I've always been confused by a portion of one dialog from "A Chistmas Carol"
I used to re-read Dickens' "Christmas Carol" yearly, from when I was a kid onward. it's always been one of my favorite pieces, but I never can help but be confused when Scrooge says - in his conversation with the charitable gentlemen - "Besides--excuse me--I don't know that." I've always assumed it's a genuine literary aposiopesis, somehow connected with Scrooge's immediately preceding comment about "surplus population"... then comes the response of "But you might know it" from one of the gentleman, indicating that it seems obvious to him what Scrooge was about to say. Well, the same has never been obvious to ME! What specifically are we to understand to be Scrooge's "THAT" and the gentleman's "IT"?
Am I thick? Every commentary/analysis of this dialog focuses either on the mechanism of character development, or the Malthusian socio-historical implications of the exchange... nobody addresses the actual verbiage. I just want to get a handle on WHAT is being said or implied, not WHY.
Any insights? What have I been missing?