tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5722735165669239585.post3154969810305313650..comments2023-05-24T23:33:57.516+10:00Comments on My Unwelcome Stranger: A New Year's TaleDenis Wrighthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12786035137418348609noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5722735165669239585.post-34986204902846920622012-01-02T16:35:54.759+11:002012-01-02T16:35:54.759+11:00And there are people who don't read Dickens. W...And there are people who don't read Dickens. When you see the power and the passion in the excerpt you chose, you have to wonder why.<br /><br />I read these sections of <i>A Christmas Carol</i> with the same awe and discomfort as I did reading <i>The Little Match Girl</i> BUT I do remember the excerpt in our reader was the Christmas dinner tale, which was much happier than the latter. I remember vividly Mrs Cratchit's 'twice turned gown' and Bob's being paid ten bob a week, but I was older when I read the whole with its more bitter parts and understood what it was really about.<br /><br />Thanks, Zoe. It makes the quinella with my Hans Anderson tale really.Denis Wrighthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12786035137418348609noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5722735165669239585.post-15113234798229696962012-01-01T13:06:11.800+11:002012-01-01T13:06:11.800+11:00From A Christmas Carol, in the same kind of vein, ...From A Christmas Carol, in the same kind of vein, I think:<br />“Oh, Man! look here. Look, look, down here!” exclaimed the Ghost. <br /><br /> 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.<br /><br />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. <br /><br /> “Spirit! are they yours?” Scrooge could say no more. <br /><br /> “They are Man’s,” said the Spirit, looking down upon them. “And 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!” cried the Spirit, stretching out its hand towards the city. “Slander those who tell it ye! Admit it for your factious purposes, and make it worse. And bide the end!” <br /><br /> “Have they no refuge or resource?” cried Scrooge. <br /><br /> “Are there no prisons?” said the Spirit, turning on him for the last time with his own words. “Are there no workhouses?” <br /><br /> The bell struck twelve.zmkchttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08972549292961948240noreply@blogger.com