"He instinctively can find the shining greatness of our American culture and does a good job of highlighting it (although he also does have those rare lapses when he writes about hockey, but that is something caused by impurities in the Eastern waters or something)." Erik Keilholtz
Under the patronage of St. Tammany
Mark C. N. Sullivan is an editor at a Massachusetts university. He is married and the father of three children. Email
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.
A few scenes in the Christmas viewing canon I find unfailingly moving, no matter how many times I've seen them. One is Harry Bailey's toast to his big brother George.
Others, in the 1951 Alastair Sim version of Christmas Carol, are when the tormented spirits seek to interfere for good but cannot; when Scrooge sees again the beloved sister he lost; and when the jovial Ghost of Christmas Present reveals the children Ignorance and Want.
John Leech's original illustrations of the departed usurers and of Ignorance and Want may be seen at the Christmas Carol page of David Perdue's Dickens site. For images from film versions of Christmas Carol over the years, see this gallery.
![[SMMMHDH]](http://www.mgilleland.com/music/smmmhdh.png){kind=small}
