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A Christmas Carol: In Prose Being a Ghost Story of Christmas by Charles Dickens, 1843
“A merry Christmas, Bob!” said Scrooge, with an earnestness that could not be mistaken, as he clapped him on the back. “A merrier Christmas, Bob, my good fellow, than I have given you for many a year!” I’ll raise your salary, and endeavour to assist your struggling family, and we will discuss your affairs this very afternoon, over a Christmas bowl of smoking bishop, Bob! Make up the fires, and buy another coal-scuttle before you dot another i, Bob Cratchit!”
I couldn’t find an appropriate meaning for Tank, although one definition was “a prison cell or enclosure.” Bishop is “mulled port wine flavored with roasted oranges and cloves.”
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Scrooge was better than his word. He did it all, and infinitely more; and to Tiny Tim, who did NOT die, he was a second father. He became as good a friend, as good a master, and as good a man, as the good old city knew, or any other good old city, town, or borough, in the good old world.
Dickens uses repetition over and over, but it gives cadence to the sentence and helps make his point.
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Some people laughed to see the alteration in him, but he let them laugh, and little heeded them; for he was wise enough to know that nothing ever happened on this globe, for good, at which some people did not have their fill of laughter in the outset; and knowing that such as these would be blind anyway, he thought it quite as well that they should wrinkle up their eyes in grins, as have the malady in less attractive forms. His own heart laughed: and that was quite enough for him.
Scrooge’s attitude toward people laughing at him is remarkable and shows again that he’s a different person than the “Bah! Humbug!”one we first encountered.
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He had no further intercourse with Spirits, but lived upon the Total Abstinence Principle, ever afterwards; and it was always said of him, that he knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge. May that be truly said of us, and all of us! And so, as Tiny Tim observed, God bless Us, Every One!
The story comes around again to the Spirits and to Tiny Tim in the wrap-up of the story. According to the “Terms and Phrases” at the end of this addition, the Total Abstinence Principle was “teetotalism,” the creed of those in the temperance movement who advocated complete abstinence from alcoholic “spirits.” Another source said it is abstinence from being bitter, mean-spirited, angry, dour, greedy, grasping, self-centered, and unforgiving. Especially dour.
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Merry Christmas! God bless us, every one!
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