t its feet,
and clung upon the outside of its garment.

"Oh, Man! look here. Look, look, down here!" exclaimed the Ghost.

They were a boy and girl. Yellow, meagre, ragged, scowling, wolfish;
but prostrate, too, in their humility. Where graceful youth should
have filled their features out, and touched them with its freshest
tints, a stale and shrivelled hand, like that of age, had pinched, and
twisted them, and pulled them into shreds. Where angels might have sat
enthroned, devils lurked, and glared out menacing. No change, no
degradation, no perversion of humanity, in any grade, through all the
mysteries of wonderful creation, has monsters half so horrible and
dread.

Scrooge started back, appalled. Having them shown to him in this way,
he tried to say they were fine

[Illustration: Original manuscript of Page 47.]

children, but the words choked themselves, rather than be parties to a
lie of such enormous magnitude.

"Spirit! are they yours?" Scrooge could say no more.

"They are Man's," said the Spirit, looking down upon them. "And they
cling to me, appealing from their fathers. This boy is Ignorance. This
girl is Want. Beware them both, and all of their degree, but most of
all beware this boy, for on his brow I see that written which is Doom,
unless the writing be erased. Deny it!" cried the Spirit, stretching
out its hand towards the city. "Slander those who tell it ye! Admit it
for your factious purposes, and make it worse! And bide the end!"

"Have they no refuge or resource?" cried Scrooge.

"Are there no prisons?" said the Spirit, turning on him for the last
time with his own words. "Are there no workhouses?"

The bell struck twelve.

Scrooge looked about him for the Ghost, and saw it not. As the last
stroke ceased to vibrate, he remembered the prediction of old Jacob
Marley, and lifting up his eyes, beheld a solemn Phantom, draped and
hooded, coming, like a mist along the ground, towards him.

[Illustration: Original manuscript of Page 48.]

[Illustration]

[Illustration: The Last of the Spirits

_London . Chapman & Hall, 186 Strand._]

[_This illustration is reproduced in full color on the inside back
cover._]

STAVE IV.

THE LAST OF THE SPIRITS.

The Phantom slowly, gravely, silently, approached. When it came near
him, Scrooge bent down upon his knee; for in the very air through
which this Spirit moved it seemed to scatter gloom and mystery.

It was shrouded in a deep black