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Some Short Christmas Stories - Charles Dickens · Charles Dickens Works Collection

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  Speaker 1: Story one of some short Christmas stories. This is a
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  Speaker 1: LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain.
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  Speaker 1: Some short Christmas Stories by Charles Dickens. Story one A
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  Speaker 1: Christmas Tree. I have been looking on this evening at
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  Speaker 1: a merry company of children assembled round that pretty German toy,
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  Speaker 1: a Christmas Tree. The tree was planted in the middle
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  Speaker 1: of a great round table and towered above their heads.
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  Speaker 1: It was brilliantly lighted by a multitude of little tapers,
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  Speaker 1: and everywhere sparkled and glittered with bright objects. There were
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  Speaker 1: rosy cheeked dolls hiding behind the green leaves, and there
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  Speaker 1: were real watches, with movable hands at least and an
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  Speaker 1: endless capacity of being wound up dangling from innumerable twigs.
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  Speaker 1: There were French polished tables, chairs, bedsteads, wardrobes, eight day clocks,
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  Speaker 1: and various other articles of domestic furniture, wonderfully made in
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  Speaker 1: tin at Wolverhampton, perched among the bowls, as if in
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  Speaker 1: preparation for some fairy housekeeping. There were jolly, broad faced
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  Speaker 1: little men much more agreeable in appearance than many real men,
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  Speaker 1: and no wonder for their heads took off and showed
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  Speaker 1: them to be full of sugar plums. There were fiddles
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  Speaker 1: and drums. There were tambourines, books, work boxes, paint boxes,
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  Speaker 1: sweetmeat boxes, peep show boxes, and all kinds of boxes.
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  Speaker 1: There were trinkets for the elder girls, far brighter than
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  Speaker 1: any grown up gold and jewels. There were baskets and
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  Speaker 1: pin cushions in all devices. There were guns, swords, and banners.
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  Speaker 1: There were witches standing in chanted rings of pasteboard to
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  Speaker 1: tell fortunes. There were teetotems, humming tops, needle cases, pen wipers,
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  Speaker 1: smelling bottles, conversation cards, bouquet holders, real fruit made artificially
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  Speaker 1: dazzling with gold leaf imitation, apples, pearls, and walnuts, crammed
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  Speaker 1: with surprises. In short, as a pretty child before me
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  Speaker 1: delightedly whispered to another pretty child, her bosom friend, there
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  Speaker 1: was everything and more, this motley collection of odd objects
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  Speaker 1: clustering on the tree like magic fruit, and flashing back
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  Speaker 1: the bright looks directed towards it from every side. Some
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  Speaker 1: of the diamond eyes admiring it were hardly on a
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  Speaker 1: level with the table, and a few were languishing in
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  Speaker 1: timid wonder on the bosoms of pretty mothers, ants and nurses,
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  Speaker 1: made a lively realizing of the fancies of childhood, and
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  Speaker 1: set me thinking how all the trees that grow, and
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  Speaker 1: all the things that come into existence on the earth
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  Speaker 1: have their wild adornments at that well remembered time. Being
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  Speaker 1: now at home again and alone, the only person in
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  Speaker 1: the house awake, my thoughts are drawn back by a
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  Speaker 1: fascination which I do not care to resist, to my
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  Speaker 1: own childhood. I begin to consider what do we all
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  Speaker 1: remember best upon the branches of the Christmas tree, of
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  Speaker 1: our own young Christmas days by which we climbed to
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  Speaker 1: real life. Straight in the middle of the room, cramped
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  Speaker 1: in the freedom of its growth, by no encircling walls
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  Speaker 1: or soon reached ceiling, a shadowy tree arises, and looking
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  Speaker 1: up into the dreamy brightness of its top. For I
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  Speaker 1: observe in this tree the singular property that it appears
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  Speaker 1: to grow downward towards the earth. I look into my
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  Speaker 1: youngest Christmas recollections, all toys. At first I find up
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  Speaker 1: yonder among the green holly and red berries, is the tumbler,
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  Speaker 1: with his hands in his pockets, who wouldn't lie down,
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  Speaker 1: but whenever he was put upon the floor, persisted in
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  Speaker 1: rolling his fat body about, until he rolled himself still,
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  Speaker 1: and brought those lobster eyes of his to bear upon
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  Speaker 1: me when I affected to laugh very much, but in
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  Speaker 1: my heart of hearts was extremely doubtful of him. Close
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  Speaker 1: beside him is that infernal snuffbox, out of which there
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  Speaker 1: sprang a demon niacal counselor in a black gown, with
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  Speaker 1: an obnoxious head of hair and a red cloth, mouth
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  Speaker 1: wide open, who was not to be endured on any terms,
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  Speaker 1: but could not be put away either, for he used suddenly,
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  Speaker 1: in a highly magnified state, to fly out of mammoth
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  Speaker 1: snuff boxes in dreams when least expected, nor as the
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  Speaker 1: frog with cobbler's wax on his tail far off, for
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  Speaker 1: there was no knowing where he wouldn't jump. And when
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  Speaker 1: he flew over the candle and came upon one's hat
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  Speaker 1: with that spotted back red on a green ground, he
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  Speaker 1: was horrible. The cardboard lady in a blue silk skirt,
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  Speaker 1: who was stood up against the candlestick to dance, and
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  Speaker 1: whom I see on the same branch, was milder and
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  Speaker 1: was beautiful but I can't say as much for the
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  Speaker 1: larger cardboard man who used to be hung against the
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  Speaker 1: wall and pulled by a string. There was a sinister
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  Speaker 1: expression in that nose of his, and when he got
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  Speaker 1: his legs round his neck, which he very often did,
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  Speaker 1: he was ghastly and not a creature to be alone with.
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  Speaker 1: When did that dreadful mask first look at me? Who
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  Speaker 1: put it on? And why was I so frightened? That
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  Speaker 1: the sight of it is an era in my life?
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  Speaker 1: It is not a hideous visage in itself. It is
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  Speaker 1: even meant to be troll. Why then, were its stolid
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  Speaker 1: features so intolerable? Surely not because it hid the wearer's face.
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  Speaker 1: An apron would have done as much. And though I
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  Speaker 1: should have preferred even the apron away, it would not
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  Speaker 1: have been absolutely insupportable like the mask. Was it the
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  Speaker 1: immovability of the mask. The doll's face was immovable, but
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  Speaker 1: I was not afraid of her. Perhaps that fixed and
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  Speaker 1: set change coming over a real face infused into my
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  Speaker 1: quickened heart some remote suggestion and dread of the universal
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  Speaker 1: change that is to come on every face and make
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  Speaker 1: it Still nothing reconciled me to it. No drummers, from
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  Speaker 1: whom proceeded a melancholy chirping on the turning of a handle.
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  Speaker 1: No regiment of soldiers with the mute band taken out
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  Speaker 1: of a box and fitted one by one upon a
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  Speaker 1: stiff and lazy little set of lazy tongs. No old
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  Speaker 1: woman made of wires and a brown paper composition cutting
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  Speaker 1: up a pie for two small children could give me
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  Speaker 1: a permanent comfort for a long time. Nor was it
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  Speaker 1: any satisfaction to be shown the mask and see that
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  Speaker 1: it was made of paper, or to have it locked
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  Speaker 1: up and be assured that no one wore it. The
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  Speaker 1: mere recollection of that fixed face, the mere knowledge of
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  Speaker 1: its existence anywhere, was sufficient to awake me in the night,
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  Speaker 1: all perspiration and hort with Oh, I know it's coming,
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  Speaker 1: Oh the mask. I never wondered what the dear old
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  Speaker 1: donkey with the paniers there he is was made of.
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  Speaker 1: Then his hide was real to the touch I recollect.
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  Speaker 1: And the great black horse with the round red spots
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  Speaker 1: all over him, the horse that I could even get upon,
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  Speaker 1: I never wondered what had brought him to that strange condition,
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  Speaker 1: or thought that such a horse was not commonly seen
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  Speaker 1: at Newmarket. The four horses of no color next to him,
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  Speaker 1: that went into the wagon of cheeses and could be
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  Speaker 1: taken out and stabled under the piano, appear to have
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  Speaker 1: bits of fur tippet for their tails and other bits
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  Speaker 1: for their manes, and to stand on pegs instead of legs.
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  Speaker 1: But it was not so. When they were brought home
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  Speaker 1: for a Christmas present, they were all right. Then, neither
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  Speaker 1: was their harness unceremoniously nailed into their chests, as appears
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  Speaker 1: to be the case now. The tinkling works of the
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  Speaker 1: music cart I did find out to be made of
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  Speaker 1: quill tooth picks and wire. And I always thought that
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  Speaker 1: little tumbler in his shirt sleeves, perpetually swarming up one
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  Speaker 1: side of a wooden frame and coming down head foremost
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  Speaker 1: on the other, rather a weak minded person, though good natured.
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  Speaker 1: But the Jacob's ladder next him made of little squares
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  Speaker 1: of redwood that went flapping and clattering over one another,
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  Speaker 1: each developing a different picture. And the whole enlivened by
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  Speaker 1: small bells, was a mighty marvel and a great delight. Ah.
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  Speaker 1: The Dolls house of which I was not proprietor, but
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  Speaker 1: where I visited I don't admire the Houses of Parliament
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  Speaker 1: half so much as that stone fronted mansion, with real
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  Speaker 1: glass windows and doorsteps, and a real balcony, greener than
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  Speaker 1: I ever see now except at watering places, and even
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  Speaker 1: they afford but a poor imitation. And though it did
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  Speaker 1: open all at once the entire house front, which was
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  Speaker 1: a blow I admit as canceling the fiction of a staircase,
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  Speaker 1: it was but to shut it up again, and I
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  Speaker 1: could believe even open there were three distinct rooms in it,
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  Speaker 1: a sitting room and bedroom, elegantly furnished, and best of all,
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  Speaker 1: a kitchen with uncommonly soft fire irons, a plentiful assortment
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  Speaker 1: of diminutive utensils, oh the warming pan, and a tin
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  Speaker 1: man cook in profile who was always going to fry
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  Speaker 1: two fish. What barmecide justice have I done to the
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  Speaker 1: noble feasts wherein the set of wooden platters, figured each
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  Speaker 1: with its own peculiar delicacy as a ham or turkey,
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  Speaker 1: glued tight onto it and garnished with something green, which
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  Speaker 1: I recollect as moss could. All the temperance societies of
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  Speaker 1: these later days united give me such a tea drinking
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  Speaker 1: as I have had through the means of yonder little
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  Speaker 1: set of blue crockery, which really would hold liquid. It
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  Speaker 1: ran out of the small wooden cask, I recollect and
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  Speaker 1: taste it of matches, and which made tea nectar. And
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  Speaker 1: if the two legs of the ineffectual little sugar tongs
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  Speaker 1: did tumble over one another and want purpose like punches hands,
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  Speaker 1: what does it matter? And if I did once shriek
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  Speaker 1: out as a poisoned child and strike the fashionable company
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  Speaker 1: with consternation by reason of having drunk a little teaspoon
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  Speaker 1: inadvertently dissolved into hot tea, I was never the worse
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  Speaker 1: for it, except by a powder upon the next branches
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  Speaker 1: of the tree, lower down hard by the green roller
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  Speaker 1: and miniature gardening tools. How thick the books began to hang,
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  Speaker 1: thin books in themselves at first, but many of them,
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  Speaker 1: and with deliciously smooth covers of bright red or green,
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  Speaker 1: what fat black letters? To begin with, quote A was
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  Speaker 1: an archer and shot at a frog end. Quote of
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  Speaker 1: course he was. He was an apple pie also, and
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  Speaker 1: there he is. He was a good many things in
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  Speaker 1: his time, was A. And so were most of his friends,
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  Speaker 1: except X, who had so little versatility that I never
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  Speaker 1: knew him to get beyond Xerxes or zantropy, like why
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  Speaker 1: who was always confined to a yacht or a hyew tree?
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  Speaker 1: And z condemned forever to be a zebra or a zany.
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  Speaker 1: But now the very tree itself changes and becomes a
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  Speaker 1: bean stalk, the marvelous beanstalk up which Jack climbed to
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  Speaker 1: the giant's house. And now those dreadfully interesting double headed
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  Speaker 1: giants with their clubs over their shoulders, begin to stride
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  Speaker 1: along the boughs in a perfect throng, dragging knights and
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  Speaker 1: ladies home for dinner by the hair of their heads.
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  Speaker 1: And Jack, how noble, with his sword of sharpness and
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  Speaker 1: his shoes of swiftness. Again those old meditations come upon
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  Speaker 1: me as I gaze up at him, and I debate
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  Speaker 1: within myself whether there was more than one Jack, which
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  Speaker 1: I am loath to believe possible, or only one genuine, original,
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  Speaker 1: admirable Jack who achieved all the recorded exploits. Good for
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  Speaker 1: Christmas time is the ruddy color of the cloak, in
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  Speaker 1: which the tree making a forest of itself for her
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  Speaker 1: to trip through with her basket. Little red riding Hood
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  Speaker 1: comes to me one Christmas Eve to give me information
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  Speaker 1: of the cruelty and treachery of that dissembling wolf who
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  Speaker 1: ate her grandmother without making any impression on his appetite,
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  Speaker 1: and then ate her after making that ferocious joke about
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  Speaker 1: his teeth. She was my first love. I felt that
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  Speaker 1: if I could have married little Red riding Hood, I
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  Speaker 1: should have known perfect bliss. But it was not to be.
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  Speaker 1: There was nothing for it but to look out the
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  Speaker 1: wolf in the Noah's Ark there and put him late
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  Speaker 1: in the procession, on the table as a monster who
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  Speaker 1: was to be the great, oh, the wonderful Noah's Ark.
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  Speaker 1: It was not found seaworthy when put in a washing tub,
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  Speaker 1: and the animals were crammed in at the roof, and
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  Speaker 1: it needed to have their legs well shaken down before
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  Speaker 1: they could be got in even there and then ten
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  Speaker 1: to one, but they began to tumble out the door,
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  Speaker 1: which was but imperfectly fastened with a wire latch. But
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  Speaker 1: what was that against it? Consider the noble fly, a
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  Speaker 1: size or too smaller than the elephant, the lady bird,
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  Speaker 1: the butterfly, all triumphs of art. Consider the goose, whose
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  Speaker 1: feet were so small and whose balance was so indifferent,
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  Speaker 1: that he usually tumbled forward and knocked down all the
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  Speaker 1: animal creation. Consider Noah and his family like idiotic tobacco stoppers,
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  Speaker 1: and how the leopard stuck to warm little fingers, and
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  Speaker 1: how the tails of the larger animals used gradually to
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  Speaker 1: resolve themselves and to frayed bits of string. Hush again,
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  Speaker 1: a forest, and somebody up in a tree. Not robin Hood,
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  Speaker 1: not Valentine, not the yellow dwarf. I have passed him,
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  Speaker 1: and all mother bunches wonders without mention. But an Eastern
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  Speaker 1: king with a glittering scimitar and turban by allah, two
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  Speaker 1: Eastern kings. For I see another looking over his shoulder.
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  Speaker 1: Down upon the grass. At the tree's foot lies the
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  Speaker 1: full length of a coal black giant, stretched asleep with
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  Speaker 1: his head in a lady's lap. And near them is
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  Speaker 1: a glass box fastened with four locks of shining steel,
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  Speaker 1: in which he keeps the lady prisoner. When he is awake.
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  Speaker 1: I see the four keys at his girdle. Now the
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  Speaker 1: lady makes signs to the two kings in the tree,
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  Speaker 1: who softly descend. It is the setting in of the
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  Speaker 1: bright Arabian nights. Oh, Now all common things become uncommon
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  Speaker 1: and enchanted to me. All lamps are wonderful, All rings
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  Speaker 1: are talismans. Common flower pots are full of treasure with
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  Speaker 1: a little earth scattered on top. Trees are for Ali
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  Speaker 1: Baba to hide in. Beef steaks are to throw down
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  Speaker 1: into the valley of diamonds, that the precious stones may
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  Speaker 1: stick to them and be carried by the eagles to
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  Speaker 1: their nests. Whence the traders with loud cries will scare them.
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: Tarts are made according to the recipe of the Vizier's
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: son of Bussorah, who turned pastry cook after he was
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: set down in his drawers at the gate of Damascus.
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: Cobblers are all mustaphus, and in the habit of sowing
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: up people cut into four pieces, to whom they are
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  Speaker 1: taken blindfold. Any iron ring let into stone is the
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  Speaker 1: entrance to a cave which only waits for the magician
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  Speaker 1: and the little fire and the necromancy that will make
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: the earth shake. All the dates imported come from the
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: same tree as that unlucky date with whose shall the
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: merchant knocked out the eye of the genies invisible sun.
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  Speaker 1: All olives are of the stock of that fresh fruit
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  Speaker 1: concerning which the commander of the faithful overheard the boy
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  Speaker 1: conduct the fictitious trial of the fraudulent olive merchant. All
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  Speaker 1: apples are akin to the apple purchased with two others
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  Speaker 1: from the Sultan's gardener for three sequins, which the tall
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  Speaker 1: black slaves stole from the child. All dogs are associated
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  Speaker 1: with the dog really a transformed man, who jumped upon
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  Speaker 1: the baker's counter and put his paw on the piece
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  Speaker 1: of bad money. All rice recalls the rice which the
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: awful lady, who was a ghoul, could only peck by
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  Speaker 1: grains because of her nightly feasts. In the burial place,
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: My very rocking horse, and there he is, with his
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: nostrils turned completely inside out, indicative of blood, should have
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  Speaker 1: a peg in his neck by virtue thereof to fly
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  Speaker 1: away with me, as the wooden horse did with the
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: Prince of Persia in the sight of all his father's court. Yes,
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  Speaker 1: on every object that I recognize among those upper branches
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  Speaker 1: of my Christmas tree, I see this very light when
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  Speaker 1: I wake in bed at daybreak on the cold dark
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  Speaker 1: winter mornings, the white snow dimly beheld outside through the
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: frost on the window pane. I hear Dinarzada, sister sister,
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  Speaker 1: if you are yet awake, I pray you finish the
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: history of the young King of the Black Islands. Sheherrazada replies,
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  Speaker 1: if my Lord the Sultan will suffer me to live
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  Speaker 1: another day, sister, I will not only finish that, but
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: tell you a more wonderful story. Yet then the gracious
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: Sultan goes out, giving no orders for the execution, and
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: we all three breathe again. At this height of my tree,
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: I begin to see cowering among the leaves. It may
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: be born of turkey, or of pudding, or mince pie,
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: or of these many fancies jump with Robinson Crusoe on
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  Speaker 1: his desert island, Philip Quarrel among the monkeys, Sandford and Merton,
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  Speaker 1: with mister Barlow, mother Bunch and the Mask. Or it
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: may be the result of indigestion assisted by imagination and overdoctoring,
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: a prodigious nightmare. It is so exceedingly indistinct that I
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: don't know why it's frightful, but I know it is.
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: I can only make out that it is an immense
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: array of shapeless things which appear to be planted in
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: a vast exaggeration of the lazy tongs that used to
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: bear the toy soldiers, and to be slowly coming close
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  Speaker 1: to my eyes and receding to an immeasurable distance. When
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: it comes closest, it is worse in connection with it.
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: I describe remembrances of winter nights incredibly long, of being
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: sent early to bed as a punishment for some small offense,
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  Speaker 1: and waking in two hours with a sensation of having
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  Speaker 1: been asleep, two nights of the laden hopelessness of morning
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  Speaker 1: ever dawning, and the oppression of a weight of remorse.
