The Pawtuxet General™

The Pawtuxet General | Episode 8

December 24, 2021 Jess Watts Season 1 Episode 8
The Pawtuxet General™
The Pawtuxet General | Episode 8
Show Notes Transcript

The Pawtuxet General wants to wish you all a very happy, safe, and joyful holiday.

This week, we will share Jess's famous scone recipe, learn how to make a wassail, and listen to A Christmas Carol, as our ghost story.

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Greetings and welcome into a very special holiday episode of the Pawtuxet General. I am your host, Jess. We have so much, today. So, let's get to it. We have my own guilt-free Little Falls Bakery Scone recipe, for a special morning. A lovely wassail recipe to warm you up, while you sit back and enjoy a reading of a Christmas Carol. But, first, I would like to thank our patron subscribers. You fabulous people make it possible for us to do what we do. So thank you! As a special gift to you. You will find a copy of some of the recipes featured here on with the show. Your colors today might be red, black and green, or blue and white or red and green. They might be gold, silver, red and white or purple, dark, violet, yellow, green and turquoise. Whatever your colors in this holiday rainbow, we wish you the most peaceful holiday season. I want to tell you about my friend Mike and his Electro Magnetic Pinball Museum and Restoration Arcade. It's an all inclusive place to relax and share anything related to modern pinball and pinball and arcade games. A group of pinball and arcade fans with an addiction to games of all kinds and Lego, too.$10 gets you free play on pinball and arcade games, all day. You can find them at 881 Main Street, Pawtucket, Rhode Island or online at www.electromagneticpinballmuseum.com. Today's recipe, blueberry scones. Let's talk about scones. I experimented and baked scones professionally for over 15 years. If it is a scone, I have probably done it in one form or another. It was customary back then on Fridays to bake a special scone plus six other batches of scones for the busy early weekend. The special would be different each week, but the other six were always the same blueberry, cranberry, walnut, orange, raisin, multigrain, cinnamon chip and chocolate chip. Everybody had their favorites. Mine still is blueberry. This simple scone seems easy, but mastering it is impossible without some important tips. Luckily, you have me. Let's get started. You will need the dry mix. Four and a half cups of flour, a half a cup of sugar, one tablespoon of baking powder, and one teaspoon of baking soda and the butter. One cup of cold butter cut in half inch cubes. The tray, two cookie sheets topped with parchment paper. The egg wash, one egg beaten well with a brush, the wet mix, six eggs beaten, one and three quarter cups of fat free yogurt, one quart of skim milk and one tablespoon real vanilla . The flavoring blueberries, frozen, still cold, but not a block, broken up, so that they disperse evenly throughout the batter when used. Preheat your oven to 375 degrees. Combine dry ingredients. This is important so that the leavening is equally distributed throughout the mix. Add the very cold, tiny chunks of butter into the dry ingredients and crush tiny cubes with your fingers swiftly, so that the butter doesn't melt. During the summer, I sometimes would put the dry mix in the fridge until it re hardened. The best scones are gently mixed, so gently as to discourage gluten strands from forming. They should pull apart in chunks, not strands when you break it up. The batter should be somewhat dry, but hold together. I use gloved hands to achieve this mix so that you know for sure how well it has worked. So, take your cold, dry mix and add three cups of your wet mix. Channel your inner Grammy, while mixing. Slow, deliberate movements. If you have to add a little more wet mix, that's fine. But you don't want to add too much when you still have a good amount of dry bits. Sprinkle the frozen blueberries that have been broken up, fold over just once or twice, and then take a scoop and fill it with the mixture tightly by dragging it up the side of the bowl. Each scoop should be filled to the brim to encourage continuity. Release onto parchment covered trays, leaving about 3 to 4 inches between each one. Brush with egg wash and put immediately into the oven. If the batter sits at this point, the texture will change. Not good. When they are finished, they should be golden on the bottom and most spots on the top with a little bounce back. The timing depends on the size of your scones. Medium-sized ones take about 12 minutes. But extra large ones like mine can take up to 20 minutes. They don't mind if you peek at them. Just, try not to slam the door. They might become vexed. I promise you, with these tips and a little practice, these will be the greatest scones. And, then, you can call them yours. Send pictures of your scones. To our email, Jess@PawtuxetGeneral.com and I'll answer any questions, Praise your