The Complete Christmas Books and Stories. A to Z Classics

Chapter 7 — Picking Up the Tinker

       Somebody’s Luggage

       Chapter 1 — His Leaving It Till Called For

       Chapter 2 — His Boots

       Chapter 3 — His Brown-Paper Parcel

       Chapter 4 — His Wonderful End

       Mrs. Lirriper’s Lodgings

       Chapter 1 — How Mrs. Lirriper Carried on the Business

       Chapter 2 — How the Parlours Added a Few Words

       Mrs. Lirriper’s Legacy

       Chapter 1 — Mrs. Lirriper Relates How She Went On, and Went Over

       Chapter 2 — Mrs. Lirriper Relates How Jemmy Topped Up

       Doctor Marigold

       Mugby Junction

       Chapter 1 — Barbox Brothers

       Chapter 2 — Barbox Brothers and Co.

       Chapter 3 — The Boy at Mugby

       No Thoroughfare

       The Overture

       Act 1

       The Curtain Rises

       Enter the Housekeeper

       The Housekeeper Speaks

       New Characters on the Scene

       Exit Wilding

       Act 2

       Vendale Makes Love

       Vendale Makes Mischief

       Act 3

       In the Valley

       On the Mountain

       Act 4

       The Clock-lock

       Obenreizer’s Victory

       The Curtain Falls

      A Christmas Carol

      First published : 1843

       Stave 1: Marley’s Ghost

       Stave 2: The First of the Three Spirits

       Stave 3: The Second of the Three Spirits

       Stave 4: The Last of the Spirits

       Stave 5: The End of It

Stave 1: 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 Saint Paul’s Churchyard 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 grind-stone, 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