connected
with a thousand thoughts, and hopes, and joys, and cares long, long
forgotten.' Each circumstance of the time past is restored. The village
school; a boy left deserted in the school-room, whom SCROOGE recognises as
his former self reading 'Robinson Crusoe;' till at last a lovely girl, who
throws her arms round the boy's neck, and bids him come home to a 'merry,
merry Christmas.' Then the scene changes, and SCROOGE is once more in the
house of the kind-hearted master of his youth, who loved to keep Christmas
as it was kept in the olden time, and he recognises himself the most
joyous of the joyous group. Then comes the scene of his manhood, when he
deserted his betrothed for a wealthier bride; and last, he views the girl
he had deserted, the mother of a happy blooming family. This picture is
delightfully sketched; it is enough to make a bachelor in love with
wedlock. The scene is too affecting for the changed and worldly miser; he
implores to be removed from the familiar place; he wrestles with the
spirit, and awakened by the struggle, finds himself once more in his own
room, and in darkness.

Again he has a long sleep. Christmas Present comes in the shape of a
giant, with a holly-green robe. SCROOGE perceives him seated in his room,
with his noble head crowned with holly wreath studded with icicles,
reaching to the ceiling. His throne is a wine-cask and his foot-stool a
twelfth-cake. In his hand he bears a blazing torch, from which he
sprinkles down gladness upon every threshhold he enters. An immense fire
glows and crackles in the grate, the walls and ceiling are hung with
living green, and all around are heaped up the choice provisions collected
to make Christmas glad. The giant leads SCROOGE forth. They pass through
streets and lanes, with every house bearing token of rejoicing by its
roaring fire or its sprig of holly, till they come to the dwelling of poor
BOB CRATCHIT, old SCROOGE'S clerk. And here ensues a picture worthy of
WILKIE in his best days:

'Perhaps it was the pleasure the good Spirit had in showing off
his power, or else it was his own kind, generous, hearty nature,
and his sympathy with all poor men, that led him straight to
Scrooge's clerk's; for there he went, and took Scrooge with him,
holding to his robe; and on the threshhold of the door the Spirit
smiled, and stopped to bless Bob Cratchit's dwelling with the
sprinkling of his torch. Think of that! Bob had bu