attempts and give you free flavor suggestions. Enjoy them. Today's cocktail is Wassail! I found this amazing recipe on the New York Times Cook Page. As always, this can be made as a mocktail. By denying it the booze. And, it's so tasty that way. The author has this to say,"Here is the beauty of wassail more than just another nice tasting drink. It's part of a long, if largely forgotten tradition of celebrating life that winter can seem determined to snuff out." It's a fragrant warming concoction built in bulk. This recipe makes 12 servings and set out for sharing all but demanding that you call in a crowd. There's really no such thing as Wassail for one, and a punch bowl is good for this, although you can also ladle it into individual cups. For this recipe, you will need 5 to 6 medium Honeycrisp or Fuji or McIntosh Apples or any local apple would do and be lovely and more festive. One half a cup, light brown sugar one half cup, dark brown sugar, two cups of Madeira, two bottles of London Pride Ale, four bottles of Strongbow, English Cider, One Cup, Apple Cider, 12 whole cloves, 12 fold allspice berries, two cinnamon sticks, two inches long, two strips orange peel, two inches long, one teaspoon ground ginger and one teaspoon ground nutmeg. First, preheat oven to 350 degrees. Place your apples in a nine by nine inch glass baking dish. Spoon, light and dark sugar into the center of each apple, dividing sugar evenly among them. Pour one cup of water into the bottom of the dish and bake until tender about one hour. Meanwhile, pour the Madeira Ale and the English and Apple ciders into a low, slow cooker or heavy part to place cloves, allspice, cinnamon and orange peel into a cheesecloth, tie shut with kitchen twine and add to the slow cooker or pot along with ginger and nutmeg. Set slow cooker to medium and place pot over low heat. Gently simmer for about one hour while apples bake or longer if desired. Add liquid from the baking dish and stir to combine. Using tongs, transfer the apples into the slow cooker or pot to garnish, reduce the heat and then ladle hot wassail into heat-proof cups to serve. Holy mackerel. If that doesn't warm you up, what will? Enjoy our special reading today is A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens, one of the most popular holiday ghost stories of all time. First published in December 19th, 1843. It stands today just as movingly as it did then. A terrifying cautionary tale. So settle in with wassail or hot cider. Turn the lights down. Thank you again for joining us for this epic holiday episode of The Toxic General. A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens installment one, stave one,"Marley's Ghost." Marley was dead, to begin with. There is no doubt whatsoever about that. The register of his burial was signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker and the chief mourner. Scrooge signed it and Scrooge's name was good upon change for anything he chose to put his hand to. Old Marley was dead as a doornail. I don't mean to say now of my own knowledge, what there is particularly dead about a doornail. I might have been inclined myself to regard a coffin nail as the deadliest piece of Iron mongery in the trade. But the wisdom of our ancestors is in the smile, and my un-hallowed hands shall not disturb it. Or for the country has done it. You will therefore permit me to repeat emphatically that Marley was dead as a doornail. Scrooge knew he was dead. Of course he did. How could it be otherwise? Scrooge and he were partners for I don't know how many years. Scrooge was his sole executor, his sole administrator, his soul assignee, the soul residuary legatee, his sole friend. and sole mourner. And even Scrooge was not so dreadfully cut up by the sad event. But he was an excellent man of business on the very day of the funeral and solemnized it with an undoubted bargain. The mention of Marley's funeral brings me back to the point I started from. There is no doubt that Marley was dead. This must be distinctly understood or nothing wonderful can come of the story, I'm about to relate. If we are not perfectly convinced that Hamlet's father died before the play began, there would be nothing more remarkable in his taking a stroll at night in an easterly wind upon his own ramparts, than there would be any other middle-aged gentleman rashly turning out in the dark on a breezy spot, say St Paul's Church, for instance, literally to astonish his weak son's mind. Scrooge never painted out old Marley's name. There it stood. Years afterward, above the warehouse door, Scrooge and Marley, the firm was known as Scrooge and Marley. Sometimes people new to the business called Scrooge. Scrooge and sometimes Marley. But he answered to both names. It was all the same to him. Oh, but he was a tight fisted hand at the grindstone. Scrooge, a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old sinner, hard and sharp as flint in which no steel had ever struck out. Generous fire, secret and self-contained