her
father’s wish, and whose young husband had died,
and who had died of sorrow herself, and whose un-
fortunate baby (Old Cheeseman) had been brought
up at the cost of a grandfather who would never
consent to see it, baby, boy, or man: which grandfa-
ther was now dead, and serve him right—that’s my
putting in—and which grandfather’s large property,
there being no will, was now, and all of a sudden and
for ever, Old Cheeseman’s! Our so long respected
friend and fellow-pilgrim in the pleasant plains of
knowledge, the Reverend wound up a lot of bother-
ing quotations by saying, would “come among us
once more” that day fortnight, when he desired to
take leave of us himself, in a more particular man-
ner. With these words, he stared severely round at
our fellows, and went solemnly out.
There was precious consternation among the mem-
bers of the Society, now. Lots of them wanted to
resign, and lots more began to try to make out that
they had never belonged to it. However, the Presi-
dent stuck up, and said that they must stand or fall
together, and that if a breach was made it should
be over his body—which was meant to encourage the
Society: but it didn’t. The President further said, he
would consider the position in which they stood, and
would give them his best opinion and advice in a few
days. This was eagerly looked for, as he knew a good
deal of the world on account of his father’s being in
the West Indies.
After days and days of hard thinking, and draw-
ing armies all over his slate, the President called
our fellows together, and made the matter clear. He
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said it was plain that when Old Cheeseman came on
the appointed day, his first revenge would be to im-
peach the Society, and have it flogged all round.
After witnessing with joy the torture of his enemies,
and gloating over the cries which agony would ex-
tort from them, the probability was that he would
invite the Reverend, on pretence of conversation,
into a private room—say the parlour into which Par-
ents were shown, where the two great globes were
which were never used—and would there reproach
him with the various frauds and oppressions he had
endured at his hands. At the close of his observa-
tions he would make a signal to a Prizefighter con-
cealed in the passage, who would then appear and
pitch into the Reverend, till he was left insensible.
Old Cheeseman would then make Jane a present of
from five to ten pounds, and would leave the estab-
lishment in fiendish triumph.
The President explained that against the parlour
part, or the Jane part, of these arrangements he
had nothing to say; but, on the part of the Society,
he counselled deadly resistance. With this view he
recommended that all available desks should be filled
with stones, and that the first word of the complaint
should be the signal to every fellow to let fly at Old
Cheeseman. The bold advice put the Society in bet-
ter spirits, and was unanimously taken. A post about
Old Cheeseman’s size was put up in the playground,
and all our fellows practised at it till it was dinted
all over.
When the day came, and Places were called, ev-
ery fellow sat down in a tremble. There had been
much discussing and disputing as to how Old
Cheeseman would come; but it was the general opin-
ion that he would appear in a sort of triumphal car
drawn by four horses, with two livery servants in
front, and the Prizefighter in disguise up behind. So,
all our fellows sat listening for the sound of wheels.
But no wheels were heard, for Old Cheeseman walked
after all, and came into the school without any
preparation. Pretty much as he used to be, only
dressed in black.
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Charles Dickens
“Gentlemen,” said the Reverend, presenting him,
“our so long respected friend and fellow-pilgrim in the
pleasant plains of knowledge, is desirous to offer a
word or two. Attention, gentlemen, one and all!”
Every fellow stole his hand into his desk and looked
at the President. The President was all ready, and
taking aim at old Cheeseman with his eyes.
What did Old Cheeseman then, but walk up to his
old desk, look round him with a queer smile as if there
was a tear in his eye, and begin in a quavering, mild
voice, “My dear companions and old friends!”
Every fellow’s hand came out of his desk, and the
President suddenly began to cry.
“My dear companions and old friends,” said Old
Cheeseman, “you have heard of my good fortune. I
have passed so many years under this roof—my en-
tire life so far, I may say—that I hope you have been
glad to hear of it for my sake. I could never enjoy it
without exchanging congratulations with you. If we
have ever misunderstood one another at all, pray,
my dear boys, let us forgive and forget. I have a great
tenderness for you, and I am sure you return it. I
want in the fulness of a grateful heart to shake
hands with you every one. I have come back to do it,
if you please, my dear boys.”
