Oh! But he was a tight-fisted hand at the grind-stone , Scrooge! A squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous , old sinner! Hard and sharp as flint , from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire; secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster . The cold within him froze his old features , nipped his pointed nose, shriveled his cheek, stiffened his gait; made his eyes red, his then lips blue and spoke out shrewdly in his grating voice . A frosty rime was on his head and on his eyebrows, and his wiry chin. He carried his own low temperature always about with him; he iced his office in the dog days ; and didn't thaw it one degree at Christmas.
