Short Stories Old and New - Selected and Edited by C. Alphonso Smith
For the first time the kind hand faltered.
"I will honor Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year. I
will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future. The Spirits of all
three shall strive within me. I will not shut out the lessons that they
teach. O, tell me I may sponge away the writing on this stone!"
Holding up his hands in one last prayer to have his fate reversed, he
saw an alteration in the Phantom's hood and dress. It shrunk, collapsed,
and dwindled down into a bedpost.
Yes, and the bedpost was his own. The bed was his own, the room was his
own. Best and happiest of all, the Time before him was his own, to make
amends in!
He was checked in his transports by the churches ringing out the
lustiest peals he had ever heard.
Running to the window, he opened it, and put out his head. No fog, no
mist, no night; clear, bright, stirring, golden day!
"What's to-day?" cried Scrooge, calling downward to a boy in Sunday
clothes, who perhaps had loitered in to look about him.
"Eh?"
"What's to-day, my fine fellow?"
"To-day! Why, CHRISTMAS DAY."
"It's Christmas day! I haven't missed it. Hallo, my fine fellow!"
"Hallo!"
"Do you know the Poulterer's, in the next street but one, at the
corner?"
"I should hope I did."
"An intelligent boy! A remarkable boy! Do you know whether they've sold
the prize Turkey that was hanging up there? Not the little prize
Turkey,--the big one?"
"What, the one as big as me?"
"What a delightful boy! It's a pleasure to talk to him. Yes, my buck!"
"It's hanging there now."
"Is it? Go and buy it."
"Walk-ER!"[*] exclaimed the boy.
[* "Walker!" or "Hookey Walker!" means "What a story!"]
"No, no, I am in earnest. Go and buy it, and tell 'em to bring it here,
that I may give them the direction where to take it. Come back with the
man, and I'll give you a shilling. Come back with him in less than five
minutes, and I'll give you half a crown!"
The boy was off like a shot.
"I'll send it to Bob Cratchit's! He sha'n't know who sends it. It's
twice the size of Tiny Tim. Joe Miller never made such a joke as sending
it to Bob's will be!"
The hand in which he wrote the address was not a steady one; but write
it he did, somehow, and went down stairs to open the street door, ready
for the coming of the poulterer's man.
It _was_ a Turkey! He never could have stood upon his legs, that bird.
He would have snapped 'em short off in a minute, like sticks of
sealing-wax.
Scrooge dressed himself "all in his best," and at last got out into the
streets. The people were by this time pouring forth, as he had seen them
with the Ghost of Christmas Present; and, walking with his hands behind
him, Scrooge regarded every one with a delighted smile. He looked so
irresistibly pleasant, in a word, that three or four good-humored
fellows said: "Good morning, sir! A merry Christmas to you!" and Scrooge
said often afterwards, that, of all the blithe sounds he had ever heard,
those were the blithest in his ears.
In the afternoon, he turned his steps towards his nephew's house.
He passed the door a dozen times, before he had the courage to go up and
knock. But he made a dash, and did it.
"Is your master at home, my dear?" said Scrooge to the girl. Nice girl!
Very.
"Yes, sir."
"Where is he, my love?"
"He's in the dining-room, sir, along with mistress."
"He knows me," said Scrooge, with his hand already on the dining-room
lock. "I'll go in here, my dear."
"Fred!"
"Why, bless my soul!" cried Fred, "who's that?"
"It's I. Your uncle Scrooge. I have come to dinner. Will you let me in,
Fred?"
Let him in! It is a mercy he didn't shake his arm off. He was at home in
five minutes. Nothing could be heartier. His niece looked just the same.
So did Topper when _he_ came. So did the plump sister when _she_ came.
So did every one when _they_ came. Wonderful party, wonderful games,
wonderful unanimity, won-der-ful happiness!
But he was early at the office next morning. O, he was early there! If
he could only be there first, and catch Bob Cratchit coming late! That
was the thing he had set his heart upon.
And he did it. The clock struck nine. No Bob. A quarter past. No Bob.
Bob was full eighteen minutes and a half behind his time. Scrooge sat
with his door wide open, that he might see him come into the Tank.
Bob's hat was off before he opened the door; his comforter too. He was
on his stool in a jiffy; driving away with his pen, as if he were trying
to overtake nine o'clock.
