Published: February 26, 2008

Please Sir, May I Have some More?

During the past holiday season there was surely one replay of the nostalgic Charles Dickens’ classic “A Christmas Carol” on a television set near you. In that tale, the fate of one crippled boy and his family rests on the generosity of the miserly Scrooge.

Though the conclusion focuses on the redemption of the greedy, lonely Scrooge, my thoughts have been on Tim and his family.

In the England of the 1830s and 40s, Dickens, who had suffered poverty when his father was sent to debtor’s prison, wrote stories that leapt the huge divide between the rich and poor of the 19th century. His poor protagonists always benefited, through a stroke of luck, from...