and solitary as an oyster, the cold from within, and froze. His old features nipped at his pointed nose, shriveled, his cheeks stiffened, his gait made his eyes red, his thin lips blue, and spoke out shrewdly in his grating voice of frosty rhyme was on his head and on his eyebrows and his wiry chin. He carried his own low temperament, always about him. He iced his office in the dog days and didn't thought one degree of Christmas external heat and cold had little influence over Scrooge. No warmth could warm, no wintry weather chill him, no wind. The blue was bitter. Then he no falling snow was more intent upon its purpose. No pelting rain, less open to entreaty. Foul weather, didn't know where to have him. The heaviest rain and snow and hail and sleet could boast of the advantage of them in only one respect. They often came down handsomely, and Scrooge never did. Nobody ever stopped him on the street to say with glad some looks, why do Scrooge, how are you? When will you come to see me? Tho beggars implored to bestow a trifle. No children asked him when it was o'clock. No man or woman ever once in his life inquired the way to such and such a place of Scrooge. Even the blind man's dogs appeared to know him, and when they saw him coming, would tug their owners into doorways and up courts, and they would wag their tails as though they said no. Why at all is better than the evil I Dark Master. But what did Scrooge care? It was the very thing he liked to edge his way along the crowded path of a life, warning all human sympathy to keep its distance was what one of the knowing ones called nuts to Scrooge. Once upon a time of all the good days of the year on Christmas Eve, old Scrooge sat busy in his counting house. It was bleak, the cold, biting weather, foggy withal. And he could hear the people of the court outside go wheezing up and down, beating their hands upon their breast, stamping their feet upon the pavement. Stones to warm them. The city clocks had only just gone three, but it was quite dark already. It had not been light all day and candles were flaring in the windows of the neighboring offices, like ruddy smears upon the palpable brown air. The fog came pouring in at every chink and keyhole and was so dense. Without that, although the court was of the narrowest, the houses opposite were like phantoms to see the dingy cloud come drooping down, obscuring anything. One might have thought that nature lived hard by and was brewing on a large scale. The door of Scrooge's counting house was open that he may keep an eye upon his clerk, who, in a dismal cell beyond a sort of tank, was copying letters. Scrooge had a very small fire, and the clerk's fire was so very much smaller that it looked like one coal. But he could replenish it, for Scrooge had kept the coal box in his own room. So surely as the clerk came in with a shovel, the master predicted that it would be necessary for them to part whenever the clerk put on his white comforter and tried to warm himself at the candle, in which effort not being a man of strong imagination, he failed."A merry Christmas, Uncle. God save you," said a cheerful voice. It was the voice of Scrooge's nephew who came upon him so quickly that this was the first intimation that he had heard of his approach. But said Scrooge, "Humbug." He had so heated himself with rapid walking in the fog and frost, this nephew of Scrooge's that he was all aglow. His face was ruddy and handsome. His eyes sparkled and his breath smoked again."Christmas a humbug, uncle?" said Scrooge's nephew."You don't mean that, I'm sure.""I do," said Scrooge."Merry Christmas. What right have you to be merry? What reason have you to be merry? You're poor enough." "Come now," said his nephew gaily."What right do you have to be dismal? What reason have you to be morose? You're rich enough." Scrooge having no better answer, ready to at the spur of the moment than plow and followed it up with "humbug." "Being cross, uncle," said his nephew."What else can I be?" Said his uncle."When I live in such a world of fools. Is this Merry Christmas out upon Merry Christmas. It's Christmas time to you. What a time for paying bills without money. A time for finding yourself a year older, but not an hour richer. A time for balancing your books and having them. Every item of them go round. Dozens of months presented dead against you. If I Could Work My Will. Every idiot who goes about the merry Christmas on his lips should be boiled with his own pudding and buried with a stake of Holly through his heart. He should.""Uncle!" said his nephew."Nephew!" said his uncle, sternly."Keep Christmas your way. Let me keep it mine." "Keep it," repeated Scrooge's nephew."But you don't keep it.""Let me leave it alone. Then," said Scrooge."Much good as it may do you. Much good hasit it ever done you?""There are many things from which I have derived good by which I have not profited. I daresay," said the nephew."Christmas among the rest. I am sure that I have always thought of