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10. "Two others have gone toward the setting sun,
And made them a home in its light,
And fairy fingers have taken their share
To mend by the fireside bright;
Some other baskets their garments fill-
But mine! Oh, mine is emptier still.

11. "Another-the dearest-the fairest-the best-
Was ta'en by the angels away,

And clad in a garment that waxeth not old,
In a land of continual day.

Oh! wonder no more at the dimmed eye-light,
While I mend the one pair of stockings to-night."

XIV. THE MISER.

CHARLES DICKENS.

1. Marley was dead, to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. The register of his burial was signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker, and the chief mourner. Scrooge signed it. And Scrooge's name was good upon 'Change, for anything he chose to put his hand to. Old Marley was as dead as a door-nail.

2. Mind! I don't mean to say that I know, of my own knowledge, what there is particularly dead about a door-nail. I might have been inclined, myself, to regard a coffin-nail as the deadest piece of ironmongery in the trade. But the wisdom of our ancestors is in the simile; and my unhallowed hands shall not disturb it, or the country's done for. You will, therefore, permit me to repeat, emphatically, that Marley was as dead as a door-nail.

3. Scrooge knew he was dead? Of course he did. How could it be otherwise? Scrooge and he were partners, for I don't know how many years. Scrooge was his sole executor, his sole administrator, his sole assign, his sole residuary legatee, his sole friend, and sole mourner. And even Scrooge was not so dreadfully cut up by the sad event, but that he was an excellent man of business on the very day

of the funeral, and solemnized it with an undoubted bar

gain.

4. Scrooge never painted out old Marley's name. There it stood, years afterwards, above the warehouse door : Scrooge and Marley. The firm was known as Scrooge and Marley. Sometimes people new to the business called Scrooge Scrooge, and sometimes Marley, but he answered to both names. It was all the same to him.

5. Oh! But he was a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone, Scrooge! a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous old sinner! Hard and sharp as flint from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire; secret and self-contained and solitary as an oyster. The cold within him froze his old features, nipped his pointed nose, shriveled his cheek, stiffened his gait ; made his eyes red, his thin lips blue; and spoke out shrewdly in his grating voice. A frost rime was on his head, and on his eyebrows, and his wiry chin. He carried his own low temperature always about with him; he iced his office in the dog-days; and didn't thaw it one degree at Christmas.

6. External heat and cold had little influence on Scrooge. No warmth could warm, no wintry weather chill him. No wind that blew was bitterer than he, no falling snow was more intent upon its purpose, no pelting rain less open to entreaty. Foul weather didn't know where to have him. The heaviest rain and snow and hail and sleet could boast of the advantage over him in only one respect. They often came down handsomely, and Scrooge never did. 7. Nobody ever stopped him in the street to say, with gladsome looks, "My dear Scrooge, how are you? When will you come to see me?" No beggars implored him to bestow a trifle, no children asked him what it was o'clock, no man or woman ever once in all his life inquired the way to such and such a place, of Scrooge. Even the blind-men's dogs appeared to know him; and when they saw him coming on, would tug their owners into door-ways and up courts; and then would wag their tails as though they said, "No eye at all is better than an evil eye, dark master!”

8. But what did Scrooge care! It was the very thing he liked. To edge his way along the crowded paths of life,

warning all human sympathy to keep its distance, was what the knowing ones called "nuts" to Scrooge.

9. Once upon a time-of all the good days in the year, upon Christmas Eve-old Scrooge sat busy in his countinghouse. It was cold, bleak, biting weather: foggy withal: and he could hear the people in the court outside, go wheezing up and down, beating their hands upon their breasts, and stamping their feet upon the pavement stones to warm them. The city clocks had only just gone three, but it was quite dark already—it had not been light all day-and candles were flaring in the windows of the neighboring offices, like ruddy smears upon the palpable brown air. The fog came pouring in at every chink and key-hole, and was so dense without, that, although the court was of the narrowest, the houses opposite were mere phantoms. To see the dingy cloud come drooping down, obscuring everything, one might have thought that Nature lived hard by, and was brewing on a large scale.

10. The door of Scrooge's counting-house was open, that he might keep his eye upon his clerk, who in a dismal little cell beyond, a sort of tank, was copying letters. Scrooge had a very small fire, but the clerk's fire was so very much smaller that it looked like one coal. But he could not replenish it, for Scrooge kept the coal-box in his own room; and so surely as the clerk came in with the shovel, the master predicted that it would be necessary for them to part. Wherefore the clerk put on his white comforter, and tried to warm himself at the candle; in which effort, not being at man of strong imagination, he failed.

QUESTIONS.-1. What is an "undertaker"? What is meant by the expression "Scrooge's name was good upon 'Change," etc. 3. What is an "administrator"? "assign"? "residuary legatee"? 5. What is meant by a "wiry chin"? Explain the last two sentences in the sixth paragraph. What double meaning in the phrase "came down handsomely"? 9. What kind of day must it have been to be dark at three o'clock? Is there any thing peculiar about the climate of London, where the scene of this story is laid?

XV. THE PLANTING OF THE APPLE-TREE.

WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT.

1. Come, let us plant the apple-tree!

Cleave the tough greensward with the spade;
Wide let its hollow bed be made;

There gently lay the roots, and there.
Sift the dark mold with kindly care,
And press it o'er them tenderly,
As round the sleeping infant's feet
We softly fold the cradle-sheet :
So plant we the apple-tree.

2. What plant we in the apple-tree?

Buds, which the breath of summer days

Shall lengthen into leafy sprays;

Boughs, where the thrush with crimson breast

Shall haunt and sing and hide her nest.

We plant upon the sunny lea

A shadow for the noon-tide hour,
A shelter from the summer shower,
When we plant the apple-tree.

3. What plant we in the apple-tree?
Sweets for a hundred flowery springs,
To load the May-wind's restless wings,
When from the orchard-row he pours
Its fragrance through our open doors;
A world of blossoms for the bee;
Flowers for the sick girl's silent room;
For the glad infant sprigs of bloom,
We plant with the apple-tree.

4. What plant we in the apple-tree?
Fruits that shall swell in sunny June
And redden in the August noon,
And drop as gentle airs come by
That fan the blue September sky;

While children, wild with noisy glee,
Shall scent their fragrance as they pass,
And search for them the tufted grass
At the foot of the apple-tree.

5. And when above this apple-tree
The winter stars are quivering bright,
And winds go howling through the night,
Girls whose young eyes o'erflow with mirth,
Shall peel its fruit by cottage hearth,

And guests in prouder homes shall see,
Heaped with the orange and the grape,
As fair as they in tint and shape,
The fruit of the apple-tree.

6. The fruitage of this apple-tree
Winds and our flag of stripe and star
Shall bear to coasts that lie afar,
Where men shall wonder at the view,
And ask in what fair groves they grew;
And they who roam beyond the sea
Shall look, and think of childhood's day,
And long hours passed in summer play
In the shade of the apple-tree.

7. Each year shall give this apple-tree
A broader flush of roseate bloom,

A deeper maze of verdurous gloom,
And loosen, when the frost-clouds lower,
The crisp brown leaves in thicker shower;

The years shall come and pass,
but we
Shall hear no longer, where we lie,
The summer's song, the autumn's sigh,
In the boughs of the apple-tree.

8. And time shall waste this apple-tree.
Oh, when its aged branches throw
Their shadows on the sward below,
Shall fraud and force and iron will
Oppress the weak and helpless still?

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