stave 1

• 'i am sure i have always thought of christmas time when it has come around [...] as a good time: a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time: the only time i know of, in the long calendar of the year, when mean and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys'