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By Charles Dickens

One wintry evening a keen north wind arose as it grew dark, and night came on with black and dismal looks. A bitter storm of sleet, dense and ice-cold, swept the wet streets, and rattled on the trembling windows. Sing-boards, shaken past endurance in their creaking frames, fell crashing on the pavement; old tottering chimneys reeled and staggered in the blast; and many a steeple rocked again that night, as though the earth were troubled.

It was not a time for those, who could by any means get light and warmth, to brave the fury of the weather. In coffee-houses of the better sort, guests crowded round the fire, forgot to be political, and told each other with a secret gladness that the blast grew fiercer every minute. Each humble tavern by the waterside had its group of uncouth figures round the hearth, who talked of vessels foundering at sea, and all the hands lost; related many a dismal tale of shipwreck and drowned men, and hoped that some they knew were safe, and shook their heads in doubt. In private dwellings, children clustered near the blaze; listening with timid pleasure to tales of ghosts and goblins, and tall figures clad in white standing by besides, and people who had gone to sleep in old churches and being overlooked had found themselves alone there at the dead hour of the night, until they shuddered at the thought of the dark roooms up-stairs, yet loved to hear the wind moan too, and hoped it would continue bravely. From time to time these happy in-door people stopped to listen, or one held up his finger and cried, “Hark!” And then above the rumbling in the chimney, and the fast pattering on the glass, was heard a wailing, rushing sound, which shook the walls as though a giant’s hand were on them; then a hoarse roar as if the sea had risen; then such a whirl and tumult that the air seemed mad and then, with a lengthened howl, the waves of wind swept on, and left a moment’s interval of rest.

Cheerily, though there were none abroad to see it, shone the May-pole Tavern light that evening Blessings on the deep-red, ruby-glowing-red, old curtains of the window, blending into one rich stream of brightness, fire an candle, meat, drink, and company, and gleaming like a jovial eye upon the bleak waste out of doors! Within, what carpet like its crunching sand, what music merry as its crackling logs, what perfume like its kithen’s dainty breach, what weather genial as its hearty warmth! Blessings on the old house, how sturdily it stood! How did the vexed wind chafe and roar about its stalwart roof; how did it pant and strive with its wide chimneys, which still poured forth from their hospitable throats great clouds of smoke, and puffed defiance in its face; how, above all, did it drive and rattle at the casement, emulous to extinguish that cheerful glow, which would not be put down and seemed the brighter for the conflict.