w in any little creature's head. Altogether she was
what you would have called provoking, you know; but satisfactory, too. Oh,
perfectly satisfactory!' Is not the following a most glowing sketch
of a well known pastime?

'But they didn't devote the whole evening to music. After a while
they played at forfeits; for it is good to be children sometimes,
and never better than at Christmas, when its mighty Founder was a
child himself. Stop! There was first a game at blindman's buff. Of
course there was. And I no more believe Topper was really blind
than I believe he had eyes in his boots. My opinion is, that it
was a done thing between him and Scrooge's nephew; and that the
Ghost of Christmas Present knew it. The way he went after that
plump sister in the lace tucker, was an outrage on the credulity
of human nature. Knocking down the fire-irons, tumbling over the
chairs, bumping up against the piano, smothering himself among the
curtains, wherever she went, there went he. He always knew where
the plump sister was. He wouldn't catch any body else. If you had
fallen up against him, as some of them did, and stood there; he
would have made a feint endeavoring to seize you, which would have
been an affront to your understanding: and would instantly have
sidled off in the direction of the plump sister. She often cried
out that it wasn't fair; and it really was not. But when, at last,
he caught her; when, in spite of all her silken rustlings, and her
rapid flutterings past him, he got her into a corner whence there
was no escape; then his conduct was the most execrable. For his
pretending not to know her; his pretending that it was necessary
to touch her head-dress, and farther to assure himself of her
identity by pressing a certain ring upon her finger, and a certain
chain about her neck; was vile, monstrous! No doubt she told him
her opinion of it, when, another blindman being in office, they
were so very confidential together, behind the curtains.'

The Ghost of Christmas to Come is the third spirit. It is a stately
figure, surrounded in black and impenetrable drapery. It leads SCROOGE
into the heart of the city, and he hears his acquaintance talking
jestingly of one departed; into the Exchange, and he sees another standing
against his peculiar pillar; into a haunt of infamy, where wretches are
dividing the spoils and hoa