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  Speaker 1: And now I see a wonderful row of little lights
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  Speaker 1: rise smoothly out of the ground before a vast green curtain.
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: Now a bell rings, a magic bell, which still sounds
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: in my ears unlike all other bells, and music plays
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  Speaker 1: amidst the buzz of voices and a fragrant smell of
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: orange peel and oil anon. The magic bell commands the
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  Speaker 1: music to cease, and the great green curtain rolls itself
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: up majestically, and the play begins. The devoted dog of
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: Montarchy avenges the death of his master, Foully murdered in
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: the forest upon Dee, and the humorous peasant with a
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: red nose and a very little hat, whom I take
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  Speaker 1: from this hour forth to my bosom as a friend.
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: I think he was a waiter or an hostler at
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: a village inn. But many years have passed since he
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: and I have met. Remarks that the sassagacity of that
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: dog is indeed surprising, and evermore this jocular conceit will
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: live in my remembrance, fresh and unfating, overtopping all possible
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: jokes unto the end of time. Or now I learn
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: with bitter tears, how poor Jane Shore, dressed all in
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  Speaker 1: white and with her brown hair hanging down, went starving
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: through the streets, Or how George Barnwell killed the worthiest
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: uncle that ever man had, and was afterwards so sorry
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: for it that he ought to have been let off.
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: Comes swift to comfort me the pantomime stupendous phenomenon when
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: clowns are shot from loaded mortars into the great chandelier
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: bright constellation, that it is, when harlequins, covered all over
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: with scales of pure gold, twist and sparkle like amazing fish.
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: When pantaloon, whom I deem it no irreverence to compare
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: in my own mind to my grandfather, puts red hot
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: pokers in his pocket and cries, here's somebody coming, or
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: taxes the clown with petty larceny by saying, now, I
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: saw you do it. When everything is capable with the
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: greatest of ease of being changed into anything, and nothing is,
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: but thinking makes it so now too, I perceived my
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: first experience of the dreary sensation often to return in
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: after life, of being unable next day to get back
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: to the dull, settled world, of wanting to live forever
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: in the bright atmosphere. I have quitted of doting on
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: the little fairy with the wand like a celestial barber's pole,
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: and pining for a fairy immortality along with her. Huh.
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: She comes back in many shapes as my eye wanders
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: down the branches of my Christmas tree and goes as
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: often and has never yet stayed by me. Out of
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: this delight spring the toy theater. There it is, with
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: its familiar prosenium and ladies in feathers in the boxes,
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: and all its attendant occupation with paste and glue and
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: gum and water colors. In the getting up of the
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: miller Ander's Men and Elizabeth, or the Exile of Serbia
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: in spite of a few besetting accidents and failures, particularly
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: an unreasonable disposition in the respectable Kalmar and some others
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: to become faint in the legs and double up at
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: exciting points of the drama. A teeming world of fancy,
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: so suggestive and all embracing that far below it on
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: my Christmas tree, I see dark, dirty, real theaters in
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: the daytime, adorned with these associations, as with the freshest
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: garlands of the rarest flowers and charming me. Yet, but hark,
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: the weights are playing, and they break my childish sleep.
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: What images do I associate with the Christmas music? As
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: I see them set forth on the Christmas tree, known
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: before all the others, Keeping far apart from all the others,
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: they gather round my little bed. An angel speaking to
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: a group of shepherds in a field, some travelers with
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: eyes uplifted, following a star. A baby in a manger,
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: a child in a spacious temple talking with grave men.
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: A solemn figure with a mild and beautiful face raising
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: a dead girl by the hand, again near a city gate,
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: calling back the son of a widow on his bear
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: to life. A crowd of people looking through the opened
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: roof of a chamber where he set, and letting down
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: a sick person on a bed with ropes, the same
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: in a tempest, walking on the water to a ship again,
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: and on a seashore, teaching a great multitude again, with
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: a child upon his knee and other children round again,
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: restoring sight to the blind, speech to the dumb, hearing
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: to the deaf, health to the sick, strength to the lame,
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: knowledge to the ignorant. Again, dying upon a cross, watched
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: by armed soldiers, a thick darkness coming on the earth,
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: beginning to shake, and only one voice heard. Forgive them,
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: for they know not what they do. Still on the
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: lower and maturer branches of the tree, Christmas associations cluster,
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: thick school books shut up of it, and virgils silenced.
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: The Rule of three with its cool, impertinent inquiries, long
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: disposed of, Terence and Ploutus acted no more. In an
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: arena of huddled desks and forms, all chipped and notched
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: and inked, cricket bats, stumps and balls. Left higher up,
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: with the smell of trodden grass and the softened noise
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: of shouts in the evening air, the tree is still
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: fresh still gay. If I no more come home at
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: Christmas time, there will be boys and girls, Thank Heaven,
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: while the world lasts, and they do yonder they dance
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: and play upon the branches of my tree. God russ
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: them merrily, and my heart dances in place. Two and
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: I do come home at Christmas. We all do, or
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: we all should we all come home, or ought to
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: come home for a short holiday, The longer the better,
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: from the great boarding school, where we are forever working
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: at our arithmetical slates, to take and give a rest
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: as to going a visiting? Where can we not go?
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: If we will? Where have we not been when we
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: would starting our fancy from our Christmas tree away into
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: the winter prospect. There are many such upon the tree,
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: on my low lying misty grounds, through fens and fogs,
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: up long hills, winding dark as caverns, between thick plantations,
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: almost shutting out the sparkling stars so out on broad heights,
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: until we stop at last with sudden silence at an avenue.
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: The gatebell has a deep, half awful sound in the
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: frosty air. The gate swings open on its hinges, and
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: as we drive up to a great house, the glancing
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: lights grow larger in the windows, and the opposing rows
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: of trees seem to fall solemnly back on either side,
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: to give us place. At intervals all day, a frightened
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: hair as shot across this whitened turf, or the distant
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: clatter of a herd of deer trampling the hard frost,
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: has for the minute crushed the silence too. Their watchful
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: eyes beneath the fern may be shining now if we
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: could see them, like the icy dewdrops on the leaves,
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: But they are still, and all is still, And so
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: the lights grow larger, and the trees falling back before us,
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: and closing up again behind us, as if to forbid retreat.
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: We come to the house. There is probably a smell
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: of roasted chestnuts and other good comfortable things all the time,
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: for we are telling winter stories, ghost stories, or more
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: shame for us round the Christmas fire, and we have
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: never stirred, except to draw a little nearer to it.
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: But no matter, for that We came to the house,
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: and it is an old house, full of great chimneys,
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: where wood is burnt on, ancient dogs upon the hearth,
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: and grim portraits, some of them with grim legends too
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: lower distrustfully from the oaken panels of the walls. We
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: are a middle aged noblemen, and we make a generous
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: supper with our host and hostess and their guests, it
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: being Christmas time in the old house, full of company,
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: and then we go to bed. Our room is a
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: very old room. It is hung with tapestry. We don't
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: like the portrait of a cavalier in green over the fireplace.
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: There are great black beams in the ceiling, and there
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: is a great black bedstead supported at the foot by
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: two great black figures who seem to have come off
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: a couple of tombs in the old baronial church in
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: the park for our particular accommodation. But we are not
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: a superstitious nobleman, and we don't mind well. We dismiss
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: our servant, lock the door, and sit before the fire
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: in our dressing gown, musing about a great many things.
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: At length we go to bed. Well, we can't sleep.
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: We toss and tumble and can't sleep. The embers on
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: the hearth burn fitfully and make the room look ghostly.
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: We can't help peeping out over the counterpane at the
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: two black figures and the cavalier, that wicked looking cavalier
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: in green. In the flickering light, they seem to advance
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: and retire, which, though we are not by any means
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: a superstitious nobleman, is not agreeable. Well, we get nervous,
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: more and more nervous. We say, this is very foolish,
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: but we can't stand this. We'll pretend to be ill
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: and knock up somebody. Well, we are just going to
• 34:45
  Speaker 1: do it, when the locked door opens, and there comes
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: in a young woman, deadly, pale, and with long fair hair,
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: who glides to the fire and sits down in the
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: chair we have left there, wringing her hands. Then we
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: notice that her clothes are wet. Our tongue cleaves to
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: the roof of our mouth, and we can't speak, but
• 35:11
  Speaker 1: we observe her accurately. Her clothes are wet, her long
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: hair is dabbled with moist mud. She is dressed in
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: the fashion of two hundred years ago, and she has
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: at her girdle a bunch of rusty keys. Well, there
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: she sits, and we can't even faint. We are in
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: such a state about it. Presently she gets up and
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: tries all the locks in the room, with the rusty keys,
• 35:42
  Speaker 1: which won't fit one of them. Then she fixes her
• 35:47
  Speaker 1: eyes on the portrait of the Cavalier in green and says,
• 35:50
  Speaker 1: in a low, terrible voice, the stags know it. After that,
• 35:59
  Speaker 1: she wrings her hands again, pass us the bedside, and
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: goes out at the door. We hurry on our dressing gown,
• 36:09
  Speaker 1: seize our pistols. We always travel with pistols, and are following.
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: When we find the door locked, We turn the key,
• 36:19
  Speaker 1: look out into the dark gallery. No one there. We
• 36:25
  Speaker 1: wander away and try to find our servant. Can't be done.
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: We pace the gallery till daybreak, then return to our
• 36:34
  Speaker 1: deserted room, fall asleep, and are awakened by our servant.
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: Nothing ever haunts him, and the shining sun. Well. We
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: make a wretched breakfast, and all the companies say we
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: look a queer. After breakfast, we go over the house
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: with our host, and then we take him to the
• 36:55
  Speaker 1: portrait of the Cavalier in green. And then it all
• 36:58
  Speaker 1: comes out. He was false to a young housekeeper once
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: attached to that family and famous for her beauty, who
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: drowned herself in a pond, and whose body was discovered
• 37:11
  Speaker 1: after a long time because the stags refused to drink
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: of the water, since which it has been whispered that
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: she traverses the house at midnight, but goes especially to
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: that room where the cavalier in green was wont to sleep,
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: trying the old locks with the rusty keys. Well, we
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: tell our host of what we have seen in a
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: shade comes over his features, and he begs it may
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: be hushed up, and so it is, but it's all true.
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: And we said so before we died. We are dead now.
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: To many responsible people, there is no end to the
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: old houses, with resounding galleries and dismal state bedchambers and
• 38:02
  Speaker 1: haunted wings, shut up for many years, through which we
• 38:05
  Speaker 1: may ramble with an agreeable creeping up our back, and
• 38:10
  Speaker 1: encounter any number of ghosts. But it is worthy of remark,
• 38:15
  Speaker 1: perhaps reducible to a very few general types and classes,
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: for ghosts have little originality and walk in a beaten track.
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: Thus it comes to pass that a certain room in
• 38:29
  Speaker 1: a certain old hall, where a certain bad lord, baronet, knight,
• 38:34
  Speaker 1: or gentleman shot himself, has certain planks in the floor
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: from which the blood will not be taken out. You
• 38:42
  Speaker 1: may scrape and scrape as the present owner has done,
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: or plane and plane as his father did, or scrub
• 38:50
  Speaker 1: and scrub as his grandfather did, or burn and burn
• 38:53
  Speaker 1: with strong acids as his great grandfather did. But there
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: the blood will still be no redder and no paler,
• 39:03
  Speaker 1: no more and no less, always just the same. Thus
• 39:10
  Speaker 1: in such another house there is a haunted door that
• 39:13
  Speaker 1: never will keep open, or another door that never will
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: keep shut, or a haunted sound of a spinning wheel
• 39:21
  Speaker 1: or a hammer, or a footstep, or a cry or
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: a sigh, or a horse's tramp, or the rattling of
• 39:31
  Speaker 1: a chain, or else there is a turret clock which
• 39:36
  Speaker 1: at the midnight hour strikes thirteen, when the head of
• 39:39
  Speaker 1: the family is going to die, or a shadowy, immovable
• 39:45
  Speaker 1: black carriage, which at such a time is always seen
• 39:48
  Speaker 1: by somebody waiting near the great gates in the stable yard.
• 39:54
  Speaker 1: Or thus it came to pass how lady Mary went
• 39:57
  Speaker 1: to pay a visit at a large wild house the
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: Scottish Highlands, and, being fatigued with her long journey, retired
• 40:06
  Speaker 1: to bed early, and innocently said next morning at the
• 40:10
  Speaker 1: breakfast table, how odd to have so laid a party
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: last night in this remote place, and not to tell
• 40:17
  Speaker 1: me of it before I went to bed. Then everyone
• 40:22
  Speaker 1: asked Lady Mary what she meant. Then Lady Mary replied,
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: why all night long the carriages were driving round and
• 40:30
  Speaker 1: round the terrace underneath my window. Then the owner of
• 40:34
  Speaker 1: the house turned pale, and so did his lady, and
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: Charles macdoodle of Macdoodle signed to Lady Mary to say
• 40:42
  Speaker 1: no more, and everyone was silent. After breakfast, Charles macdoodle
• 40:49
  Speaker 1: told Lady Mary that it was a tradition in the
• 40:51
  Speaker 1: family that those rumbling carriages on the terrace betokened death,
• 40:56
  Speaker 1: and so it proved for two months afterwards, the lady
• 41:00
  Speaker 1: of the mansion died, and Lady Mary, who was a
• 41:04
  Speaker 1: maid of honor at court, often told this story to
• 41:07
  Speaker 1: the old Queen Charlotte. By this token that the old
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: King always said, hey, hey, what what ghosts? Ghosts? No
• 41:17
  Speaker 1: such thing, No such thing, and never left off saying
• 41:21
  Speaker 1: so until he went to bed. Or a friend of
• 41:26
  Speaker 1: somebody's whom most of us know, when he was a
• 41:30
  Speaker 1: young man at college, had a particular friend with whom
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: he made the compact that if it were possible for
• 41:36
  Speaker 1: the spirit to return to this earth after its separation
• 41:40
  Speaker 1: from the body, he of the twain who first died
• 41:43
  Speaker 1: should reappear to the other. In course of time, this
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: compact was forgotten by our friend, the two young men
• 41:51
  Speaker 1: having progressed in life and taken diverging paths that were
• 41:56
  Speaker 1: wide asunder. But one night, many years afterwards, our friend,
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: being in the north of England, and staying for the
• 42:04
  Speaker 1: night in an inn on the Yorkshire Moors, happened to
• 42:08
  Speaker 1: look out of bed, and there, in the moonlight, leaning
• 42:12
  Speaker 1: on a bureau near the window, steadfastly regarding him, saw
• 42:17
  Speaker 1: his old college friend. The appearance being solemnly addressed, replied,
• 42:24
  Speaker 1: in a kind of whisper, but very audibly, do not
• 42:29
  Speaker 1: come near me. I am dead. I am here to
• 42:34
  Speaker 1: redeem my promise. I come from another world, but may
• 42:39
  Speaker 1: not disclose its secrets. Then the whole form, becoming paler,
• 42:47
  Speaker 1: melted as it were, into the moonlight, and faded away.
• 42:54
  Speaker 1: Or there was the daughter of the first occupier of
• 42:57
  Speaker 1: the picturesque Elizabethan House so famous in our neighborhood. You
• 43:02
  Speaker 1: have heard about her. No why she went out one
• 43:06
  Speaker 1: summer evening at twilight, when she was a beautiful girl,
• 43:10
  Speaker 1: just seventeen years of age, to gather flowers in the garden,
• 43:14
  Speaker 1: and presently came running terrified into the hall to her father, saying, oh,
• 43:20
  Speaker 1: dear father, I have met myself. He took her in
• 43:24
  Speaker 1: his arms and told her it was a fancy, but
• 43:27
  Speaker 1: she said, oh no, I met myself in the broad walk,
• 43:31
  Speaker 1: and I was pale and gathering withered flowers, and I
• 43:34
  Speaker 1: turned my head and held them up. And that night
• 43:40
  Speaker 1: she died, and a picture of her story was begone,
• 43:45
  Speaker 1: though never finished, and they say it is somewhere in
• 43:48
  Speaker 1: the house to this day, with its face to the wall.
• 43:53
  Speaker 1: Or the uncle of my brother's wife was riding home
• 43:56
  Speaker 1: on horseback one mellow evening at sunset, when an a
• 44:00
  Speaker 1: green lane close to his own house, he saw a
• 44:03
  Speaker 1: man standing before him in the very center of a
• 44:06
  Speaker 1: narrow way. Why does that man and the cloak stand there,
• 44:10
  Speaker 1: he thought, Does he want me to ride over him?
• 44:14
  Speaker 1: But the figure never moved. He felt a strange sensation
• 44:18
  Speaker 1: at seeing it so still, but slackened his trot and
• 44:21
  Speaker 1: rode forward. When he was so close to it as
• 44:25
  Speaker 1: almost to touch it with his stirrup. His horse shied,
• 44:28
  Speaker 1: and the figure glided up the bank in a curious,
• 44:32
  Speaker 1: unearthly manner, backward and without seeming to use its feet,
• 44:37
  Speaker 1: and was gone. The uncle of my brother's wife, exclaiming,
• 44:41
  Speaker 1: good Heaven, it's my cousin Harry from Bombay, put spurs
• 44:46
  Speaker 1: to his horse, which was suddenly in a profuse sweat, and,
• 44:50
  Speaker 1: wondering at such strange behavior, dashed round to the front
• 44:54
  Speaker 1: of his house. There he saw the same figure just
• 44:58
  Speaker 1: passing in at the long French window of the drawing
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: room opening on the ground. He threw his bridle to
• 45:04
  Speaker 1: a servant and hastened in after it. His sister was
• 45:08
  Speaker 1: sitting there alone, Alice, where's my cousin Harry, Your cousin
• 45:14
  Speaker 1: Harry John, Yes, from Bombay. I met him in the
• 45:18
  Speaker 1: lane just now and saw him enter here this instant,
• 45:23
  Speaker 1: not a creature, had been seen by anyone, and in
• 45:26
  Speaker 1: that hour and minute, as it afterwards appeared, this cousin
• 45:31
  Speaker 1: died in India. Or it was a certain sensible old
• 45:36
  Speaker 1: maiden lady who died at ninety nine and retained her
• 45:39
  Speaker 1: faculties to the last, who really did see the orphan boy.
• 45:44
  Speaker 1: A story which has often been incorrectly told, but of
• 45:49
  Speaker 1: which the real truth is this because it is in
• 45:51
  Speaker 1: fact a story belonging to our family and she was
• 45:55
  Speaker 1: a connection of our family. When she was about forty
• 45:59
  Speaker 1: years of age and still an uncommonly fine woman, her
• 46:03
  Speaker 1: lover died young, which was the reason why she never married,
• 46:07
  Speaker 1: though she had many offers. She went to stay at
• 46:10
  Speaker 1: a place in Kent which her brother, an Indian merchant,
• 46:14
  Speaker 1: had newly bought. There was a story that this place
• 46:17
  Speaker 1: had once been held in trust by the guardian of
• 46:20
  Speaker 1: a young boy, who was himself the next heir, and
• 46:23
  Speaker 1: who killed the young boy by harsh and cruel treatment.
• 46:27
  Speaker 1: She knew nothing of that. It has been said that
• 46:31
  Speaker 1: there was a cage in her bedroom in which the
• 46:33
  Speaker 1: guardian used to put the boy. There was no such thing.