"Hallo!" growled Scrooge in his accustomed voice, as near as he could
feign it. "What do you mean by coming here at this time of day?"
"I am very sorry, sir. I _am_ behind my time."
"You are? Yes. I think you are. Step this way, if you please."
"It's only once a year, sir. It shall not be repeated. I was making
rather merry yesterday, sir."
"Now, I'll tell you what, my friend. I am not going to stand this sort
of thing any longer. And therefore," Scrooge continued, leaping from his
stool, and giving Bob such a dig in the waistcoat that he staggered back
into the Tank again,--"and therefore I am about to raise your salary!"
Bob trembled, and got a little nearer to the ruler.
"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 endeavor 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 a second coal-scuttle
before you dot another i, Bob Cratchit!"
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. Some people laughed to see the alteration in him; but his own
heart laughed, and that was quite enough for him.
He had no further intercourse with spirits, but lived in that respect
upon the total-abstinence principle ever afterward; 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!
VI. THE GREAT STONE FACE[*] (1850)
[* From "The Snow Image, and Other Twice-Told Tales." Used by permission
of, and by special arrangement with, Houghton Mifflin Company,
publishers of Hawthorne's Works.]
BY NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE (1804-1864)
[_Setting_. The Profile Mountain, a huge "work of Nature in her mood of
majestic playfulness," seems to have given the suggestion. The Profile
Mountain is a part of Cannon Mountain, which is one of the White
Mountains of New Hampshire. But the larger background is to be sought in
the interplay of the spiritual and physical forces which Hawthorne has
here staged in allegory. The mountain is the symbol of a lofty ideal
that blesses those that follow its beckoning and marks the degree of
failure of those that slight or ignore it.
_Plot_. The plan of the story is as simple and beautiful as the teaching
is profound and helpful. "Mr. Hawthorne," writes Mrs. Hawthorne, "says
he is rather ashamed of the mechanical structure of the story, the moral
being so plain and manifest." But what is the "plain and manifest" moral
that the structure of the story is designed to bring out? One
interpreter says, "That the last shall be first"; another, "That success
is not to be measured by human standards." The central thought seems to
me to be larger than either of these and to include both. It is rather
the assimilative power of a lofty ideal and is best phrased in 2
Corinthians iii, 18: "But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass
the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to
glory." By setting his ideal high and by looking and longing, Ernest
grew daily in spiritual stature and was saved from being the victim of
the popular and passing allurements of war, money, and politics,
allurements to which his neighbors succumbed because they did not live
in vital communion with the Great Stone Face. The poet, it is true, felt
the appeal of the Great Stone Face but only afar off, for his life did
not correspond with his thought. It is one of the finest touches in the
story that, though Ernest meets the double requirement of thought and
act, he still hoped "that some wiser and better man than himself would
by and by appear." If a man once catches up with his ideal, it ceases to
be an ideal. Ernest did not think that he had attained.
_Characters_. Ernest, like Scrooge, is a developing character. He did
not have as far to go as Scrooge and his development was differently
wrought; but both passed from weakness to strength and from isolation to
service, the one through the ministry of a single profound experience,
the other through the constant challenge of a high ideal. The other
characters fall below Ernest because they did not relate themselves as
whole-heartedly to the influence of the Great Stone Face. Mr.
Gathergold, type of the merely rich man, Old Blood-and-Thunder, type of
the merely military hero, Old Stony Phiz, type of the merely eloquent
statesman, the easily satisfied people, type of the fickle crowd, and at
last the gifted poet, type of the discord between words and works, all
were natives of the same valley of opportunity. But the Great Stone Face
was the measure of their defect rather than the means of their
attainment because, unlike Esther and Scrooge and Ernest, they were
"disobedient unto the heavenly vision."]
One afternoon, when the sun was going down, a mother and her little boy
sat at the door of their cottage, talking about the Great Stone Face.
They had but to lift their eyes, and there it was plainly to be seen,
though miles away, with the sunshine brightening all its features.
And what was the Great Stone Face?
