12/05/2023
βOh, Man! look here. Look, look, down here!β 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 children, but the words choked themselves, rather than be parties to a lie of such enormous magnitude.
βSpirit! are they yours?β Scrooge could say no more.
βThey are Manβs,β said the Spirit, looking down upon them. βAnd 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!β cried the Spirit, stretching out its hand towards the city. βSlander those who tell it ye! Admit it for your factious purposes, and make it worse. And bide the end!β
βHave they no refuge or resource?β cried Scrooge.
βAre there no prisons?β said the Spirit, turning on him for the last time with his own words. βAre there no workhouses?β
βA Christmas Carolβ Charles Dickens - 1843
Illustration by J.P. Lynch