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Dickens, Charles

"The Haunted Man And The Ghosts Bargain"

All within the man bereft of what you have resigned,
is the same barren wilderness. Woe to such a man! Woe, tenfold,
to the nation that shall count its monsters such as this, lying
here, by hundreds and by thousands!"
Redlaw shrank, appalled, from what he heard.
"There is not," said the Phantom, "one of these - not one - but
sows a harvest that mankind MUST reap. From every seed of evil in
this boy, a field of ruin is grown that shall be gathered in, and
garnered up, and sown again in many places in the world, until
regions are overspread with wickedness enough to raise the waters
of another Deluge. Open and unpunished murder in a city's streets
would be less guilty in its daily toleration, than one such
spectacle as this."
It seemed to look down upon the boy in his sleep. Redlaw, too,
looked down upon him with a new emotion.
"There is not a father," said the Phantom, "by whose side in his
daily or his nightly walk, these creatures pass; there is not a
mother among all the ranks of loving mothers in this land; there is
no one risen from the state of childhood, but shall be responsible
in his or her degree for this enormity. There is not a country
throughout the earth on which it would not bring a curse. There is
no religion upon earth that it would not deny; there is no people
upon earth it would not put to shame.


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