Page:Works of Charles Dickens, ed. Lang - Volume 18.djvu/9

Rh of clanking chains, derived from classical superstition, might, at Christmas, be blamelessly revived. The result is an allegory. Mr. Scrooge vainly pleads the popular theory of the origin of hallucinations: "You may be an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of an underdone potato;" but Marley's ghost is that rare phantasm, a ghost with a purpose and a moral: "The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, benevolence, were all my business." Mr. Scrooge's eyes were opened to the invisible myriads of spectres of the unconsoled, and the result is his conversion to—"Carol philosophy"—Christianity illuminated by the flames of punch. He beholds the Christmas of his boyhood, before he was a maker of money for the mere love of the game. He sees the end predestined for a man who has lived his life. Above all, he sees the Christmas of the clerk whom he bullies, and underpays, and knows nothing of; and his heart is wrung, like Thackeray's, by Tiny Tim, who is to die. In vain Mr. Scrooge talks of "decreasing the surplus population;" and now "Carol philosophy" dashes itself against the iron laws of the universe. It is not inconceivable that earth may come to hold more people than it can support, though it is probable that these laws will never allow this destitution to become an actual fact. But the processes by which it will be prevented are inconsistent with aught but wide-sweeping misery, famine, plague, revolution, and war. For this wretchedness "Carol philosophy" may offer a sympathetic palliative, but not a cure. The past and the future show black, and merriment is not the end of the great humorist's Christmas stories. You cannot escape the realities of things by "loving your love with all the letters of the alphabet." However, Scrooge, personally, was a better and happier man for his visions, and made other people