."

"Can you--can you sit down?"

"I can."

"Do it, then."

Scrooge asked the question, because he didn't know whether a ghost so
transparent might find himself in a condition to take a chair; and felt
that, in the event of its being impossible, it might involve the
necessity of an embarrassing explanation. But the ghost sat down on the
opposite side of the fireplace, as if he were quite used to it.

"You don't believe in me."

"I don't."

"What evidence would you have of my reality beyond that of your senses?"

"I don't know."

"Why do you doubt your senses?"

"Because a little thing affects them. A slight disorder of the stomach
makes them cheats. You may be an undigested bit of beef, a blot of
mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of an underdone potato. There's
more of gravy than of grave about you, whatever you are!"

Scrooge was not much in the habit of cracking jokes, nor did he feel in
his heart by any means waggish then. The truth is, that he tried to be
smart, as a means of distracting his own attention, and keeping down his
horror.

But how much greater was his horror when, the phantom taking off the
bandage round its head, as if it were too warm to wear in-doors, its
lower jaw dropped down upon its breast!

"Mercy! Dreadful apparition, why do you trouble me? Why do spirits walk
the earth, and why do they come to me?"

"It is required of every man, that the spirit within him should walk
abroad among his fellow-men, and travel far and wide; and if that spirit
goes not forth in life, it is condemned to do so after death. I cannot
tell you all I would. A very little more is permitted to me. I cannot
rest, I cannot stay, I cannot linger anywhere. My spirit never walked
beyond our counting-house,--mark me!--in life my spirit never roved
beyond the narrow limits of our money-changing hole; and weary journeys
lie before me!"

"Seven years dead. And travelling all the time? You travel fast?"

"On the wings of the wind."

"You might have got over a great quantity of ground in seven years."

"O blind man, blind man! not to know that ages of incessant labor by
immortal creatures for this earth must pass into eternity before the
good of which it is susceptible is all developed. Not to know that any
Christian spirit working kindly in its little sphere, whatever it may
be, will find its mortal life too short for its vast means of
usefulness. Not to know that no space of regret can make amends for o