"Now, ladies and gentlemen," said the voice, "look well to the illuminated screen. What do you see now?"
"Nothing!" was the universal and indignant answer.
"I thought so," replied the voice. "Yet you have before you a miser's soul magnified five thousand times; a million such would not produce an image on the screen."
The illuminated disk grew dark and disappeared; then a lurid light seemed to fill all space; and soon huge billows of flames rolled upward, and writhed and twisted together like a myriad of gigantic serpents. Shrieks and howls of anguish issued from the fiery mass, but above all was heard the startling clangor of a bell.
"Halloo! who's this?" cried a voice that evidently issued from a set of powerful human lungs. The miser felt himself roughly shaken by the shoulder, and awoke.
"What's the noise?—fire?" he asked; for the bell he had heard in his dream now jarred upon his waking senses.
"Fire! no!" said the man who had awakened him—the butcher of the village. "It's the boys ringing in the new year. By the way, I wish you a happy new year, Mr. Wurm."
"A happy new year, Mr. Wurm," said the schoolmaster for he, too, was present.
"A happy new year," said Farmer Harrowby.
"And a happy new year" chorused a dozen other voices. It was great fun wishing a miser a happy new year.