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SPAMCAPITAL OMEGA: THE REMAKE OF THE REMAKE OF THE SPAM

They left the high-road, by a well-remembered lane, and
soon approached a mansion of dull red brick, with a little
weathercock-surmounted cupola, on the roof, and a bell
hanging in it.
 
It was a large house, but one of broken fortunes; for
the spacious offices were little used, their walls were
damp and mossy, their windows broken, and their gates
decayed. Fowls clucked and strutted in the stables; and
the coach-houses and sheds were over-run with grass.
 
Nor was it more retentive of its ancient state, within; for
entering the dreary hall, and glancing through the open
doors of many rooms, they found them poorly furnished,
cold, and vast.
 
There was an earthy savour in the air, a chilly bareness
in the place, which associated itself somehow with too
much getting up by candle-light, and not too much to eat.
 
They went, the Ghost and Scrooge, across the hall, to a
door at the back of the house. It opened before them, and
disclosed a long, bare, melancholy room, made barer still by
lines of plain deal forms and desks.
 
At one of these a lonely boy was reading near a feeble fire;
and Scrooge sat down upon a form, and wept to see his
poor forgotten self as he used to be.
 
Not a latent echo in the house, not a squeak and scuffle
from the mice behind the panelling, not a drip from the
half-thawed water-spout in the dull yard behind, not a sigh among
the leafless boughs of one despondent poplar, not the idle
swinging of an empty store-house door, no, not a clicking in
the fire, but fell upon the heart of Scrooge with a softening
influence, and gave a freer passage to his tears.
 
The Spirit touched him on the arm, and pointed to his
younger self, intent upon his reading. Suddenly a man, in
foreign garments: wonderfully real and distinct to look at:
stood outside the window, with an axe stuck in his belt, and
leading by the bridle an ass laden with wood.
 
"Why, it's Ali Baba!" Scrooge exclaimed in ecstasy. "It's
dear old honest Ali Baba! Yes, yes, I know! One Christmas
time, when yonder solitary child was left here all alone,
he did come, for the first time, just like that. Poor boy! And
Valentine," said Scrooge, "and his wild brother, Orson; there
they go!
 
And what's his name, who was put down in his drawers,
asleep, at the Gate of Damascus; don't you see him!
And the Sultan's Groom turned upside down by the Genii;
there he is upon his head! Serve him right. I'm glad of it.
What business had he to be married to the Princess!"
 
To hear Scrooge expending all the earnestness of his nature
on such subjects, in a most extraordinary voice between
laughing and crying; and to see his heightened and excited
face; would have been a surprise to his business friends in
the city, indeed.
 
"There's the Parrot!" cried Scrooge. "Green body and
yellow tail, with a thing like a lettuce growing out of the
top of his head; there he is! Poor Robin Crusoe, he called
him, when he came home again after sailing round the
island.
 
'Poor Robin Crusoe, where have you been, Robin Crusoe?'
The man thought he was dreaming, but he wasn't.
It was the Parrot, you know. There goes Friday, running
for his life to the little creek! Halloa! Hoop! Halloo!"
 
Then, with a rapidity of transition very foreign to his
usual character, he said, in pity for his former self, "Poor
boy!" and cried again.
 
"I wish," Scrooge muttered, putting his hand in his
pocket, and looking about him, after drying his eyes with his
cuff: "but it's too late now."
 
"Nothing," said Scrooge. "Nothing. There was a boy
singing a Christmas Carol at my door last night. I should
like to have given him something: that's all."
 
A CHRISTMAS CAROL by Charles Dickens

The Ghost smiled thoughtfully, and waved its hand:
saying as it did so, "Let us see another Christmas!"
 
Scrooge's former self grew larger at the words, and the
room became a little darker and more dirty. The panels shrunk,
the windows cracked; fragments of plaster fell out of the
ceiling, and the naked laths were shown instead; but how all
this was brought about, Scrooge knew no more than you do.
 
He only knew that it was quite correct; that everything had
happened so; that there he was, alone again, when all the
other boys had gone home for the jolly holidays.
 
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