A holiday reminder from Dickens

-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.

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.

``Spirit! are they yours?'' Scrooge could say no more.

``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!''

``Have they no refuge or resource?'' cried Scrooge.

``Are there no prisons?'' said the Spirit, turning on him for the last time with his own words. ``Are there no workhouses?''-

Cheerful thoughts. Yet worse seems to be something even Scrooge does not possess - heartlessness. And our current regime possesses in over-abundance. As Potter said: "What does that get us, but a discontented, lazy, rabble instead of a thrifty working class." The greedy, mean-spirited wealthy and powerful, unlike Scrooge, cannot be made to develop sympathy for the struggling poor and lower working classes. They are too much into "tough love". It would be a sad commentary if most of America agreed with them instead of voting them out.

(we do every year)and the greatest thing is Dicken's railing against poverty and his wonderful and early awareness of the need for balance and caring for others.