Christmas time when it came round. Apart from the veneration do with its own sacred name in origin, if anything belonging to it can be apart from that as a good time a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time. The only time I know of in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem to be content to open their shut up hearts freely and to think of people below them as they are really fellow passengers to the grave, and not just a race of creatures bound on other journeys. And therefore, uncle, though it is never put a scrap of gold or silver in my pocket, I believe that it has done me good and will do me good. And I say God bless it." The clerk in the tank involuntarily applauded, coming immediately sensible of the propriety. He poked the fire and extinguished the last frail spark forever."Let me hear another sound from you, said Scrooge. And you'll keep your Christmas by losing your situation. You're quite a powerful speaker, sir," he added, turning to his nephew."I wonder that you don't go into Parliament.""Don't be angry, Uncle. Come dine with us tomorrow." Scrooge said that he would see him. Yes, indeed he did. He went the whole length of the expression and said that he would see him in that extremity first."But why?" Said Scrooge's nephew. "Why? Why did you get married?" Said Scrooge."Because I fell in love.""Because you fell in love?" Growled Scrooge, as if it were the only thing in the world more ridiculous than a merry Christmas."Good afternoon." "Hey, uncle. But you never came to see me before that happened. Why is it a reason for you not to come now?""Good afternoon," said Scrooge."I want nothing from you. I ask. Nothing from you. I cannot. We be friends.""Good afternoon," said Scrooge."I am sorry with all my heart to find you so resolute. We have never had any quarrel to which I have been a party. But I have made the trial in homage to Christmas. And I'll keep my Christmas humor to the last note. A merry Christmas, uncle.""Good afternoon," said Scrooge."And a happy New Year.""Good afternoon," said Scrooge. His nephew left the room without an angry word, notwithstanding, he stopped at the outer door to bestow the greetings of the season on the clerk, who, cold as he was, was warmer than Scrooge, for he returned them cordially. There's another fellow, muttered Scrooge, who overheard him by a clerk on 15 shillings a week and a wife in a family talking about a merry Christmas. All retired of bedlam, this lunatic and letting Scrooge's nephew out had let two other people in. They were portly, gentlemen, pleasant to behold, and now stood with their hats off in Scrooge's office. They had books and papers in their hands and bowed to him."Scrooge and Marley's, I believe," said one of the gentlemen, referring to his list. Have I the pleasure of addressing Mr. Scrooge or Mr. Marley?" "Mr. Marley has been dead these seven years," Scrooge said."He died seven years ago on this very night." We have no doubt his liberality is well represented by his surviving partner," said the gentleman, presenting his credentials. It certainly was, for they had been two kindred spirits at the Amis word "liberality." Scrooge frowned and shook his head and handed the credentials back."At this festive time of year, Mr. Scrooge," said, the gentleman taking a pen."It is more than usually desirable that we should make some slight provision for the poor and destitute who suffer greatly at this present time. Many thousands are in want of common necessities. Hundreds of thousands are in want of common comforts, sir.""Are there no prisons as Scrooge?" "Plenty of prisons," said the gentleman, laying his pen down."And union workhouses," demanded Scrooge."Are they still in operation?""Well, they are still," returned the gentlemen." wish I could say they were not. The treadmills and the poor law are in full vigor.""Then," said Scrooge."Well, both very busy, sir.""Well, I was afraid, from what you said at first, that something had occurred to stop them in their useful course," said Scrooge."I'm very glad to hear it," "Under the impression that they scarcely furnished Christian cheer of mind or body to the multitude," said the gentleman."A few of us are endeavoring to raise a fund by the poor. Some meat and drink and means of warmth. We choose this time because it is a time of all others when want is keenly felt and abundance rejoices. What shall I put you down for?""Nothing," Scrooge replied."Do you wish to be anonymous?""I wish to be left alone," said Scrooge. "Since you asked me what I wish. Gentlemen, that is my answer. I don't make merry myself at Christmas and I can't afford to make idle people merry. I help to support the establishments I have mentioned. They cost me enough and those who are badly off must go there.""Many can't go there. Many would rather die." "If they would rather die," said Scrooge "than they had better do it and decrease the surplus population. Besides, excuse me. I don't know that." "But, you might know it" observed the