[7] A ChristmasCarol

In Prose being

A Ghost Story of Christmas

Stave I
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 choseto 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 ofironmongery in the trade. But the wisdom of our ancestors is in thesimile; and myunhallowed hands shall not disturb it, or the[8] Country’sdone 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 soleexecutor, his sole administrator, his soleassign, his soleresiduary legatee, his sole friend, and sole mourner. And even Scrooge was not so dreadfullycut up by the sad event, but that he was an excellent man of business on the very day of the funeral, andsolemnised 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 ownramparts, than there would be in any other middle-aged gentleman rashly turning out after dark in a breezy spot – say Saint Paul’s Churchyard for instance – literally to astonish his son’s weak mind.

Scrooge never painted out Old Marley’s name. There it[9] 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 atight-fisted hand at thegrindstone. Scrooge! a squeezing,wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching,covetous, old sinner! Hard and sharp asflint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire; secret, andself-contained, and solitary as an oyster. The cold within him froze his old features,nipped his pointed nose,shrivelled his cheek, stiffened