• 46:37
  Speaker 1: There was only a closet. She went to bed, made
• 46:41
  Speaker 1: no alarm whatever in the night, and in the morning
• 46:44
  Speaker 1: said composedly to her maid when she came in, who
• 46:47
  Speaker 1: is the pretty, forlorn looking child who has been peeping
• 46:50
  Speaker 1: out of that closet all night? The maid replied by
• 46:55
  Speaker 1: giving a loud scream and instantly decamping. She was prized,
• 47:00
  Speaker 1: but she was a woman of remarkable strength of mind,
• 47:03
  Speaker 1: and she dressed herself and went downstairs and closeted herself
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: with her brother, now Walter she said, I have been
• 47:13
  Speaker 1: disturbed all night by a pretty forlorn looking boy who
• 47:17
  Speaker 1: has been constantly peeping out of that closet in my room,
• 47:21
  Speaker 1: which I can't open. This is some trick, I am
• 47:26
  Speaker 1: afraid not, Charlotte said he for it is the legend
• 47:31
  Speaker 1: of the house. It is the orphan boy. What did
• 47:36
  Speaker 1: he do? He opened the door softly, said she, and
• 47:43
  Speaker 1: peeped out. Sometimes he came a step or two into
• 47:46
  Speaker 1: the room. Then I called to him to encourage him,
• 47:50
  Speaker 1: and he shrunk and shuddered, and crept in again and
• 47:53
  Speaker 1: shut the door. The closet has no communication, Charlotte said
• 48:00
  Speaker 1: her brother, with any part of the house, and its
• 48:03
  Speaker 1: nailed up. This was undeniably true, and it took two
• 48:09
  Speaker 1: carpenters a whole forenoon to get it open for examination.
• 48:13
  Speaker 1: Then she was satisfied that she had seen the orphan boy.
• 48:17
  Speaker 1: But the wild and terrible part of the story is
• 48:20
  Speaker 1: that he was also seen by three of her brother's
• 48:23
  Speaker 1: sons in succession, who all died young on the occasion
• 48:28
  Speaker 1: of each child being taken ill. He came home in
• 48:32
  Speaker 1: a heat twelve hours before and said, oh, Mamma, he
• 48:36
  Speaker 1: had been playing under a particular oak tree in a
• 48:38
  Speaker 1: certain meadow with a strange boy, a pretty forlorn looking
• 48:42
  Speaker 1: boy who was very timid and made signs from fatal experience.
• 48:49
  Speaker 1: The parents came to know that this was the orphan boy,
• 48:53
  Speaker 1: and that the course of that child, whom he chose
• 48:55
  Speaker 1: for his little playmate, was surely ruin. Legion is the
• 49:02
  Speaker 1: name of the German castles where we sit up alone
• 49:06
  Speaker 1: to wait for the specter, where we are shown into
• 49:11
  Speaker 1: a room made comparatively cheerful for our reception, where we
• 49:16
  Speaker 1: glance round at the shadows thrown on the blank walls
• 49:19
  Speaker 1: by the crackling fire, where we feel very lonely when
• 49:24
  Speaker 1: the village innkeeper and his pretty daughter have retired, after
• 49:28
  Speaker 1: laying down a fresh store of wood upon the hearth,
• 49:31
  Speaker 1: and setting forth on the small table such supper cheer
• 49:34
  Speaker 1: as a cold roast capon bread, grapes and a flask
• 49:39
  Speaker 1: of old rhine wine. Where the reverberating doors close on
• 49:45
  Speaker 1: their retreat one after another, like so many peals of
• 49:50
  Speaker 1: sullen thunder, And where about the small hours of the
• 49:55
  Speaker 1: night we come into the knowledge of diverse supernatural mysteries.
• 50:02
  Speaker 1: Legion is the name of the haunted German students in
• 50:05
  Speaker 1: whose society we draw yet nearer to the fire, while
• 50:09
  Speaker 1: the schoolboy in the corner opens his eyes wide and round,
• 50:14
  Speaker 1: and flies off the footstool he has chosen for his
• 50:16
  Speaker 1: seat when the door accidentally blows open. Fast is the
• 50:23
  Speaker 1: crop of such fruit shining on our Christmas tree, hint
• 50:28
  Speaker 1: blossom almost at the very top, ripening all down the boughs,
• 50:35
  Speaker 1: among the later toys and fancies hanging there as idle,
• 50:40
  Speaker 1: often and less pure be the images once associated with
• 50:44
  Speaker 1: the sweet old weights, the softened music in the night,
• 50:50
  Speaker 1: ever unalterable, encircled by the social thoughts of Christmas time. Still,
• 50:57
  Speaker 1: let the benignant figure of my childhood stand up, unchanged
• 51:02
  Speaker 1: in every cheerful image and suggestion that the season brings.
• 51:06
  Speaker 1: May the bright star that rested above the poor roof
• 51:09
  Speaker 1: be the star of all the Christian world. A moment's paulse,
• 51:17
  Speaker 1: a vanishing tree of which the lower boughs are dark
• 51:21
  Speaker 1: to me. As yet, and let me look once more.
• 51:27
  Speaker 1: I know there are blank spaces on thy branches, where
• 51:32
  Speaker 1: eyes that I have loved have shone and smiled, from
• 51:36
  Speaker 1: which they are departed. But far above I see the
• 51:41
  Speaker 1: razor of the dead girl, and the widow's son. And
• 51:47
  Speaker 1: God is good. If age be hiding for me in
• 51:51
  Speaker 1: the unseen portion of thy downward growth. Oh, may I,
• 51:56
  Speaker 1: with a gray head turn a child's heart to that
• 51:59
  Speaker 1: figure yet and a child's trustfulness and confidence. Now the
• 52:07
  Speaker 1: tree is decorated with a bright merriment and song and
• 52:11
  Speaker 1: dance and cheerfulness. And they are welcome, innocent and welcome.
• 52:17
  Speaker 1: Be they ever held beneath the branches of the Christmas tree,
• 52:21
  Speaker 1: which cast no gloomy shadow. But as it sinks into
• 52:26
  Speaker 1: the ground, I hear a whisper going through the leaves.
• 52:32
  Speaker 1: This in commemoration of the law of love and kindness,
• 52:37
  Speaker 1: mercy and compassion. This in remembrance of me. End of
• 52:46
  Speaker 1: a Christmas Tree recording by John Vanstand Savannah, Georgia, Story
• 52:56
  Speaker 1: two of some short Christmas stories by Charles Dickens. This
• 53:00
  Speaker 1: Sleeprivox recording is in the public domain. What Christmas is
• 53:04
  Speaker 1: as we grow older. Time was with most of us
• 53:09
  Speaker 1: when Christmas Day, encircling all our limited world like a
• 53:13
  Speaker 1: magic ring, left nothing out for us to miss or seek.
• 53:18
  Speaker 1: Bound together all our home enjoyments, affections and hopes, grouped
• 53:23
  Speaker 1: everything and everyone around the Christmas fire and made the
• 53:27
  Speaker 1: little picture shining in our bright young eyes. Complete time came,
• 53:34
  Speaker 1: perhaps all so soon, when our thoughts overlapt that narrow boundary,
• 53:40
  Speaker 1: when there was someone very dear we thought then, very
• 53:44
  Speaker 1: beautiful and absolutely perfect, wanting to the fullness of our
• 53:48
  Speaker 1: happiness when we were wanting to, or we thought so,
• 53:53
  Speaker 1: which did just as well at the Christmas hearth by
• 53:56
  Speaker 1: which that someone sat, and when we intertwined with every
• 54:00
  Speaker 1: reef and garland of our life that someone's name, That
• 54:05
  Speaker 1: was the time for the bright visionary Christmases which have
• 54:09
  Speaker 1: long arisen from us to show faintly after summer rain
• 54:13
  Speaker 1: in the palest edges of the rainbow. That was the
• 54:17
  Speaker 1: time for the beatified enjoyment of the things that were
• 54:21
  Speaker 1: to be and never were, and yet the things that
• 54:25
  Speaker 1: were so real in our resolute hope that it would
• 54:28
  Speaker 1: be hard to say now what realities achieved since have
• 54:33
  Speaker 1: been stronger? What did that Christmas never really come? When
• 54:39
  Speaker 1: we and the priceless pearl who was our young choice
• 54:42
  Speaker 1: were received after the happiest of totally impossible marriages by
• 54:47
  Speaker 1: the two United families previously at Dackers drawn on our account,
• 54:53
  Speaker 1: when brothers and sisters in law who had always been
• 54:56
  Speaker 1: rather cool to us before our relationship was affected perfectly
• 55:01
  Speaker 1: doated on us, and when fathers and mothers overwhelmed us
• 55:05
  Speaker 1: with unlimited incomes. Was that Christmas dinner never really eaten,
• 55:11
  Speaker 1: after which we arose and generously ineloquently rendered honor to
• 55:15
  Speaker 1: our late rival present in the company, then in their
• 55:19
  Speaker 1: exchanging friendship and forgiveness and founding an attachment not to
• 55:24
  Speaker 1: be surpassed in Greek or Roman story which subsisted unto death.
• 55:30
  Speaker 1: Has that same rival long ceased to care for that
• 55:33
  Speaker 1: same priceless pearl and married for money and become usurious
• 55:40
  Speaker 1: above all? Do we really know now that we should
• 55:45
  Speaker 1: probably have been miserable if we had won and worn
• 55:47
  Speaker 1: the pearl, and that we are better without her? That Christmas,
• 55:55
  Speaker 1: when we had recently achieved so much fame, when we
• 55:59
  Speaker 1: had been carried in triumph somewhere for doing something great
• 56:03
  Speaker 1: and good, when we had won an honored and ennobled name,
• 56:07
  Speaker 1: and arrived and were received at home in a shower
• 56:11
  Speaker 1: of tears of joy? Is it possible that that Christmas
• 56:17
  Speaker 1: has not come yet? And is our life here at
• 56:24
  Speaker 1: the best so constituted that pausing as we advance at
• 56:29
  Speaker 1: such a noticeable milestone in the track as this great birthday,
• 56:35
  Speaker 1: we look back on the things that never were, as
• 56:38
  Speaker 1: naturally and fool as gravely as on the things that
• 56:41
  Speaker 1: have been and are gone, or have been it still are.
• 56:47
  Speaker 1: If it be so, and so it seems to be,
• 56:52
  Speaker 1: must we come to the conclusion that life is little
• 56:54
  Speaker 1: better than a dream, and little worth the loves and
• 56:58
  Speaker 1: strivings that we into it. No, for be such miscalled
• 57:06
  Speaker 1: philosophy from us, dear reader, on Christmas Day. Nearer and
• 57:11
  Speaker 1: closer to our hearts be the Christmas Spirit, which is
• 57:14
  Speaker 1: the spirit of active usefulness, perseverance, cheerful discharge of duty, kindness,
• 57:21
  Speaker 1: and forbearance. It is in the last virtues especially that
• 57:26
  Speaker 1: we are or should be strengthened by the unaccomplished visions
• 57:31
  Speaker 1: of our youth. For who shall say that they are
• 57:35
  Speaker 1: not our teachers to deal gently even with the impalpable
• 57:38
  Speaker 1: nothings of the earth. Therefore, as we grow older, let
• 57:45
  Speaker 1: us be more thankful that the circle of our Christmas
• 57:49
  Speaker 1: associations and of the lessons that they bring expands. Let
• 57:56
  Speaker 1: us welcome every one of them and summon them to
• 57:59
  Speaker 1: take their places. By the Christmas hearth. Welcome old aspirations,
• 58:06
  Speaker 1: glittering creatures of an ardent fancy, to your shelter underneath
• 58:10
  Speaker 1: the holly. We know you and have not outlived you yet.
• 58:15
  Speaker 1: Welcome old projects and old loves, however fleeting to your
• 58:21
  Speaker 1: nooks among the steadier lights that burn around us. Welcome
• 58:26
  Speaker 1: all that was ever real to our hearts, and for
• 58:29
  Speaker 1: the earnestness that made you real. Thanks to Heaven, do
• 58:33
  Speaker 1: we build no Christmas castles in the clouds now. Let
• 58:37
  Speaker 1: our thoughts, fluttering like butterflies among these flowers of children,
• 58:41
  Speaker 1: bear witness. Before this boy there stretches out of future,
• 58:47
  Speaker 1: brighter than we ever looked on in our old romantic time,
• 58:52
  Speaker 1: but bright with honor and with truth. Around this little
• 58:56
  Speaker 1: head on which the sunny curls lie heaped the graces
• 59:00
  Speaker 1: sport as prettily, as airily as when there was no
• 59:04
  Speaker 1: scythe within the reach of time to shear away the
• 59:07
  Speaker 1: curls of our first love. Upon another girl's face near it,
• 59:13
  Speaker 1: placiter but smiling bright, a quiet and contented little face.
• 59:19
  Speaker 1: We see home fairly written, shining from the word as
• 59:25
  Speaker 1: rays shine from a star. We see how when our
• 59:30
  Speaker 1: graves are old, other hopes than ours are young, other
• 59:34
  Speaker 1: hearts than ours are moved, How other ways are smoothed,
• 59:39
  Speaker 1: How other happiness blooms, ripens and decays. No, not decays
• 59:46
  Speaker 1: for other homes and other bands of children not yet
• 59:50
  Speaker 1: in being, nor for ages yet to be, arise and
• 59:55
  Speaker 1: bloom and ripen. To the end of all. Welcome everything,
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 1: Welcome alike what has been and what never was, and
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 1: what we hope may be, to your shelter underneath the holly,
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 1: to your places round the Christmas fire, where what is
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 1: sits open hearted? In yonder shadow? Do we see obtruding
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 1: furtively upon the blaze in enemy's face? By Christmas Day
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 1: we do forgive him. If the injury he has done
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 1: us may admit of such companionship. Let him come here
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 1: and take his place, If otherwise unhappily, let him go,
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 1: hands assured that we will never injure nor accuse him.
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 1: On this day we shut out nothing. Pause, says a
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 1: low voice. Nothing think on Christmas Day we will shut
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 1: out from our fireside nothing. Not the shadow of a
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 1: vast city where the withered leaves are lying deep, the
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 1: voice replies, Not the shadow that darkens the whole globe.
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 1: Not the shadow of the City of the Dead, not
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 1: even that of all days in the year. We will
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 1: turn our faces toward that city upon Christmas Day, and
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 1: from its silent hosts, bring those we loved among us.
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 1: City of the Dead, in the blessed name, wherein we
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 1: are gathered together at this time, and in the presence
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 1: that is here among us, according to the promise, we
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 1: will receive and not dismiss thy people who are dear
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 1: to us. Yes, we can look upon these children angels
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 1: that alight so solemnly, so beautifully, among the living children
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 1: by the fire, and can bear to think how they
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 1: departed from us, entertaining angels unawares, as the patriarchs did.
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 1: The playful children are unconscious of their guests, but we
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 1: can see them, can see a radiant arm around one
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 1: favorite neck, as if there were attempting of that child away.
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 1: Among the celestial figures there is one, a poor mishappened
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 1: boy on earth of a glorious beauty now, of whom
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 1: his dying mother said it grieved her much to leave
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 1: him here alone for so many years, as it was
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 1: likely would elapse before he came to her, being such
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 1: a little child. But he went quickly and was laid
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 1: upon her breast, and in her hand she leads him.
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 1: There was a boy who fell far away upon burning sand,
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 1: beneath a burning sun, and said, tell him at home
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 1: with my last love, how much I could have wished
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 1: to kiss them once, but that I died contented and
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 1: had done my duty. Or there was another over whom
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 1: they read the words, therefore we commit his body to
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 1: the deep, and so consigned him to the lonely ocean
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 1: and sailed on. Or there was another who lay down
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 1: to his rest in the dark shadow of great forests,
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 1: and on earth awoke no more. Oh shall they not
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 1: from sand and sea and forest be brought home at
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 1: such a time. There was a dear girl, almost a
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 1: woman never to be one, who made a morning Christmas
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 1: in a house of joy, and went her trackless way
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 1: to the silent city. Do we recollect her, worn out,
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 1: faintly whispering what could not be heard, and falling into
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 1: that last sleep for weariness. Oh look upon her now, Oh,
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 1: look upon her beauty, her serenity, her changeless youth, her happiness.
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 1: The daughter of Iris was recalled to life to die,
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 1: But she more blest has heard the same voice saying,
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 1: unto her arise forever. We had a friend who was
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 1: our friend from early days, with whom we often pictured
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 1: the changes that were to come upon our lives, and
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 1: merrily imagined how we would speak and walk and think
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 1: and talk when we came to be old. His destined
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 1: habitation in the City of the Dead received him in
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 1: his prime. Shall he be shut out from our Christmas remembrance?
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 1: What is love? Had so excluded us lost friend, lost child,
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 1: lost parent, sister, brother, husband, wife, We will not so
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 1: discard you. You shall hold your cherished places in our
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 1: Christmas hearts, and by our Christmas fires, and in the
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 1: season of immortal hope, and on the birthday of immortal mercy,
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 1: we will shut out nothing. The winter sun goes down
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 1: over town and village on the sea. It makes a
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 1: rosy path, as if the sacred tread were fresh upon
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 1: the water. A few more moments and it sinks, and
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 1: night comes on, and lights begin to sparkle in the
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 1: prospect on the hillside beyond the shapelessly diffused town, and
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 1: in the quiet keeping of the trees that gird the village.
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 1: Steeple remembrances are cut in stone, planted and common flowers
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 1: growing in grass, entwined with lowly brambles. Around many a
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 1: mound of earth. In town and village. There are doors
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 1: and windows closed against the weather. There are flaming logs
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 1: heaped high. There are joyful faces, There is healthy music
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 1: of voices. Be all ungentleness and harm excluded from the
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 1: temples of the household gods. But be those remembrances admitted
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 1: with tender encouragement. They are of the time and all
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 1: its comforting and peaceful reassurances, and of the history that
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 1: reunited even upon earth, the living and the dead, And
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 1: of the broad beneficence and goodness that too many men
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 1: have tried to tear to narrow shreds. End of what
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 1: Christmas is as we grow older. Recording by John vanstan Savannah, Georgia,
• 1:07:38
  Speaker 1: Story three of some short Christmas stories by Charles Dickens.
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 1: This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. The Poor
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 1: Relations story. He was very reluctant to take precedence of
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 1: so many respected members of the family by beginning the
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 1: round of stories they were to relate as they sat
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 1: in a goodly circle by the Christmas fire, and he
• 1:08:01
  Speaker 1: modestly suggested that it would be more correct, if John,
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 1: our esteemed host, whose healthy beg to drink, would have
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 1: the kindness to begin. For as to himself, he said
• 1:08:13
  Speaker 1: he was so little used to lead the way that really,
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 1: But as they all cried out here that he must begin,
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 1: and agreed with one voice that he might, could, would,
• 1:08:24
  Speaker 1: and should begin, he left off rubbing his hand and
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 1: took his legs out from under his arm chair, and
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 1: did begin. I have no doubt, said the poor relation,
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 1: that I shall surprise the assembled members of our family,
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 1: and particularly John, our esteemed hosts, to whom we are
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 1: so much indebted for the great hospitality with which he
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 1: has this day entertained us by the confession I am
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 1: going to make. But if you do me the honor
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 1: to be surprised at anything that falls from a person
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 1: so unimportant in the family as I am, I can
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 1: only say that I shall be scrupulously accurate in all
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 1: I relate. I am not what I am supposed to be.
