{"id":242,"date":"2014-06-17T22:39:13","date_gmt":"2014-06-17T22:39:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/opentextbc.ca\/englishliterature\/?post_type=chapter&p=242"},"modified":"2019-07-04T22:26:00","modified_gmt":"2019-07-04T22:26:00","slug":"a-christmas-carol-stave-1","status":"publish","type":"chapter","link":"https:\/\/opentextbc.ca\/englishliterature\/chapter\/a-christmas-carol-stave-1\/","title":{"raw":"A Christmas Carol: Stave 1","rendered":"A Christmas Carol: Stave 1"},"content":{"raw":"

Marley's Ghost<\/h1>\r\nMarley 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[footnote]\"Change\": a place of (financial or commercial) exchange, as in the King's or Queen's Exchange (1601); a money changer's office (1569); the \"Burse\" or Exchange built in London by Sir Thomas Gresham in 1566 received from Queen Elizabeth I the name of the Royal Exchange.[\/footnote], for anything he chose to put his hand to.\r\n\r\nOld Marley was as dead as a door-nail.\r\n\r\nMind! I don\u2019t 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\u2019s done for. You will therefore permit me to repeat, emphatically, that Marley was as dead as a door-nail.\r\n\r\nScrooge knew he was dead? Of course he did. How could it be otherwise? Scrooge and he were partners for I don\u2019t 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.\r\n\r\nThe mention of Marley\u2019s 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\u2019s 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 \u2013 say Saint Paul\u2019s Churchyard for instance \u2013 literally to astonish his son\u2019s weak mind.\r\n\r\nScrooge never painted out Old Marley\u2019s 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.\r\n\r\nOh! 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\u2019t thaw it one degree at Christmas.\r\n\r\nExternal 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\u2019t 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[footnote]\u201cto come down\u201d: slang, \u201cto give money.\u201d[\/footnote]\u00a0handsomely, and Scrooge never did.\r\n\r\nNobody ever stopped him in the street to say, with gladsome looks, \u2018My dear Scrooge, how are you? When will you come to see me?\u2019 No beggars implored him to bestow a trifle, no children asked him what it was o\u2019clock, 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\u2019s 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, \u2018No eye at all is better than an evil eye, dark master!\u2019\r\n\r\nBut 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 \u2018nuts\u2019[footnote]\u201cnuts to someone\u201d: slang, a source of pleasure.[\/footnote]\u00a0to Scrooge.\r\n\r\nOnce upon a time \u2013 of all the good days in the year, on Christmas Eve \u2013 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 \u2013 it had not been light all day \u2013 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.\r\n\r\nThe door of Scrooge\u2019s counting-house[footnote]The office in which the accounts and money of a business are kept.[\/footnote]\u00a0was 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\u2019s fire was so very much smaller that it looked like one coal. But he couldn\u2019t replenish it, for Scrooge kept the coal-box in his own room; and so surely as the clerk came in with the shovel, the master predicted that it would be necessary for them to part. Wherefore the clerk put on his white comforter, and tried to warm himself at the candle; in which effort, not being a man of a strong imagination, he failed.\r\n\r\n\u2018A merry Christmas, uncle! God save you!\u2019 cried a cheerful voice. It was the voice of Scrooge\u2019s nephew, who came upon him so quickly that this was the first intimation he had of his approach.\r\n\r\n\u2018Bah!\u2019 said Scrooge, \u2018Humbug[footnote]A hoax or sham.[\/footnote]!\u2019\r\n\r\nHe had so heated himself with rapid walking in the fog and frost, this nephew of Scrooge\u2019s, that he was all in a glow; his face was ruddy and handsome; his eyes sparkled, and his breath smoked again.\r\n\r\n\u2018Christmas a humbug, uncle!\u2019 said Scrooge\u2019s nephew. \u2018You don\u2019t mean that, I am sure?\u2019\r\n\r\n\u2018I do,\u2019 said Scrooge. \u2018Merry Christmas! What right have you to be merry? What reason have you to be merry? You\u2019re poor enough.\u2019\r\n\r\n\u2018Come, then,\u2019 returned the nephew gaily. \u2018What right have you to be dismal? What reason have you to be morose? You\u2019re rich enough.\u2019\r\n\r\nScrooge having no better answer ready on the spur of the moment, said, \u2018Bah!\u2019 again; and followed it up with \u2018Humbug!\u2019\r\n\r\n\u2018Don\u2019t be cross, uncle,\u2019 said the nephew.\r\n\r\n\u2018What else can I be,\u2019 returned the uncle, \u2018when I live in such a world of fools as this? Merry Christmas! Out upon merry Christmas. What\u2019s Christmas time to you but a time for paying bills without money; a time for finding yourself a year older, but not an hour richer; a time for balancing your books and having every item in them through a round dozen of months presented dead against you? If I could work my will,\u2019 said Scrooge indignantly,\u2019every idiot who goes about with \u2018Merry Christmas\u2019 on his lips, should be boiled with his own pudding, and buried with a stake of holly through his heart. He should!\u2019\r\n\r\n\u2018Uncle!\u2019 pleaded the nephew.\r\n\r\n\u2018Nephew!\u2019 returned the uncle, sternly, \u2018keep Christmas in your own way, and let me keep it in mine.\u2019\r\n\r\n\u2018Keep it!\u2019 repeated Scrooge\u2019s nephew. \u2018But you don\u2019t keep it.\u2019\r\n\r\n\u2018Let me leave it alone, then,\u2019 said Scrooge. \u2018Much good may it do you! Much good it has ever done you!\u2019\r\n\r\n\u2018There are many things from which I might have derived good, by which I have not profited, I dare say,\u2019 returned the nephew. \u2018Christmas among the rest. But I am sure I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round-- apart from the veneration due to its sacred name and origin, if anything belonging to it can be apart from that--as a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time; the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys. And therefore, uncle, though it has never put a scrap of gold or silver in my pocket, I believe that it has done me good, and will do me good; and I say, God bless it!\u2019\r\n\r\nThe clerk in the tank involuntarily applauded. Becoming immediately sensible of the impropriety, he poked the fire, and extinguished the last frail spark for ever.\r\n\r\n\u2018Let me hear another sound from you,\u2019 said Scrooge, \u2018and you\u2019ll keep your Christmas by losing your situation[footnote]Job, position.[\/footnote]! You\u2019re quite a powerful speaker, sir,\u2019 he added, turning to his nephew. \u2018I wonder you don\u2019t go into Parliament.\r\n\r\n\u2018Don\u2019t be angry, uncle. Come! Dine with us tomorrow.\u2019\r\n\r\nScrooge said that he would see him--yes, indeed he did. He went the whole length of the expression, and said that he would see him in that extremity first.\r\n\r\n\u2018But why?\u2019 cried Scrooge\u2019s nephew. \u2018Why?\u2019\r\n\r\n\u2018Why did you get married?\u2019 said Scrooge.\r\n\r\n\u2018Because I fell in love.\u2019\r\n\r\n\u2018Because you fell in love!\u2019 growled Scrooge, as if that were the only one thing in the world more ridiculous than a merry Christmas. \u2018Good afternoon!\u2019\r\n\r\n\u2018Nay, uncle, but you never came to see me before that happened. Why give it as a reason for not coming now?\u2019\r\n\r\n\u2018Good afternoon,\u2019 said Scrooge.\r\n\r\n\u2018I want nothing from you; I ask nothing of you; why cannot we be friends?