“there were more children there than Scrooge in his agitated mind could count, and unlike the celebrated poem, not every forty children were acting as one, but every child was acting as forty.”

“and, unlike the celebrated herd in the poem, they were not forty children conducting themselves as one, but every child was conducting itself like forty.”

“There was once a king, and he had a queen; and he was the manliest of his gender, and she was the loveliest of hers. They had nineteen children, and were always having more.”

“...[their] children were not growing up or being brought up, but were tumbling up.”

“It is good to be children sometimes, and never better than at Christmas when the Great Creator was a child himself.”

“For it is good to be children sometimes, and never better than at Christmas, when its mighty Founder was a child Himself.”

“Scrooge followed to the window: desperate in his curiosity. He looked out.The air was filled with phantoms, wandering hither and thither in restless haste, and moaning as they went. Every one of them wore chains like Marley's Ghost; some few (they might be guilty governments) were linked together; none were free. Many had been personally known to Scrooge in their lives. He had been quite familiar with one old ghost, in a white waistcoat, with a monstrous iron safe attached to its ankle, who cried piteously at being unable to assist a wretched woman with an infant, whom it saw below, upon a door-step. The misery with them all was, clearly, that they sought to interfere, for good, in human matters, and had lost the power for ever”