Charles Dickens

A Christmas Carol Charles Dickens

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1846 edition. Excerpt: ...am here, or how I came. I have listened to the Chimes these many years. They have cheered me often." "And you have thanked them?" said the Bell. " A thousand times!" cried Trotty. "How?" "I am a poor man," faltered Trotty, " and could only thank them in words." "And always so?" inquired the Goblin of the Bell. "Have you never done us wrong in words? " "No!" cried Trotty eagerly. "Never done us foul, and false, and wicked wrong, in words?" pursued the Goblin of the Bell. Trotty was about to answer, "Never!" But he stopped, and was confused. "The voice of Time," said the Phantom, "cries to man, Advance! Time is for his advancement and improvement; for his greater worth, his greater happiness, his better life; his progressonward to that goal within its knowledge and its view, and set there, in the period when Time and He began. Ages of darkness, wickedness, and violence, have come and gone: millions uncountable, have suffered, lived, and died: to point the way Before him. Who seeks to turn him hack, or stay him on his course, arrests a mighty engine which will strike the meddler dead; and be the fiercer and the wilder, ever, for its momentary check! " "I never did so, to my knowledge, Sir," said Trotty. "It was quite, by accident if I did. I wouldn't go to do it, I "in sure." " Who puts into the month of Time, or of its servants," said the Goblin of the Bell, "a cry of lamentation for days which have had their trial and their failure, and have left deep traces of it which the blind may see--a cry that only serves the Present Time, by showing men how much it needs their help when any ears can listen to regrets for such a Past--who does this, does a wrong. And yon have done that wrong to us, the Chimes." Trotty's first excess of fear was gone. But he...