\u2019\r\n\r\n'Good afternoon,\u2019 said Scrooge.\r\n\r\n\u2018I am sorry, with all my heart, to find you so resolute. We have never had any quarrel, to which I have been a party. But I have made the trial in homage to Christmas, and I\u2019ll keep my Christmas humour to the last. So A Merry Christmas, uncle!\u2019\r\n\r\n\u2018Good afternoon.\u2019 said Scrooge.\r\n\r\n\u2018And A Happy New Year!\u2019\r\n\r\n\u2018Good afternoon!\u2019 said Scrooge.\r\n\r\nHis nephew left the room without an angry word, notwithstanding. He stopped at the outer door to bestow the greeting of the season on the clerk, who, cold as he was, was warmer than Scrooge; for he returned them cordially.\r\n\r\n\u2018There\u2019s another fellow,\u2019 muttered Scrooge; who overheard him: \u2018my clerk, with fifteen shillings a week, and a wife and family, talking about a merry Christmas. I\u2019ll retire to Bedlam.'[footnote]A lunatic hospital endowed by Henry VIII in 1547, derived from St. Mary of Bethlehem Hospital, which took in lunatics as early as 1377.[\/footnote]\r\n\r\nThe clerk, in letting Scrooge\u2019s nephew out, had let two other people in. They were portly gentlemen, pleasant to behold, and now stood, with their hats off, in Scrooge\u2019s office. They had books and papers in their hands, and bowed to him.\r\n\r\n\u2018Scrooge and Marley\u2019s, I believe,\u2019 said one of the gentlemen, referring to his list. \u2018Have I the pleasure of addressing Mr Scrooge, or Mr Marley?\u2019\r\n\r\n\u2018Mr Marley has been dead these seven years,\u2019 Scrooge replied. \u2018He died seven years ago, this very night.\u2019\r\n\r\n\u2018We have no doubt his liberality is well represented by his surviving partner,\u2019 said the gentleman, presenting his credentials.\r\n\r\nIt certainly was, for they had been two kindred spirits. At the ominous word liberality, Scrooge frowned, and shook his head, and handed the credentials back.\r\n\r\n\u2018At this festive season of the year, Mr Scrooge,\u2019 said the gentleman, taking up a pen, \u2018it is more than usually desirable that we should make some slight provision for the Poor and destitute, who suffer greatly at the present time. Many thousands are in want of common necessaries; hundreds of thousands are in want of common comforts, sir.\u2019\r\n\r\n\u2018Are there no prisons?\u2019 asked Scrooge.\r\n\r\n\u2018Plenty of prisons,\u2019 said the gentleman, laying down the pen again.\r\n\r\n\u2018And the Union workhouses.[footnote]Under the Poor Law Amendment Act<\/em> of 1834, workhouses for the reception of the destitute were set up by 21 administrative districts in England and Wales. Notorious for denying civil liberties, they often separated family members and destroyed human dignity. As a result, most of the poorest people went to great lengths to avoid this degrading solution.[\/footnote]\u2019 demanded Scrooge. \u2018Are they still in operation?\u2019\r\n\r\n\u2018They are. Still,\u2019 returned the gentleman,\u2019 I wish I could say they were not.\u2019\r\n\r\n\u2018The Treadmill and the Poor Law are in full vigour, then?\u2019 said Scrooge.\r\n\r\n\u2018Both very busy, sir.\u2019\r\n\r\n\u2018Oh. I was afraid, from what you said at first, that something had occurred to stop them in their useful course,\u2019 said Scrooge. \u2018I\u2019m very glad to hear it.\u2019\r\n\r\n\u2018Under the impression that they scarcely furnish Christian cheer of mind or body to the multitude,\u2019 returned the gentleman, \u2018a few of us are endeavouring to raise a fund to buy the Poor some meat and drink, and means of warmth. We choose this time, because it is a time, of all others, when Want is keenly felt, and Abundance rejoices. What shall I put you down for?\u2019\r\n\r\n\u2018Nothing!\u2019 Scrooge replied.\r\n\r\n\u2018You wish to be anonymous?\u2019\r\n\r\n\u2018I wish to be left alone,\u2019 said Scrooge. \u2018Since you ask me what I wish, gentlemen, that is my answer. I don\u2019t make merry myself at Christmas and I can\u2019t afford to make idle people merry. I help to support the establishments I have mentioned--they cost enough; and those who are badly off must go there.\u2019\r\n\r\n\u2018Many can\u2019t go there; and many would rather die.\u2019\r\n\r\n\u2018If they would rather die,\u2019 said Scrooge, \u2018they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population[footnote]Since the first appearance of Thomas Malthus\u2019s Essay on the Principle of Population<\/em> in 1803, concern grew that Britain had too many mouths to feed. See Malthus: \u201cA man who is born into a world already possessed, if he cannot get subsistence from his parents, on whom he has a just demand, and if society do not want his labour, has no claim of right<\/em> to the smallest portion of food, and, in fact, has no business to be where he is. At nature\u2019s mighty feast there is no vacant cover for him. She tells him to be gone\u2026\"(503).[\/footnote]. Besides--excuse me--I don\u2019t know that.\u2019\r\n\r\n\u2018But you might know it,\u2019 observed the gentleman.\r\n\r\n\u2018It\u2019s not my business,\u2019 Scrooge returned. \u2018It\u2019s enough for a man to understand his own business, and not to interfere with other people\u2019s. Mine occupies me constantly. Good afternoon, gentlemen!\u2019\r\n\r\nSeeing clearly that it would be useless to pursue their point, the gentlemen withdrew. Scrooge resumed his labours with an improved opinion of himself, and in a more facetious temper than was usual with him.\r\n\r\nMeanwhile the fog and darkness thickened so, that people ran about with flaring links, proffering their services to go before horses in carriages, and conduct them on their way. The ancient tower of a church, whose gruff old bell was always peeping slily down at Scrooge out of a gothic window in the wall, became invisible, and struck the hours and quarters in the clouds, with tremulous vibrations afterwards as if its teeth were chattering in its frozen head up there. The cold became intense. In the main street, at the corner of the court, some labourers were repairing the gas-pipes, and had lighted a great fire in a brazier, round which a party of ragged men and boys were gathered: warming their hands and winking their eyes before the blaze in rapture. The water-plug being left in solitude, its overflowing sullenly congealed, and turned to misanthropic ice. The brightness of the shops where holly sprigs and berries crackled in the lamp heat of the windows, made pale faces ruddy as they passed. Poulterers\u2019 and grocers\u2019 trades became a splendid joke: a glorious pageant, with which it was next to impossible to believe that such dull principles as bargain and sale had anything to do. The Lord Mayor, in the stronghold of the might Mansion House, gave orders to his fifty cooks and butlers to keep Christmas as a Lord Mayor\u2019s household should; and even the little tailor, whom he had fined five shillings on the previous Monday for being drunk and bloodthirsty in the streets, stirred up tomorrow\u2019s pudding in his garret, while his lean wife and the baby sallied out to buy the beef.\r\n\r\nFoggier yet, and colder. Piercing, searching, biting cold. If the good Saint Dunstan[footnote]St. Dunstan (924-988). Patron saint of smiths. Legend recounts that he clamped red hot tongs on the devil\u2019s nose.[\/footnote]\u00a0had but nipped the Evil Spirit\u2019s nose with a touch of such weather as that, instead of using his familiar weapons, then indeed he would have roared to lusty purpose. The owner of one scant young nose, gnawed and mumbled by the hungry cold as bones are gnawed by dogs, stooped down at Scrooge\u2019s keyhole to regale him with a Christmas carol: but at the first sound of\r\n\r\n\u2018God bless you, merry gentleman.\r\n\r\nMay nothing you dismay!\u2019\r\n\r\nScrooge seized the ruler with such energy of action, that the singer fled in terror, leaving the keyhole to the fog and even more congenial frost.\r\n\r\nAt length the hour of shutting up the counting-house arrived. With an ill-will Scrooge dismounted from his stool, and tacitly admitted the fact to the expectant clerk in the Tank, who instantly snuffed his candle out, and put on his hat.\r\n\r\n\u2018You\u2019ll want all day tomorrow, I suppose?\u2019 said Scrooge.\r\n\r\n\u2018If quite convenient, sir.\u2019\r\n\r\n\u2018It\u2019s not convenient,\u2019 said Scrooge, \u2018and it\u2019s not fair. If I was to stop half-a-crown for it, you\u2019d think yourself ill-used, I\u2019ll be bound?\u2019\r\n\r\nThe clerk smiled faintly.\r\n\r\n\u2018And yet,\u2019 said Scrooge, \u2018you don\u2019t think me ill-used, when I pay a day\u2019s wages for no work.\u2019\r\n\r\nThe clerk observed that it was only once a year.\r\n\r\n\u2018A poor excuse for picking a man\u2019s pocket every twenty-fifth of December!\u2019 said Scrooge, buttoning his great-coat to the chin. \u2018But I suppose you must have the whole day. Be here all the earlier next morning.\u2019\r\n\r\nThe clerk promised that he would; and Scrooge walked out with a growl. The office was closed in a twinkling, and the clerk, with the long ends of his white comforter dangling below his waist (for he boasted no great-coat), went down a slide on Cornhill, at the end of a lane of boys, twenty times, in honour of its being Christmas Eve, and then ran home to Camden Town as hard as he could pelt, to play at blindman\u2019s buff.\r\n\r\nScrooge took his melancholy dinner in his usual melancholy tavern; and having read all the newspapers, and beguiled the rest of the evening with his banker\u2019s-book, went home to bed. He lived in chambers which had once belonged to his deceased partner. They were a gloomy suite of rooms, in a lowering pile of building up a yard, where it had so little business to be, that one could scarcely help fancying it must have run there when it was a young house, playing at hide-and-seek with other houses, and forgotten the way out again. It was old enough now, and dreary enough, for nobody lived in it but Scrooge, the other rooms being all let out as offices. The yard was so dark that even Scrooge, who knew its every stone, was fain to grope with his hands. The fog and frost so hung about the black old gateway of the house, that it seemed as if the Genius of the Weather sat in mournful meditation on the threshold.\r\n\r\nNow, it is a fact, that there was nothing at all particular about the knocker on the door, except that it was very large. It is also a fact, that Scrooge had seen it, night and morning, during his whole residence in that place; also that had as little of what is called fancy[footnote]Imagination. In Hard Times<\/em> (1854), Dickens\u2019s satire on the overly materialistic philosophy of certain political economists, fancy was discouraged in favour of facts. See esp., HT<\/em>, I, 2.[\/footnote]\u00a0about him as any man in the city of London, even including--which is a bold word--the corporation, aldermen, and livery. Let it also be borne in mind that Scrooge had not bestowed one thought on Marley, since his last mention of his seven-year\u2019s dead partner that afternoon. And then let any man explain to me, if he can, how it happened that Scrooge, having his key in the lock of the door, saw in the knocker, without its undergoing any intermediate process of change-not a knocker, but Marley\u2019s face.\r\n\r\nMarley\u2019s face. It was not in impenetrable shadow as the other objects in the yard were, but had a dismal light about it, like a bad lobster in a dark cellar. It was not angry or ferocious, but looked at Scrooge as Marley used to look: with ghostly spectacles turned up on its ghostly forehead. The hair was curiously stirred, as if by breath or hot air; and, though the eyes were wide open, they were perfectly motionless. That, and its livid colour, made it horrible; but its horror seemed to be in spite of the face and beyond its control, rather than a part of its own expression.\r\n\r\nAs Scrooge looked fixedly at this phenomenon, it was a knocker again.\r\n\r\nTo say that he was not startled, or that his blood was not conscious of a terrible sensation to which it had been a stranger from infancy, would be untrue. But he put his hand upon the key he had relinquished, turned it sturdily, walked in, and lighted his candle.\r\n\r\nHe did<\/em> pause, with a moment\u2019s irresolution, before he shut the door; and he did<\/em> look cautiously behind it first, as if he half expected to be terrified with the sight of Marley\u2019s pigtail sticking out into the hall. But there was nothing on the back of the door, except the screws and nuts that held the knocker on, so he said \u2019Pooh, pooh,\u2019 and closed it with a bang.\r\n\r\nThe sound resounded through the house like thunder. Every room above, and every cask in the wine-merchant\u2019s cellars below, appeared to have a separate peal of echoes of its own. Scrooge was not a man to be frightened by echoes. He fastened the door, and walked across the hall, and up the stairs; slowly too: trimming his candle as he went.\r\n\r\nYou may talk vaguely about driving a coach-and-six up a good old flight of stairs, or through a bad young Act of Parliament; but I mean to say you might have got a hearse up that staircase, and taken it broadwise, with the splinter-bar towards the wall and the door towards the balustrades: and done it easy. There was plenty of width for that, and room to spare; which is perhaps the reason why Scrooge thought he saw a locomotive hearse going on before him in the gloom. Half-a-dozen gas-lamps out of the street wouldn\u2019t have lighted the entry too well, so you may suppose that it was pretty dark with Scrooge\u2019s dip.\r\n\r\nUp Scrooge went, not caring a button for that. Darkness is cheap, and Scrooge liked it. But before he shut his heavy door, he walked through his rooms to see that all was right. He had just enough recollection of the face to desire to do that.\r\n\r\nSitting-room, bed-room, lumber-room[footnote]A room where disused or bulky items are kept.[\/footnote]. All as they should be. Nobody under the table, nobody under the sofa; a small fire in the grate; spoon and basin ready; and the little saucepan of gruel (Scrooge has a cold in his head) upon the hob. Nobody under the bed; nobody in the closet\u2019; nobody in his dressing-gown, which was hanging up in a suspicious attitude against the wall. Lumber-room as usual. Old fire-guard, old shoes, two fish-baskets, washing-stand on three legs, and a poker.\r\n\r\nQuite satisfied, he closed his door, and locked himself in; double-locked himself in, which was not his custom. Thus secured against surprise, he took off his cravat; put on his dressing-gown and slippers, and his nightcap; and sat down before the fire to take his gruel.\r\n\r\nIt was a very low fire indeed; nothing on such a bitter night. He was obliged to sit close to it, and brood over it, before he could extract the least sensation of warmth from such a handful of fuel. The fireplace was an old one, built by some Dutch merchant long ago, and paved all round with quaint Dutch tiles, designed to illustrate the Scriptures. There were Cains and Abels, Pharaoh\u2019s daughters, Queens of Sheba, Angelic messengers descending through the air on clouds like feather-beds, Abrahams, Belshazzars, Apostles putting off to sea in butter-boats[footnote]A three-piece porcelain container that used water to keep butter soft and spreadable.