4. Yet he marveled much that the cheerful light And marveled he more at the tangled balls; "I have shared thy joys since our marriage vow, 5. Then she spoke of the time when the basket there Was filled to the very brim, And how there remained of the goodly pile. But a single pair-for him. "Then wonder not at the dimmed eye-light, There's but one pair of stockings to mend to-night. 6. "I can not but think of the busy feet, In the basket, awaiting the needle's time,— How the sprightly steps, to a mother dear, 7. "For each empty nook in the basket old, 'Tis for this that a tear gathered over my sight 8. "'Twas said that far through the forest wild Was a land whose rivers and darkening caves 9. "Another went forth on the foaming waves And this nook, in its emptiness, seemeth to me 10. "Two others have gone toward the setting sun, 11. Another-the dearest-the fairest-the best- And clad in a garment that waxeth not old, In a land of continual day. Oh! wonder no more at the dimmed eye-light, XIV.-THE MISER. CHARLES DICKENS. 1. Marley was dead, to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. The register of his burial was signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker, and the chief mourner. Scrooge signed it. And Scrooge's name was good upon 'Change, for anything he chose to put his hand to. Old Marley was as dead as a door-nail. 2. Mind! I don't mean to say that I know, of my own knowledge, what there is particularly dead about a door-nail. I might have been inclined, myself, to regard a coffin-nail as the deadest piece of ironmongery in the trade. But the wisdom of our ancestors is in the simile; and my unhallowed hands shall not disturb it, or the country's done for. You will, therefore, permit me to repeat, emphatically, that Marley was as dead as a door-nail. 3. Scrooge knew he was dead? Of course he did. How could it be otherwise? Scrooge and he were partners, for I don't know how many years. Scrooge was his sole executor, his sole administrator, his sole assign, his sole residuary legatee, his sole friend, and sole mourner. And even Scrooge was not so dreadfully cut up by the sad event, but that he was an excellent man of business on the very day of the funeral, and solemnized it with an undoubted bar gain. 4. Scrooge never painted out old Marley's name. There it stood, years afterwards, above the warehouse door : Scrooge and Marley. The firm was known as Scrooge and Marley. Sometimes people new to the business called Scrooge Scrooge, and sometimes Marley, but he answered to both names. It was all the same to him. 5. Oh! But he was a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone, Scrooge! a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous old sinner!. Hard and sharp as flint from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire; secret and self-contained and solitary as an oyster. The cold within him froze his old features, nipped his pointed nose, shriveled his cheek, stiffened his gait ; made his eyes red, his thin lips blue; and spoke out shrewdly in his grating voice. A frost rime was on his head, and on his eyebrows, and his wiry chin. He carried his own low temperature always about with him; he iced his office in the dog-days; and didn't thaw it one degree at Christmas. 6. External heat and cold had little influence on Scrooge. No warmth could warm, no wintry weather chill him. No wind that blew was bitterer than he, no falling snow was more intent upon its purpose, no pelting rain less open to entreaty. Foul weather didn't know where to have him. The heaviest rain and snow and hail and sleet could boast of the advantage over him in only one respect. came down handsomely, and Scrooge never did. They often 7. Nobody ever stopped him in the street to say, with gladsome looks, "My dear Scrooge, how are you? When will you come to see me?" No beggars implored him to bestow a trifle, no children asked him what it was o'clock, no man or woman ever once in all his life inquired the way to such and such a place, of Scrooge. Even the blind-men's dogs appeared to know him ; and when they saw him coming on, would tug their owners into door-ways and up courts; and then would wag their tails as though they said, “No eye at all is better than an evil eye, dark master!" 8. But what did Scrooge care! It was the very thing he liked. To edge his way along the crowded paths of life, warning all human sympathy to keep its distance, was what the knowing ones called " nuts to Scrooge. 9. Once upon a time-of all the good days in the year, upon Christmas Eve-old Scrooge sat busy in his countinghouse. It was cold, bleak, biting weather: foggy withal: and he could hear the people in the court outside, go wheezing up and down, beating their hands upon their breasts, and stamping their feet upon the pavement stones to warm them. The city clocks had only just gone three, but it was quite dark already—it had not been light all day—and candles were flaring in the windows of the neighboring offices, like ruddy smears upon the palpable brown air. The fog came pouring in at every chink and key-hole, and was so dense. without, that, although the court was of the narrowest, the houses opposite were mere phantoms. To see the dingy cloud come drooping down, obscuring everything, one might have thought that Nature lived hard by, and was brewing on a large scale. 10. The door of Scrooge's counting-house was open, that he might keep his eye upon his clerk, who in a dismal little cell beyond, a sort of tank, was copying letters. Scrooge had a very small fire, but the clerk's fire was so very much smaller that it looked like one coal. But he could not replenish it, for Scrooge kept the coal-box in his own room; and so surely as the clerk came in with the shovel, the master predicted that it would be necessary for them to part. Wherefore the clerk put on his white comforter, and tried to warm himself at the candle; in which effort, not being a man of strong imagination, he failed. QUESTIONS.-1. What is an "undertaker"? What is meant by the expression "Scrooge's name was good upon 'Change," etc. 3. What is an "administrator"? "assign"? "residuary legatee"? 5. What is meant by a "wiry chin"? Explain the last two sentences in the sixth paragraph. What double meaning in the phrase "came down handsomely"? 9. What kind of day must it have been to be dark at three o'clock? Is there any thing peculiar about the climate of London, where the scene of this story is laid? XV.—THE PLANTING OF THE APPLE-TREE. WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT. 1. Come, let us plant the apple-tree ! Cleave the tough greensward with the spade; 2. What plant we in the apple-tree? Buds, which the breath of summer days Shall lengthen into leafy sprays; Boughs, where the thrush with crimson breast Shall haunt and sing and hide her nest. We plant upon the sunny lea A shadow for the noon-tide hour, 3. What plant we in the apple-tree? 4. What plant we in the apple-tree? |