• 1:09:10
  Speaker 1: I am quite another thing. Perhaps before I go farther,
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 1: I had a better glance at what I am supposed
• 1:09:18
  Speaker 1: to be. It is supposed unless I mistake, the assembled
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 1: members of our family will correct me if I do,
• 1:09:27
  Speaker 1: which is very likely here the poor relation looked mildly
• 1:09:31
  Speaker 1: about him. For contradiction, that I am nobody's enemy but
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 1: my own, that I never met with any particular success
• 1:09:38
  Speaker 1: in anything, That I failed in business because I was
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 1: unbusinesslike and credulous in not being prepared for the interested
• 1:09:48
  Speaker 1: designs of my partner. That I failed in love because
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 1: I was ridiculously trustful in thinking it impossible that Christihanna
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 1: could deceive me. That I failed in my expectations from
• 1:10:04
  Speaker 1: my uncle Chill on account of not being as sharp
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 1: as he could have wished in worldly matters. That through
• 1:10:13
  Speaker 1: life I have been rather put upon and disappointed in
• 1:10:17
  Speaker 1: a general way. That I am at present a bachelor
• 1:10:21
  Speaker 1: of between fifty nine and sixty years of age, living
• 1:10:25
  Speaker 1: on a limited income in the form of a quarterly allowance,
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 1: to which I see that John, our esteemed host, wishes
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 1: me to make no further allusion. This supposition as to
• 1:10:36
  Speaker 1: my present pursuits and habits is to the following effect.
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 1: I live in a lodging in the Clapham Road, a
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 1: very clean back room and a very respectable house, where
• 1:10:48
  Speaker 1: I am expected not to be at home in the
• 1:10:50
  Speaker 1: daytime unless poorly, in which I usually leave in the
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 1: morning at nine o'clock on pretense of going to business.
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 1: I take my breakfast, my roll and butter, and my
• 1:11:01
  Speaker 1: half pint of coffee at the old established coffee shop
• 1:11:04
  Speaker 1: near Westminster Bridge, and then I go into the city
• 1:11:09
  Speaker 1: I don't know why, and sit in Garraway's coffee house,
• 1:11:13
  Speaker 1: and on change and walk about and look into a
• 1:11:16
  Speaker 1: few offices and counting houses where some of my relations
• 1:11:20
  Speaker 1: or acquaintance are so good as to tolerate me, and
• 1:11:24
  Speaker 1: where I stand by the fire if the weather happens
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 1: to be cold. I get through the day in this
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 1: way until five o'clock, and then I dine at a
• 1:11:32
  Speaker 1: cost on the average of one in threepence, having still
• 1:11:36
  Speaker 1: a little money to spend on my evening's entertainment. I
• 1:11:39
  Speaker 1: look into the old established coffee shop as I go home,
• 1:11:43
  Speaker 1: take my cup of tea and perhaps my bit of toast.
• 1:11:48
  Speaker 1: So as the large hand of the clock makes its
• 1:11:51
  Speaker 1: way round to the morning hour again, I make my
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 1: way round to the Clapham Road again and go to bed.
• 1:11:56
  Speaker 1: When I get to my lodging fire, being expensive and
• 1:12:01
  Speaker 1: being objected to by the family on account of its
• 1:12:03
  Speaker 1: giving trouble and making a dirt. Sometimes one of my
• 1:12:08
  Speaker 1: relations or acquaintances is so obliging as to ask me
• 1:12:11
  Speaker 1: to dinner. Those are holiday occasions, and then I generally
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 1: walk in the park. I am a solitary man and
• 1:12:19
  Speaker 1: seldom walk with anybody. Not that I am avoided because
• 1:12:23
  Speaker 1: I am shabby. For I am not shabby at all,
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 1: having always a very good suit of black on, or
• 1:12:30
  Speaker 1: rather Oxford mixture, which has the appearance of black and
• 1:12:33
  Speaker 1: wears much better. But I have got into a habit
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 1: of speaking low and being rather silent, and my spirits
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 1: are not high, and I am sensible that I am
• 1:12:44
  Speaker 1: not an attractive companion. The only exception to this general
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 1: rule is the child of my first cousin, little Frank.
• 1:12:54
  Speaker 1: I have a particular affection for that child, and he
• 1:12:57
  Speaker 1: takes very kindly to me. He is a diffident boy
• 1:13:01
  Speaker 1: by nature, and in a crowd he has soon run over,
• 1:13:04
  Speaker 1: as I may say, and forgotten. He and I, however,
• 1:13:09
  Speaker 1: get on exceedingly well. I have a fancy that the
• 1:13:13
  Speaker 1: poor child will in time succeed to my peculiar position
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 1: in the family. We talk, but little still we understand
• 1:13:23
  Speaker 1: each other. We walk about hand in hand, and without
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 1: much speaking. He knows what I mean, and I know
• 1:13:30
  Speaker 1: what he means. When he was very little, indeed, I
• 1:13:34
  Speaker 1: used to take him to the windows of the toy
• 1:13:36
  Speaker 1: shops and show him the toys inside. It is surprising
• 1:13:40
  Speaker 1: how soon he found out that I would have made
• 1:13:43
  Speaker 1: him a great many presents if I had been in
• 1:13:45
  Speaker 1: circumstances to do it. Little Frank and I go and
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 1: look at the outside of the monument. He is very
• 1:13:53
  Speaker 1: fond of the monument, and at the bridges, and at
• 1:13:56
  Speaker 1: all the sights that are free. On two of my birthdays,
• 1:14:00
  Speaker 1: we have dined on Alamode beef, and have gone at
• 1:14:03
  Speaker 1: half price to the play, and been deeply interested. I
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 1: was once walking with him on Lombard Street, which we
• 1:14:11
  Speaker 1: often visit on account of my having mentioned to him
• 1:14:13
  Speaker 1: that there are great riches there. He is very fond
• 1:14:17
  Speaker 1: of Lombard Street. When a gentleman said to me as
• 1:14:20
  Speaker 1: he passed by, Sir, your little son has dropped his glove.
• 1:14:26
  Speaker 1: I assure you, if you will excuse my remarking on
• 1:14:29
  Speaker 1: so trivial a circumstance, This accidental mention of the child
• 1:14:34
  Speaker 1: is mine quite touched my heart and brought the foolish
• 1:14:38
  Speaker 1: tears into my eyes. When little Frank is sent to
• 1:14:43
  Speaker 1: school in the country, I shall be very much at
• 1:14:46
  Speaker 1: a loss what to do with myself. But I have
• 1:14:49
  Speaker 1: the intention of walking down there once a month and
• 1:14:52
  Speaker 1: seeing him on a half holiday. I am told he
• 1:14:55
  Speaker 1: will then be at play upon the heath, and if
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 1: my visit should be object as unsettling the child, I
• 1:15:03
  Speaker 1: can see him from a distance without his seeing me,
• 1:15:05
  Speaker 1: and walk back again. His mother comes of a highly
• 1:15:10
  Speaker 1: genteel family, and rather disapproves. I am aware of our
• 1:15:15
  Speaker 1: being too much together. I know that I am not
• 1:15:19
  Speaker 1: calculated to improve his retiring disposition, but I think he
• 1:15:23
  Speaker 1: would miss me beyond the feeling of the moment if
• 1:15:27
  Speaker 1: we were wholly separated. When I die in the Clapham Road,
• 1:15:34
  Speaker 1: I shall not leave much more in this world than
• 1:15:36
  Speaker 1: I shall take out of it. But I happen to
• 1:15:40
  Speaker 1: have a miniature of a bright faced boy with a
• 1:15:43
  Speaker 1: curling head and an open shirt frill waving down his bosom.
• 1:15:48
  Speaker 1: My mother had it taken for me, but I can't
• 1:15:50
  Speaker 1: believe that it was ever like which will be worth
• 1:15:54
  Speaker 1: nothing to sell, and which I shall beg may be
• 1:15:56
  Speaker 1: given to Frank. I have written, my dear boy, a
• 1:16:00
  Speaker 1: little letter with it, in which I have told him
• 1:16:03
  Speaker 1: that I felt very sorry to part from him, though
• 1:16:07
  Speaker 1: bound to confess that I knew no reason why I
• 1:16:09
  Speaker 1: should remain here. I have given him some short advice,
• 1:16:14
  Speaker 1: the best in my power, to take warning of the
• 1:16:17
  Speaker 1: consequences of being nobody's enemy but his own, and I
• 1:16:21
  Speaker 1: have endeavored to comfort him for what I fear he
• 1:16:24
  Speaker 1: will consider a bereavement, by pointing out to him that
• 1:16:28
  Speaker 1: I was only a superfluous something to everyone but him,
• 1:16:34
  Speaker 1: and that, having by some means failed to find a
• 1:16:36
  Speaker 1: place in this great assembly, I am better out of it.
• 1:16:42
  Speaker 1: Such said the poor relation, clearing his throat and beginning
• 1:16:46
  Speaker 1: to speak a little louder. Is the general impression about
• 1:16:51
  Speaker 1: me now. It is a remarkable circumstance which forms the
• 1:16:55
  Speaker 1: aim and purpose of my story. That this is all wrong.
• 1:17:02
  Speaker 1: This is not my life, and these are not my habits.
• 1:17:06
  Speaker 1: I do not even live in the Clapham Road. Comparatively speaking,
• 1:17:10
  Speaker 1: I am very seldom there. I reside mostly in a
• 1:17:16
  Speaker 1: I am almost ashamed to say the word it sounds
• 1:17:19
  Speaker 1: so full of pretension. In a castle. I do not
• 1:17:24
  Speaker 1: mean that it is an old baronial habitation. But still
• 1:17:29
  Speaker 1: it is a building, always known to everyone by the
• 1:17:31
  Speaker 1: name of a castle. In it, I preserve the particulars
• 1:17:36
  Speaker 1: of my history. They run. Thus it was when I
• 1:17:41
  Speaker 1: first took John Spatter, who had been my clerk, into partnership,
• 1:17:46
  Speaker 1: and when I was still a young man of not
• 1:17:48
  Speaker 1: more than five and twenty, residing in the house of
• 1:17:51
  Speaker 1: my uncle Jill, from whom I had considerable expectations, that
• 1:17:56
  Speaker 1: I ventured to propose to Christiania. I had loved Christiana
• 1:18:01
  Speaker 1: a long time. She was very beautiful and very winning
• 1:18:05
  Speaker 1: in all respects. I rather mistrusted her widowed mother, who
• 1:18:10
  Speaker 1: I feared was of a plotting and mercenary turn of mind.
• 1:18:14
  Speaker 1: But I thought as well of her as I could
• 1:18:18
  Speaker 1: for Christiana's sake. I never had loved any one but Christiana,
• 1:18:23
  Speaker 1: and she had been all the world, and oh far
• 1:18:27
  Speaker 1: more than all the world to me from our childhood.
• 1:18:31
  Speaker 1: Christiana accepted me with her mother's consent, and I was
• 1:18:34
  Speaker 1: rendered very happy. Indeed, my life at my uncle Chill's
• 1:18:38
  Speaker 1: was of a spare, dull kind, and my garret chamber
• 1:18:42
  Speaker 1: was as dull and bare and cold as an upper
• 1:18:45
  Speaker 1: prison room in some stern northern fortress. But having Christiana's
• 1:18:50
  Speaker 1: love I wanted nothing upon earth. I would not have
• 1:18:54
  Speaker 1: changed my lot with any human being. Avarice was unhappy
• 1:19:00
  Speaker 1: my uncle Chill's master vice. Though he was rich, he
• 1:19:05
  Speaker 1: pinched and scraped and clutched, and lived miserably, as Christiana
• 1:19:11
  Speaker 1: had no fortune. I was for some time a little
• 1:19:13
  Speaker 1: fearful of confessing our engagement to him, But at length
• 1:19:17
  Speaker 1: I wrote him a letter saying how it all truly was.
• 1:19:21
  Speaker 1: I put it into his hand one night on going
• 1:19:23
  Speaker 1: to bed. As I came downstairs next morning, shivering in
• 1:19:28
  Speaker 1: the cold december air, colder in my uncle's unwarmed house
• 1:19:32
  Speaker 1: than in the street, where the winter sun did sometimes shine,
• 1:19:36
  Speaker 1: and which was at all events enlivened by cheerful faces
• 1:19:39
  Speaker 1: and voices. Passing along, I carried a heavy heart toward
• 1:19:44
  Speaker 1: the long low breakfast room in which my uncle sat.
• 1:19:49
  Speaker 1: It was a large room with a small fire, and
• 1:19:51
  Speaker 1: there was a great bay window in it, which the
• 1:19:53
  Speaker 1: rain had marked in the night, as if with the
• 1:19:56
  Speaker 1: tears of houseless people. It stared upon a raw yard
• 1:20:00
  Speaker 1: with a cracked stone pavement and some rusted iron railings
• 1:20:04
  Speaker 1: half uprooted. Whence an ugly outbuilding that had once been
• 1:20:08
  Speaker 1: a dissecting room in the time of the great surgeon,
• 1:20:11
  Speaker 1: who had mortgaged the house to my uncle stared at it.
• 1:20:16
  Speaker 1: We rose so early always that at that time of
• 1:20:19
  Speaker 1: the year we breakfasted by candlelight. When I went into
• 1:20:23
  Speaker 1: the room, my uncle was so contracted by the cold,
• 1:20:26
  Speaker 1: and so huddled together in his chair behind the one
• 1:20:29
  Speaker 1: dim candle, that I did not see him until I
• 1:20:32
  Speaker 1: was close to the table. As I held up my
• 1:20:35
  Speaker 1: hand to him, he caught up his stick. Being infirm
• 1:20:39
  Speaker 1: he always walked about the house of the stick, and
• 1:20:42
  Speaker 1: made a blow at me and said, you fool. Uncle.
• 1:20:48
  Speaker 1: I returned, I didn't expect you to be so angry
• 1:20:51
  Speaker 1: as this, nor had I expected it, though he was
• 1:20:55
  Speaker 1: a hard and angry old man. You didn't expect, said he.
• 1:21:02
  Speaker 1: When did you ever expect, wen? Did you ever calculate
• 1:21:07
  Speaker 1: or look forward, you contemptible dog? These are hard words, Uncle,
• 1:21:15
  Speaker 1: hard words feathers to pelt such an idiot as you with,
• 1:21:21
  Speaker 1: said he here Betsy's snap, look at him. Betsy's snap
• 1:21:28
  Speaker 1: was a withered, hard favored yellow old woman, our only domestic,
• 1:21:33
  Speaker 1: always employed at this time of the morning, and rubbing
• 1:21:35
  Speaker 1: my uncle's legs, as my uncle adjured her to look
• 1:21:39
  Speaker 1: at me. He put his lean grip on the crown
• 1:21:42
  Speaker 1: of her head. She kneeling beside him, and turned her
• 1:21:45
  Speaker 1: face toward me. An involuntary thought connected them both with
• 1:21:49
  Speaker 1: the dissecting room, as it must often have been in
• 1:21:52
  Speaker 1: the surgeon's time, passed across my mind in the midst
• 1:21:56
  Speaker 1: of my anxiety. Look at the sniveling Elksop, said, my uncle,
• 1:22:02
  Speaker 1: look at the baby. This is the gentleman who people
• 1:22:06
  Speaker 1: say is nobody's enemy but his own. This is the
• 1:22:11
  Speaker 1: gentleman who can't say no. This is the gentleman who
• 1:22:15
  Speaker 1: was making such large profits in his business that he
• 1:22:18
  Speaker 1: must needs take a partner t'other day. This is the
• 1:22:22
  Speaker 1: gentleman who is going to marry our wife without a penny,
• 1:22:25
  Speaker 1: and who falls into the hands of Jezebel's who are
• 1:22:29
  Speaker 1: speculating on my death. I knew now how great my
• 1:22:35
  Speaker 1: uncle's rage was. For nothing short of his being almost
• 1:22:39
  Speaker 1: beside himself would have induced him to utter that concluding word,
• 1:22:44
  Speaker 1: which he held in such repugnance that it was never
• 1:22:47
  Speaker 1: spoken or hinted at before him on any account. On
• 1:22:52
  Speaker 1: my death, he repeated, as if he were defying me
• 1:22:56
  Speaker 1: by defying his own abhorrence of the word on my death, death, death,
• 1:23:04
  Speaker 1: But I'll spoil the speculation. Eat your last under this roof,
• 1:23:09
  Speaker 1: you feeble wretch, and may it choke you. You may
• 1:23:16
  Speaker 1: suppose that I had not much appetite for the breakfast
• 1:23:18
  Speaker 1: to which I was bidden in these terms, but I
• 1:23:22
  Speaker 1: took my accustomed seat. I saw that I was repudiated
• 1:23:27
  Speaker 1: henceforth by my uncle. Still I could bear that very well,
• 1:23:31
  Speaker 1: possessing Christianna's heart. He emptied his basin of bread and
• 1:23:35
  Speaker 1: milk as usual, only that he took it on his knees,
• 1:23:38
  Speaker 1: with his chair turned away from the table where I sat.
• 1:23:42
  Speaker 1: When he had done, he carefully snuffed out the candle,
• 1:23:45
  Speaker 1: and the cold slate colored miserable day looked in upon us. Now,
• 1:23:53
  Speaker 1: mister Michael said he before we part, I should like
• 1:23:59
  Speaker 1: to have a word with these ladies in your presence,
• 1:24:04
  Speaker 1: as you will, sir. I returned, But you deceive yourself
• 1:24:09
  Speaker 1: and wrong us cruelly if you suppose that there is
• 1:24:12
  Speaker 1: any feeling at stake in this contract, but pure, disinterested,
• 1:24:17
  Speaker 1: faithful love. To this, he only replied, you lie, and
• 1:24:25
  Speaker 1: not one other word. We went through half thought snow
• 1:24:29
  Speaker 1: and half frozen rain. To the house where Christiana and
• 1:24:32
  Speaker 1: her mother lived. My uncle knew them very well. They
• 1:24:36
  Speaker 1: were sitting at their breakfast and were surprised to see
• 1:24:39
  Speaker 1: us at that hour. Your servant, ma'am, said my uncle
• 1:24:44
  Speaker 1: to the mother. You divine the purpose of my visit.
• 1:24:49
  Speaker 1: I dare say, ma'am, I understand there is a world
• 1:24:52
  Speaker 1: of pure, disinterested, faithful love cooped up here. I am
• 1:24:58
  Speaker 1: happy to bring it all at wants to make it complete.
• 1:25:02
  Speaker 1: I bring you your son in law, ma'am, and you
• 1:25:05
  Speaker 1: your husband. Miss. The gentleman is a perfect stranger to me,
• 1:25:11
  Speaker 1: but I wish him joy of his wise bargain. He
• 1:25:16
  Speaker 1: snarled at me as he went out, and I never
• 1:25:20
  Speaker 1: saw him again. It is altogether a mistake, continued the
• 1:25:28
  Speaker 1: poor relation. To suppose that my dear Christiana, over persuaded
• 1:25:34
  Speaker 1: and influenced by her mother, married a rich man, the
• 1:25:38
  Speaker 1: dirt from whose carriage wheels is often, in these changed times,
• 1:25:42
  Speaker 1: thrown upon me as she rides by. No. No, she
• 1:25:49
  Speaker 1: married me. The way we came to be married, rather
• 1:25:53
  Speaker 1: sooner than we intended, was this. I took a frugal
• 1:25:57
  Speaker 1: lodging and was saving and planning for her sake. When
• 1:26:00
  Speaker 1: one day, she spoke to me with great earnestness and said,
• 1:26:05
  Speaker 1: my dear Michael, I have given you my heart. I
• 1:26:10
  Speaker 1: have said that I loved you, and I have pledged
• 1:26:12
  Speaker 1: myself to be your wife. I am as much yours
• 1:26:15
  Speaker 1: through all changes of good and evil, as if we
• 1:26:18
  Speaker 1: had been married on the day when such words passed
• 1:26:21
  Speaker 1: between us. I know you well and know that if
• 1:26:25
  Speaker 1: we should be separated and our union broken off, your
• 1:26:29
  Speaker 1: whole life would be shadowed, and all that might even
• 1:26:33
  Speaker 1: now be stronger in your character, for the conflict with
• 1:26:36
  Speaker 1: the world would then be weakened to the shadow of
• 1:26:40
  Speaker 1: what it is. God help me, Christiana said, I you
• 1:26:47
  Speaker 1: speak the truth. Michael, said, she putting her hand in mine,
• 1:26:54
  Speaker 1: and all maidenly devotion. Let us keep apart no longer.
