Hello and welcome to another unusual episode of My Time Capsule.

My name's Mike Fenton-Stevens, and as you probably know, I like to give you a pre-Christmas gift of a free recording of one of Charles Dickens' Christmas stories every year.

This year I've recorded The Battle of Life, a love story, and it's Dickens' 1846 novella, one of his less well-known,

but still a beautiful story nonetheless. It comes in three parts, each about an hour long,

and this is part two. Part one is already available, so if you missed it, you might want to

listen to that first. I hope you enjoy them. Merry Christmas.

Thank you. to listen to that first. I hope you enjoy them. Merry Christmas. Part the Second Snitchie and Craggs had a snug little office on the old battleground, where they drove a snug little business,

and fought a great many small-pitched battles for a great many contending parties.

Though it could hardly be said of these conflicts that they were running fights, for in truth they were generally proceeded at a stale's pace.

The part the firm had in them came so far within the general denomination that now they had a shot at this plaintiff, and now aimed a chop at that defendant, now made a heavy charge at an estate in

chancery, and now had some light skirmishing among an irregular body of small

debtors, just as the occasions served, and the enemy happened to present himself.

The Gazette was an important and profitable feature in some of their fields, and in fields of

greater renown, and in most of the actions wherein they showed their generalship, it was afterwards

observed by the combatants that they had had great difficulty in making each other out,

or in knowing with any degree of distinctness what they were about, in consequence at the vast

amount of smoke by which they were surrounded. The offices of Messer, Snitchie and Cragg, stood convenient with an open door down two

smooth steps in the marketplace, so that any angry farmer inclining towards hot water might

tumble into it at once.

Their special council chamber and hall of conference was an old back room upstairs, with a low, dark ceiling, which seemed to be knitting its brows glumily in the consideration of tangled points of law.

It was furnished with some high-backed leather chairs, garnished with great goggle-eyed brass nails, of which every here and there two or three had fallen out,

or had been picked out, perhaps, by the wandering thumbs and four fingers of bewildered clients.

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