The Further Adventures of Ebenezer Scrooge Read Online Free PDF Page A

mine who once helped save my life and tonight will help save yours. May I present the Ghost of Christmas Past.”
    If possible, Freddie’s eyes opened even wider. From sheer force of habit, he managed to whisper, “Very pleased to make your acquaintance, Mr. . . .”
    â€œYou may call me Spirit,” said the ghost jovially.
    â€œAnd what is your business here, Spirit?” asked Freddie, with a bureaucratic air that belied his continued unease.
    â€œAs I said, nephew, we come for your welfare.”
    The nephew, now fully awake and of the belief that he might dispose of these unwelcome visitors in the same manner that he disposed of those members of the public who deigned to wander into his office in Whitehall, noted that a night of unbroken rest would have been more conducive to that end.
    â€œTake heed!” cried the Spirit, rattling all authority out of poor Freddie, who now, if he had been wearing boots, would have been shaking in them.
    â€œRise and walk with us,” said Scrooge. “You must see the past ere we plot your future.” With this he laid one hand on his nephew and the other on the Spirit, and in a twinkling (though Freddie might have been more likely to describe it as a trembling) the trio found themselves in a cold stone room. The air was dank and stale, the only light a pale and hazy aura that seeped through an iron-barred window high overhead. The room was unfurnished (it was, in fact, so small it would have admitted little more than a single kitchen stool) and Freddie at first thought it empty. A low groan from behind him he took to be the voice of the ghost, until that spectre removed his cap and the room was flooded with the white light that flowed from his pate.
    Freddie turned on his feet to take in the entire room, which he now saw to be no more than six feet square. When he saw the source of the groan he stopped in horror, his breath catching in his throat. Against his better judgment, he stared transfixed at the figure before him. The woman lay slumped against the rough stone wall, her hands and feet fastened to those same stones with chains as heavy as those that encumbered the ghost of Jacob Marley—a spirit which Freddie, prior to that night, had dismissed as his uncle’s fancy. The woman’s clothes were so ragged as to be nearly superfluous and her hair was matted far worse than the fur of the stray dogs on London’s streets.
    â€œWhat godforsaken prison is this?” choked Freddie.
    â€œNot a prison,” said the ghost, to whom Freddie now paid rapt attention. “An asylum. St. Luke’s Hospital for Lunatics. This creature came here in hopes of a cure for her madness.”
    â€œThis cannot be,” gasped Freddie. “Such inhumanity is surely a thing of the past.”
    â€œSo it is,” said the ghost. “Perhaps you forget who I am. But this is a past you must see.”
    â€œShe was a governess,” said Scrooge, “working for a respectable family for seven years before she became ill. Now she has been chained to that wall for as many years, with no hope of salvation.”
    The woman groaned again, a quiet and resigned sort of groan that seeped out of her like the last of the air out of a squeeze-box. She took no notice of either her visitors or the light they brought to her cell. Freddie reached out to touch her filthy shoulder but felt nothing but cold air.
    â€œShe is but the shadow of what has been,” said the ghost. “She has no consciousness of us.”
    â€œWhat day is this?” asked Freddie, his eyes still on the wretched creature at his feet.
    â€œChristmas Day,” answered the ghost. “A Christmas before you were brought into this world, though not before your uncle heard the first chorus of ‘Merry Christmas’ strike his ears.”
    â€œBut how can doctors treat a poor woman like this?” asked Freddie.
    â€œCoercion for the outward man, and