[\/footnote], hundreds of figures to attract his thoughts; and yet that face of Marley, seven years dead, came like the ancient Prophet\u2019s rod[footnote]A reference to Exodus 7:12 in which Aaron\u2019s rod, transformed into a serpent, swallowed up all the serpents produced by the magicians of the Pharoah.[\/footnote], and swallowed up the whole. If each smooth tile had been a blank at first, with power to shape some picture on its surface from the disjointed fragments of his thoughts, there would have been a copy of old Marley\u2019s head on every one.\r\n\r\n\u2018Humbug!\u2019 said Scrooge; and walked across the room.\r\n\r\nAfter several turns, he sat down again. As he threw his head back in the chair, his glance happened to rest upon a bell, a disused bell, that hung in the room, and communicated for some purpose now forgotten with a chamber in the highest story of the building. It was with great astonishment, and with a strange, inexplicable dread, that as he looked, he saw this bell begin to swing. It swung so softly in the outset that it scarcely made a sound; but soon it rang out loudly, and so did every bell in the house.\r\n\r\nThis might have lasted half a minute, or a minute, but it seemed an hour. The bells ceased as they had begun, together. They were succeeded by a clanking noise, deep down below; as if some person were dragging a heavy chain over the casks in the wine-merchant\u2019s cellar. Scrooge then remembered to have heard that ghosts in haunted houses were described as dragging chains.\r\n\r\nThe cellar-door flew open with a booming sound, and then he heard the noise much louder, on the floors below; then coming up the stairs; then coming straight towards his door.\r\n\r\n\u2018It\u2019s humbug still!\u2019 said Scrooge. \u2018I won\u2019t believe it.\u2019\r\n\r\nHis colour changed though, when, without a pause, it came on through the heavy door, and passed into the room before his eyes. Upon its coming in, the dying flame leaped up, as though it cried, \u2018I know him; Marley\u2019s Ghost!\u2019 and fell again.\r\n\r\nThe same face: the very same. Marley in his pigtail, usual waistcoat, tights and boots; the tassels on the latter bristling, like his pigtail, and his coat-skirts, and the hair upon his head. The chain he drew was clasped about his middle. It was long, and wound about him like a tail; and it was made (for Scrooge observed it closely) of cash-boxes, keys, padlocks, ledgers, deeds, and heavy purses wrought in steel. His body was transparent; so that Scrooge, observing him, and looking through his waistcoat, could see the two buttons on his coat behind.\r\n\r\nScrooge had often heard it said that Marley had no bowels, but he had never believed it until now.\r\n\r\nNo, nor did he believe it even now. Though he looked the phantom through and through, and saw it standing before him; though he felt the chilling influence of its death-cold eyes; and marked the very texture of the folded kerchief bound about its head and chin, which wrapper he had not observed before; he was still incredulous, and fought against his senses.\r\n\r\n\u2018How now.\u2019 said Scrooge, caustic and cold as ever. \u2018What do you want with me?\u2019\r\n\r\n\u2018Much.\u2019--Marley\u2019s voice, no doubt about it.\r\n\r\n\u2018Who are you?\u2019\r\n\r\n\u2018Ask me who I was<\/em>.\u2019\r\n\r\n\u2018Who were<\/em> you then?\u2019 said Scrooge, raising his voice. \u2018You\u2019re particular, for a shade.\u2019 He was going to say \u2018to<\/em> a shade,\u2019 but substituted this, as more appropriate.\r\n\r\n\u2018In life I was your partner, Jacob Marley.\u2019\r\n\r\n\u2018Can you--can you sit down?\u2019 asked Scrooge, looking doubtfully at him.\r\n\r\n\u2018I can.\u2019\r\n\r\n\u2018Do it, then.\u2019\r\n\r\nScrooge asked the question, because he didn\u2019t know whether a ghost so transparent might find himself in a condition to take a chair; and felt that in the event of its being impossible, it might involve the necessity of an embarrassing explanation. But the ghost sat down on the opposite side of the fireplace, as if he were quite used to it.\r\n\r\n\u2018You don\u2019t believe in me,\u2019 observed the Ghost.\r\n\r\n\u2018I don\u2019t,\u2019 said Scrooge.\r\n\r\n\u2018What evidence would you have of my reality beyond that of your senses?\u2019\r\n\r\n\u2018I don\u2019t know,\u2019 said Scrooge.\r\n\r\n\u2018Why do you doubt your senses?\u2019\r\n\r\n\u2018Because,\u2019 said Scrooge, \u2018a little thing affects them. A slight disorder of the stomach makes them cheats. You may be an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of an underdone potato. There\u2019s more of gravy than of grave about you, whatever you are!\u2019\r\n\r\nScrooge was not much in the habit of cracking jokes, nor did he feel, in his heart, by any means waggish then. The truth is, that he tried to be smart, as a means of distracting his own attention, and keeping down his terror; for the spectre\u2019s voice disturbed the very marrow in his bones.\r\n\r\nTo sit, staring at those fixed glazed eyes, in silence for a moment, would play, Scrooge felt, the very deuce with him. There was something very awful, too, in the spectre\u2019s being provided with an infernal atmosphere of its own. Scrooge could not feel it himself, but this was clearly the case; for though the Ghost sat perfectly motionless, its hair, and skirts, and tassels, were still agitated as by the hot vapour from an oven.\r\n\r\n\u2018You see this toothpick.\u2019 said Scrooge, returning quickly to the charge, for the reason just assigned; and wishing, though it were only for a second, to divert the vision\u2019s stony gaze from himself.\r\n\r\n\u2018I do,\u2019 replied the Ghost.\r\n\r\n\u2018You are not looking at it,\u2019 said Scrooge.\r\n\r\n\u2018But I see it,\u2019 said the Ghost, \u2018notwithstanding.\u2019\r\n\r\n\u2018Well.\u2019 returned Scrooge, \u2018I have but to swallow this, and be for the rest of my days persecuted by a legion of goblins, all of my own creation. Humbug, I tell you, humbug!\u2019\r\n\r\nAt this the spirit raised a frightful cry, and shook its chain with such a dismal and appalling noise, that Scrooge held on tight to his chair, to save himself from falling in a swoon. But how much greater was his horror, when the phantom taking off the bandage round its head, as if it were too warm to wear in-doors, its lower jaw dropped down upon its breast.\r\n\r\nScrooge fell upon his knees, and clasped his hands before his face.\r\n\r\n\u2018Mercy!\u2019 he said. \u2018Dreadful apparition, why do you trouble me?\u2019 \u2018Man of the worldly mind!\u2019 replied the Ghost, \u2018do you believe in me or not?\u2019\r\n\r\n\u2018I do,\u2019 said Scrooge. \u2018I must. But why do spirits walk the earth, and why do they come to me?\u2019\r\n\r\n\u2018It is required of every man,\u2019 the Ghost returned, \u2018that the spirit within him should walk abroad among his fellow-men, and travel far and wide; and if that spirit goes not forth in life, it is condemned to do so after death. It is doomed to wander through the world--oh, woe is me!--and witness what it cannot share, but might have shared on earth, and turned to happiness.\u2019\r\n\r\nAgain the spectre raised a cry, and shook its chain and wrung its shadowy hands.\r\n\r\n\u2018You are fettered,\u2019 said Scrooge, trembling. \u2018Tell me why?\u2019\r\n\r\n\u2018I wear the chain I forged in life,\u2019 replied the Ghost. \u2018I made it link by link, and yard by yard; I girded it on of my own free will, and of my own free will I wore it. Is its pattern strange to you<\/em>?\u2019\r\n\r\nScrooge trembled more and more.\r\n\r\n\u2018Or would you know,\u2019 pursued the Ghost, \u2018the weight and length of the strong coil you bear yourself? It was full as heavy and as long as this, seven Christmas Eves ago. You have laboured on it, since. It is a ponderous chain!