“Ghost of the Future!” he exclaimed, “I fear you more than any spectre I have seen. But as I know your purpose is to do me good, and as I hope to live to be another man from what I was, I am prepared to bear you company, and do it with a thankful heart. Will you not speak to me?”
It gave him no reply. The hand was pointed straight before them.
Dickens and Forster continued to go back and forth on Dickens’ relationship with his publisher. He wrote to Forster on November 19, “I was most horribly put out for a little while; for I had got up early to go at it, and was full of interest in what I had to do. But having eased my mind by that note to you, and taken a turn or two up and down the room, I went at it again, and soon got so interested that I blazed away till 9 last night; only stopping ten minutes for dinner! I suppose I wrote eight printed pages of Chuzzlewit yesterday. The consequence is that I could finish to-day, but am taking it easy, and making myself laugh very much.”
Returning to Carol, with the visitation of this grim ghost, showed Dickens at the height of his literary powers.