in the simile; and my unhallowed hands shall not disturb it, or the Country's done for. You will therefore permit me to repeat, emphatically, that Marley was as dead as a door-nail. Scrooge knew he was dead? Of course he did. How could it be otherwise? Scrooge and he were partners for I don't know how many years. Scrooge was his sole executor, his sole administrator his sole assign, his sole residuary legatee, his sole friend, and sole mourner. And even Scrooge was not so dreadfully cut up by the sad event, but that he was an excellent man of business on the very day of the funeral, and solemnized it with an undoubted bargain. Scrooge never painted out old Marley's name. There it stood, years afterwards, above the warehouse door: Scrooge and Marley. The firm was known as Scrooge and Marley. Sometimes people new to the business called Scrooge Scrooge, and sometimes Marley, but he answered to both names: it was all the same to him. Oh! But he was a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone, Scrooge ! a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous old sinner! Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire; secret and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster. The cold within him froze his old features, nipped his pointed nose, shriveled his cheek, stiffened his gait; made his eyes red, his thin lips blue; and spoke out shrewdly in his grating voice. A frosty rime was on his head, and on his eyebrows, and his wiry chin. He carried his own low temperature always about with him; he iced his office in the dog-days; and didn't thaw it one degree at Christmas. External heat and cold had little influence on Scrooge. No warmth could warm, nor wintry weather chill him. No wind that blew was bitterer than he, no falling snow was more intent upon its purpose, no pelting rain less open to entreaty. Foul weather didn't know where to have him. The heaviest rain, and snow, and hail, and sleet, could boast of the advantage over him in only one respect. They often "came down" handsomely, and Scrooge never did. Nobody ever stopped him in the street to say, with gladsome looks, "My dear Scrooge, how are you? when will you come to see me?" No beggars implored him to bestow a trifle, no children asked him what it was o'clock, no man or woman ever once in all his life inquired the way to such and such a place, of Scrooge. Even the blind-men's dogs appeared to know him; and when they saw him coming on, would tug their owners into doorways and up courts; and then would wag their tails as though they said, "no eye at all is better than an evil eye, dark master!" But what did Scrooge care? It was the very thing he liked. To edge his way along the crowded paths of life, warning all human sympathy to keep its distance, was what the knowing ones call "nuts" to Scrooge. Dickens. Passing Away. Was it the chime of a tiny bell, That came so sweet to my dreaming ear, That he winds on the beach so mellow and clear, And he his notes as silvery quite, While the boatman listens and ships his oar, But, no; it was not a fairy's shell, Blown on the beach so mellow and clear: Striking the hours that fell on my ear, (As you've sometimes seen, in a little ring "Passing away! passing away!" III. Oh, how bright were the wheels, that told Of the lapse of time as they moved round slow! And lo! she had changed;-in a few short hours, Yet then, when expecting her happiest day, IV. While I gazed on that fair one's cheek, a shade The rose yet lay on her cheek, but its flush Had something lost of its brilliant blush; And the light in her eye, and the light on the wheels, That marched so calmly round above her, Was a little dimmed - as when evening steals Upon noon's hot face:—yet one couldn't but love her; And she seemed in the same silver tone to say, While yet I looked, what a change there came! Her eye was quenched, and her cheek was wan; The garland beneath her had fallen to dust; Grew crook'd and tarnished, but on they kept; (Let me never forget, to my dying day, Up from the south at break of day, II. And wilder still those billows of war As he thought of the stake in that fiery fray, III. But there is a road from Winchester town, A good, broad highway leading down; Pierpont 392139/ And there, through the flush of the morning light, A steed, as black as the steeds of night, He stretched away with the utmost speed; IV. Still sprung from these swift hoofs, thundering South, The heart of the steed and the heart of the master Every nerve of the charger was strained to full play Under his spurning feet, the road Like an arrowy Alpine river flowed, And the landscape sped away behind And the steed, like a bark fed with furnace ire, But lo! he is nearing his heart's desire — VI The first that the General saw were the groups a glance told him both, Then striking his spurs with a muttered oath, He dashed down the line 'mid a storm of huzzahs, And the wave of retreat checked its course there because The sight of the master compelled it to pause. With foam and with dust the black charger was gray; |