\u2019\r\n\r\nScrooge glanced about him on the floor, in the expectation of finding himself surrounded by some fifty or sixty fathoms of iron cable: but he could see nothing.\r\n\r\n\u2018Jacob,\u2019 he said, imploringly. \u2018Old Jacob Marley, tell me more. Speak comfort to me, Jacob.\u2019\r\n\r\n\u2018I have none to give,\u2019 the Ghost replied. \u2018It comes from other regions, Ebenezer Scrooge, and is conveyed by other ministers, to other kinds of men. Nor can I tell you what I would. A very little more is all permitted to me. I cannot rest, I cannot stay, I cannot linger anywhere. My spirit never walked beyond out counting-house--mark me!-- in life my spirit never roved beyond the narrow limits of our money-changing hole; and weary journeys lie before me.\u2019\r\n\r\nIt was a habit with Scrooge, whenever he became thoughtful, to put his hands in his breeches pockets. Pondering on what the Ghost had said, he did so now, but without lifting up his eyes, or getting off his knees.\r\n\r\n\u2018You must have been very slow about it, Jacob,\u2019 Scrooge observed, in a business-like manner, though with humility and deference.\r\n\r\n\u2018Slow!\u2019 the Ghost repeated.\r\n\r\n\u2018Seven years dead,\u2019 mused Scrooge. \u2018And travelling all the time?\u2019\r\n\r\n\u2018The whole time,\u2019 said the Ghost. \u2018No rest, no peace. Incessant torture of remorse.\u2019\r\n\r\n\u2018You travel fast?\u2019 said Scrooge.\r\n\r\n\u2018On the wings of the wind,\u2019 replied the Ghost.\r\n\r\n\u2018You might have got over a great quantity of ground in seven years,\u2019 said Scrooge.\r\n\r\nThe Ghost, on hearing this, set up another cry, and clanked its chain so hideously in the dead silence of the night, that the Ward[footnote]A patrolman employed by the ward or administrative division of a town or city.[\/footnote]\u00a0would have been justified in indicting it for a nuisance.\r\n\r\n\u2018Oh! captive, bound, and double-ironed,\u2019 cried the phantom, \u2018not to know, that ages of incessant labour by immortal creatures, for this earth must pass into eternity before the good of which it is susceptible is all developed! Not to know that any Christian spirit working kindly in its little sphere, whatever it may be, will find its mortal life too short for its vast means of usefulness! Not to know that no space of regret can make amends for one life\u2019s opportunity misused! Yet such was I! Oh! such was I!\u2019\r\n\r\n\u2018But you were always a good man of business, Jacob,\u2019 faltered Scrooge, who now began to apply this to himself.\r\n\r\n\u2018Business!\u2019 cried the Ghost, wringing its hands again. \u2018Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were, all, my business. The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business!\u2019\r\n\r\nIt held up its chain at arm\u2019s length, as if that were the cause of all its unavailing grief, and flung it heavily upon the ground again.\r\n\r\n\u2018At this time of the rolling year,\u2019 the spectre said, \u2018I suffer most. Why did I walk through crowds of fellow-beings with my eyes turned down, and never raise them to that blessed Star which led the Wise Men[footnote]cf. Matthew 2: 1-3.[\/footnote]\u00a0to a poor abode? Were there no poor homes to which its light would have conducted me?\u2019\r\n\r\nScrooge was very much dismayed to hear the spectre going on at this rate, and began to quake exceedingly.\r\n\r\n\u2018Hear me!\u2019 cried the Ghost. \u2018My time is nearly gone.\u2019\r\n\r\n\u2018I will,\u2019 said Scrooge. \u2018But don\u2019t be hard upon me. Don\u2019t be flowery, Jacob! Pray!\u2019\r\n\r\n\u2018How it is that I appear before you in a shape that you can see, I may not tell. I have sat invisible beside you many and many a day.\u2019\r\n\r\nIt was not an agreeable idea. Scrooge shivered, and wiped the perspiration from his brow.\r\n\r\n\u2018That is no light part of my penance,\u2019 pursued the Ghost. \u2018I am here to-night to warn you, that you have yet a chance and hope of escaping my fate. A chance and hope of my procuring, Ebenezer.\u2019\r\n\r\n\u2018You were always a good friend to me,\u2019 said Scrooge. \u2018Thank\u2019ee.\u2019\r\n\r\n\u2018You will be haunted,\u2019 resumed the Ghost, \u2018by Three Spirits.\u2019\r\n\r\nScrooge\u2019s countenance fell almost as low as the Ghost\u2019s had done.\r\n\r\n\u2018Is that the chance and hope you mentioned, Jacob?\u2019 he demanded, in a faltering voice.\r\n\r\n\u2018It is.\u2019\r\n\r\n\u2018I--I think I\u2019d rather not,\u2019 said Scrooge.\r\n\r\n\u2018Without their visits,\u2019 said the Ghost, \u2018you cannot hope to shun the path I tread. Expect the first to-morrow, when the bell tolls One.\u2019\r\n\r\n\u2018Couldn\u2019t I take them all at once, and have it over, Jacob?\u2019 hinted Scrooge.\r\n\r\n\u2018Expect the second on the next night at the same hour. The third upon the next night when the last stroke of Twelve has ceased to vibrate. Look to see me no more; and look that, for your own sake, you remember what has passed between us!\u2019\r\n\r\nWhen it had said these words, the spectre took its wrapper from the table, and bound it round its head, as before. Scrooge knew this, by the smart sound its teeth made, when the jaws were brought together by the bandage. He ventured to raise his eyes again, and found his supernatural visitor confronting him in an erect attitude, with its chain wound over and about its arm.\r\n\r\nThe apparition walked backward from him; and at every step it took, the window raised itself a little, so that when the spectre reached it, it was wide open.\r\n\r\nIt beckoned Scrooge to approach, which he did. When they were within two paces of each other, Marley\u2019s Ghost held up its hand, warning him to come no nearer. Scrooge stopped.\r\n\r\nNot so much in obedience, as in surprise and fear: for on the raising of the hand, he became sensible of confused noises in the air; incoherent sounds of lamentation and regret; wailings inexpressibly sorrowful and self-accusatory. The spectre, after listening for a moment, joined in the mournful dirge; and floated out upon the bleak, dark night.\r\n\r\nScrooge followed to the window: desperate in his curiosity. He looked out.\r\n\r\nThe air was filled with phantoms, wandering hither and thither in restless haste, and moaning as they went. Every one of them wore chains like Marley\u2019s Ghost; some few (they might be guilty governments) were linked together; none were free.\r\n\r\nMany had been personally known to Scrooge in their lives. He had been quite familiar with one old ghost, in a white waistcoat, with a monstrous iron safe attached to its ankle, who cried piteously at being unable to assist a wretched woman with an infant, whom it saw below, upon a door-step. The misery with them all was, clearly, that they sought to interfere, for good, in human matters, and had lost the power for ever.\r\n\r\nWhether these creatures faded into mist, or mist enshrouded them, he could not tell. But they and their spirit voices faded together; and the night became as it had been when he walked home.\r\n\r\nScrooge closed the window, and examined the door by which the Ghost had entered. It was double-locked, as he had locked it with his own hands, and the bolts were undisturbed. He tried to say \u2018Humbug!\u2019 but stopped at the first syllable. And being, from the emotion he had undergone, or the fatigues of the day, or his glimpse of the Invisible World, or the dull conversation of the Ghost, or the lateness of the hour, much in need of repose; went straight to bed, without undressing, and fell asleep upon the instant.\r\n
\r\n\r\n \r\n\r\n<\/div>","rendered":"

