The Start of It
"A merry Christmas, Bob.” said Scrooge, with an earnestness that couldn’t be mistaken as he clapped him on the back. “A merrier Christmas, Bob, my good fellow, than I have given you, for many a year. I’ll raise your salary, and endeavor to assist your struggling family, and we’ll discuss your affairs this afternoon, over a Christmas mug of steaming cider, Bob. Make up the fires and buy another coal-scuttle before you dot another i, Bob Cratchit.”
Scrooge was better than his word. He did it all, and infinitely more, and to Tiny Tim, who did not die, he was a second father. He became as good a friend, as good a citizen, and as good a man, as the good old city knew, or any other good old city, town, or borough, in this good old world.
He knew how to keep Christmas better than any man alive.
“Bah.”
Ebenezer slammed The Christmas Carol shut.
“Humbug.What a wretched screed.”
He hurled the book into the fireplace. The fire flared into sparks and flames of orange, and before long the book was ashes.
“It’s all humbug anyway,” he said as he poked the fire. “It was all a grotesque and foolish dream.
“But it wasn’t my dream.It was never my dream.It was Mr. Dickens’s dream.And it’s been my living nightmare.
“The promise of Dickens’s last chapter is as cold and as the slush outside.
“Yes, I did indeed keep Christmas.But Christmas didn’t keep me.Grief is my portion and loneliness is my only yuletide gift as I again taste destitution.And now I see that my visions were those of a man that age and ale has addled.”
Ebenezer snuffed out his last candle.He shuffled off to bed.
“God changes worms into butterflies, coals into diamonds, and sand into pearls. But somehow He forgot me.For I am what I always was. A damned fool.”