Since the President had begun to cry, several other
fellows had broken out here and there: but now, when
Old Cheeseman began with him as first boy, laid his
left hand affectionately on his shoulder and gave him
his right; and when the President said “Indeed, I don’t
deserve it, sir; upon my honour I don’t;” there was
sobbing and crying all over the school. Every other
fellow said he didn’t deserve it, much in the same way;
but Old Cheeseman, not minding that a bit, went
cheerfully round to every boy, and wound up with
every master—finishing off the Reverend last.
Then a snivelling little chap in a corner, who was
always under some punishment or other, set up a
shrill cry of “Success to Old Cheeseman! Hooray!”
The Reverend glared upon him, and said, “ Mr.
Cheeseman, sir.” But, Old Cheeseman protesting
that he liked his old name a great deal better than
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Some Christmas Stories
his new one, all our fellows took up the cry; and, for
I don’t know how many minutes, there was such a
thundering of feet and hands, and such a roaring of
Old Cheeseman, as never was heard.
After that, there was a spread in the dining-room
of the most magnificent kind. Fowls, tongues, pre-
serves, fruits, confectionaries, jellies, neguses, bar-
ley-sugar temples, trifles, crackers—eat all you can
and pocket what you like—all at Old Cheeseman’s
expense. After that, speeches, whole holiday, double
and treble sets of all manners of things for all man-
ners of games, donkeys, pony-chaises and drive your-
self, dinner for all the masters at the Seven Bells
(twenty pounds a-head our fellows estimated it at),
an annual holiday and feast fixed for that day every
year, and another on Old Cheeseman’s birthday—
Reverend bound down before the fellows to allow it,
so that he could never back out—all at Old
Cheeseman’s expense.
And didn’t our fellows go down in a body and cheer
outside the Seven Bells? O no!
But there’s something else besides. Don’t look at
the next story- teller, for there’s more yet. Next day,
it was resolved that the Society should make it up
with Jane, and then be dissolved. What do you think
of Jane being gone, though! “What? Gone for ever?”
said our fellows, with long faces. “Yes, to be sure,”
was all the answer they could get. None of the people
about the house would say anything more. At length,
the first boy took upon himself to ask the Reverend
whether our old friend Jane was really gone? The
Reverend (he has got a daughter at home—turn-up
nose, and red) replied severely, “Yes, sir, Miss Pitt is
gone.” The idea of calling Jane, Miss Pitt! Some said
she had been sent away in disgrace for taking money
from Old Cheeseman; others said she had gone into
Old Cheeseman’s service at a rise of ten pounds a
year. All that our fellows knew, was, she was gone.
It was two or three months afterwards, when, one
afternoon, an open carriage stopped at the cricket
field, just outside bounds, with a lady and gentle-
man in it, who looked at the game a long time and
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Charles Dickens
stood up to see it played. Nobody thought much
about them, until the same little snivelling chap
came in, against all rules, from the post where he
was Scout, and said, “It’s Jane!” Both Elevens for-
got the game directly, and ran crowding round the
carriage. It was Jane! In such a bonnet! And if you’ll
believe me, Jane was married to Old Cheeseman.
It soon became quite a regular thing when our fel-
lows were hard at it in the playground, to see a car-
riage at the low part of the wall where it joins the
high part, and a lady and gentleman standing up in
it, looking over. The gentleman was always Old
Cheeseman, and the lady was always Jane.
The first time I ever saw them, I saw them in that
way. There had been a good many changes among
our fellows then, and it had turned out that Bob
Tarter’s father wasn’t worth Millions! He wasn’t
worth anything. Bob had gone for a soldier, and Old
Cheeseman had purchased his discharge. But that’s
not the carriage. The carriage stopped, and all our
fellows stopped as soon as it was seen.
“So you have never sent me to Coventry after all!”
said the lady, laughing, as our fellows swarmed up
the wall to shake hands with her. “Are you never
going to do it?”
