15. "I do," said Scrooge. "Merry Christmas! What right have you to be merry?

16. "What's Christmas time to you but a time. for paying bills without money; a time for finding yourself a year older, and not an hour richer; a time for balancing your books and having every item in 'em through a round dozen of months presented dead against you? If I could work my will," said Scrooge, indignantly, "every idiot who goes about with Merry Christmas' on his lips should be boiled with his own pudding, and buried with a stake of holly through his heart. He should!"

17. "Uncle!" pleaded the nephew.

18. Nephew!" returned the uncle, sternly, "keep Christmas in your own way, and let me keep it in mine."

19. "Keep it!" repeated Scrooge's nephew. "But you don't keep it."

20. "Let me leave it alone, then," said Scrooge. "Much good may it do you! Much good it has ever done you!"

21.

There are many things from which I might have derived good, by which I have not profited, I dare say," returned the nephew, "Christmas among But I am sure I have always thought of Christmas-time as a good time; a kind, forgiving, pleasant time; the only time I know of, in the long

the rest.

calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys. And therefore, uncle, though it has never put a scrap of gold or silver in my pocket, I believe that it has done me good, and will do me good; and I say, God bless it!"

22. The clerk in the bank involuntarily applauded. Becoming immediately sensible of the impropriety, he poked the fire, and extinguished the last frail spark forever.

23. "Let me hear another sound from you,” said Scrooge, "and you'll keep your Christmas by losing your situation. You're quite a powerful speaker, sir," he added, turning to his nephew. "I wonder you don't go into Parliament."

24. "Don't be angry, uncle. Come! Dine with us to-morrow."

25. Scrooge said that he would see him yes, indeed he did.

26. "But why?" cried Scrooge's nephew. "Why?" 27. "Why did Why did you get married?" said Scrooge.

28. "Because I fell in love."

29. "Because you fell in love!" growled Scrooge, as if that were the only one thing in the world more

ridiculous than a merry Christmas. "Good after

noon!"

30. "Nay, uncle, but you never came to see me before that happened. Why give it as a reason for not coming now?"

31. "Good afternoon," said Scrooge.

32. "I want nothing from you; I ask nothing of you; why cannot we be friends?"

33.

"Good afternoon," said Scrooge.

34. “I am sorry, with all my heart, to find you so resolute. We have never had any quarrel, to which I have been a party. But I have made the trial in homage to Christmas, and I'll keep my Christmas humor to the last. So, A Merry Christmas, uncle!"

35.

"Good afternoon!" said Scrooge. 36. "And A Happy New Year!"

37. "Good afternoon!" said Scrooge.

38. His nephew left the room without an angry word.

CHARLES DICKENS in A Christmas Carol.

LXXXVIII. THE THREE COPECKS

I. Crouched low in a sordid chamber,

With a cupboard of empty shelves,
Half starved, and, alas! unable

To comfort or help themselves,

2. Two children were left forsaken,
All orphaned of mortal care;
But with spirits too close to heaven
To be tainted by earth's despair.

3. Alone in that crowded city,

Which shines like an arctic star,
By the banks of the frozen Neva,
In the realm of the mighty Czar.

4. Now, Max was an urchin of seven;
But his delicate sister Leeze,

With the crown of her rippling ringlets,

Could scarcely have reached your knees.

5. As he looked at his sister weeping,
And tortured by hunger's smart,
A thought, like an angel, entered
At the door of his open heart.

6. He wrote on a fragment of

paper,

With quivering hand and soul,

"Please send to me, Christ, three copecks, To purchase for Leeze a roll!"

7. Then rushed to a church, his missive
To drop ere the vesper psalms,

As the surest mail bound Christward,
In the unlocked box for alms!

8. While he stepped upon tiptoe to reach it
One passed from the priestly band,
And, with smile like a benediction,
Took the note from his eager hand.

9. Having read it, the good man's bosom
Grew warm with a holy joy;

"Ah, Christ may have heard you already! Will you come to my house, my boy?"

10. "But not without Leeze?"

IO.

"No, surely,

We'll have a rare party of three;
Go, tell her that somebody's waiting
To welcome her home to tea."

11. That night, in the cosiest cottage, The orphans were safe at rest; Each sang as a callow birdling

In the depths of its downy nest.

12. And the next Lord's Day, in his pulpit, The preacher so spake of these

Stray lambs from the fold which Jesus
Had blessed by the sacred seas;

13. So recounted their guileless story,
As he held each child by the hand,
That the hardest there could feel it,

And the dullest could understand.