Marley’s Ghost<\/h1>\n

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[1]<\/sup><\/a>, for anything he chose to put his hand to.<\/p>\n

Old Marley was as dead as a door-nail.<\/p>\n

Mind! I don\u2019t 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\u2019s done for. You will therefore permit me to repeat, emphatically, that Marley was as dead as a door-nail.<\/p>\n

Scrooge knew he was dead? Of course he did. How could it be otherwise? Scrooge and he were partners for I don\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n

The mention of Marley\u2019s 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\u2019s 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 \u2013 say Saint Paul\u2019s Churchyard for instance \u2013 literally to astonish his son\u2019s weak mind.<\/p>\n

Scrooge never painted out Old Marley\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

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\u2019t thaw it one degree at Christmas.<\/p>\n

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\u2019t 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[2]<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0handsomely, and Scrooge never did.<\/p>\n

Nobody ever stopped him in the street to say, with gladsome looks, \u2018My dear Scrooge, how are you? When will you come to see me?\u2019 No beggars implored him to bestow a trifle, no children asked him what it was o\u2019clock, 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\u2019s 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, \u2018No eye at all is better than an evil eye, dark master!\u2019<\/p>\n

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 \u2018nuts\u2019[3]<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0to Scrooge.<\/p>\n

Once upon a time \u2013 of all the good days in the year, on Christmas Eve \u2013 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 \u2013 it had not been light all day \u2013 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.<\/p>\n

The door of Scrooge\u2019s counting-house[4]<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0was 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\u2019s fire was so very much smaller that it looked like one coal. But he couldn\u2019t replenish it, for Scrooge kept the coal-box in his own room; and so surely as the clerk came in with the shovel, the master predicted that it would be necessary for them to part. Wherefore the clerk put on his white comforter, and tried to warm himself at the candle; in which effort, not being a man of a strong imagination, he failed.<\/p>\n

\u2018A merry Christmas, uncle! God save you!\u2019 cried a cheerful voice. It was the voice of Scrooge\u2019s nephew, who came upon him so quickly that this was the first intimation he had of his approach.<\/p>\n

\u2018Bah!\u2019 said Scrooge, \u2018Humbug[5]<\/sup><\/a>!\u2019<\/p>\n

He had so heated himself with rapid walking in the fog and frost, this nephew of Scrooge\u2019s, that he was all in a glow; his face was ruddy and handsome; his eyes sparkled, and his breath smoked again.<\/p>\n

\u2018Christmas a humbug, uncle!\u2019 said Scrooge\u2019s nephew. \u2018You don\u2019t mean that, I am sure?\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2018I do,\u2019 said Scrooge. \u2018Merry Christmas! What right have you to be merry? What reason have you to be merry? You\u2019re poor enough.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2018Come, then,\u2019 returned the nephew gaily. \u2018What right have you to be dismal? What reason have you to be morose? You\u2019re rich enough.\u2019<\/p>\n

Scrooge having no better answer ready on the spur of the moment, said, \u2018Bah!\u2019 again; and followed it up with \u2018Humbug!\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2018Don\u2019t be cross, uncle,\u2019 said the nephew.<\/p>\n

\u2018What else can I be,\u2019 returned the uncle, \u2018when I live in such a world of fools as this? Merry Christmas! Out upon merry Christmas. What\u2019s Christmas time to you but a time for paying bills without money; a time for finding yourself a year older, but not an hour richer; a time for balancing your books and having every item in them through a round dozen of months presented dead against you? If I could work my will,\u2019 said Scrooge indignantly,\u2019every idiot who goes about with \u2018Merry Christmas\u2019 on his lips, should be boiled with his own pudding, and buried with a stake of holly through his heart. He should!\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2018Uncle!\u2019 pleaded the nephew.<\/p>\n

\u2018Nephew!\u2019 returned the uncle, sternly, \u2018keep Christmas in your own way, and let me keep it in mine.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2018Keep it!\u2019 repeated Scrooge\u2019s nephew. \u2018But you don\u2019t keep it.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2018Let me leave it alone, then,\u2019 said Scrooge. \u2018Much good may it do you! Much good it has ever done you!\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2018There are many things from which I might have derived good, by which I have not profited, I dare say,\u2019 returned the nephew. \u2018Christmas among the rest. But I am sure I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round– apart from the veneration due to its sacred name and origin, if anything belonging to it can be apart from that–as a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time; the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys. And therefore, uncle, though it has never put a scrap of gold or silver in my pocket, I believe that it has done me good, and will do me good; and I say, God bless it!\u2019<\/p>\n

