Tiny Tim
: Dickens Stories About Children Every Child Can ReadIT will surprise you all very much to hear that there was once a man who
did not like Christmas. In fact, he had been heard on several occasions
to use the word humbug with regard to it. His name was Scrooge, and he
was a hard, sour-tempered man of business, intent only on saving and
making money, and caring nothing for anyone. He paid the poor,
hard-working clerk in his office as little as he could possibly get the
wo
dismal rooms. He was never merry or comfortable or happy, and he hated
other people to be so, and that was the reason why he hated Christmas,
because people will be happy at Christmas, you know, if they possibly
can, and like to have a little money to make themselves and others
comfortable.
Well, it was Christmas eve, a very cold and foggy one, and Mr. Scrooge,
having given his poor clerk permission very unwillingly to spend
Christmas day at home, locked up his office and went home himself in a
very bad temper, and with a cold in his head. After having taken some
gruel as he sat over a miserable fire in his dismal room, he got into
bed, and had some wonderful and disagreeable dreams, to which we will
leave him, whilst we see how Tiny Tim, the son of his poor clerk, spent
Christmas day.
The name of this clerk was Bob Cratchit. He had a wife and five other
children besides Tim, who was a weak and delicate little cripple, and
for this reason was dearly loved by his father and the rest of the
family; not but what he was a dear little boy, too, gentle and patient
and loving, with a sweet face of his own, which no one could help
looking at.
Whenever he could spare the time, it was Mr. Cratchit's delight to carry
his little boy out on his shoulder to see the shops and the people; and
to-day he had taken him to church for the first time.
"Whatever has got your precious father and your brother Tiny Tim!"
exclaimed Mrs. Cratchit, "here's dinner all ready to be dished up. I've
never known him so late on Christmas day before."
"Here he is, mother!" cried Belinda, and "here he is!" cried the other
children.
In came little Bob, the father, with at least three feet of comforter,
exclusive of the fringe, hanging down before him; and his threadbare
clothes darned up and brushed, to look just as well as possible; and
Tiny Tim upon his shoulder. Alas for Tiny Tim, he bore a little crutch,
and had his limbs supported by an iron frame!
"Why, where's our Martha?" cried Bob Cratchit, looking round.
"Not coming," said Mrs. Cratchit.
"Not coming!" said Bob, with a sudden dropping in his high spirits; for
he had been Tim's blood horse all the way from church, and had come home
rampant. "Not coming upon Christmas day!"
Martha didn't like to see him disappointed, if it were only in joke; so
she came out sooner than had been agreed upon from behind the
closet-door, and ran into his arms, while the two young Cratchits
hustled Tiny Tim, and bore him off into the wash-house, that he might
hear the pudding singing in the copper kettle.
"And how did Tim behave?" asked Mrs. Cratchit.
"As good as gold and better," replied his father. "I think, wife, the
child gets thoughtful, sitting at home so much. He told me, coming home,
that he hoped the people in church who saw he was a cripple, would be
pleased to remember on Christmas day who it was who made the lame to
walk."
"Bless his sweet heart!" said the mother in a trembling voice, and the
father's voice trembled, too, as he remarked that "Tiny Tim was growing
strong and hearty at last."
His active little crutch was heard upon the floor, and back came Tiny
Tim before another word was spoken, led by his brother and sister to his
stool beside the fire; while Bob, Master Peter, and the two young
Cratchits (who seemed to be everywhere at once) went to fetch the goose,
with which they soon returned in high procession.
Such a bustle ensued that you might have thought a goose the rarest of
all birds; a perfect marvel, to which a black swan was a matter of
course--and in truth it was something very like it in that house. Mrs.
Cratchit made the gravy (ready beforehand in a little saucepan) hissing
hot; Master Peter mashed the potatoes with tremendous vigor; Miss
Belinda sweetened up the apple-sauce; Martha dusted the hot plates; Bob
took Tiny Tim beside him in a tiny corner at the table; the two young
Cratchits set chairs for everybody, not forgetting themselves, and,
mounting guard upon their posts, crammed spoons into their mouths, lest
they should shriek for goose before their turn came to be helped. At
last the dishes were set on, and grace was said. It was succeeded by a
breathless pause, as Mrs. Cratchit, looking slowly all along the
carving-knife, prepared to plunge it in the breast; but when she did,
and when the long-expected gush of stuffing issued forth, one murmur of
delight arose all round the board, and even Tiny Tim, excited by the two
young Cratchits, beat on the table with the handle of his knife, and
feebly cried Hurrah!
There never was such a goose. Bob said he didn't believe there ever was
such a goose cooked. Its tenderness and flavor, size, and cheapness were
the themes of universal admiration. Eked out by apple-sauce and mashed
potatoes, it was a sufficient dinner for the whole family; indeed, as
Mrs. Cratchit said with great delight (surveying one small atom of a
bone upon the dish), they hadn't ate it all at that! Yet everyone had
had enough, and the youngest Cratchits, in particular, were steeped in
sage and onions to the eyebrows! But now, the plates being changed by
Miss Belinda, Mrs. Cratchit left the room alone--too nervous to bear
witnesses--to take up the pudding and bring it in.