Embosomed amongst a family of lofty mountains, there was a valley so
spacious that it contained many thousand inhabitants. Some of these good
people dwelt in log huts, with the black forest all around them, on the
steep and difficult hillsides. Others had their homes in comfortable
farm-houses, and cultivated the rich soil on the gentle slopes or level
surfaces of the valley. Others, again, were congregated into populous
villages, where some wild, highland rivulet, tumbling down from its
birthplace in the upper mountain region, had been caught and tamed by
human cunning, and compelled to turn the machinery of cotton-factories.
The inhabitants of this valley, in short, were numerous, and of many
modes of life. But all of them, grown people and children, had a kind of
familiarity with the Great Stone Face, although some possessed the gift
of distinguishing this grand natural phenomenon more perfectly than many
of their neighbors.
The Great Stone Face, then, was a work of Nature in her mood of majestic
playfulness, formed on the perpendicular side, of the mountain by some
immense rocks, which had been thrown together in such a position as,
when viewed at a proper distance, precisely to resemble the features of
the human countenance. It seemed as if an enormous giant, or a Titan,
had sculptured his own likeness on the precipice. There was the broad
arch of the forehead, a hundred feet in height; the nose, with its long
bridge; and the vast lips, which, if they could have spoken, would have
rolled their thunder accents from one end of the valley to the other.
True it is, that if the spectator approached too near, he lost the
outline of the gigantic visage, and could discern only a heap of
ponderous and gigantic rocks, piled in chaotic ruin one upon another.
Retracing his steps, however, the wondrous features would again be seen;
and the farther he withdrew from them, the more like a human face, with
all its original divinity intact, did they appear; until, as it grew dim
in the distance, with the clouds and glorified vapor of the mountains
clustering about it, the Great Stone Face seemed positively to be alive.
It was a happy lot for children to grow up to manhood or womanhood with
the Great Stone Face before their eyes, for all the features were noble,
and the expression was at once grand and sweet, as if it were the glow
of a vast, warm heart, that embraced all mankind in its affections, and
had room for more. It was an education only to look at it. According to
the belief of many people, the valley owed much of its fertility to this
benign aspect that was continually beaming over it, illuminating the
clouds, and infusing its tenderness into the sunshine.
As we began with saying, a mother and her little boy sat at their
cottage-door, gazing at the Great Stone Face, and talking about it. The
child's name was Ernest.
"Mother," said he, while the Titanic visage smiled on him, "I wish that
it could speak, for it looks so very kindly that its voice must needs be
pleasant. If I were to see a man with such a face, I should love him
dearly."
"If an old prophecy should come to pass," answered his mother, "we may
see a man, some time or other, with exactly such a face as that."
"What prophecy do you mean, dear mother?" eagerly inquired Ernest. "Pray
tell me all about it!"
So his mother told him a story that her own mother had told to her, when
she herself was younger than little Ernest; a story, not of things that
were past, but of what was yet to come; a story, nevertheless, so very
old that even the Indians, who formerly inhabited this valley, had heard
it from their forefathers, to whom, as they affirmed, it had been
murmured by the mountain streams, and whispered by the wind among the
treetops. The purport was, that, at some future day, a child should be
born hereabouts, who was destined to become the greatest and noblest
personage of his time, and whose countenance, in manhood, should bear an
exact resemblance to the Great Stone Face. Not a few old-fashioned
people, and young ones likewise, in the ardor of their hopes, still
cherished an enduring faith in this old prophecy. But others, who had
seen more of the world, had watched and waited till they were weary, and
had beheld no man with such a face, nor any man that proved to be much
greater or nobler than his neighbors, concluded it to be nothing but an
idle tale. At all events, the great man of the prophecy had not yet
appeared.
"O mother, dear mother!" cried Ernest, clapping his hands above his
head, "I do hope that I shall live to see him?"
His mother was an affectionate and thoughtful woman, and felt that it
was wisest not to discourage the generous hopes of her little boy. So
she only said to him, "Perhaps you may."