The clerk in the tank involuntarily applauded. Becoming immediately sensible of the impropriety, he poked the fire, and extinguished the last frail spark for ever.<\/p>\n

\u2018Let me hear another sound from you,\u2019 said Scrooge, \u2018and you\u2019ll keep your Christmas by losing your situation[6]<\/sup><\/a>! You\u2019re quite a powerful speaker, sir,\u2019 he added, turning to his nephew. \u2018I wonder you don\u2019t go into Parliament.<\/p>\n

\u2018Don\u2019t be angry, uncle. Come! Dine with us tomorrow.\u2019<\/p>\n

Scrooge said that he would see him–yes, indeed he did. He went the whole length of the expression, and said that he would see him in that extremity first.<\/p>\n

\u2018But why?\u2019 cried Scrooge\u2019s nephew. \u2018Why?\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2018Why did you get married?\u2019 said Scrooge.<\/p>\n

\u2018Because I fell in love.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2018Because you fell in love!\u2019 growled Scrooge, as if that were the only one thing in the world more ridiculous than a merry Christmas. \u2018Good afternoon!\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2018Nay, uncle, but you never came to see me before that happened. Why give it as a reason for not coming now?\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2018Good afternoon,\u2019 said Scrooge.<\/p>\n

\u2018I want nothing from you; I ask nothing of you; why cannot we be friends?\u2019<\/p>\n

‘Good afternoon,\u2019 said Scrooge.<\/p>\n

\u2018I am sorry, with all my heart, to find you so resolute. We have never had any quarrel, to which I have been a party. But I have made the trial in homage to Christmas, and I\u2019ll keep my Christmas humour to the last. So A Merry Christmas, uncle!\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2018Good afternoon.\u2019 said Scrooge.<\/p>\n

\u2018And A Happy New Year!\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2018Good afternoon!\u2019 said Scrooge.<\/p>\n

His nephew left the room without an angry word, notwithstanding. He stopped at the outer door to bestow the greeting of the season on the clerk, who, cold as he was, was warmer than Scrooge; for he returned them cordially.<\/p>\n

\u2018There\u2019s another fellow,\u2019 muttered Scrooge; who overheard him: \u2018my clerk, with fifteen shillings a week, and a wife and family, talking about a merry Christmas. I\u2019ll retire to Bedlam.’[7]<\/sup><\/a><\/p>\n

The clerk, in letting Scrooge\u2019s nephew out, had let two other people in. They were portly gentlemen, pleasant to behold, and now stood, with their hats off, in Scrooge\u2019s office. They had books and papers in their hands, and bowed to him.<\/p>\n

\u2018Scrooge and Marley\u2019s, I believe,\u2019 said one of the gentlemen, referring to his list. \u2018Have I the pleasure of addressing Mr Scrooge, or Mr Marley?\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2018Mr Marley has been dead these seven years,\u2019 Scrooge replied. \u2018He died seven years ago, this very night.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2018We have no doubt his liberality is well represented by his surviving partner,\u2019 said the gentleman, presenting his credentials.<\/p>\n

It certainly was, for they had been two kindred spirits. At the ominous word liberality, Scrooge frowned, and shook his head, and handed the credentials back.<\/p>\n

\u2018At this festive season of the year, Mr Scrooge,\u2019 said the gentleman, taking up a pen, \u2018it is more than usually desirable that we should make some slight provision for the Poor and destitute, who suffer greatly at the present time. Many thousands are in want of common necessaries; hundreds of thousands are in want of common comforts, sir.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2018Are there no prisons?\u2019 asked Scrooge.<\/p>\n

\u2018Plenty of prisons,\u2019 said the gentleman, laying down the pen again.<\/p>\n

\u2018And the Union workhouses.[8]<\/sup><\/a>\u2019 demanded Scrooge. \u2018Are they still in operation?\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2018They are. Still,\u2019 returned the gentleman,\u2019 I wish I could say they were not.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2018The Treadmill and the Poor Law are in full vigour, then?\u2019 said Scrooge.<\/p>\n

\u2018Both very busy, sir.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2018Oh. I was afraid, from what you said at first, that something had occurred to stop them in their useful course,\u2019 said Scrooge. \u2018I\u2019m very glad to hear it.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2018Under the impression that they scarcely furnish Christian cheer of mind or body to the multitude,\u2019 returned the gentleman, \u2018a few of us are endeavouring to raise a fund to buy the Poor some meat and drink, and means of warmth. We choose this time, because it is a time, of all others, when Want is keenly felt, and Abundance rejoices. What shall I put you down for?\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2018Nothing!\u2019 Scrooge replied.<\/p>\n

\u2018You wish to be anonymous?\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2018I wish to be left alone,\u2019 said Scrooge. \u2018Since you ask me what I wish, gentlemen, that is my answer. I don\u2019t make merry myself at Christmas and I can\u2019t afford to make idle people merry. I help to support the establishments I have mentioned–they cost enough; and those who are badly off must go there.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2018Many can\u2019t go there; and many would rather die.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2018If they would rather die,\u2019 said Scrooge, \u2018they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population[9]<\/sup><\/a>. Besides–excuse me–I don\u2019t know that.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2018But you might know it,\u2019 observed the gentleman.<\/p>\n

\u2018It\u2019s not my business,\u2019 Scrooge returned. \u2018It\u2019s enough for a man to understand his own business, and not to interfere with other people\u2019s. Mine occupies me constantly. Good afternoon, gentlemen!\u2019<\/p>\n

Seeing clearly that it would be useless to pursue their point, the gentlemen withdrew. Scrooge resumed his labours with an improved opinion of himself, and in a more facetious temper than was usual with him.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile the fog and darkness thickened so, that people ran about with flaring links, proffering their services to go before horses in carriages, and conduct them on their way. The ancient tower of a church, whose gruff old bell was always peeping slily down at Scrooge out of a gothic window in the wall, became invisible, and struck the hours and quarters in the clouds, with tremulous vibrations afterwards as if its teeth were chattering in its frozen head up there. The cold became intense. In the main street, at the corner of the court, some labourers were repairing the gas-pipes, and had lighted a great fire in a brazier, round which a party of ragged men and boys were gathered: warming their hands and winking their eyes before the blaze in rapture. The water-plug being left in solitude, its overflowing sullenly congealed, and turned to misanthropic ice. The brightness of the shops where holly sprigs and berries crackled in the lamp heat of the windows, made pale faces ruddy as they passed. Poulterers\u2019 and grocers\u2019 trades became a splendid joke: a glorious pageant, with which it was next to impossible to believe that such dull principles as bargain and sale had anything to do. The Lord Mayor, in the stronghold of the might Mansion House, gave orders to his fifty cooks and butlers to keep Christmas as a Lord Mayor\u2019s household should; and even the little tailor, whom he had fined five shillings on the previous Monday for being drunk and bloodthirsty in the streets, stirred up tomorrow\u2019s pudding in his garret, while his lean wife and the baby sallied out to buy the beef.<\/p>\n

