Dickens's Christmas Books - complete online versions

The Christmas Carol, The Chimes, Cricket On the Hearth, Battle Of Life
& The Haunted Man & the Ghosts's Bargain with Illustrations.

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THE BATTLE OF LIFE.                               263
at the bottom, cleared away such intervening obstacles as a handkerchief, an end of wax candle, a flushed apple, an orange, a lucky penny, a cramp bone, a padlock, a pair of scissors in a sheath, more expressively describable as promising young shears, a handful or so of loose beads, several balls of cotton, a needle-case, a cabinet collection of curl-papers, and a biscuit, all of which articles she entrusted individually and severally to Britain to hold, —is of no consequence. Nor how, in her determination to grasp this pocket by the throat and keep it prisoner (for it had a tendency to swing and twist itself round the nearest corner), she assumed, and calmly maintained, an attitude apparently incon­sistent with the human anatomy and the laws of gravity. It is enough that at last she triumphantly produced the thimble on her finger, and rattled the nutmeg-grater; the literature of both those trinkets being obviously in course of wearing out and wasting away, through excessive friction.
" That's the thimble, is it, young woman ?" said Mr. Snitchey, diverting himself at her expense. " And what does the thimble say?"
"It says," replied Clemency, reading slowly round it as if it were a tower, " For-get and For-give."
Snitchey and Craggs laughed heartily. " So new ! " said Snitchey. "So easy!" said Craggs. "Such a knowledge of human nature in it," said Snitchey. " So applicable to the affairs of life," said Craggs.
" And the nutmeg-grater ?" inquired the head of the Firm.
"The grater says," returned Clemency, "Do as you—wold— be—done by."
"' Do, or you'll be done brown, you mean,'" said Mr. Snitchey.
" I don't understand," retorted Clemency, shaking her head vaguely. "I an't no lawyer."
"I am afraid that if she was, Doctor," said Mr. Snitchey, turning to him suddenly, as if to anticipate any effect that might otherwise be consequent on this retort, " she'd find it to be the golden rule of half her clients. They are serious enough in that —whimsical as your world is—and lay the blame on us afterwards. We, in our profession, are little else than mirrors after all, Mr. Alfred; but we are generally consulted by angry and quarrelsome people, who are not in their best looks; and it's rather hard to quarrel with us if we reflect unpleasant aspects. I think," said Mr. Snitchey, " that I speak for Self and Craggs ? "
" Decidedly," said Craggs.
"And so, if Mr. Britain will oblige us with a mouthful of ink,"
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