And Ernest never forgot the story that his mother told him. It was
always in his mind, whenever he looked upon the Great Stone Face. He
spent his childhood in the log-cottage where he was born, and was
dutiful to his mother, and helpful to her in many things, assisting her
much with his little hands, and more with his loving heart. In this
manner, from a happy yet often pensive child, he grew up to be a mild,
quiet, unobtrusive boy, and sunbrowned with labor in the fields, but
with more intelligence brightening his aspect than is seen in many lads
who have been taught at famous schools. Yet Ernest had had no teacher,
save only that the Great Stone Face became one to him. When the toil of
the day was over, he would gaze at it for hours, until he began to
imagine that those vast features recognized him, and gave him a smile of
kindness and encouragement, responsive to his own look of veneration. We
must not take upon us to affirm that this was a mistake, although the
Face may have looked no more kindly at Ernest than at all the world
besides. But the secret was, that the boy's tender and confiding
simplicity discerned what other people could not see; and thus the love,
which was meant for all, became his peculiar portion.
About this time, there went a rumor throughout the valley, that the
great man, foretold from ages long ago, who was to bear a resemblance to
the Great Stone Face, had appeared at last. It seems that, many years
before, a young man had migrated from the valley and settled at a
distant seaport, where, after getting together a little money, he had
set up as a shopkeeper. His name--but I could never learn whether it was
his real one, or a nickname that had grown out of his habits and success
in life--was Gathergold. Being shrewd and active, and endowed by
Providence with that inscrutable faculty which develops itself in what
the world calls luck, he became an exceedingly rich merchant, and owner
of a whole fleet of bulky-bottomed ships. All the countries of the globe
appeared to join hands for the mere purpose of adding heap after heap to
the mountainous accumulation of this one man's wealth. The cold regions
of the north, almost within the gloom and shadow of the Arctic Circle,
sent him their tribute in the shape of furs; hot Africa sifted for him
the golden sands of her rivers, and gathered up the ivory tusks of her
great elephants out of the forests; the East came bringing him the rich
shawls, and spices, and teas, and the effulgence of diamonds, and the
gleaming purity of large pearls. The ocean, not to be behindhand with
the earth, yielded up her mighty whales, that Mr. Gathergold might sell
their oil, and make a profit on it. Be the original commodity what it
might, it was gold within his grasp. It might be said of him, as of
Midas in the fable, that whatever he touched with his finger immediately
glistened, and grew yellow, and was changed at once into sterling metal,
or, which suited him still better, into piles of coin. And, when Mr.
Gathergold had become so very rich that it would have taken him a
hundred years only to count his wealth, he bethought himself of his
native valley, and resolved to go back thither, and end his days where
he was born. With this purpose in view, he sent a skilful architect to
build him such a palace as should be fit for a man of his vast wealth to
live in.
As I have said above, it had already been rumored in the valley that Mr.
Gathergold had turned out to be the prophetic personage so long and
vainly looked for, and that his visage was the perfect and undeniable
similitude of the Great Stone Face. People were the more ready to
believe that this must needs be the fact, when they beheld the splendid
edifice that rose, as if by enchantment, on the site of his father's old
weather-beaten farm-house. The exterior was of marble, so dazzlingly
white that it seemed as though the whole structure might melt away in
the sunshine, like those humbler ones which Mr. Gathergold, in his young
play-days, before his fingers were gifted with the touch of
transmutation, had been accustomed to build of snow. It had a richly
ornamented portico, supported by tall pillars, beneath which was a lofty
door, studded with silver knobs, and made of a kind of variegated wood
that had been brought from beyond the sea. The windows, from the floor
to the ceiling of each stately apartment, were composed, respectively,
of but one enormous pane of glass, so transparently pure that it was
said to be a finer medium than even the vacant atmosphere. Hardly
anybody had been permitted to see the interior of this palace; but it
was reported, and with good semblance of truth, to be far more gorgeous
than the outside, insomuch that whatever was iron or brass in other
houses was silver or gold in this; and Mr. Gathergold's bedchamber,
especially, made such a glittering appearance that no ordinary man would
have been able to close his eyes there. But, on the other hand, Mr.
Gathergold was now so inured to wealth, that perhaps he could not have
closed his eyes unless where the gleam of it was certain to find its way
beneath his eyelids.
