I'm not sure if I have read this story before, but I'm cerainly glad I read it this year. It's another of Dickens' ghostly Christmas tales, though this one is more about New Years. Once again, a man learns wonderful lessons about life at the instruction of ghosts, this time the spirits of chuch bells. The following is the final paragraph of the story:
"Had Trotty dreamed? Or, are his joys and sorrows, and the actors in them, but a dream; himself a dream; the teller of this tale a dreamer, waking but now? If it be so, O listener, dear to him in all his visions, try to bear in mind the stern realities from which these shadows come; and in your sphere - none is too wide, and none too limited for such an end - endeavour to correct, improve, and soften them. So may the New Year be a happy one to you, happy to many more whose happiness depends on you! So may each year be happier than the last, and not the meanest of our brethren or sisterhood debarred their rightful share, in what our Great Creator formed them to enjoy."
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