• 1:27:00
  Speaker 1: It is but for me to say that I can
• 1:27:02
  Speaker 1: live contented upon such means as you have, and I
• 1:27:07
  Speaker 1: well know you are happy. I say so from my heart.
• 1:27:12
  Speaker 1: Strive no more alone. Let us strive together, my dear Michael.
• 1:27:19
  Speaker 1: It is not right that I should keep secret from
• 1:27:21
  Speaker 1: you what you do not suspect, but what distresses my
• 1:27:24
  Speaker 1: whole life, my mother, without considering that what you have lost,
• 1:27:32
  Speaker 1: you have lost for me, and on the assurance of
• 1:27:35
  Speaker 1: my faith, sets her heart on riches and urges another
• 1:27:39
  Speaker 1: suit upon me. To my misery. I cannot bear this,
• 1:27:44
  Speaker 1: for to bear it is to be untrue to you.
• 1:27:48
  Speaker 1: I would rather share your struggles than look on. I
• 1:27:52
  Speaker 1: want no better home than you can give me. I
• 1:27:55
  Speaker 1: know that you will aspire and labor with a higher
• 1:27:58
  Speaker 1: courage if I am holy yours, and let it be so,
• 1:28:03
  Speaker 1: and you will. I was blessed indeed that day, and
• 1:28:10
  Speaker 1: a new world opened to me. We were married in
• 1:28:13
  Speaker 1: a very little while, and I took my wife to
• 1:28:15
  Speaker 1: our happy home. That was the beginning of the residence
• 1:28:19
  Speaker 1: I have spoken of the castle we have ever since
• 1:28:22
  Speaker 1: inhabited together. Dates from that time all our children have
• 1:28:27
  Speaker 1: been born in it. Our first child, now married, was
• 1:28:33
  Speaker 1: a little girl, whom we called Christiana. Her son is
• 1:28:37
  Speaker 1: so like little Frank that I hardly know which is which.
• 1:28:42
  Speaker 1: The current impression as to my partner's dealing with me
• 1:28:45
  Speaker 1: is also quite erroneous. He did not begin to treat
• 1:28:50
  Speaker 1: me coldly as a poor simpleton when my uncle and
• 1:28:54
  Speaker 1: I so fatally quarreled, nor did he afterwards gradually possess
• 1:28:58
  Speaker 1: himself of our business and edged me out. On the contrary,
• 1:29:04
  Speaker 1: he behaved to me with the utmost good faith and honor.
• 1:29:08
  Speaker 1: Matters between us. Took this turn on the day of
• 1:29:11
  Speaker 1: my separation from my uncle, and even before the arrival
• 1:29:15
  Speaker 1: at our counting house of my trunks, which he sent
• 1:29:18
  Speaker 1: after me, not carriage paid, I went down to our
• 1:29:23
  Speaker 1: room of business on our little wharf overlooking the river,
• 1:29:27
  Speaker 1: and there I told John Spatter what had happened. John
• 1:29:32
  Speaker 1: did not say in reply that rich old relatives were
• 1:29:36
  Speaker 1: palpable facts, and that love and sentiment were moonshine in fiction.
• 1:29:43
  Speaker 1: He addressed me thus, Michael said John. We were at
• 1:29:49
  Speaker 1: school together, and I generally had the knack of getting
• 1:29:52
  Speaker 1: on better than you and making a higher reputation you had. John,
• 1:29:58
  Speaker 1: I returned, although, said John, I borrowed your books and
• 1:30:05
  Speaker 1: lost them, borrowed your pocket money and never repaid it.
• 1:30:09
  Speaker 1: Got you to buy my damaged knives at a higher
• 1:30:11
  Speaker 1: price than I had given for them new, and to
• 1:30:15
  Speaker 1: own to the windows that I had broken. All not
• 1:30:19
  Speaker 1: worth mentioning, John Spatter said, I, but certainly true when
• 1:30:26
  Speaker 1: you were first established in this infant business which promises
• 1:30:30
  Speaker 1: to thrive so well. Pursued John, I came to you
• 1:30:35
  Speaker 1: in search for almost any employment, and you made me
• 1:30:39
  Speaker 1: your clerk. Still not worth mentioning, my dear John Spatter, said,
• 1:30:46
  Speaker 1: I still equally true, and finding that I had a
• 1:30:53
  Speaker 1: good head for business, and that I was really useful
• 1:30:57
  Speaker 1: to the business, you did not like to retain me
• 1:31:00
  Speaker 1: in that capacity, and thought it an act of justice
• 1:31:04
  Speaker 1: soon to make me your partner. Still less worth mentioning
• 1:31:09
  Speaker 1: than any of those other little circumstances you have recalled,
• 1:31:13
  Speaker 1: John Spatter said I, for I was and am sensible
• 1:31:18
  Speaker 1: of your merits and my deficiencies. Now, my good friend,
• 1:31:26
  Speaker 1: said John, drawing my arm through his, as he had
• 1:31:29
  Speaker 1: had a habit of doing at school. While two vessels
• 1:31:33
  Speaker 1: outside the windows of our counting house, which were shaped
• 1:31:37
  Speaker 1: like stern windows of a ship, went lightly down the
• 1:31:40
  Speaker 1: river with the tide. As John and I might then
• 1:31:43
  Speaker 1: be sailing away in company and in trust and confidence
• 1:31:48
  Speaker 1: on our voyage of life. Let there, under these friendly
• 1:31:53
  Speaker 1: circumstances be a right understanding between us. You are too easy, Michael.
• 1:32:00
  Speaker 1: You are nobody's enemy but your own. If I were
• 1:32:03
  Speaker 1: to give you that damaging character among our connection with
• 1:32:07
  Speaker 1: a shrug and a shake of the head and a sigh.
• 1:32:10
  Speaker 1: And if I were further to abuse the trust you
• 1:32:13
  Speaker 1: place in me, but you never will abuse it at all, John,
• 1:32:19
  Speaker 1: I observed, never said he. But I am putting a case,
• 1:32:25
  Speaker 1: I say. And if I were further to abuse that trust,
• 1:32:29
  Speaker 1: by keeping this piece of our common affairs in the dark,
• 1:32:33
  Speaker 1: and this other piece in the light, and again this
• 1:32:36
  Speaker 1: other piece in the twilight, and so on, I should
• 1:32:40
  Speaker 1: strengthen my strength and weak in your weakness, day by day,
• 1:32:45
  Speaker 1: until at last I found myself on the high road
• 1:32:48
  Speaker 1: to fortune, and you left behind on some bare common
• 1:32:54
  Speaker 1: a hopeless number of miles out of the way. Exactly so,
• 1:33:02
  Speaker 1: said I. To prevent this, Michael, said John Spatter, or
• 1:33:09
  Speaker 1: the remotest chance of this, there must be perfect openness
• 1:33:13
  Speaker 1: between us. Nothing must be concealed, and we must have
• 1:33:18
  Speaker 1: but one interest, my dear John Spatter, I assured him.
• 1:33:25
  Speaker 1: That is precisely what I mean. And when you are
• 1:33:30
  Speaker 1: too easy pursue John, his face glowing with friendship. You
• 1:33:36
  Speaker 1: must allow me to prevent that imperfection in your nature
• 1:33:39
  Speaker 1: from being taken advantage of by any one. You must
• 1:33:44
  Speaker 1: not expect me to humor it, my dear John Spatter,
• 1:33:49
  Speaker 1: I interrupted, I don't expect you to humor it. I
• 1:33:54
  Speaker 1: want to correct it, and I too, said John, exactly
• 1:34:01
  Speaker 1: so cried I. We both have the same end in view,
• 1:34:06
  Speaker 1: and honorably seeking it, and fully trusting one another, and
• 1:34:10
  Speaker 1: having but one interest, ours will be a prosperous and
• 1:34:14
  Speaker 1: happy partnership. I am sure of it, returned John Spatter,
• 1:34:20
  Speaker 1: and we shook hands most affectionately. I took John home
• 1:34:25
  Speaker 1: to my castle, and we had a very happy day.
• 1:34:28
  Speaker 1: Our partnership throve well. My friend and partner supplied what
• 1:34:32
  Speaker 1: I wanted, as I had foreseen that he would, and
• 1:34:36
  Speaker 1: by improving both the business and myself, amply acknowledged any
• 1:34:40
  Speaker 1: little rise in life to which I had helped him.
• 1:34:45
  Speaker 1: I am not, said the poor relation, looking at the
• 1:34:49
  Speaker 1: fire as he slowly rubbed his hands. Very rich, for
• 1:34:54
  Speaker 1: I have never cared to be that. But I have
• 1:34:57
  Speaker 1: enough and am above all all moderate once and anxieties.
• 1:35:03
  Speaker 1: My castle is not a splendid place, but it is
• 1:35:06
  Speaker 1: very comfortable, and it has a warm and cheerful air,
• 1:35:10
  Speaker 1: and is quite a picture of home. Our eldest girl,
• 1:35:15
  Speaker 1: who is very like her mother, married John Spatter's eldest son.
• 1:35:21
  Speaker 1: Our two families are closely united in other ties of attachment.
• 1:35:26
  Speaker 1: It is very pleasant of an evening when we are
• 1:35:28
  Speaker 1: all assembled together, which frequently happens, and when John and
• 1:35:33
  Speaker 1: I talk over old times and the one interest there
• 1:35:36
  Speaker 1: has always been between us. I really do not know
• 1:35:41
  Speaker 1: in my castle what loneliness is. Some of our children
• 1:35:47
  Speaker 1: or grandchildren are always about it, and the young voices
• 1:35:51
  Speaker 1: of my descendants are delightful. Oh, how delightful to me
• 1:35:55
  Speaker 1: to hear my dearest and most devoted wife, Ever faithful,
• 1:36:01
  Speaker 1: ever loving, ever helpful, and sustaining and consoling is the
• 1:36:07
  Speaker 1: priceless blessing of my house, from whom all its other
• 1:36:11
  Speaker 1: blessings spring. We are rather a musical family, And when
• 1:36:16
  Speaker 1: Christiana sees me at any time a little weary or depressed,
• 1:36:20
  Speaker 1: she steals to the piano and sings a gentle air
• 1:36:23
  Speaker 1: she used to sing when we were first betrothed. So
• 1:36:28
  Speaker 1: weak a man am I that I cannot bear to
• 1:36:32
  Speaker 1: hear it from any other source. They played it once
• 1:36:36
  Speaker 1: at the theater when I was there with little Frank,
• 1:36:38
  Speaker 1: and the child said, wondering, cousin, Michael, whose hot tears
• 1:36:43
  Speaker 1: are these that have fallen on my hand? Such is
• 1:36:48
  Speaker 1: my castle, and such are the real particulars of my
• 1:36:52
  Speaker 1: life therein preserved. I often take little Frank home there.
• 1:36:59
  Speaker 1: He is very welcome to my grandchildren, and they play together.
• 1:37:03
  Speaker 1: At this time of the year, the Christmas and New
• 1:37:05
  Speaker 1: Year time, I am seldom out of my castle, for
• 1:37:10
  Speaker 1: the associations of the season seem to hold me there,
• 1:37:13
  Speaker 1: and the precepts of the season seem to teach me
• 1:37:16
  Speaker 1: that it is well to be there. And the castle
• 1:37:21
  Speaker 1: is observed. A grave kind voice among the company, Yes,
• 1:37:30
  Speaker 1: my castle, said the poor relation, shaking his head as
• 1:37:34
  Speaker 1: he still looked at the fire is in the air. John,
• 1:37:42
  Speaker 1: our esteemed host, suggests its situation accurately. My castle is
• 1:37:48
  Speaker 1: in the air. I have done. Will you be so
• 1:37:55
  Speaker 1: good as to pass the story and of a Poor
• 1:38:00
  Speaker 1: Relations story recording by John vanstan Savannah, Georgia, Story four
• 1:38:11
  Speaker 1: of some short Christmas stories by Charles Dickens. This LibriVox
• 1:38:15
  Speaker 1: recording is in the public domain. The child's story. Once
• 1:38:22
  Speaker 1: upon a time, a good many years ago, there was
• 1:38:26
  Speaker 1: a traveler, and he set out upon a journey. It
• 1:38:30
  Speaker 1: was a magic journey, and was to seem very long
• 1:38:33
  Speaker 1: when he began it, and very short when he got
• 1:38:35
  Speaker 1: halfway through. He traveled along a rather dark path for
• 1:38:40
  Speaker 1: some little time without meeting anything, until at last he
• 1:38:44
  Speaker 1: came to a beautiful child. So he said to the child,
• 1:38:49
  Speaker 1: what do you do here? And the child said, I
• 1:38:54
  Speaker 1: am always at play. Come and play with me. So
• 1:39:00
  Speaker 1: with that child the whole day long, and they were
• 1:39:03
  Speaker 1: very merry. The sky was so blue, the sun was
• 1:39:07
  Speaker 1: so bright, the water was so sparkling, the leaves were
• 1:39:10
  Speaker 1: so green, the flowers were so lovely, And they heard
• 1:39:15
  Speaker 1: such singing birds, and saw so many butterflies, that everything
• 1:39:19
  Speaker 1: was beautiful. This was in fine weather. When it rained,
• 1:39:25
  Speaker 1: they loved to watch the falling drops and to smell
• 1:39:28
  Speaker 1: the fresh scents. When it blew, it was delightful to
• 1:39:32
  Speaker 1: listen to the wind and fancy what it said as
• 1:39:35
  Speaker 1: it came rushing from its home. Where was that? They wondered,
• 1:39:40
  Speaker 1: whistling and howling, driving the clouds before it, bending the trees,
• 1:39:46
  Speaker 1: rumbling in the chimneys, shaking the house, and making the
• 1:39:50
  Speaker 1: sea roar in fury. But when it snowed, that was
• 1:39:55
  Speaker 1: best of all, for they liked nothing so well as
• 1:39:59
  Speaker 1: to look up at the white flakes falling fast and
• 1:40:02
  Speaker 1: thick like down from the breasts of millions of white birds,
• 1:40:06
  Speaker 1: and to see how smooth and deep the drift was,
• 1:40:10
  Speaker 1: and to listen to the hush upon the paths and roads.
• 1:40:15
  Speaker 1: They had plenty of the finest toys in the world,
• 1:40:18
  Speaker 1: and the most astonishing picture books, all about scimitars and slippers,
• 1:40:23
  Speaker 1: and turbans and dwarfs and giants and genii and fairies
• 1:40:28
  Speaker 1: and bluebeards and beanstalks and riches and caverns and forests
• 1:40:34
  Speaker 1: and valentines and arsons, and all new and all true.
• 1:40:40
  Speaker 1: But one day of a sun the traveler lost the child.
• 1:40:45
  Speaker 1: He called to him over and over again, but got
• 1:40:47
  Speaker 1: no answer. So he went upon his road and went
• 1:40:51
  Speaker 1: on for a little while without meeting anything, until at
• 1:40:55
  Speaker 1: last he came to a handsome boy. So he said
• 1:40:59
  Speaker 1: to the boy, what do you do here? And the
• 1:41:02
  Speaker 1: boy said, I am always learning. Come and learn with me.
• 1:41:09
  Speaker 1: So he learned with that boy about Jupiter and Juno,
• 1:41:13
  Speaker 1: and the Greeks and the Romans, and I don't know what,
• 1:41:16
  Speaker 1: and learned more than I could tell or he either,
• 1:41:19
  Speaker 1: for he soon forgot a great deal of it. But
• 1:41:23
  Speaker 1: they were not always learning. They had the merriest games
• 1:41:27
  Speaker 1: that ever were played. They rode upon the river in
• 1:41:30
  Speaker 1: summer and skated on the ice in winter. They were
• 1:41:33
  Speaker 1: active afoot and active on horseback at cricket and all
• 1:41:37
  Speaker 1: games at ball at prisoner's base here, and hounds follow
• 1:41:42
  Speaker 1: my leader in more sports than I can think of.
• 1:41:45
  Speaker 1: Nobody could beat them. They had holidays too, and twelfth cakes,
• 1:41:50
  Speaker 1: and parties where they danced till midnight, and real theaters
• 1:41:54
  Speaker 1: where they saw palaces of real gold and silver rise
• 1:41:58
  Speaker 1: out of the real earth, and saw all the wonders
• 1:42:02
  Speaker 1: of the world at once. As the friends. They had,
• 1:42:06
  Speaker 1: such dear friends, and so many of them that I
• 1:42:10
  Speaker 1: want the time to reckon them up. They were all young,
• 1:42:13
  Speaker 1: like the handsome boy, and were never to be strange
• 1:42:16
  Speaker 1: to one another all their lives through. Still, one day,
• 1:42:22
  Speaker 1: in the midst of all these pleasures, the traveler lost
• 1:42:25
  Speaker 1: the boy as he had lost the child, and after
• 1:42:29
  Speaker 1: calling to him in vain, went upon his journey. So
• 1:42:33
  Speaker 1: he went on for a little while without seeing anything,
• 1:42:37
  Speaker 1: until at last he came to a young man. So
• 1:42:40
  Speaker 1: he said to the young man, what do you do here?
• 1:42:44
  Speaker 1: And the young man said, I am always in love.
• 1:42:49
  Speaker 1: Come in love with me. So he went away with
• 1:42:53
  Speaker 1: that young man, and presently they came to one of
• 1:42:55
  Speaker 1: the prettiest girls that ever was seen, just like Fanny
• 1:42:59
  Speaker 1: and the corner there. And she had eyes like Fanny,
• 1:43:03
  Speaker 1: and hair like Fanny, and dimples like Fanny's. Hen she
• 1:43:07
  Speaker 1: laughed and colored just as Fanny does while I'm talking
• 1:43:10
  Speaker 1: about her. So the young man fell in love directly,
• 1:43:16
  Speaker 1: just as somebody I won't mention the first time he
• 1:43:20
  Speaker 1: came here did with Fanny. Well, he was teased sometimes
• 1:43:26
  Speaker 1: just as somebody used to be by Fanny. And they
• 1:43:29
  Speaker 1: quarreled sometimes, just as somebody and Fanny used to quarrel.
• 1:43:34
  Speaker 1: And they made it up and sat in the dark
• 1:43:36
  Speaker 1: and wrote letters every day, and never were happy asunder,
• 1:43:40
  Speaker 1: and were always looking out for one another and pretending
• 1:43:43
  Speaker 1: not to, and were engaged at Christmas time and sat
• 1:43:47
  Speaker 1: close to one another by the fire, and we're going
• 1:43:51
  Speaker 1: to be married very soon, all exactly like somebody I
• 1:43:56
  Speaker 1: won't mention and Fanny. But the traveler lost them one day,
• 1:44:03
  Speaker 1: as he had lost the rest of his friends, and
• 1:44:05
  Speaker 1: after calling to them to come back, which they never did,
• 1:44:10
  Speaker 1: went on upon his journey. So he went on for
• 1:44:14
  Speaker 1: a little while without seeing anything, until at last he
• 1:44:18
  Speaker 1: came to a middle aged gentleman. So he said to
• 1:44:22
  Speaker 1: the gentleman, what are you doing here? And his answer was,
• 1:44:28
  Speaker 1: I am always busy. Come and be busy with me.
