Изображения страниц
PDF
EPUB

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 advantagé 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.

Passing Away.
L

Was it the chime of a tiny bell,

That came so sweet to my dreaming ear,
Like the silvery tones of a fairy's shell,

That he winds on the beach so mellow and clear,
When the winds and the waves lie together asleep,
And the moon and the fairy are watching the deep,
She dispensing her silvery light,

And he his notes as silvery quite,

While the boatman listens and ships his oar,
To catch the music that comes from the shore?—
Hark! the notes on my ear that play,
Are set to words: as they float, they say,
"Passing away! passing away!"

II.

But, no; it was not a fairy's shell,

Blown on the beach so mellow and clear:
Nor was it the tongue of a silver bell
Striking the hours that fell on my ear,
As I lay in my dream: yet was it a chime
That told of the flow of the stream of Time;
For a beautiful clock from the ceiling hung,
And a plump little girl for a pendulum, swung;

Dickens.

(As you've sometimes seen, in a little ring
That hangs in his cage, a canary bird swing;)
And she held to her bosom a budding bouquet,
And as she enjoyed it, she seemed to say,

"Passing away! passing away!"

III

Oh, how bright were the wheels, that told

Of the lapse of time as they moved round slow!
And the hands as they swept o'er the dial of gold
Seemed to point to the girl below.

And lo! she had changed;-in a few short hours,
Her bouquet had become a garland of flowers,
That she held in her outstretched hands, and flung
This way and that, as she, dancing, swung
In the fullness of grace and womanly pride,
That told me she soon was to be a bride;

Yet then, when expecting her happiest day,
In the same sweet voice I heard her say,
"Passing away! passing away!"

IV.

While I gazed on that fair one's cheek, a shade
Of thought, or care, stole softly over,
Like that by a cloud in a summer's day made,

Looking down on a field of blossoming clover.

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;
For she looked like a mother whose first babe lay
Rocked on her breast, as she swung all day;

And she seemed in the same silver tone to say,
'Passing away! passing away!"

[ocr errors]

While yet I looked, what a change there came!

Her eye was quenched, and her cheek was wan;
Stooping and staffed was her withered frame,
Yet just as busily swung she on:

The garland beneath her had fallen to dust;
The wheels above her were eaten with rust;
The hands, that over the dial swept,

Grew crook'd and tarnished, but on they kept;
And still there came that silver tone
From the shriveled lips of the toothless crone,

(Let me never forget, to my dying day,
The tone or the burden of that lay) —
"PASSING AWAY! PASSING AWAY!"

[merged small][ocr errors]

Up from the south at break of day,
Bringing to Winchester fresh dismay,
The affrighted air with a shudder bore,
Like a herald in haste, to the chieftain's door,
The terrible grumble and rumble and roar,
Telling the battle was on once more,
And Sheridan-twenty miles away.

II.

And wilder still those billows of war
Thundered along the horizon's bar,
And louder yet into Winchester rolled
The roar of that red sea uncontrolled,
Making the blood of the listener cold

As he thought of the stake in that fiery fray,
And Sheridan-twenty miles away.

III.

But there is a road from Winchester town,

A good, broad highway leading down;

Pierpont

392139A

And there, through the flush of the morning light,

A steed, as black as the steeds of night,
Was seen to pass as with eagle flight -
As if he knew the terrible need,

He stretched away with the utmost speed;
Hills rose and fell - but his heart was gay,
With Sheridan fifteen miles away.

IV.

Still sprung from these swift hoofs, thundering South,
The dust, like the smoke from the cannon's mouth,
Or the trail of a comet sweeping faster and faster,
Foreboding to traitors the doom of disaster;

The heart of the steed and the heart of the master
Were beating like prisoners assaulting their walls,
Impatient to be where the battle-field calls;
Every nerve of the charger was strained to full play
With Sheridan only ten miles away.

[ocr errors]

Under his spurning feet, the road
Like an arrowy Alpine river flowed,

And the landscape sped away behind
Like an ocean flying before the wind;

And the steed, like a bark fed with furnace ire,
Swept on with his wild eyes full of fire.

But lo he is nearing his heart's desire-
He is snuffing the smoke of the roaring fray,
With Sheridan only five miles away.

VI.

The first that the General saw were the groups

Of stragglers, and then the retreating troops;

What was done—what to do—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;

« ПредыдущаяПродолжить »