In due time, the mansion was finished; next came the upholsterers with
magnificent furniture; then, a whole troop of black and white servants,
the harbingers of Mr. Gathergold, who, in his own majestic person, was
expected to arrive at sunset. Our friend Ernest, meanwhile, had been
deeply stirred by the idea that the great man, the noble man, the man of
prophecy, after so many ages of delay, was at length to be made manifest
to his native valley. He knew, boy as he was, that there were a thousand
ways in which Mr. Gathergold, with his vast wealth, might transform
himself into an angel of beneficence, and assume a control over human
affairs as wide and benignant as the smile of the Great Stone Face. Full
of faith and hope, Ernest doubted not that what the people said was
true, and that now he was to behold the living likeness of those
wondrous features on the mountain-side. While the boy was still gazing
up the valley, and fancying, as he always did, that the Great Stone Face
returned his gaze and looked kindly at him, the rumbling of wheels was
heard, approaching swiftly along the winding road.
"Here he comes!" cried a group of people who were assembled to witness
the arrival. "Here comes the great Mr. Gathergold!"
A carriage, drawn by four horses, dashed round the turn of the road.
Within it, thrust partly out of the window, appeared the physiognomy of
a little old man, with a skin as yellow as if his own Midas-hand had
transmuted it. He had a low forehead, small, sharp eyes, puckered about
with innumerable wrinkles, and very thin lips, which he made still
thinner by pressing them forcibly together.
"The very image of the Great Stone Face!" shouted the people. "Sure
enough, the old prophecy is true; and here we have the great man come,
at last!"
And, what greatly perplexed Ernest, they seemed actually to believe that
here was the likeness which they spoke of. By the roadside there chanced
to be an old beggar-woman and two little beggar-children, stragglers
from some far-off region, who, as the carriage rolled onward, held out
their hands and lifted up their doleful voices, most piteously
beseeching charity. A yellow claw--the very same that had clawed
together so much wealth--poked itself out of the coach-window, and dropt
some copper coins upon the ground; so that, though the great man's name
seems to have been Gathergold, he might just as suitably have been
nicknamed Scattercopper. Still, nevertheless, with an earnest shout, and
evidently with as much good faith as ever, the people bellowed,--
"He is the very image of the Great Stone Face!"
But Ernest turned sadly from the wrinkled shrewdness of that sordid
visage, and gazed up the valley, where, amid a gathering mist, gilded by
the last sunbeams, he could still distinguish those glorious features
which had impressed themselves into his soul. Their aspect cheered him.
What did the benign lips seem to say?
"He will come! Fear not, Ernest; the man will come!"
The years went on, and Ernest ceased to be a boy. He had grown to be a
young man now. He attracted little notice from the other inhabitants of
the valley; for they saw nothing remarkable in his way of life, save
that, when the labor of the day was over, he still loved to go apart and
gaze and meditate upon the Great Stone Face. According to their idea of
the matter, it was a folly, indeed, but pardonable, inasmuch as Ernest
was industrious, kind, and neighborly, and neglected no duty for the
sake of indulging this idle habit. They knew not that the Great Stone
Face had become a teacher to him, and that the sentiment which was
expressed in it would enlarge the young man's heart, and fill it with
wider and deeper sympathies than other hearts. They knew not that thence
would come a better wisdom than could be learned from books, and a
better life than could be moulded on the defaced example of other human
lives. Neither did Ernest know that the thoughts and affections which
came to him so naturally, in the fields and at the fireside, and
wherever he communed with himself, were of a higher tone than those
which all men shared with him. A simple soul,--simple as when his mother
first taught him the old prophecy,--he beheld the marvellous features
beaming adown the valley, and still wondered that their human
counterpart was so long in making his appearance.
By this time poor Mr. Gathergold was dead and buried; and the oddest
part of the matter was, that his wealth, which was the body and spirit
of his existence, had disappeared before his death, leaving nothing of
him but a living skeleton, covered over with a wrinkled, yellow skin.
Since the melting away of his gold, it had been very generally conceded
that there was no such striking resemblance, after all, betwixt the
ignoble features of the ruined merchant and that majestic face upon the
mountain-side. So the people ceased to honor him during his lifetime,
and quietly consigned him to forgetfulness after his decease. Once in a
while, it is true, his memory was brought up in connection with the
magnificent palace which he had built, and which had long ago been
turned into a hotel for the accommodation of strangers, multitudes of
whom came, every summer, to visit that famous natural curiosity, the
Great Stone Face. Thus, Mr. Gathergold being discredited and thrown into
the shade, the man of prophecy was yet to come.