• 1:44:32
  Speaker 1: So he began to be very busy with that gentleman,
• 1:44:36
  Speaker 1: and they went on through the wood together. The whole
• 1:44:39
  Speaker 1: journey was through a wood, only it had been open
• 1:44:42
  Speaker 1: and green at first, like a wooden spring, and now
• 1:44:47
  Speaker 1: began to be thick and dark like a wood in summer.
• 1:44:51
  Speaker 1: Some of the little trees that had come out earliest
• 1:44:53
  Speaker 1: were even turning brown. The gentleman was not alone, but
• 1:44:58
  Speaker 1: had a lady of about the same age with him,
• 1:45:00
  Speaker 1: who was his wife, and they had children who were
• 1:45:04
  Speaker 1: with them too. So they all went on together through
• 1:45:08
  Speaker 1: the wood, cutting down the trees and making a path
• 1:45:11
  Speaker 1: through the branches and the fallen leaves, and carrying burdens
• 1:45:15
  Speaker 1: and working hard. Sometimes they came to a long green
• 1:45:20
  Speaker 1: avenue that opened into deeper woods. Then they would hear
• 1:45:25
  Speaker 1: a very little distant voice crying, father, father, I am
• 1:45:31
  Speaker 1: another child. Stop for me. And presently they would see
• 1:45:36
  Speaker 1: a very little figure, growing larger as it came along,
• 1:45:39
  Speaker 1: running to join them. When it came up, they all
• 1:45:43
  Speaker 1: crowded round it and kissed and welcomed it, and then
• 1:45:47
  Speaker 1: they all went on together. Sometimes they came to several
• 1:45:52
  Speaker 1: avenues at once, and then they all stood still, and
• 1:45:55
  Speaker 1: one of the children said, father, I am going to
• 1:46:00
  Speaker 1: see and another said, father, I am going to India,
• 1:46:08
  Speaker 1: and another father, I am going to seek my fortune
• 1:46:12
  Speaker 1: where I can, and another father, I am going to heaven. So,
• 1:46:22
  Speaker 1: with many tears at parting, they went solitary down those avenues,
• 1:46:28
  Speaker 1: each child upon its way, and the child who went
• 1:46:32
  Speaker 1: to Heaven rose into the golden air and vanished. Whenever
• 1:46:37
  Speaker 1: these partings happened, the traveler looked at the gentleman and
• 1:46:41
  Speaker 1: saw him glance up at the sky above the trees,
• 1:46:44
  Speaker 1: where the day was beginning to decline and the sunset
• 1:46:49
  Speaker 1: to come on. He saw too that his hair was
• 1:46:53
  Speaker 1: turning gray. But they never could rest long, for they
• 1:46:58
  Speaker 1: had their journey to perform, and it was necessary for
• 1:47:01
  Speaker 1: them to be always busy. At last, there had been
• 1:47:07
  Speaker 1: so many partings that there were no children left, and
• 1:47:11
  Speaker 1: only the traveler, the gentleman, and the lady went upon
• 1:47:14
  Speaker 1: their way in company. And now the wood was yellow
• 1:47:19
  Speaker 1: and now brown, and the leaves, even of the forest trees,
• 1:47:24
  Speaker 1: began to fall. So they came to an avenue that
• 1:47:28
  Speaker 1: was darker than the rest, and were pressing forward on
• 1:47:32
  Speaker 1: their journey without looking down at When the lady stopped.
• 1:47:36
  Speaker 1: My husband said, the lady, I am called. They listened,
• 1:47:44
  Speaker 1: and they heard a voice a long way down the
• 1:47:46
  Speaker 1: avenue say, mother, Mother. It was the voice of the
• 1:47:53
  Speaker 1: first child, who had said, I am going to heaven.
• 1:47:58
  Speaker 1: And the father said, I pray not yet. The sun
• 1:48:03
  Speaker 1: set is very near. I pray not yet. But the
• 1:48:09
  Speaker 1: voice cried mother, mother, without minding him, though his hair
• 1:48:16
  Speaker 1: was now quite white and tears were on his face.
• 1:48:21
  Speaker 1: Then the mother, who was already drawn into the shade
• 1:48:24
  Speaker 1: of the dark avenue and moving away, with her arms
• 1:48:28
  Speaker 1: still round his neck, kissed him and said, my dearest,
• 1:48:35
  Speaker 1: I am summoned, and I go. And she was gone,
• 1:48:43
  Speaker 1: and the traveler and he were left alone together. And
• 1:48:48
  Speaker 1: they went on and on together until they came to
• 1:48:52
  Speaker 1: very near the end of the wood, so near that
• 1:48:56
  Speaker 1: they could see the sun set shining red before them
• 1:48:59
  Speaker 1: through the trees. Yet once more, while he broke his
• 1:49:03
  Speaker 1: way among the branches, the traveler lost his friend. He
• 1:49:08
  Speaker 1: called and called, but there was no reply. And when
• 1:49:13
  Speaker 1: he passed out of the wood and saw the peaceful
• 1:49:15
  Speaker 1: sun going down upon a wide purple prospect, he came
• 1:49:20
  Speaker 1: to an old man sitting on a fallen tree. So
• 1:49:25
  Speaker 1: he said to the old man, what do you do here?
• 1:49:29
  Speaker 1: And the old man said, with a calm smile, I
• 1:49:34
  Speaker 1: am always remembering, Come and remember with me. So the
• 1:49:43
  Speaker 1: traveler sat down by the side of that old man,
• 1:49:46
  Speaker 1: face to face with the serene sunset, and all his
• 1:49:51
  Speaker 1: friends came softly back and stood around him. The beautiful child,
• 1:49:57
  Speaker 1: the handsome boy, the young man in love, the father, mother,
• 1:50:03
  Speaker 1: and children. Every one of them was there, and he
• 1:50:07
  Speaker 1: had lost nothing. So he loved them all and was
• 1:50:12
  Speaker 1: kind and forbearing with them all, and was always pleased
• 1:50:17
  Speaker 1: to watch them all. And they all honored and loved him.
• 1:50:23
  Speaker 1: And I think the traveler must be yourself, dear grandfather,
• 1:50:28
  Speaker 1: because this is what you do to us and what
• 1:50:32
  Speaker 1: we do to you. End of the Child's Story recording
• 1:50:37
  Speaker 1: by John Van stan Savannah, Georgia, story five of some
• 1:50:47
  Speaker 1: short Christmas stories by Charles Dickens. This LibriVox recording is
• 1:50:51
  Speaker 1: in the public domain. The Schoolboy's story being rather young
• 1:50:57
  Speaker 1: at present, I am getting on in here, but still
• 1:51:00
  Speaker 1: I am rather young. I have no particular adventures of
• 1:51:04
  Speaker 1: my own to fall back upon. It wouldn't much interest
• 1:51:07
  Speaker 1: anybody here. I suppose to know what a screw the
• 1:51:11
  Speaker 1: reverend is, or what a griffin she is, or how
• 1:51:14
  Speaker 1: they do stick it into parents, particularly hair cutting and
• 1:51:18
  Speaker 1: medical attendants. One of our fellows was charging his halfs
• 1:51:22
  Speaker 1: account twelve and sixpence for two pills, tolerably profitable at
• 1:51:27
  Speaker 1: six and threepence apiece, I should think. And he never
• 1:51:31
  Speaker 1: took them either, but put them up the sleeve of
• 1:51:33
  Speaker 1: his jacket. As to the beef, it's shameful. It's not beef.
• 1:51:40
  Speaker 1: Regular beef isn't veins. You can chew regular beef. Besides
• 1:51:46
  Speaker 1: which there's gravy to regular beef, and you never see
• 1:51:50
  Speaker 1: a drop to ours. Another of our fellows went home
• 1:51:53
  Speaker 1: ill and heard the family doctor tell his father that
• 1:51:56
  Speaker 1: he couldn't account for his complaint unless it was the beer.
• 1:52:00
  Speaker 1: Of course it was the beer, and well it might be. However,
• 1:52:05
  Speaker 1: beef and old cheeseman are two different things, so is beer.
• 1:52:11
  Speaker 1: It was old cheeseman I meant to tell you about,
• 1:52:14
  Speaker 1: not the manner in which our fellows get their constitutions
• 1:52:17
  Speaker 1: destroyed for the sake of profit. Why look at the
• 1:52:21
  Speaker 1: pie crust alone, there's no flakiness in it. It's solid
• 1:52:24
  Speaker 1: like damp lead. Then our fellows get nightmares and are
• 1:52:28
  Speaker 1: bolstered for calling out and waking other fellows who can wonder.
• 1:52:34
  Speaker 1: Old Cheeseman one night walked in his sleep, put his
• 1:52:37
  Speaker 1: hat on over his night cap, got hold of a
• 1:52:40
  Speaker 1: fishing rod and a cricket bat, and went down into
• 1:52:43
  Speaker 1: the parlor, where they naturally thought from his appearance he
• 1:52:46
  Speaker 1: was a ghost. Why he never would have done that
• 1:52:50
  Speaker 1: if his meals had been wholesome. When we all begin
• 1:52:53
  Speaker 1: to walk in our sleeps, I suppose they'll be sorry
• 1:52:56
  Speaker 1: for it. Old Cheeseman wasn't second l and master, then
• 1:53:01
  Speaker 1: he was a fellow himself. He was first brought there,
• 1:53:05
  Speaker 1: very small, in a post chays by a woman who
• 1:53:07
  Speaker 1: was always taking snuff and shaking him, and that was
• 1:53:13
  Speaker 1: the most he remembered about it. He never went home
• 1:53:16
  Speaker 1: for the holidays. His accounts he never learned any extras
• 1:53:21
  Speaker 1: were sent to a bank and the bank paid them.
• 1:53:26
  Speaker 1: And he had a brown suit twice a year, and
• 1:53:28
  Speaker 1: went into boots at twelve. They were always too big
• 1:53:31
  Speaker 1: for him too. In the Midsummer holidays, some of our
• 1:53:34
  Speaker 1: fellows who lived within walking distance used to come back
• 1:53:38
  Speaker 1: and climb the trees outside the playground wall on purpose
• 1:53:42
  Speaker 1: to look at old Cheeseman reading there by himself. He
• 1:53:47
  Speaker 1: was always as mild as the tea. And that's pretty mild,
• 1:53:52
  Speaker 1: I should hope. So when they whistled to him, he
• 1:53:55
  Speaker 1: looked up and nodded. And when they said helloa, old cheeseman,
• 1:53:59
  Speaker 1: what have you had for dinner? He said, boiled mutton.
• 1:54:04
  Speaker 1: And when they said, ain't its solitary, old Cheeseman, he said,
• 1:54:10
  Speaker 1: it is a little dull sometimes, And then they said, well,
• 1:54:15
  Speaker 1: good bye, Old Cheeseman, and climbed down again. Of course,
• 1:54:19
  Speaker 1: it was imposing on old Cheesemen to give him nothing
• 1:54:22
  Speaker 1: but boiled mutton through a whole vacation, but that was
• 1:54:25
  Speaker 1: just like the system. When they didn't give him boiled mutton,
• 1:54:29
  Speaker 1: they gave him rice pudding, pretending it was a treat,
• 1:54:33
  Speaker 1: and saved the butcher. So Old Cheeseman went on. The
• 1:54:39
  Speaker 1: holidays brought him into other trouble besides the loneliness, because
• 1:54:43
  Speaker 1: when the fellows began to come back, not wanting to,
• 1:54:47
  Speaker 1: he was always glad to see them, which was aggravating
• 1:54:50
  Speaker 1: when they were not at all glad to see him.
• 1:54:53
  Speaker 1: And so he got his head knocked against walls, and
• 1:54:56
  Speaker 1: that was the way his nose bled. But he was
• 1:54:59
  Speaker 1: a favor in general. Once a subscription was raised for him,
• 1:55:03
  Speaker 1: and to keep up his spirits, he was presented before
• 1:55:06
  Speaker 1: the holidays with two white mice, a rabbit, a pigeon,
• 1:55:10
  Speaker 1: and a beautiful puppy. Old Cheeseman cried about it, especially
• 1:55:15
  Speaker 1: soon afterwards when they all ate one another. Of course,
• 1:55:20
  Speaker 1: Old Cheeseman used to be called by the names of
• 1:55:23
  Speaker 1: all sorts of cheeses double Glosterman family, cheshire Man, Dutchman,
• 1:55:29
  Speaker 1: north wiltshireman, and all that. But he never minded it.
• 1:55:34
  Speaker 1: And I don't mean to say he was old in
• 1:55:37
  Speaker 1: point of years, because he wasn't. Only he was called
• 1:55:40
  Speaker 1: from the first Old Cheeseman. At last, Old Cheeseman was
• 1:55:45
  Speaker 1: made second Latin master. He was brought in one morning
• 1:55:49
  Speaker 1: at the beginning of a new half, and presented to
• 1:55:52
  Speaker 1: the school in that capacity as mister Cheeseman. Then our
• 1:55:57
  Speaker 1: fellows all agreed that Old Cheeseman was a spot and
• 1:56:01
  Speaker 1: a deserter who had gone over to the enemy's camp
• 1:56:03
  Speaker 1: and sold himself for gold. There was no excuse for
• 1:56:07
  Speaker 1: him that he had sold himself for very little gold
• 1:56:11
  Speaker 1: two pounds ten a quarter in his washing. As was reported,
• 1:56:15
  Speaker 1: it was decided by a parliament which sat about it,
• 1:56:18
  Speaker 1: that old Cheeseman's mercenary motives could alone be taken into account,
• 1:56:22
  Speaker 1: and that he had coined our blood for Drachmas. The
• 1:56:27
  Speaker 1: parliament took the expression out of the quarrel scene between
• 1:56:30
  Speaker 1: Brutus and Cassius, when it was settled in this strong
• 1:56:35
  Speaker 1: way that old Cheeseman was a tremendous traitor who had
• 1:56:38
  Speaker 1: wormed himself into our fellow's secrets on purpose to get
• 1:56:42
  Speaker 1: himself into favor by giving up everything he knew. All
• 1:56:46
  Speaker 1: courageous fellows were invited to come forward and enroll themselves
• 1:56:50
  Speaker 1: in a society for making a set against him. The
• 1:56:54
  Speaker 1: president of the society was first boy named Bob Tartar.
• 1:57:00
  Speaker 1: His father was in the West Indies, and he owned
• 1:57:03
  Speaker 1: himself that his father was worth millions. He had great
• 1:57:07
  Speaker 1: power among our fellows, And he wrote a parody beginning,
• 1:57:11
  Speaker 1: who made believe to be so meek that we could
• 1:57:14
  Speaker 1: hardly hear him speak, yet turned out an informing sneak
• 1:57:19
  Speaker 1: Old Cheeseman, and on in that way through more than
• 1:57:24
  Speaker 1: a dozen verses which he used to go and sing
• 1:57:27
  Speaker 1: every morning close by the new master's desk. He trained
• 1:57:32
  Speaker 1: one of the low boys too, a rosy cheeked little
• 1:57:35
  Speaker 1: brass who didn't care what he did, to go up
• 1:57:38
  Speaker 1: to him with his Latin grammar one morning and say
• 1:57:40
  Speaker 1: it so nomin nativus pronominum. Old Cheeseman RaRo expirimitour was
• 1:57:50
  Speaker 1: never suspected nisi distincionis of being an informer out emphasi
• 1:57:57
  Speaker 1: segracia until he proved one oot for instance, vos damnasties.
• 1:58:04
  Speaker 1: When he sold the boys quasi as though decot he
• 1:58:08
  Speaker 1: should say preteria nemo, I'm a judas. All this produced
• 1:58:15
  Speaker 1: a great effect on Old Cheeseman. He had never had
• 1:58:18
  Speaker 1: much hair, but what he had began to get thinner
• 1:58:21
  Speaker 1: and thinner. Every day he grew paler and more worn,
• 1:58:26
  Speaker 1: and sometimes of an evening he was seen sitting at
• 1:58:29
  Speaker 1: his desk with a precious long snuff to his candle
• 1:58:33
  Speaker 1: and his hands before his face, crying. But no member
• 1:58:37
  Speaker 1: of the society could pity him, even if he felt inclined,
• 1:58:41
  Speaker 1: because the President said it was Old Cheeseman's conscience. So
• 1:58:46
  Speaker 1: Old Cheeseman went on and didn't He lead a miserable life.
• 1:58:50
  Speaker 1: Of course, the reverend turned up his nose at him,
• 1:58:53
  Speaker 1: and of course she did, because both of them always
• 1:58:57
  Speaker 1: do that at all the masters. But he suffered from
• 1:59:01
  Speaker 1: the fellow's most and he suffered from them constantly. He
• 1:59:06
  Speaker 1: never told about it that the society could find out,
• 1:59:10
  Speaker 1: but he got no credit for that, because the President
• 1:59:12
  Speaker 1: said it was old Cheeseman's cowardice. He had only one
• 1:59:17
  Speaker 1: friend in the world, and that one was almost as
• 1:59:20
  Speaker 1: powerless as he was, for it was only Jane. Jane
• 1:59:25
  Speaker 1: was a sort of wardrobe woman to our fellows, and
• 1:59:28
  Speaker 1: took care of the boxes. She had come at first,
• 1:59:31
  Speaker 1: I believe as a kind of apprentice. Some of our
• 1:59:34
  Speaker 1: fellows say from a charity, but I don't know. And
• 1:59:38
  Speaker 1: after her time was out, had stopped at so much
• 1:59:41
  Speaker 1: a year, so little a year, perhaps, I ought to say,
• 1:59:45
  Speaker 1: for it is far more likely, however, she had put
• 1:59:49
  Speaker 1: some pounds in the savings bank. And she was a
• 1:59:52
  Speaker 1: very nice young woman. She was not quite pretty, but
• 1:59:55
  Speaker 1: she had a very frank, honest, bright face, and all
• 1:59:59
  Speaker 1: our fellows were fond of her. She was uncommonly neat
• 2:00:03
  Speaker 1: and cheerful, and uncommonly comfortable and kind, and if anything
• 2:00:07
  Speaker 1: was the matter with a fellow's mother, he always went
• 2:00:10
  Speaker 1: and showed the letter to Jane. Jane was Old Cheeseman's friend.
