es!" Master
Peter Cratchit, again, arrayed in his father's shirt collars, who,
rejoicing to find himself so gallantly attired, at one moment "yearned
to show his linen in the fashionable parks," and at another, hearing his
sister Martha talk of some lord who "was much about as tall as Peter,
pulled up his collars so high that you couldn't have seen him if you
had been there." As for the pathetic portions of the narrative, it is
especially observable in regard to those, that they were anything rather
than made too much of. There, more particularly, the elisions were
ruthless. Looking through the marked copy, it really would appear that
only a very few indeed of the salient points were left in regard to the
life and death of Tiny Tim. Bob's visit to the death-bed was entirely
unmentioned. Even the words "Spirit of Tiny Tim, thy childish essence
was from God!" were never uttered. Two utterances there _were_, however,
the one breathing an exquisite tenderness, the other indicative of a
long-suppressed but passionate outburst of grief, that thrilled to
the hearts of all who heard them, and still, we doubt not, haunt their
recollection. The one--where the mother, laying her mourning needlework
upon the table, put her hand up to her face. "'The colour hurts my
eyes,' she said. The colour? Ah! poor Tiny Tim!" The other, where the
father, while describing the little creature's grave, breaks down in a
sudden agony of tears. "It would have done you good to see how green a
place it is. But you'll see it often. I promised him that I would walk
there on a Sunday--_My little, little child! My little child!_" It was a
touch of nature that made the Reader and his world of hearers, upon the
instant, kin. The tearful outcry brimmed to the eyes of those present
a thousand visible echoes. "He broke down all at once. He couldn't help
it," said the Reader, adding in subdued accents the simple words, "If
he could have helped it, he and his child would have been further apart
perhaps than they were." With that ended all reference to the home-grief
at Bob Cratchit's. Everything else in relation to the loss of Tiny Tim
was foregone unhesitatingly.

The descriptive passages were cut out by wholesale. While the Christmas
dinner at Scrooge's Clerk's, and the Christmas party at Scrooge's
Nephew's, were left in almost in their entirety, the street-scenes and
shop-window displays were obliterated altogether. Nothing at all was
said about the "great rou