A CHRISTMAS CAROL C01 Chapter 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 ware house 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 blindmen 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 knowing ones call nuts to Scrooge Once upon a time of all the good days in the year on Christmas Eve old Scrooge sat busy in his counting house It was cold bleak biting weather foggy withal and he could hear the people in the court outside go wheezing up and down beating their hands upon their breasts and stamping their feet upon the pavement stones to warm them The city clocks had only just gone three but it was quite dark already it had not been light all day and candles were flaring in the windows of the neighbouring offices like ruddy smears upon the palpable brown air The fog came pouring in at every chink and keyhole and was so dense without that although the court was of the narrowest the houses opposite were mere phantoms To see the dingy cloud come drooping down obscuring everything one might have thought that Nature lived hard by and was brewing on a large scale The door of Scrooge s counting house was open that he might keep his eye upon his clerk who in a dismal little cell beyond a sort of tank was copying letters Scrooge had a very small fire but the clerk s fire was so ve