“Never! never! never!” on all sides.
I didn’t understand what she meant then, but of
course I do now. I was very much pleased with her
face though, and with her good way, and I couldn’t
help looking at her—and at him too—with all our fel-
lows clustering so joyfully about them.
They soon took notice of me as a new boy, so I
thought I might as well swarm up the wall myself,
and shake hands with them as the rest did. I was
quite as glad to see them as the rest were, and was
quite as familiar with them in a moment.
“Only a fortnight now,” said Old Cheeseman, “to
the holidays. Who stops? Anybody?”
A good many fingers pointed at me, and a good
many voices cried “He does!” For it was the year
when you were all away; and rather low I was about
it, I can tell you.
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Some Christmas Stories
“Oh!” said Old Cheeseman. “But it’s solitary here
in the holiday time. He had better come to us.”
So I went to their delightful house, and was as
happy as I could possibly be. They understand how
to conduct themselves towards boys, they do. When
they take a boy to the play, for instance, they do
take him. They don’t go in after it’s begun, or come
out before it’s over. They know how to bring a boy
up, too. Look at their own! Though he is very little as
yet, what a capital boy he is! Why, my next favourite
to Mrs. Cheeseman and Old Cheeseman, is young
Cheeseman.
So, now I have told you all I know about Old
Cheeseman. And it’s not much after all, I am afraid.
Is it?
NOBODY’S STORY
H
E LIVED ON THE BANK of a mighty river, broad
and deep, which was always silently rolling
on to a vast undiscovered ocean. It had
rolled on, ever since the world began. It had changed
its course sometimes, and turned into new channels,
leaving its old ways dry and barren; but it had ever
been upon the flow, and ever was to flow until Time
should be no more. Against its strong, unfathom-
able stream, nothing made head. No living creature,
no flower, no leaf, no particle of animate or inani-
mate existence, ever strayed back from the undis-
covered ocean. The tide of the river set resistlessly
towards it; and the tide never stopped, any more
than the earth stops in its circling round the sun.
He lived in a busy place, and he worked very hard
to live. He had no hope of ever being rich enough to
live a month without hard work, but he was quite
content, GOD knows, to labour with a cheerful will.
He was one of an immense family, all of whose sons
55
Charles Dickens
and daughters gained their daily bread by daily
work, prolonged from their rising up betimes until
their lying down at night. Beyond this destiny he had
no prospect, and he sought none.
There was over-much drumming, trumpeting, and
speech-making, in the neighbourhood where he
dwelt; but he had nothing to do with that. Such clash
and uproar came from the Bigwig family, at the un-
accountable proceedings of which race, he marvelled
much. They set up the strangest statues, in iron,
marble, bronze, and brass, before his door; and dark-
ened his house with the legs and tails of uncouth
images of horses. He wondered what it all meant,
smiled in a rough good-humoured way he had, and
kept at his hard work.
The Bigwig family (composed of all the stateliest
people thereabouts, and all the noisiest) had under-
taken to save him the trouble of thinking for him-
self, and to manage him and his affairs. “Why truly,”
said he, “I have little time upon my hands; and if you
will be so good as to take care of me, in return for
the money I pay over”—for the Bigwig family were
not above his money—”I shall be relieved and much
obliged, considering that you know best.” Hence the
drumming, trumpeting, and speech-making, and the
ugly images of horses which he was expected to fall
down and worship.
“I don’t understand all this,” said he, rubbing his
furrowed brow confusedly. “But it has a meaning,
maybe, if I could find it out.”
“It means,” returned the Bigwig family, suspect-
ing something of what he said, “honour and glory in
the highest, to the highest merit.”
“Oh!” said he. And he was glad to hear that.
But, when he looked among the images in iron,
marble, bronze, and brass, he failed to find a rather
meritorious countryman of his, once the son of a
Warwickshire wool-dealer, or any single countryman
whomsoever of that kind. He could find none of the
men whose knowledge had rescued him and his chil-
dren from terrific and disfiguring disease, whose
boldness had raised his forefathers from the condi-
56
Some Christmas Stories
tion of serfs, whose wise fancy had opened a new and
high existence to the humblest, whose skill had filled
the working man’s world with accumulated wonders.