Suppose it should not be done enough! Suppose it should break in turning
out! Suppose somebody should have got over the wall of the back yard and
stolen it, while they were merry with the goose--a supposition at which
the two young Cratchits became livid! All sorts of horrors were
supposed.
Halloo! A great deal of steam! The pudding was out of the copper. A
smell like a washing-day! That was the cloth. A smell like an
eating-house and a pastrycook's next door to each other, with a
laundress' next door to that! That was the pudding! In half a minute
Mrs. Cratchit entered--flushed, but smiling proudly--with the pudding
like a speckled cannon-ball, so hard and firm, blazing in half of
half-a-quartern of lighted brandy, and decorated with Christmas holly
stuck into the top.
Oh, a wonderful pudding! Bob Cratchit said, and calmly too, that he
regarded it as the greatest success achieved by Mrs. Cratchit since
their marriage. Mrs. Cratchit said that, now the weight was off her
mind, she would confess she had her doubts about the quantity of flour.
Everybody had something to say about it, but nobody said or thought it
was a small pudding for a large family. It would have been really wicked
to do so. Any Cratchit would have blushed to hint at such a thing.
At last the dinner was all done, the cloth was cleared, the hearth
swept, and the fire made up. The hot stuff in the jug being tasted, and
considered perfect, apples and oranges were put upon the table, and a
shovel full of chestnuts on the fire. Then all the Cratchit family drew
round the hearth in what Bob Cratchit called a circle, meaning half a
one; and at Bob Cratchit's elbow stood the family display of glass. Two
tumblers and a custard cup without a handle.
These held the hot stuff from the jug, however, as well as golden
goblets would have done; and Bob served it out with beaming looks, while
the chestnuts on the fire sputtered and cracked noisily. Then Bob
proposed:
"A merry Christmas to us all, my dears. God bless us!"
Which all the family re-echoed.
"God bless us everyone!" said Tiny Tim, the last of all.
Now I told you that Mr. Scrooge had some disagreeable and wonderful
dreams on Christmas eve, and so he had; and in one of them he dreamt
that a Christmas spirit showed him his clerk's home; he saw them all
gathered round the fire, and heard them drink his health, and Tiny Tim's
song, and he took special note of Tiny Tim himself.
How Mr. Scrooge spent Christmas day we do not know. He may have remained
in bed, having a cold, but on Christmas night he had more dreams, and
in one of his dreams the spirit took him again to his clerk's poor home.
The mother was doing some needlework, seated by the table, a tear
dropped on it now and then, and she said, poor thing, that the work,
which was black, hurt her eyes. The children sat, sad and silent, about
the room, except Tiny Tim, who was not there. Upstairs the father, with
his face hidden in his hands, sat beside a little bed, on which lay a
tiny figure, white and still. "My little child, my pretty little child,"
he sobbed, as the tears fell through his fingers on to the floor. "Tiny
Tim died because his father was too poor to give him what was necessary
to make him well; you kept him poor;" said the dream-spirit to Mr.
Scrooge. The father kissed the cold, little face on the bed, and went
downstairs, where the sprays of holly still remained about the humble
room; and taking his hat, went out, with a wistful glance at the little
crutch in the corner as he shut the door. Mr. Scrooge saw all this, and
many more things as strange and sad, the spirit took care of that; but,
wonderful to relate, he woke the next morning feeling a different
man--feeling as he had never felt in his life before. For after all, you
know that what he had seen was no more than a dream; he knew that Tiny
Tim was not dead, and Scrooge was resolved that Tiny Tim should not die
if he could help it.
"Why, I am as light as a feather, and as happy as an angel, and as merry
as a schoolboy," Scrooge said to himself as he skipped into the next
room to breakfast and threw on all the coals at once, and put two lumps
of sugar in his tea. "I hope everybody had a merry Christmas, and here's
a happy New Year to all the world."
On that morning, the day after Christmas poor Bob Cratchit crept into
the office a few minutes late, expecting to be roundly abused and
scolded for it, but no such thing; his master was there with his back to
a good fire, and actually smiling, and he shook hands with his clerk,
telling him heartily he was going to raise his salary and asking quite
affectionately after Tiny Tim! "And mind you make up a good fire in your
room before you set to work, Bob," he said, as he closed his own door.
Bob could hardly believe his eyes and ears, but it was all true. Such
doings as they had on New Year's day had never been seen before in the
Cratchits' home, nor such a turkey as Mr. Scrooge sent them for dinner.
Tiny Tim had his share too, for Tiny Tim did not die, not a bit of it.
Mr. Scrooge was a second father to him from that day, he wanted for
nothing, and grew up strong and hearty. Mr. Scrooge loved him, and well
he might, for was it not Tiny Tim who had without knowing it, through
the Christmas dream-spirit, touched his hard heart and caused him to
become a good and happy man?
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