A Christmas Carol | Page 2

church." Frontispiece
"A Merry Christmas, Uncle! God save you!" cried a cheerful voice. 14
To sit staring at those fixed glazed eyes in silence, for a moment, would
play, Scrooge felt, the very deuce with him. 26
"You recollect the way?" inquired the spirit. "Remember it!" cried
Scrooge, with fervour; "I could walk it blindfold." 36
"Why, it's Ali Baba!" Scrooge exclaimed in ecstasy. "It's dear old
honest Ali Baba!" 38

A CHRISTMAS CAROL
In Prose
BEING A GHOST STORY OF CHRISTMAS

STAVE ONE
MARLEY'S GHOST

Marley was dead, to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that.
The register of his burial was signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the
undertaker, and the chief mourner. Scrooge signed it. And Scrooge's
name was good upon 'Change for anything he chose to put his hand to.
Old Marley was as dead as a door-nail.
Mind! I don't mean to say that I know, of my own knowledge, what
there is particularly dead about a door-nail. I might have been inclined,
myself, to regard a coffin-nail as the deadest piece of ironmongery in
the trade. But the wisdom of our ancestors is in the simile; and my
unhallowed hands shall not disturb it, or the Country's done for. You
will, therefore, permit me to repeat, emphatically, that Marley was as
dead as a door-nail.
Scrooge knew he was dead? Of course he did. How could it be
otherwise? Scrooge and he were partners for I don't know how many
years. Scrooge was his sole executor, his sole administrator, his sole
assign, his sole residuary legatee, his sole friend, and sole mourner.
And even Scrooge was not so dreadfully cut up by the sad event, but
that he was an excellent man of business on the very day of the funeral,
and solemnised it with an undoubted bargain.
The mention of Marley's funeral brings me back to the point I started
from. There is no doubt that Marley was dead. This must be distinctly
understood, or nothing wonderful can come of the story I am going to
relate. If we were not perfectly convinced that Hamlet's Father died
before the play began, there would be nothing more remarkable in his
taking a stroll at night, in an easterly wind, upon his own ramparts, than
there would be in any other middle-aged gentleman rashly turning out
after dark in a breezy spot--say St. Paul's Church-yard, for
instance--literally to astonish his son's weak mind.
Scrooge never painted out Old Marley's name. There it stood, years
afterwards, above the warehouse door: Scrooge and Marley. The firm
was known as Scrooge and Marley. Sometimes people new to the
business called Scrooge Scrooge, and sometimes Marley, but he
answered to both names. It was all the same to him.

Oh! but he was a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone, 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,
shrivelled his cheek, stiffened his gait; made his eyes red, his thin 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.
External heat and cold had little influence on Scrooge. No warmth
could warm, no wintry weather chill him. No wind that blew was
bitterer than he, no falling snow was more intent upon its purpose, no
pelting rain less open to entreaty. Foul weather didn't know where to
have him. The heaviest rain, and snow, and hail, and sleet could boast
of the advantage over him in only one respect. They often "came down"
handsomely and Scrooge never did.
Nobody ever stopped him in the street to say, with gladsome looks,
"My dear Scrooge, how are you? When will you come to see me?" No
beggars implored him to bestow a trifle, no children asked him what it
was o'clock, no man or woman ever once in all his life inquired the way
to such and such a place, of Scrooge. Even the blind men's dogs
appeared to know him; and, when they saw him coming on, would tug
their owners into doorways and up courts; and then would wag their
tails as though they said, "No eye at all is better than an evil eye, dark
master!"
But what did Scrooge care? It was the very thing he liked. To edge his
way along the crowded paths of life, warning all human sympathy to
keep its distance, was what the