gentleman."It's not my business." Scrooge returned."Enough for a man to understand his own business and not to interfere with other people's. Mine occupies me, constantly. Good afternoon, gentlemen." Seeing clearly that it would be useless to pursue their point, the gentleman withdrew. Scrooge resumed his labors with an improved opinion of himself and in a more fastidious temper them as usual for him. Meanwhile, the fog and darkness thickened so that people ran about flaring links, procuring their services to go before horses and carriages to conduct them along their way. The ancient tower of the church, whose graceful bell was always peeping slyly down at scrooge out of the Gothic window in the wall, became invisible and struck the hours and quarters in the clouds with tremendous vibrations afterwards, as if its teeth were chattering in its frozen head, up there. The cold became intense in the main street at the corner of the court. Some laborers were repairing the gas pipes and had lighted a great fire in a brazier round which a party of ragged men and boys were gathered, warming their hands and winking their eyes before the blaze in rapture. Water plug being left in solitude, its overflowing, suddenly congealed and turned to misanthropic ice. The brightness of the shops where holly sprigs and berries crackled in the heat lamps of the windows made pale faces ruddy as they passed. Halters and grocers, trades became a splendid joke, a glorious pageant with which it was next to impossible to leave such dull principles as bargain in the sale had anything to do. The Lord Mayor in the stronghold of the mighty Mansion House, gave orders to his 50 cooks and butlers to keep Christmas as the Lord Mayor's household should, and even the little tailor, whom he had fined five shillings on the previous Monday, for being drunk and bloodthirsty in the streets, stirred up tomorrow's pudding in his garret while his lean wife and baby slid out to buy their beef. Foggy or yet and cold or cursing, searching, Biting. Cold. If the good St Dunstan had but nipped the evil spirits news with a touch of such weather at that instead of using his familiar weapons, then indeed he would have roared to lusty purpose. Owner of one scant young nose, gnawed and mumbled by the hungry cold. His bones are not by dogs, stooped down at Scrooge's keyhole to regale him with a Christmas carol. But at the first sound of "God bless you, merry gentlemen, nothing you dismay." Scrooge sees the ruler with such energy of action that. A singer fled in terror, leaving the keyhole to the fog and even more congenial frost. At length, the hour of shutting up the counting house arrived with ill will. Scrooge dismounted from his stool and tactically admitted to the fact to the expecting clerk in the tank who instantly snuffed his candle out and put on his hat."You'll want all day tomorrow, I suppose," said Scrooge."If quite convenient, sir." "It's not convenient," said Scrooge, "and it's not fair. If I was to stop half a crown for you'd think yourself ill used. I'll be bound." The clerk smiled faintly."And yet," said, Scrooge, "you don't think me ill used when I pay a day's wages for no work?" Clark observed that it was only once a year."A poor excuse for picking a man's pocket every 25th December," said Scrooge, buttoning his greatcoat to the chin."I suppose you must have the whole day. Be here all the early the next morning." The clerk promised that he would and Scrooge walked out with the ground. The office was closed in a twinkling, and the clerk, with the long arms of his white comforter dangling below his waist free, boasted no great coat and went down a slide in Cornhill at the end of one of the lane a boys 20 times to humor it being Christmas Eve, and then ran home to Camden Town as hard as he could pelt, to play at "blind man's bluff." Scrooge took his melancholy dinner in his usual melancholy tavern, and having read all the newspapers and beguiled the rest of the evening with his bankers' book, went home to bed. He lived in chambers, which had once belonged to his deceased partner. They were a gloomy suite of rooms, then a lowering pile of building up a yard, where it had so little business to be that one could scarcely help fancying it must have run up here as a young house playing hide and seek with the other houses and forgotten the way out again. It was old enough now and dreary enough for nobody lived in it but Scrooge. The other rooms being all let out for offices. The yard was so dark that even Scrooge, who knew its every stone, was feigned to groap with his hands, the fog and frost so hung above the black old gateway of the house, that it seemed as if the genius of weather sat in mournful meditation on the threshold. Now it is a fact. There is nothing at all particular about the knocker on the door, except that it was very large. It is also a fact that Scrooge had seen it night and morning during his whole residence in the place. Also that Scrooge had as little of what he called fancy