ted yet in the street outside. At
any rate, I could see nothing against the darkness but the shining
shop-window. There were no sounds of steps or voices in the street; I
might have strayed into some new and sunless world. But something had
cut the chords of common sense, and I could not feel even surprise
except sleepily. Something made me say, "You look ill, Father
Christmas."

"I am dying," he said.

I did not speak, and it was he who spoke again.

"All the new people have left my shop. I cannot understand it. They seem
to object to me on such curious and inconsistent sort of grounds,
these scientific men, and these innovators. They say that I give people
superstitions and make them too visionary; they say I give people
sausages and make them too coarse. They say my heavenly parts are too
heavenly; they say my earthly parts are too earthly; I don't know what
they want, I'm sure. How can heavenly things be too heavenly, or earthly
things too earthly? How can one be too good, or too jolly? I don't
understand. But I understand one thing well enough. These modern people
are living and I am dead."

"You may be dead," I replied. "You ought to know. But as for what they
are doing, do not call it living."

.....

A silence fell suddenly between us which I somehow expected to be
unbroken. But it had not fallen for more than a few seconds when, in the
utter stillness, I distinctly heard a very rapid step coming nearer and
nearer along the street. The next moment a figure flung itself into the
shop and stood framed in the doorway. He wore a large white hat tilted
back as if in impatience; he had tight black old-fashioned pantaloons,
a gaudy old-fashioned stock and waistcoat, and an old fantastic coat. He
had large, wide-open, luminous eyes like those of an arresting actor; he
had a pale, nervous face, and a fringe of beard. He took in the shop
and the old man in a look that seemed literally a flash and uttered the
exclamation of a man utterly staggered.

"Good lord!" he cried out; "it can't be you! It isn't you! I came to ask
where your grave was."

"I'm not dead yet, Mr. Dickens," said the old gentleman, with a feeble
smile; "but I'm dying," he hastened to add reassuringly.

"But, dash it all, you were dying in my time," said Mr. Charles Dickens
with animation; "and you don't look a day older."

"I've felt like this for a long time," said Father Christmas.

Mr. Dickens turned his back and put his head out of the