Whereas, he did find others whom he knew no good
of, and even others whom he knew much ill of.
“Humph!” said he. “I don’t quite understand it.”
So, he went home, and sat down by his fireside to
get it out of his mind.
Now, his fireside was a bare one, all hemmed in by
blackened streets; but it was a precious place to
him. The hands of his wife were hardened with toil,
and she was old before her time; but she was dear
to him. His children, stunted in their growth, bore
traces of unwholesome nurture; but they had beauty
in his sight. Above all other things, it was an ear-
nest desire of this man’s soul that his children should
be taught. “If I am sometimes misled,” said he, “for
want of knowledge, at least let them know better,
and avoid my mistakes. If it is hard to me to reap
the harvest of pleasure and instruction that is
stored in books, let it be easier to them.”
But, the Bigwig family broke out into violent fam-
ily quarrels concerning what it was lawful to teach
to this man’s children. Some of the family insisted
on such a thing being primary and indispensable
above all other things; and others of the family in-
sisted on such another thing being primary and in-
dispensable above all other things; and the Bigwig
family, rent into factions, wrote pamphlets, held
convocations, delivered charges, orations, and all
varieties of discourses; impounded one another in
courts Lay and courts Ecclesiastical; threw dirt,
exchanged pummelings, and fell together by the ears
in unintelligible animosity. Meanwhile, this man, in
his short evening snatches at his fireside, saw the
demon Ignorance arise there, and take his children
to itself. He saw his daughter perverted into a heavy,
slatternly drudge; he saw his son go moping down
the ways of low sensuality, to brutality and crime;
he saw the dawning light of intelligence in the eyes
of his babies so changing into cunning and suspi-
cion, that he could have rather wished them idiots.
57
Charles Dickens
“I don’t understand this any the better,” said he;
“but I think it cannot be right. Nay, by the clouded
Heaven above me, I protest against this as my
wrong!”
Becoming peaceable again (for his passion was
usually short-lived, and his nature kind), he looked
about him on his Sundays and holidays, and he saw
how much monotony and weariness there was, and
thence how drunkenness arose with all its train of
ruin. Then he appealed to the Bigwig family, and said,
“We are a labouring people, and I have a glimmering
suspicion in me that labouring people of whatever
condition were made—by a higher intelligence than
yours, as I poorly understand it—to be in need of
mental refreshment and recreation. See what we
fall into, when we rest without it. Come! Amuse me
harmlessly, show me something, give me an escape!”
But, here the Bigwig family fell into a state of up-
roar absolutely deafening. When some few voices
were faintly heard, proposing to show him the won-
ders of the world, the greatness of creation, the
mighty changes of time, the workings of nature and
the beauties of art—to show him these things, that
is to say, at any period of his life when he could look
upon them—there arose among the Bigwigs such
roaring and raving, such pulpiting and petitioning,
such maundering and memorialising, such name-
calling and dirt-throwing, such a shrill wind of par-
liamentary questioning and feeble replying—where
“I dare not” waited on “I would”—that the poor fel-
low stood aghast, staring wildly around.
“Have I provoked all this,” said he, with his hands
to his affrighted ears, “by what was meant to be an
innocent request, plainly arising out of my familiar
experience, and the common knowledge of all men
who choose to open their eyes? I don’t understand,
and I am not understood. What is to come of such a
state of things!”
He was bending over his work, often asking him-
self the question, when the news began to spread
that a pestilence had appeared among the
labourers, and was slaying them by thousands. Go-
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Some Christmas Stories
ing forth to look about him, he soon found this to be
true. The dying and the dead were mingled in the
close and tainted houses among which his life was
passed. New poison was distilled into the always
murky, always sickening air. The robust and the
weak, old age and infancy, the father and the mother,
all were stricken down alike.