about him as any man in the City of London, even including, which is a bold word, the corporation alderman in livery. Let it also be borne in mind that Scrooge had not bestowed one thought on Marley since his last mention of his seven years dead partner that afternoon. And then let any man explain to me, if he can, how it happened that Scrooge, having his key in the lock of the door, saw in the knocker without its undergoing any intermediate process of change. Not a knocker. But Marley's face was not in the impenetrable shadow, as other objects in the yard were, but had a dismal light about it. Like a bad lobster in a dark cellar. Not angry or ferocious, but looked at Scrooge as Marley used to look with ghostly spectacles turned up on his ghostly forehead. The hair was curiously stirred, as if by breath or hot air, and the eyes were wide open. They were perfectly motionless. That, and its livid color made it horrible, and its horror seemed to be in spite of the face and beyond its control, rather than part of its own expression. As Scrooge looked fixedly at the phenomenon. It was a knocker again. To say that he was not startled, that his blood was not conscious of a terrible sensation which had been a stranger from infancy would be untrue. But he put his hand upon the key he had relinquished, turned it straight away, walked in and lighted the candle . He did pause with a moment's irresolution before he shut the door, and he did look cautiously behind it at first, as if he expected to be terrified with the sight of Marley's pigtail sticking out of the hall. But there was nothing on the back of the door except the screws and nuts that held the knocker on. So he said "pfft" and closed it with a bang. The sound resounded through the house like thunder from every room above and every cask in the wine merchant's cellars below appeared to have a separate peal of echoes of its own. Scrooge was not a man to be frightened by echoes. He fastened the door, walked across the hall and up the stairs slowly to trimming his candle as he went. You may talk vaguely about driving a coach and six of a good flight of stairs or through a bad young act of parliament. But I mean to say to you that you might have gotten a hearse up that staircase and taken it broad wise with a splinter bar towards the wall and the door towards the balustrades and done it easy. There was plenty of width for that and room to spare, which is perhaps the reason why Scrooge thought he saw a locomotive hearse going on before him in the gloom. Half a dozen gas lamps out on the street wouldn't have lighted that entry too well. So you may suppose it was pretty dark with Scrooge's dip up Scrooge when not carrying a button for that, darkness is cheap and Scrooge liked it. But before he shut his heavy door, he walked through his rooms to see it was all right. He had just enough recollection of the face to desire to do that sitting room, bedroom, lumber room, all as they should be. Nobody under the table, nobody under the sofa. A small fire in the great spoon in basin ready. And the little saucepan of gruel. Scrooge had a cold in his head up on the hob. Nobody under the bed. Nobody under the bed. Nobody in the closet. Nobody in his dressing gown, which was hanging in a suspicious attitude against the wall lumber room as usual. Old fire guard, old shoes, 2 fish baskets, washing stand on three legs, and a poker. Quietly. Satisfied, he closed his door and locked himself in, double locked himself in, which was not his custom. Thus, secured against surprise, he took up his cravat, put on his dressing gown and slippers and his night cap, and sat down before the fire to take his gruel. He was a very low fire indeed. Nothing on such a bitter night. He was obliged to sit close to it, to brood over it, before he could extract one least sensation of warmth from such a handful of fuel. The fireplace was an old one built by some Dutch merchant long ago and paved all around with quaint Dutch tiles designed to illustrate the scriptures. There were Caines and Ables, Pharaoh's daughters, Queens of Sheba, angelic messengers descending through the air on clouds like feather beds, Abrahams, Balthezars, apostles putting off to sea in butter boats, hundreds of figures to attract his thoughts. And yet, that face of Marley, seven years dead, came like the ancient prophet's rod and swallowed up the hole as if each smooth tile had been a blanket first before he was still incredulous and fought against his senses."How now," said Scrooge, caustic and cold as ever."What do you want with me?" "Much" Marley's voice, no doubt about it."Who are you?""Ask me who I was.""Who were you then?" Said Scrooge, raising his voice."You're particular for a shade." He was going to say to a shade, but substituted this as more appropriate."In life. I was your partner. Jacob Marley." "Can you and you sit down?" as Scrooge, looking doubtfully at him?"I can" "Do it, then." Scrooge asked the question, but he didn't know whether a ghost so transparent