which is working now to night if you have aught to teach me let me profit by it touch my robe did as he was told and held it fast red ivy game poultry meat pigs fruit and punch all vanished instantly so did the room the fire the ruddy glow the hour of night and they stood in the city streets on christmas morning where for the weather was severe the people made a rough but brisk and not unpleasant kind of music in the snow from the pavement in front of their dwellings and from the of their houses whence it was mad delight to the boys to see it come down into the road below and into artificial little snow storms the house fronts looked black enough and the windows with the smooth white sheet of snow upon the ground which last deposit had been up in deep by the heavy wheels of carts and that crossed and each other hundreds of times where the great streets ofi and made intricate channels hard to trace in the thick yellow mud and icy water the sky was gloomy and the shortest streets were choked up with a dingy mist half whose heavier descended in a shower of as if all the chimneys in great britain had by one consent caught fire and were blazing away to their dear heart s content there was nothing very cheerful in the climate or the town and yet was there an air of cheerfulness abroad that the summer air and brightest summer sun might have endeavored to in vain � the second of the three spirits fi for the people who were away on the house tops wore jovial and full of glee calling out to one another from the and now and then exchanging a � better natured far than many a jest � laughing heartily if it went right and not less heartily if it went wrong the were still half open and the were radiant in their glory there were great round pot of shaped like the of jolly old gentlemen at the doors and tumbling out into the street in their there were ruddy brown faced spanish shining in the of their growth like spanish and from their shelves in wanton at the girls as they went by and glanced at the hung up there were and apples clustered high in blooming of s made in the benevolence to from conspicuous hooks that people s mouths might water as they passed there were piles of and brown recalling in their fragrance ancient walks among the woods and pleasant ankle deep through withered leaves there and setting off the yellow of the and and in the great of their persons and to be carried home in paper bags and eaten after dinner the very gold and silver fish set forth among these choice fruits in a bowl though members of a dull and race appeared to know that there was something going on and to a fish went gasping round and round their little world in slow and excitement the oh the nearly closed with perhaps two shutters down or one through those such glimpses it was not alone that the scales descending on the counter made a merry sound or that the and parted company so briskly or that the were rattled up and down like m a christmas tricks or that the of tea and were grateful to the nose or ev n that the were so plentiful � and rare the so extremely white the sticks of long and straight the other so delicious the fruits so and spotted with sugar as to make the on feel faint and subsequently nor was it that the were moist and or that the french blushed in modest from their highly decorated boxes or that everything was good to eat and in its christmas dress but the customers were all so hurried and so eager in the hopeful promise of the day that they tumbled up against each other at the door their baskets wildly and their purchases the counter and came running back to fetch them and committed hundreds of the like mistakes in the best humor possible while the and his people were so frank and that the polished hearts with which they fastened their behind might have been their own worn outside for general inspection and for christmas to at if they chose but soon the called good people all to church and chapel and away they came through the streets in their best clothes and with their faces and at the same time there emerged from scores of bye streets lanes and nameless innumerable people carrying their dinners to the shops the sight of these poor appeared to interest the spirit very much for he stood with beside him in a baker s doorway and taking off the covers as their passed sprinkled incense on their dinners from his torch and it was a very uncommon kind of torch for once or twice when there were angry words between some dinner who had with each other he shed a few drops of water on them from it and their good humor was restored directly for they said it was a shame to quarrel upon christmas day and so it was i love it so it was the second of the three spirits t in time the bells ceased and the were shut up and yet there was a genial forth of all these dinners and the of their cooking in the of wet above each baker s oven where the pavement smoked as if its stones were cooking too is there a peculiar flavor in what you from your torch v asked � there is my own would it apply to any kind of dinner on this day asked to any kindly given to a poor one most why to a poor one most asked 