A blue dragonfly on a leaf. © William Cho, Wikimedia Commons. Licence: CC-BY-SA 2.0.
“I SEE a vacant seat,” replied the Ghost, “in the poor chimney-corner, and a crutch without an owner, carefully preserved. If these shadows remain unaltered by the Future, none other of my race will find him here. What then? If he be like to die, he had better do it, and decrease the surplus population.”
Scrooge hung his head to hear his own words quoted by the Spirit, and was overcome with penitence and grief.
“Man,” said the Ghost, “if man you be in heart, not adamant, forbear that wicked cant until you have discovered What the surplus is, and Where it is.
“Will you decide what men shall live, what men shall die? It may be, that in the sight of Heaven, you are more worthless and less fit to live than millions like this poor man’s child. Oh God! to hear the Insect on the leaf pronouncing on the too much life among his hungry brothers in the dust!”
Précis
Scrooge has in the past declared that the poor and sickly should be allowed to die, to ease over-population. When he is shown his own nephew’s disabled child, he asks the ghost to reasure him that the boy will live, but the ghost casts Scrooge’s own words back in his teeth. (51 / 60 words)