might find himself in a condition to take a chair. But the ghost sat down on the opposite side of the fireplace as if he was quite used to it."You don't believe in me," observed the ghost."I don't," said Scrooge."What evidence would you have of my reality beyond that of your senses?" I don't know, said Scrooge."Why do you doubt your senses?""Because," said Scrooge,"a little thing affects them. A slight disorder of the stomach makes them cheat. You may be an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of an underdone potato is more of gravy than grave about you. Whatever you are." Scrooge was not in the habit of cracking jokes, nor did he feel in his heart by any means. Wag ish, then. The truth is that he tried to be smart as a means of display. Directing his own attention and keeping down his own terror for the Specter's voice disturbed the very marrow of his bones to sit, staring into those fixed glazed eyes in silence for a moment would play. Scrooge felt the very deuce of him. There was something very awful, too, when the specters being provided with an infernal atmosphere of its own, Scrooge could not feel it himself. But this was clearly the case. For though the ghost sat perfectly motionless, its hair and skirts and tassels were agitated by the hot vapor from an oven. "You see this toothpick?" said Scrooge, returning quickly to the charge for the reason just a sign and wishing, though it were only for a second to divert the vision's stony gaze from himself."I do," replied the ghost."You are not looking at it," said Scrooge."But, I see it," said the ghost,"notwithstanding.""Well," returned Scrooge."I have but to swallow this and be for the rest of my days, persecuted by a legion of goblins. All of my own creation. Humbug, I tell you, humbug." At this, the spirit raised a frightful cry and shook its chain with such dismal and appalling noise that Scrooge held on tight to his chair to save himself from falling into the swinging. But how much greater was his horror when the Phantom taking off the bandage around its head as if to wear indoors, its lower jaw dropped down to its breast. Scrooge fell upon his knees and clapped his hands to his face. He said, "Dreadful apparition. Why do you trouble me?""Man of the worldly mind?" Replied the ghost."Do you believe in me or not?""I do," said Scrooge."I must. I do. Spirits walk the earth. And why do they come to me?""It is required of every man," The ghost returned, "that the spirit within him should walk abroad among his fellow men and travel far and wide. And if the spirit goes not forth, in life, it is doomed to wander through the world. Oh, woe is me and witness what it cannot share, but might have shared on earth and turned to happiness, again." The specter raised a cry and shook its shadowy hands."You are fettered," said Scrooge, trembling."Tell me why?" "I wear the chain I forged in life," replied the ghost."I made it link by link and yard by yard. I girded on it of my own free will and, of my free will, I wore it. Is its pattern strange to you?" Scrooge trembled more and more."Or would you know, pursued the ghost. The weight and length of the strong coil you bear yourself. It was full, as heavy. And as long as this seven Christmases ago you have labored on it, since. it is a thunderous chain." Scrooge glanced about him on the floor in the expectation of finding himself surrounded by some near 50 or 60 fathoms of iron cable. But he could find nothing, Jacob, he said, imploring the old Jacob."Marley, tell me more. Speak comfort to me, Jacob.""I have none to give," the ghost replied."It comes from other regions, Ebenezer Scrooge, and is convened by other ministers, to other kinds of men. But, I can tell you what I would. Very little more is all permitted to me. I cannot rest. I cannot stay. I cannot linger anywhere. My spirit never walked beyond our counting house. Mark me! In life, my spirit never roved beyond the narrow limits of our money Changing hole and weary journeys lie before me. It was a habit with Scrooge whenever he became thoughtful to put his hands in his breeches pockets. Pondering on what the ghost had said, he did so now, but without lifting up his eyes or getting off his knees."You must have been very slow about it, Jacob," Scrooge observed, in a businesslike manner, with humility and slow, the ghost repeated."Seven years dead, Mr. Scrooge, and traveling all the time, the whole time," said the ghost."No rest, no peace." "Incessant torture of remorse." "You travel fast," said Scrooge."On the wings of the wind," replied the ghost."You might have seen a great quantity of ground in seven years," said Scrooge. The ghost, on hearing this, sent up another cry and clanked its chainsn so hideouslyn in the dead silence of the nightn that the ward would have been justified to inciting it as a nuisance."Oh, captive bound in double iron," cried the Phantom," not to know that any Christian spirit working kindly in its little sphere, whatever it may be, will find its mortal life too short for its vast means of usefulness not to. Know that no space of regret can make amends for one's life. Opportunity misused it. Such was I. Such was I." "But, you were a good man of business, Jacob," felted Scrooge, who now began to apply this to himself."Business?" cried the ghost, wringing its hands again."Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business. Charity, mercy, forbearance and benevolence were all my business. The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business." It held up its chain at arm's length, as if it were the cause of all its unavailing grief and flung it heavily upon the ground again."At this time of the rolling year," the specter said, "I suffer most. Why did I walk through crowds of fellow beings with my eyes turned down and never raise them to the blessed star which led the wise men to a poor abode? Were there no homes to which to light? That would have conducted me." Scrooge was very much dismayed to hear the specter going on at this rate and began to quake exceedingly."Hear me," cried the ghost."My time is nearly done.""I will," said Scrooge."But don't be hard upon me. Don't be flowery, Jacob." "Pray. How is it that I appear before you in a shape that you can see? I may not tell. I have sat here invisible beside you, many and many a day." It was not an agreeable idea. Scrooge shivered and wiped the perspiration from his brow."That is no light part of my penance," pursued the ghost."I am here tonight to warn you that you have yet a chance and hope of escaping my fate. A chance and hope of my procuring Ebenezer.""You were always a good friend to me," said Scrooge,"Thank you." "You will be haunted," resumed the ghost,"by three spirits." Scrooge's countenance fell almost as low as the ghost had done."Is is that the chance and hope? You mentioned Jacob?" in his faltering voice."It is," "I, I think I'd rather not." Said Scrooge."Without their visits," said the ghost, "You cannot hope to shun the path I tread. Expect the first tomorrow when the bell tolls. One." "Couldn't I take them all at once and have it over?? Jacob hinted Scrooge, that the second on the second night at the same hour, the third upon the next night, when the last stroke of 12 has ceased to vibrate."Look to see me no more. And look that for your own sake. You remember what has passed between us." when he had said these words. The specter took its wrapper from the table and bounded around his head as before. Scrooge knew this by the smart sound its teeth made. When the jaws were brought together by the bandage, he ventured to raise his eyes again and found a supernatural visitor, confronting him in an erect attitude with its chains wound over and about its own. The apparition walked backward from him, and every step it took, the window raised itself a little so that when the specter reached it, it was wide open. It beckoned Scrooge to approach, which he did, and when they were within two pieces of each other, Marley's ghost held up its hand, warning him to come no nearer, and Scrooge stopped not so much in obedience as in surprise and fear for the raising of his hand. He becomes sensible of confused noises in the air and concludes sounds, lamentation and regret weanlings in expressively sour falling self accusatory the specter after listening for a moment joined in the mournful dirge and floated out into the bleak, dark night. Scrooge followed to the window, desperate. In his curiosity, he looked out there was filled with phantoms, wandering hither and thither in restless haste and moaning as they did. Every one of them were chains like Marley's Ghost. Some few, they may be guilty. Governments were linked together. None were free. Many had been personally known to Scrooge in their lives and had been quite familiar with one old ghost in a some white waistcoat with a monstrous iron safe attached to his ankle. Piteously had been unable to assist a wretched woman with an infant whom it saw below upon a doorstep. The misery was with them all. Clearly they sought to interfere for good in human matters and had lost the power forever. When these creatures faded into mist or mist surrounded them. He could not tell, but they, in their spirit, voices faded together and the night became as it had been when he had walked home. We would like to thank the St Germain Donnelly family for the original Scone recipe that so much was built on and the opportunity to do so. There is so much love in our Little Falls Bakery family and that is eternal. If you would like to make a one time donation to the Pawtuxet General, we have a holiday fundraiser with a link in the show notes. You can always reach out to our email. Jess@PawtuxetGeneral.com. Let's see if you can scare me with a local ghost story. But most of all, we wish all of you all over the world the safest, most joyous and happiest of holidays. And there are a lot of them. So drive safe. This has been the Pawtuxet General a something for posterity production. Prerecorded in Pawtuxet