2. Select a list of words and phrases that suggest happiness. How does Dickens make you wish you were at the Cratchit feast?
3. Appoint a committee of three from your class to report fully on Dickens's life and writings. Take brief notes on their report.
Twelve o'clock.--A knock at my door; a poor girl comes in and greets me by name. At first I do not recall her, but she looks at me and smiles. Ah, it is Paulette! But it is nearly a year since I have seen her, and Paulette is no longer the same; the other day she was 5 a child; to-day she is almost a young woman.
Paulette is thin, pale, and miserably clad; but she has always the same open and straightforward look--the same mouth, smiling at every word as if to plead for sympathy--the same voice, timid yet caressing. Paulette is not 10 pretty--she is even thought plain; as for me, I think her charming. Perhaps that is not on her account but on my own. Paulette is a part of one of my happiest recollections.
It was the evening of a public holiday. Our principal buildings were lighted with festoons of fire, a thousand flags floated in the night wind, and the fireworks had just shot forth their jets of flame in the midst of the _Champ de Mars_. Suddenly one of those unaccountable panics which 5 seize a multitude falls upon the dense crowd; they cry out, they rush on headlong; the weaker ones fall and the frightened crowd tramples them down in its convulsive struggles. Escaping from the confusion by a miracle, I was hastening away when the cries of a perishing child 10 arrested me; I went back into that human chaos and after unheard-of exertions I brought Paulette away at the peril of my life.
That was two years ago; since then I had seen the child only at long intervals and had almost forgotten her; but 15 Paulette had a grateful heart, and she came at the beginning of the year to bring me her good wishes. She brought me, too, a wallflower in full bloom; she herself had planted and reared it; it was something that belonged wholly to herself, for it was because of her care, her perseverance, 20 and her patience that it was hers.
The wallflower had grown in a common pot; but Paulette, who is a bandbox maker, had put it into a case of varnished paper ornamented with arabesques. These might have been in better taste, but I felt the good will 25 none the less.