• 2:00:15
  Speaker 1: The more the society went against him, the more Jane
• 2:00:19
  Speaker 1: stood by him. She used to give him a good
• 2:00:22
  Speaker 1: humored look out of her still room window. Sometimes that
• 2:00:26
  Speaker 1: seemed to set him up for the day. She used
• 2:00:29
  Speaker 1: to pass out of the orchard, and the kitchen garden
• 2:00:32
  Speaker 1: always kept locked, I believe you, through the playground, when
• 2:00:36
  Speaker 1: she might have gone the other way, only to give
• 2:00:38
  Speaker 1: a turn of her head, as much as to say
• 2:00:41
  Speaker 1: keep up your spirits to old Cheeseman. His slip of
• 2:00:45
  Speaker 1: a room was so fresh and orderly that it was
• 2:00:48
  Speaker 1: well known who looked after it while he was at
• 2:00:50
  Speaker 1: his desk. And when our fellows saw a smoking hot
• 2:00:54
  Speaker 1: dumpling on his plate at dinner, they knew with indignation
• 2:00:57
  Speaker 1: who had sent it up. Under these circumstances, the society resolved,
• 2:01:03
  Speaker 1: after a quantity of meeting and debating, that Jane should
• 2:01:07
  Speaker 1: be requested to cut Old Cheeseman dead, and that if
• 2:01:10
  Speaker 1: she refused, she must be sent to Coventry herself. So
• 2:01:16
  Speaker 1: a deputation headed by the President was appointed to wait
• 2:01:20
  Speaker 1: on Jane and inform her of the vote the society
• 2:01:24
  Speaker 1: had been under the painful necessity of passing. She was
• 2:01:28
  Speaker 1: very much respected for all her good qualities, and there
• 2:01:31
  Speaker 1: was a story about her having once waylaid the reverend
• 2:01:34
  Speaker 1: in his own study and got a fellow off from
• 2:01:37
  Speaker 1: severe punishment of her own kind, comfortable heart. So the
• 2:01:42
  Speaker 1: deputation didn't much like the job. However, they went up
• 2:01:47
  Speaker 1: and the President told Jane all about it, upon which
• 2:01:50
  Speaker 1: Jane turned very red, burst into tears, informed the President
• 2:01:55
  Speaker 1: and the Deputation in a way not at all like
• 2:01:57
  Speaker 1: her usual way, that they were a parcel of mal
• 2:02:00
  Speaker 1: delicious young savages, and turned the whole respected body out
• 2:02:04
  Speaker 1: of the room. Consequently, it was entered in the Society's book,
• 2:02:10
  Speaker 1: kept an astronomical cipher for fear of detection, that all
• 2:02:15
  Speaker 1: communication with Jane was interdicted, and the President addressed the
• 2:02:19
  Speaker 1: members on this convincing instant of Old Cheeseman's undermining. But
• 2:02:24
  Speaker 1: Jane was as true to Old Cheeseman as Old Cheeseman
• 2:02:27
  Speaker 1: was false to our fellows in their opinion at all events,
• 2:02:32
  Speaker 1: and steadily continued to be his only friend. It was
• 2:02:36
  Speaker 1: a great exasperation to the Society, because Jane was as
• 2:02:40
  Speaker 1: much a loss to them as she was again to him,
• 2:02:43
  Speaker 1: and being more inveterate against him than ever, they treated
• 2:02:47
  Speaker 1: him worse than ever. At last, one morning his desk
• 2:02:51
  Speaker 1: stood empty, his room was peeped into and found to
• 2:02:55
  Speaker 1: be vacant. Hanna whisper went about among the pale faces
• 2:02:59
  Speaker 1: of fellows that old Cheesemen, unable to bear it any longer,
• 2:03:05
  Speaker 1: had got up early and drowned himself. The mysterious looks
• 2:03:11
  Speaker 1: of the other masters after breakfast, and the evident fact
• 2:03:15
  Speaker 1: that old Cheeseman was not expected to confirm the society
• 2:03:18
  Speaker 1: and this opinion. Some began to discuss whether the president
• 2:03:22
  Speaker 1: was liable to hanging or only transportation for life, and
• 2:03:27
  Speaker 1: the president's face showed a great anxiety to note which. However,
• 2:03:32
  Speaker 1: he said that a jury of his country should find
• 2:03:35
  Speaker 1: him game, and that in his address he should put
• 2:03:38
  Speaker 1: it to them to lay their hands upon their hearts
• 2:03:41
  Speaker 1: and say whether they, as Britons, approved of informers, and
• 2:03:45
  Speaker 1: how they thought they would like it themselves. Some of
• 2:03:49
  Speaker 1: the society considered that he had better run away until
• 2:03:52
  Speaker 1: he found a forest where he might change clothes with
• 2:03:55
  Speaker 1: a wood cutter and stain his face with blackberries. But
• 2:03:59
  Speaker 1: the major he already believed that if he stood his ground,
• 2:04:02
  Speaker 1: his father, belonging as he did to the West Indies
• 2:04:05
  Speaker 1: and being worth millions, could buy him off. All our
• 2:04:10
  Speaker 1: fellow's hearts beat fast when the Reverend came in and
• 2:04:14
  Speaker 1: made a sort of a Roman or a field marshal
• 2:04:16
  Speaker 1: of himself with the ruler, as he always did before
• 2:04:19
  Speaker 1: delivering an address. But their fears were nothing to their
• 2:04:23
  Speaker 1: astonishment when he came out with the story that Old Cheesemen,
• 2:04:28
  Speaker 1: so long our respected friend and fellow pilgrim in the
• 2:04:30
  Speaker 1: pleasant plains of knowledge he called him. Oh yes, I
• 2:04:34
  Speaker 1: dare say much of that was the orphaned child of
• 2:04:38
  Speaker 1: a disinherited young lady who had married against her father's wish,
• 2:04:42
  Speaker 1: and whose young husband had died, and who had died
• 2:04:45
  Speaker 1: of sorrow herself, and whose unfortunate baby, Old Cheeseman had
• 2:04:51
  Speaker 1: been brought up at the cost of a grandfather who
• 2:04:53
  Speaker 1: would never consent to see it baby boy or man.
• 2:05:00
  Speaker 1: Which grandfather was now dead, and serve him right, that's
• 2:05:03
  Speaker 1: my putting in, And which grandfather's large property, there being
• 2:05:08
  Speaker 1: no will, was now and all of a sudden and
• 2:05:11
  Speaker 1: forever Old cheesemans our so long respected friend and fellow
• 2:05:18
  Speaker 1: pilgrim in the pleasant plains of knowledge. The Reverend wound
• 2:05:22
  Speaker 1: up a lot of bothering quotations by saying, would come
• 2:05:25
  Speaker 1: among us once more that day fortnight, when he desired
• 2:05:29
  Speaker 1: to take leave of us himself in a more particular manner.
• 2:05:33
  Speaker 1: With these words, he stared severely round at our fellows
• 2:05:37
  Speaker 1: and went solemnly out. There was precious consternation among the
• 2:05:44
  Speaker 1: members of the society. Now lots of them wanted to resign,
• 2:05:48
  Speaker 1: and lots more began to try to make out that
• 2:05:50
  Speaker 1: they had never belonged to it. However, the President stuck
• 2:05:55
  Speaker 1: up and said that they must stand our fault together,
• 2:05:58
  Speaker 1: and that if a breach was made, it be over
• 2:06:00
  Speaker 1: his body, which was meant to encourage the society, but
• 2:06:05
  Speaker 1: it didn't. The President further said he would consider the
• 2:06:09
  Speaker 1: position in which they stood and would give them his
• 2:06:12
  Speaker 1: best opinion and advice in a few days. This was
• 2:06:16
  Speaker 1: eagerly looked for, as he knew a good deal of
• 2:06:19
  Speaker 1: the world on account of his father's being in the
• 2:06:21
  Speaker 1: West Indies. After days and days of hard thinking and
• 2:06:27
  Speaker 1: drawing armies all over his slate, the President called our
• 2:06:31
  Speaker 1: fellows together and made the matter clear. He said, it
• 2:06:36
  Speaker 1: was plain that when Old Cheeseman came on the appointed day,
• 2:06:39
  Speaker 1: his first revenge would be to impeach the society and
• 2:06:43
  Speaker 1: have it flogged all round, after witnessing with joy the
• 2:06:47
  Speaker 1: torture of his enemies, and gloating over the cries which
• 2:06:51
  Speaker 1: agony would extort from them. The probability was that he
• 2:06:54
  Speaker 1: would invite the Reverend, on pretense of conversation, into a
• 2:06:59
  Speaker 1: private room, say the parlor into which parents were shown,
• 2:07:03
  Speaker 1: where the two great globes were, which were never used,
• 2:07:07
  Speaker 1: and would there reproach him with the various frauds and
• 2:07:11
  Speaker 1: oppressions he had endured at his hands. At the close
• 2:07:15
  Speaker 1: of his observations, he would make a signal to a
• 2:07:18
  Speaker 1: prize fighter concealed in the passage, who would then appear
• 2:07:21
  Speaker 1: in pitchon to the Reverent till he was left insensible.
• 2:07:27
  Speaker 1: Old cheese Men would then make Jane a present of
• 2:07:29
  Speaker 1: from five to ten pounds, and would leave the establishment
• 2:07:33
  Speaker 1: in fiendish triumph. The President explained that against the parlor
• 2:07:39
  Speaker 1: part or the Jane part of these arrangements, he had
• 2:07:42
  Speaker 1: nothing to say, but on the part of the society,
• 2:07:47
  Speaker 1: he counseled deadly resistance. With this view, he recommended that
• 2:07:51
  Speaker 1: all available desks should be filled with stones, and that
• 2:07:55
  Speaker 1: the first word of the complaint should be the signal
• 2:07:58
  Speaker 1: to every fellow to let fly at Old Cheeseman. The
• 2:08:02
  Speaker 1: bold advice put the society in better spirits and was
• 2:08:06
  Speaker 1: unanimously taken. A post about Old Cheeseman's size was put
• 2:08:11
  Speaker 1: up in the playground, and all our fellows practiced at
• 2:08:15
  Speaker 1: it till it was dinted all over. When the day
• 2:08:19
  Speaker 1: came and places were called, every fellow sat down in
• 2:08:23
  Speaker 1: a tremble. There had been much discussing and disputing as
• 2:08:27
  Speaker 1: to how Old Cheesemen would come, but it was the
• 2:08:30
  Speaker 1: general opinion that he would appear in a sort of
• 2:08:33
  Speaker 1: triumphal car drawn by four horses, with two livery servants
• 2:08:38
  Speaker 1: in front, and the prize fighter in disguise up behind.
• 2:08:44
  Speaker 1: So all our fellows sat listening for the sound of wheels,
• 2:08:48
  Speaker 1: but no wheels were heard, for Old Cheesemen walked after all,
• 2:08:53
  Speaker 1: and came into the school without any preparation, pretty much
• 2:08:57
  Speaker 1: as he used to be, only dressed in black ack. Gentlemen,
• 2:09:02
  Speaker 1: said the reverend, presenting him, oh so long, respected friend
• 2:09:06
  Speaker 1: and fellow, pilgrim in the pleasant plains of knowledge, is
• 2:09:10
  Speaker 1: desirous to offer a word or two. Attention, gentlemen, one
• 2:09:14
  Speaker 1: and all. Every fellow stole his hand into his desk
• 2:09:19
  Speaker 1: and looked at the President. The President was all ready
• 2:09:23
  Speaker 1: and taking aim an old cheeseman with his eyes. What
• 2:09:27
  Speaker 1: did old cheeseman then but walk up to his old desk,
• 2:09:32
  Speaker 1: look round him with a queer smile, as if there
• 2:09:35
  Speaker 1: was a tear in his eye, and begin in a
• 2:09:38
  Speaker 1: quavering mild voice, my dear companions and old friends. Every
• 2:09:46
  Speaker 1: fellow's hand came out of his desk, and the President
• 2:09:50
  Speaker 1: suddenly began to cry. My dear companions and old friends,
• 2:09:56
  Speaker 1: said old cheeseman, you have heard of my good fortune.
• 2:10:01
  Speaker 1: I have passed so many years under this roof my
• 2:10:05
  Speaker 1: entire life. So far, I may say that I hope
• 2:10:08
  Speaker 1: you have been glad to hear of it. For my sake,
• 2:10:12
  Speaker 1: I could never enjoy it without exchanging congratulations with you.
• 2:10:17
  Speaker 1: If we have ever misunderstood one another at all, Pray,
• 2:10:20
  Speaker 1: my dear boys, let us forgive and forget. I have
• 2:10:24
  Speaker 1: a great tenderness for you, and I am sure you
• 2:10:27
  Speaker 1: return it. I want, in the fullness of a grateful
• 2:10:30
  Speaker 1: heart to shake hands with you, every one. I have
• 2:10:35
  Speaker 1: come back to do it, if you please, my dear boys.
• 2:10:39
  Speaker 1: Since the President had begun to cry, several other fellows
• 2:10:44
  Speaker 1: had broken out here and there. But now when Old
• 2:10:48
  Speaker 1: Cheeseman began with him as first boy, laid his left
• 2:10:51
  Speaker 1: hand affectionately on his shoulder and gave him his right.
• 2:10:55
  Speaker 1: And when the President said, indeed, I don't deserve it, sir,
• 2:11:00
  Speaker 1: upon my honor, I don't there was sobbing and crying
• 2:11:04
  Speaker 1: all over the school. Every other fellow said he didn't
• 2:11:08
  Speaker 1: deserve it much in the same way. But Old Cheeseman,
• 2:11:12
  Speaker 1: not minding that a bit, went cheerfully round to every boy,
• 2:11:17
  Speaker 1: and wound up with every master finishing off the reverend. Last.
• 2:11:23
  Speaker 1: Then a sniveling little chap in a corner, who was
• 2:11:25
  Speaker 1: always under some punishment rather set up a shrill cry
• 2:11:29
  Speaker 1: of success to Old Cheesemen, hooray. The Reverend glared upon
• 2:11:35
  Speaker 1: him and said, mister Cheeseman, sir. But old Cheeseman, protesting
• 2:11:42
  Speaker 1: that he liked his old name a great deal better
• 2:11:44
  Speaker 1: than his new one, all our fellows took up the cry,
• 2:11:48
  Speaker 1: and for I don't know how many minutes there was
• 2:11:50
  Speaker 1: such a thundering of feet and hands, and such a
• 2:11:53
  Speaker 1: roaring of old cheesemen as never was heard. After that,
• 2:11:59
  Speaker 1: there was a bread in the dining room of the
• 2:12:01
  Speaker 1: most magnificent kind. Fowls, tongues, preserves, fruit, skinnedfectioneries, jellies, and eggasus, barley, sugar, temples, trifles, crackers,
• 2:12:13
  Speaker 1: eat all you can, and pocket what you like, all
• 2:12:16
  Speaker 1: at Old cheese Men's expense. After that, speeches whole holiday,
• 2:12:23
  Speaker 1: double and trouble, sets of all manners of things, for
• 2:12:26
  Speaker 1: all manners of games, donkeys, pony chases, and drive yourself
• 2:12:32
  Speaker 1: dinner for all the masters at the seven bells twenty
• 2:12:36
  Speaker 1: pounds ahead are fellows estimated it at an annual holiday
• 2:12:40
  Speaker 1: and feast fixed for that day every year, and another
• 2:12:44
  Speaker 1: on Old Cheeseman's birthday. Reverend bound down before the fellows
• 2:12:50
  Speaker 1: to allow it, so that he could never back out
• 2:12:53
  Speaker 1: all at Old Cheeseman's expense. And didn't our fellows go
• 2:12:59
  Speaker 1: down in a body and cheer outside the seven bells.
• 2:13:03
  Speaker 1: Oh no, but there's something else besides. Don't look at
• 2:13:09
  Speaker 1: the next storyteller, for there's more yet. Next day it
• 2:13:12
  Speaker 1: was resolved that the society should make it up with
• 2:13:15
  Speaker 1: Jane and then be dissolved. What do you think of
• 2:13:20
  Speaker 1: Jane being gone? Though? What gone? Forever? Said our fellows
• 2:13:25
  Speaker 1: with long faces. Yes, to be sure, was all the
• 2:13:29
  Speaker 1: answer they could get. None of the people about the
• 2:13:32
  Speaker 1: house would say anything more. At length, the first boy
• 2:13:36
  Speaker 1: took upon himself to ask the reverend whether our old
• 2:13:39
  Speaker 1: friend Jane was really gone. The reverend, he has got
• 2:13:44
  Speaker 1: a daughter at home, turn up nose and read, replied severely, Yes, sir,
• 2:13:50
  Speaker 1: miss Pitt is gone. The idea of calling Jane miss Pitt.
• 2:13:58
  Speaker 1: Some said she had been sent away into disgrace for
• 2:14:00
  Speaker 1: taking money from old Cheeseman. Others said she had gone
• 2:14:05
  Speaker 1: into old Cheeseman's service at a rise of ten pounds
• 2:14:08
  Speaker 1: a year. All that our fellows knew was she was gone.
• 2:14:13
  Speaker 1: It was two or three months afterwards when one afternoon
• 2:14:17
  Speaker 1: an open carriage stopped at the cricket field just outside bounds,
• 2:14:21
  Speaker 1: with a lady and gentleman in it, who looked at
• 2:14:23
  Speaker 1: the game a long time and stood up to see
• 2:14:26
  Speaker 1: it played. Nobody thought much about them until the same
• 2:14:31
  Speaker 1: little sniveling chap came in against all rules from the
• 2:14:35
  Speaker 1: post where he was scout, and said, it's Jane. Both
• 2:14:39
  Speaker 1: elevens forgot the game directly and ran crowding round the carriage.
• 2:14:44
  Speaker 1: It was Jane in such a bonnet, and if you'll
• 2:14:48
  Speaker 1: believe me, Jane was married to Old Cheeseman. It soon
• 2:14:54
  Speaker 1: became quite a regular thing when our fellows were hard
• 2:14:56
  Speaker 1: at it in the playground, to see a carriage at
• 2:14:59
  Speaker 1: the low part of the wall where it joins the
• 2:15:01
  Speaker 1: high part, and a lady and gentleman standing up in
• 2:15:05
  Speaker 1: it looking over. The gentleman was always old Cheeseman, and
• 2:15:09
  Speaker 1: the lady was always Jane. First time I ever saw him,
• 2:15:15
  Speaker 1: I saw him in that way. There had been a
• 2:15:17
  Speaker 1: good many changes among our fellows then, and it had
• 2:15:21
  Speaker 1: turned out that Bob Tartar's father wasn't worth millions, He
• 2:15:26
  Speaker 1: wasn't worth anything. Bob had gone for a soldier, an
• 2:15:30
  Speaker 1: old Cheeseman had purchased his discharge. But that's not the carriage.
• 2:15:35
  Speaker 1: The carriage stopped, and all our fellows stopped as soon
• 2:15:39
  Speaker 1: as it was seen. So you have never sent me
• 2:15:44
  Speaker 1: to Coventry, after all, said the lady, laughing, as our
• 2:15:48
  Speaker 1: fellows swarmed up the wall to shake hands with her.
• 2:15:52
  Speaker 1: Are you never going to do it? Never? Never, never,
• 2:15:57
  Speaker 1: On all sides I didn't understand what she meant then,
• 2:16:02
  Speaker 1: but of course I do now. I was very much
• 2:16:06
  Speaker 1: pleased with her face, though, and with her good way,
• 2:16:09
  Speaker 1: and I couldn't help looking at her, and him too,
• 2:16:13
  Speaker 1: With all our fellows clustering so joyfully about them, they
• 2:16:17
  Speaker 1: soon took notice of me as a new boy, so
• 2:16:20
  Speaker 1: I thought I might as well swarm up the wall
• 2:16:22
  Speaker 1: myself and shake hands with them as the rest did.
• 2:16:26
  Speaker 1: I was quite as glad to see them as the
• 2:16:28
  Speaker 1: rest were, and was quite as familiar with them. In
• 2:16:31
  Speaker 1: a moment only a fortnight now, said old Cheeseman to
• 2:16:37
  Speaker 1: the holidays, who stops anybody? A good many fingers pointed
• 2:16:43
  Speaker 1: at me, and a good many voices cried he does,
• 2:16:47
  Speaker 1: For it was the year when you were all away
• 2:16:50
  Speaker 1: and rather low I was about it, I can tell you, oh,
• 2:16:55
  Speaker 1: said old Cheseman. But it's solitary here in the holiday time.
• 2:17:00
  Speaker 1: He had better come to us. So I went to
• 2:17:05
  Speaker 1: their delightful house and was as happy as I could
• 2:17:08
  Speaker 1: possibly be. They understand how to conduct themselves towards boys.
• 2:17:13
  Speaker 1: They do when they take a boy to the play,
• 2:17:16
  Speaker 1: for instance, they do take him. They don't go in
• 2:17:19
  Speaker 1: after it's begun or come out before it's over. They
• 2:17:22
  Speaker 1: know how to bring a boy up too. Look at
• 2:17:25
  Speaker 1: their own, though he is very little as yet, what
• 2:17:29
  Speaker 1: a capital boy he is. Why my next favorite to
• 2:17:33
  Speaker 1: missus Cheeseman, an old cheeseman, is young Cheeseman. So now
• 2:17:40
  Speaker 1: I have told you all I know about old Cheeseman,
• 2:17:44
  Speaker 1: and it's not much after all. I'm afraid, is it.
• 2:17:50
  Speaker 1: End of the Schoolboy's Story recording by John vanstan Savannah, Georgia,
• 2:18:00
  Speaker 1: Story six of some short Christmas stories by Charles Dickens.
• 2:18:05
  Speaker 1: This Sleeprivox recording is in the public domain. Nobody's story.
• 2:18:12
  Speaker 1: He lived on the bank of a mighty river, broad
• 2:18:15
  Speaker 1: and deep, which was always silently rolling on to a
• 2:18:19
  Speaker 1: vast undiscovered ocean. It had rolled on ever since the
• 2:18:23
  Speaker 1: world began. It had changed its course sometimes and turned
• 2:18:28
  Speaker 1: into new channels, leaving its old ways dry and barren.
• 2:18:33
  Speaker 1: But it had ever been upon the floe, and ever
• 2:18:36
  Speaker 1: was to flow until time should be no more against
• 2:18:40
  Speaker 1: its strong, unfathomable stream. Nothing made head, no living creature,
• 2:18:46
  Speaker 1: no flower, no leaf, no particle of animate or inanimate
• 2:18:51
  Speaker 1: existence ever strayed back from the undiscovered ocean. The tide
• 2:18:58
  Speaker 1: of the river set resistlessly towards it, and the tide
• 2:19:02
  Speaker 1: never stopped any more than the earth stops in its
• 2:19:05
  Speaker 1: circling round the sun. He lived in a busy place,
• 2:19:11
  Speaker 1: and he worked very hard to live. He had no
• 2:19:14
  Speaker 1: hope of ever being rich enough to live a month
• 2:19:17
  Speaker 1: without hard work, but he was quite content. God knows
• 2:19:21
  Speaker 1: to labor with a cheerful will. He was one of
• 2:19:25
  Speaker 1: an immense family, all of whose sons and daughters gained
• 2:19:29
  Speaker 1: their daily bread by daily work, prolonged from their rising
• 2:19:33
  Speaker 1: up betimes until they're lying down at night. Beyond this destiny,
• 2:19:40
  Speaker 1: he had no prospect, and he sought none. There was
• 2:19:45
  Speaker 1: overmuch drumming, trumpeting, and speech making in the neighborhood where
• 2:19:49
  Speaker 1: he dwelt, but he had nothing to do with that.
• 2:19:53
  Speaker 1: Such clash and uproar came from the big Whig family,
• 2:19:58
  Speaker 1: at the unaccountable proceed of which race he marveled much.
• 2:20:03
  Speaker 1: They set up the strangest statues in iron, marble, bronze
• 2:20:10
  Speaker 1: and brass before his door, and darkened his house with
• 2:20:15
  Speaker 1: the legs and tails of uncouth images of horses. He
• 2:20:20
  Speaker 1: wondered what it all meant, smiled in a rough, good
• 2:20:24
  Speaker 1: humored way he had and kept at his hard work.
• 2:20:29
  Speaker 1: The Big Whig Family, composed of all the stateliest people
• 2:20:33
  Speaker 1: thereabouts and all the noisiest, had undertaken to save him
• 2:20:37
  Speaker 1: the trouble of thinking for himself and to manage him
• 2:20:41
  Speaker 1: and his affairs. Why, truly, said he, I have little
• 2:20:48
  Speaker 1: time upon my hands, and if he will be so
• 2:20:51
  Speaker 1: good as to take care of me in return for
• 2:20:54
  Speaker 1: the money I pay over for the Big Whig Family
• 2:20:58
  Speaker 1: were not above his mind, I shall be relieved and
• 2:21:03
  Speaker 1: much obliged, considering that you know best. Hence the drumming,
• 2:21:10
  Speaker 1: trumpeting and speech making, and the ugly images of horses
• 2:21:15
  Speaker 1: which she was expected to fall down in worship. I
• 2:21:20
  Speaker 1: don't understand all this, said he, rubbing his furrowed brow confusedly.
• 2:21:28
  Speaker 1: But it has a meaning, maybe if I could find
• 2:21:34
  Speaker 1: it out. It means returned to the big Wig family
• 2:21:39
  Speaker 1: suspecting something of what he had said. Honor and glory
• 2:21:44
  Speaker 1: in the highest to the highest merit, oh, said he,
• 2:21:53
  Speaker 1: And he was glad to hear that. But when he
• 2:21:56
  Speaker 1: looked among the images of iron, marble, bronze and brass,
• 2:22:01
  Speaker 1: he failed to find a rather meritorious countryman of his.
• 2:22:05
  Speaker 1: Once the son of a Warwickshire wool dealer, or any
• 2:22:09
  Speaker 1: single countryman whomsoever of that kind. He could find. None
• 2:22:14
  Speaker 1: of the men whose knowledge had rescued him and his
• 2:22:17
  Speaker 1: children from terrific and disfiguring disease, whose boldness had raised
• 2:22:23
  Speaker 1: his forefathers from the condition of serfs, whose wise fancy
• 2:22:28
  Speaker 1: had opened a new and high existence, to the humblest
• 2:22:33
  Speaker 1: whose skill had filled the working man's world with accumulated wonders.
• 2:22:39
  Speaker 1: Whereas he did find others whom he knew no good of,
• 2:22:43
  Speaker 1: and even others whom he knew much ill of. Humph
• 2:22:49
  Speaker 1: said he, I don't quite understand it. So he went
• 2:22:55
  Speaker 1: home and sat down by his fireside to get it
• 2:22:57
  Speaker 1: out of his mind. Now his fireside was a bare one,
• 2:23:03
  Speaker 1: all hemmed in by blackened streets, but it was a
• 2:23:07
  Speaker 1: precious place to him. The hands of his wife were
• 2:23:10
  Speaker 1: hardened with toil, and she was old before her time,
• 2:23:15
  Speaker 1: but she was dear to him. His children, stunted in
• 2:23:19
  Speaker 1: their growth, bore traces of unwholesome nurture, but they had
• 2:23:24
  Speaker 1: beauty in his sight above all other things. It was
• 2:23:28
  Speaker 1: an earnest desire of this man's soul that his children
• 2:23:32
  Speaker 1: should be taught. If I am sometimes misled, said he,
• 2:23:39
  Speaker 1: for want of knowledge. At least let them know better
• 2:23:44
  Speaker 1: and avoid my mistakes. If it is hard for me
• 2:23:48
  Speaker 1: to reap the harvest of pleasure and instruction that is
• 2:23:52
  Speaker 1: stored in books, let it be easier to them. But
• 2:23:58
  Speaker 1: the big Wig family broke out into violent family quarrels
• 2:24:02
  Speaker 1: concerning what it was lawful to teach to this man's children.
• 2:24:07
  Speaker 1: Some of the family insisted on such a thing being
• 2:24:11
  Speaker 1: primary and indispensable above all other things, and others of
• 2:24:16
  Speaker 1: the family insisted on such another thing being primary and
• 2:24:20
  Speaker 1: indispensable above all other things. And the big Wig family
• 2:24:25
  Speaker 1: rent into factions, wrote pamphlets, held convocations, delivered charges orations,
• 2:24:32
  Speaker 1: and all varieties of discourses. Impounded one another in courts,
• 2:24:38
  Speaker 1: lay and courts ecclesiastical, through dirt, exchanged pommelings, and fell
• 2:24:44
  Speaker 1: together by the ears in unintelligible animosity. Meanwhile, this man,
• 2:24:52
  Speaker 1: in his short evening snatches at his fireside, saw the
• 2:24:56
  Speaker 1: demon ignorance arise there and take his children to itself.
• 2:25:04
  Speaker 1: He saw his daughter perverted into a heavy, slatternly drudge.
• 2:25:09
  Speaker 1: He saw his son go moping down the ways of
• 2:25:11
  Speaker 1: low sensuality to brutality and crime, he saw the dawning
• 2:25:19
  Speaker 1: light of intelligence in the eyes of his babies, so
• 2:25:22
  Speaker 1: changing into cunning and suspicion that he could have rather
• 2:25:28
  Speaker 1: wished them idiots. I don't understand this any the better,
• 2:25:35
  Speaker 1: said he, but I think it cannot be right, nay,
• 2:25:43
  Speaker 1: by the clouded heaven above me. I protest against this
• 2:25:47
  Speaker 1: as my wrong, becoming peaceable again. For his passion was
• 2:25:54
  Speaker 1: usually short lived and his nature kind. He looked about
• 2:25:58
  Speaker 1: him on his Sundays and holidays, and he saw how
• 2:26:02
  Speaker 1: much monotony and weariness there was, and thence how drunkenness
• 2:26:08
  Speaker 1: arose with all its train of ruin. Then he appealed
• 2:26:13
  Speaker 1: to the Big Whig family and said, we are a
• 2:26:17
  Speaker 1: laboring people, and I have a glimmering suspicion in me
• 2:26:22
  Speaker 1: that laboring people of whatever condition, were made by a
• 2:26:27
  Speaker 1: higher intelligence than yours, as I poorly understand it, to
• 2:26:32
  Speaker 1: be in need of mental refreshment and recreation. See what
• 2:26:37
  Speaker 1: we fall into when we rest without it. Come amuse me, harmlessly,
• 2:26:47
  Speaker 1: show me something, give me an escape. But here the
• 2:26:54
  Speaker 1: Big Whig Family fell into a state of uproar, absolutely deafening.
• 2:27:00
  Speaker 1: When some few voices were faintly heard proposing to show
• 2:27:03
  Speaker 1: him the wonders of the world, the greatness of creation,
• 2:27:07
  Speaker 1: the mighty changes of time, the workings of nature, and
• 2:27:11
  Speaker 1: the beauties of art. But to show him these things,
• 2:27:14
  Speaker 1: that is to say, at any period of his life
• 2:27:17
  Speaker 1: when he could look upon them. There arose among the
• 2:27:21
  Speaker 1: big wigs, such roaring and raving, such pulpiting and petitioning,
• 2:27:26
  Speaker 1: such maundering and memorializing, such name calling and dirt throwing,
• 2:27:32
  Speaker 1: such a shrill wind of parliamentary questioning and feeble replying.
• 2:27:38
  Speaker 1: Where I dare not waited on. I would that the
• 2:27:45
  Speaker 1: poor fellow stood aghast, staring wildly around. Have I provoked all? This?
• 2:27:56
  Speaker 1: Said he, with his hands to his affrighted ears by
• 2:28:01
  Speaker 1: what was meant to be an innocent request, plainly arising
• 2:28:07
  Speaker 1: out of my familiar experience and the common knowledge of
• 2:28:12
  Speaker 1: all men who choose to open their eyes. I don't understand,
• 2:28:19
  Speaker 1: and I am not understood, what is to come of
• 2:28:23
  Speaker 1: such a state of things? He was bending over his work,
• 2:28:29
  Speaker 1: often asking himself the question. When the news began to
• 2:28:32
  Speaker 1: spread that a pestilence had appeared among the laborers and
• 2:28:37
  Speaker 1: was slaying them by thousands. Going forth to look about him,
• 2:28:43
  Speaker 1: he soon found this to be true. The dying and
• 2:28:47
  Speaker 1: the dead were mingled in the close and tainted houses
• 2:28:51
  Speaker 1: among which his life was past. New poison was distilled
• 2:28:57
  Speaker 1: into the always murky, always sickening air. The robust and
• 2:29:03
  Speaker 1: the weak, old age and infancy, the father and the
• 2:29:07
  Speaker 1: mother all were stricken down alike. What means of flight
• 2:29:13
  Speaker 1: had he? He remained there where he was, and saw
• 2:29:19
  Speaker 1: those who were dearest to him die. A kind preacher
• 2:29:25
  Speaker 1: came to him and would have said some prayers to
• 2:29:28
  Speaker 1: soften his heart in his gloom. But he replied, Oh,
• 2:29:34
  Speaker 1: what a vails a missionary to come to me, a
• 2:29:39
  Speaker 1: man condemned to residence in this fetid place, where every
• 2:29:44
  Speaker 1: sense bestowed upon me for my delight becomes a torment,
• 2:29:50
  Speaker 1: and where every minute of my numbered days is a
• 2:29:53
  Speaker 1: new mire added to the heap under which I lie prest.
• 2:30:00
  Speaker 1: But give me my first glimpse of heaven through a
• 2:30:07
  Speaker 1: little of its light and air. Give me pure water,
• 2:30:14
  Speaker 1: Help me to be clean. Lighten this heavy atmosphere and
• 2:30:18
  Speaker 1: heavy life in which our spirits sink, and we become
• 2:30:24
  Speaker 1: the indifferent and callous creatures. You too often see us
• 2:30:29
  Speaker 1: gently and kindly take the bodies of those who die
• 2:30:33
  Speaker 1: among us, out of the small room, where we grow
• 2:30:38
  Speaker 1: to be so familiar with the awful change that even
• 2:30:42
  Speaker 1: its sanctity is lost to us. And Teacher, then I
• 2:30:49
  Speaker 1: will hear none know better than you, how willingly of
• 2:30:54
  Speaker 1: him whose thoughts were so much with the poor, and
• 2:30:59
  Speaker 1: do compassion for all human sorrow. He was at work again,
• 2:31:07
  Speaker 1: solitary and sad, when his master came and stood near
• 2:31:10
  Speaker 1: to him, dressed in black. He also had suffered heavily
• 2:31:16
  Speaker 1: his young wife, his beautiful and good young wife, was dead,
• 2:31:23
  Speaker 1: so too his only child. Master. Tis hard to bear,
• 2:31:30
  Speaker 1: I know it, but be comforted. I would give you
• 2:31:36
  Speaker 1: comfort if I could. The Master thanked him from his heart,
• 2:31:42
  Speaker 1: but said, he, oh, you laboring men, the calamity began
• 2:31:48
  Speaker 1: among you, and if you had but lived more healthily
• 2:31:53
  Speaker 1: and decently, I should not be the widowed and bereft
• 2:31:57
  Speaker 1: mourner that I am this day. Master returned the other,
• 2:32:04
  Speaker 1: shaking his head. I have begun to understand a little
• 2:32:09
  Speaker 1: that most calamities will come from us as this one did,
• 2:32:14
  Speaker 1: and that none will stop at our poor doors until
• 2:32:18
  Speaker 1: we are united with that great squabbling family yonder to
• 2:32:23
  Speaker 1: do the things that are right. We cannot live healthily
• 2:32:28
  Speaker 1: and decently unless they who undertook to manage us provide
• 2:32:33
  Speaker 1: the means. We cannot be instructed unless they will teach us.
• 2:32:40
  Speaker 1: We cannot be rationally amused unless they will amuse us.
• 2:32:47
  Speaker 1: We cannot but have some false gods of our own,
• 2:32:50
  Speaker 1: while they set up so many of theirs in all
• 2:32:53
  Speaker 1: the public places. The evil consequences of imperfect in instruction,
• 2:33:01
  Speaker 1: the evil consequences of pernicious neglect, the evil consequences of
• 2:33:08
  Speaker 1: unnatural restraint, and the denial of humanizing enjoyments, will all
• 2:33:13
  Speaker 1: come from us, and none of them will stop with us.
• 2:33:20
  Speaker 1: They will spread far and wide. They always do, they
• 2:33:27
  Speaker 1: always have done, just like the pestilence. I understand so much,
• 2:33:34
  Speaker 1: I think at last. But the Master said, again, are
• 2:33:40
  Speaker 1: you laboring men? How seldom do we ever hear of
• 2:33:44
  Speaker 1: you except in connection with some trouble. Master, he replied,
• 2:33:54
  Speaker 1: I am nobody and little likely to be heard of,
• 2:34:01
  Speaker 1: nor yet much wanted to be heard of, perhaps except
• 2:34:05
  Speaker 1: when there is some trouble. But it never begins with me,
• 2:34:10
  Speaker 1: and it never can end with me, as sure as
• 2:34:15
  Speaker 1: death it comes down to me, and it goes up
• 2:34:20
  Speaker 1: from me. There was so much reason in what he
• 2:34:25
  Speaker 1: said that the big Whig family, getting wind of it,
• 2:34:29
  Speaker 1: and being horribly frightened by the late desolation, resolved to
• 2:34:34
  Speaker 1: unite with him to do the things that were right
• 2:34:37
  Speaker 1: at all events, so far as the said things were
• 2:34:40
  Speaker 1: associated with the direct prevention humanly speaking of another testilence.
• 2:34:48
  Speaker 1: But as their fear wore off, which it soon began
• 2:34:51
  Speaker 1: to do, they resumed their falling out among themselves and
• 2:34:56
  Speaker 1: did nothing. Consequently, the scourge appeared again, low down as before,
• 2:35:04
  Speaker 1: and spread avengingly upward as before, and carried off vast
• 2:35:08
  Speaker 1: numbers of the brawlers. But not a man among them
• 2:35:12
  Speaker 1: ever admitted if in the least degree he ever perceived
• 2:35:17
  Speaker 1: that he had anything to do with it. So nobody
• 2:35:22
  Speaker 1: lived and died in the old, old old way, And this,
• 2:35:29
  Speaker 1: in the main is the whole of nobody's story. Had
• 2:35:35
  Speaker 1: he no name, you ask, perhaps it was Legon. It
• 2:35:41
  Speaker 1: matters little what his name was. Let us call him Lechen.
• 2:35:47
  Speaker 1: If you were ever in the Belgian villages near the
• 2:35:49
  Speaker 1: field of Waterloo, you will have seen in some quiet
• 2:35:53
  Speaker 1: little church a monument erected by faithful companions in the
• 2:35:58
  Speaker 1: arms to the memory of Colonel a Major b Captain C,
• 2:36:03
  Speaker 1: D and E, Lieutenants F and G, N, Signs HI
• 2:36:07
  Speaker 1: and J, seven non commissioned officers in one hundred and
• 2:36:12
  Speaker 1: thirty rank and file who fell in the discharge of
• 2:36:15
  Speaker 1: their duty on the memorable day. The story of Nobody
• 2:36:21
  Speaker 1: is the story of the rank and file of the earth.
• 2:36:25
  Speaker 1: They bear their share of the battle, they have their
• 2:36:29
  Speaker 1: part in the victory. They fall, They leave no name,
• 2:36:35
  Speaker 1: but in the mass the march of the proudest of
• 2:36:39
  Speaker 1: us leads to the dusty way by which they go. Oh,
• 2:36:46
  Speaker 1: let us think of them this year at the Christmas fire,
• 2:36:49
  Speaker 1: and not forget them when it is burnt out. End
• 2:36:55
  Speaker 1: of Nobody's Story recording by John Vanstand, Savannah, Georgia. End
• 2:37:01
  Speaker 1: of some short Christmas Stories by Charles Dickens. Merry Christmas
• 2:37:06
  Speaker 1: and happy Holidays. Thanks for listening.