What means of flight had he? He remained there,
where he was, and saw those who were dearest to
him die. A kind preacher came to him, and would have
said some prayers to soften his heart in his gloom,
but he replied:
“O what avails it, missionary, to come to me, a man
condemned to residence in this foetid place, where
every sense bestowed upon me for my delight be-
comes a torment, and where every minute of my
numbered days is new mire added to the heap un-
der which I lie oppressed! But, give me my first
glimpse of Heaven, through a little of its light and
air; give me pure water; help me to be clean; lighten
this heavy atmosphere and heavy life, in which our
spirits sink, and we become the indifferent and cal-
lous creatures you too often see us; gently and kindly
take the bodies of those who die among us, out of
the small room where we grow to be so familiar with
the awful change that even its sanctity is lost to
us; and, Teacher, then I will hear—none know better
than you, how willingly—of Him whose thoughts were
so much with the poor, and who had compassion for
all human sorrow!”
He was at work again, solitary and sad, when his
Master came and stood near to him dressed in black.
He, also, had suffered heavily. His young wife, his
beautiful and good young wife, was dead; so, too,
his only child.
“Master, ’tis hard to bear—I know it—but be com-
forted. I would give you comfort, if I could.”
The Master thanked him from his heart, but, said
he, “O you labouring men! The calamity began among
you. If you had but lived more healthily and decently,
I should not be the widowed and bereft mourner that
I am this day.”
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Charles Dickens
“Master,” returned the other, shaking his head, “I
have begun to understand a little that most calami-
ties will come from us, as this one did, and that none
will stop at our poor doors, until we are united with
that great squabbling family yonder, to do the things
that are right. We cannot live healthily and decently,
unless they who undertook to manage us provide
the means. We cannot be instructed unless they will
teach us; we cannot be rationally amused, unless
they will amuse us; we cannot but have some false
gods of our own, while they set up so many of theirs
in all the public places. The evil consequences of im-
perfect instruction, the evil consequences of perni-
cious neglect, the evil consequences of unnatural
restraint and the denial of humanising enjoyments,
will all come from us, and none of them will stop with
us. They will spread far and wide. They always do;
they always have done—just like the pestilence. I
understand so much, I think, at last.”
But the Master said again, “O you labouring men!
How seldom do we ever hear of you, except in con-
nection with some trouble!”
“Master,” he replied, “I am Nobody, and little likely
to be heard of (nor yet much wanted to be heard of,
perhaps), except when there is some trouble. But it
never begins with me, and it never can end with me.
As sure as Death, it comes down to me, and it goes
up from me.”
There was so much reason in what he said, that
the Bigwig family, getting wind of it, and being hor-
ribly frightened by the late desolation, resolved to
unite with him to do the things that were right—at
all events, so far as the said things were associated
with the direct prevention, humanly speaking, of an-
other pestilence. But, as their fear wore off, which
it soon began to do, they resumed their falling out
among themselves, and did nothing. Consequently
the scourge appeared again—low down as before—
and spread avengingly upward as before, and car-
ried off vast numbers of the brawlers. But not a man
among them ever admitted, if in the least degree he
ever perceived, that he had anything to do with it.
60
Some Christmas Stories
So Nobody lived and died in the old, old, old way;
and this, in the main, is the whole of Nobody’s story.
Had he no name, you ask? Perhaps it was Legion.
It matters little what his name was. Let us call him
Legion.
If you were ever in the Belgian villages near the
field of Waterloo, you will have seen, in some quiet
little church, a monument erected by faithful com-
panions in arms to the memory of Colonel A, Major
B, Captains C, D and E, Lieutenants F and G, Ensigns
H, I and J, seven non-commissioned officers, and one
hundred and thirty rank and file, who fell in the dis-
charge of their duty on the memorable day. The story
of Nobody is the story of the rank and file of the
earth. They bear their share of the battle; they have
their part in the victory; they fall; they leave no name
but in the mass. The march of the proudest of us,
leads to the dusty way by which they go. O! Let us
think of them this year at the Christmas fire, and
not forget them when it is burnt out.