Foggier yet, and colder. Piercing, searching, biting cold. If the good Saint Dunstan[10]<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0had but nipped the Evil Spirit\u2019s nose with a touch of such weather as that, instead of using his familiar weapons, then indeed he would have roared to lusty purpose. The owner of one scant young nose, gnawed and mumbled by the hungry cold as bones are gnawed by dogs, stooped down at Scrooge\u2019s keyhole to regale him with a Christmas carol: but at the first sound of<\/p>\n

\u2018God bless you, merry gentleman.<\/p>\n

May nothing you dismay!\u2019<\/p>\n

Scrooge seized the ruler with such energy of action, that the singer fled in terror, leaving the keyhole to the fog and even more congenial frost.<\/p>\n

At length the hour of shutting up the counting-house arrived. With an ill-will Scrooge dismounted from his stool, and tacitly admitted the fact to the expectant clerk in the Tank, who instantly snuffed his candle out, and put on his hat.<\/p>\n

\u2018You\u2019ll want all day tomorrow, I suppose?\u2019 said Scrooge.<\/p>\n

\u2018If quite convenient, sir.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2018It\u2019s not convenient,\u2019 said Scrooge, \u2018and it\u2019s not fair. If I was to stop half-a-crown for it, you\u2019d think yourself ill-used, I\u2019ll be bound?\u2019<\/p>\n

The clerk smiled faintly.<\/p>\n

\u2018And yet,\u2019 said Scrooge, \u2018you don\u2019t think me ill-used, when I pay a day\u2019s wages for no work.\u2019<\/p>\n

The clerk observed that it was only once a year.<\/p>\n

\u2018A poor excuse for picking a man\u2019s pocket every twenty-fifth of December!\u2019 said Scrooge, buttoning his great-coat to the chin. \u2018But I suppose you must have the whole day. Be here all the earlier next morning.\u2019<\/p>\n

The clerk promised that he would; and Scrooge walked out with a growl. The office was closed in a twinkling, and the clerk, with the long ends of his white comforter dangling below his waist (for he boasted no great-coat), went down a slide on Cornhill, at the end of a lane of boys, twenty times, in honour of its being Christmas Eve, and then ran home to Camden Town as hard as he could pelt, to play at blindman\u2019s buff.<\/p>\n

Scrooge took his melancholy dinner in his usual melancholy tavern; and having read all the newspapers, and beguiled the rest of the evening with his banker\u2019s-book, went home to bed. He lived in chambers which had once belonged to his deceased partner. They were a gloomy suite of rooms, in a lowering pile of building up a yard, where it had so little business to be, that one could scarcely help fancying it must have run there when it was a young house, playing at hide-and-seek with other houses, and forgotten the way out again. It was old enough now, and dreary enough, for nobody lived in it but Scrooge, the other rooms being all let out as offices. The yard was so dark that even Scrooge, who knew its every stone, was fain to grope with his hands. The fog and frost so hung about the black old gateway of the house, that it seemed as if the Genius of the Weather sat in mournful meditation on the threshold.<\/p>\n

Now, it is a fact, that there was nothing at all particular about the knocker on the door, except that it was very large. It is also a fact, that Scrooge had seen it, night and morning, during his whole residence in that place; also that had as little of what is called fancy[11]<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0about him as any man in the city of London, even including–which is a bold word–the corporation, aldermen, and livery. Let it also be borne in mind that Scrooge had not bestowed one thought on Marley, since his last mention of his seven-year\u2019s dead partner that afternoon. And then let any man explain to me, if he can, how it happened that Scrooge, having his key in the lock of the door, saw in the knocker, without its undergoing any intermediate process of change-not a knocker, but Marley\u2019s face.<\/p>\n

Marley\u2019s face. It was not in impenetrable shadow as the other objects in the yard were, but had a dismal light about it, like a bad lobster in a dark cellar. It was not angry or ferocious, but looked at Scrooge as Marley used to look: with ghostly spectacles turned up on its ghostly forehead. The hair was curiously stirred, as if by breath or hot air; and, though the eyes were wide open, they were perfectly motionless. That, and its livid colour, made it horrible; but its horror seemed to be in spite of the face and beyond its control, rather than a part of its own expression.<\/p>\n

As Scrooge looked fixedly at this phenomenon, it was a knocker again.<\/p>\n

To say that he was not startled, or that his blood was not conscious of a terrible sensation to which it had been a stranger from infancy, would be untrue. But he put his hand upon the key he had relinquished, turned it sturdily, walked in, and lighted his candle.<\/p>\n

He did<\/em> pause, with a moment\u2019s irresolution, before he shut the door; and he did<\/em> look cautiously behind it first, as if he half expected to be terrified with the sight of Marley\u2019s pigtail sticking out into the hall. But there was nothing on the back of the door, except the screws and nuts that held the knocker on, so he said \u2019Pooh, pooh,\u2019 and closed it with a bang.<\/p>\n

The sound resounded through the house like thunder. Every room above, and every cask in the wine-merchant\u2019s cellars below, appeared to have a separate peal of echoes of its own. Scrooge was not a man to be frightened by echoes. He fastened the door, and walked across the hall, and up the stairs; slowly too: trimming his candle as he went.<\/p>\n

You may talk vaguely about driving a coach-and-six up a good old flight of stairs, or through a bad young Act of Parliament; but I mean to say you might have got a hearse up that staircase, and taken it broadwise, with the splinter-bar towards the wall and the door towards the balustrades: and done it easy. There was plenty of width for that, and room to spare; which is perhaps the reason why Scrooge thought he saw a locomotive hearse going on before him in the gloom. Half-a-dozen gas-lamps out of the street wouldn\u2019t have lighted the entry too well, so you may suppose that it was pretty dark with Scrooge\u2019s dip.<\/p>\n

Up Scrooge went, not caring a button for that. Darkness is cheap, and Scrooge liked it. But before he shut his heavy door, he walked through his rooms to see that all was right. He had just enough recollection of the face to desire to do that.<\/p>\n

Sitting-room, bed-room, lumber-room[12]<\/sup><\/a>. All as they should be. Nobody under the table, nobody under the sofa; a small fire in the grate; spoon and basin ready; and the little saucepan of gruel (Scrooge has a cold in his head) upon the hob. Nobody under the bed; nobody in the closet\u2019; nobody in his dressing-gown, which was hanging up in a suspicious attitude against the wall. Lumber-room as usual. Old fire-guard, old shoes, two fish-baskets, washing-stand on three legs, and a poker.<\/p>\n

Quite satisfied, he closed his door, and locked himself in; double-locked himself in, which was not his custom. Thus secured against surprise, he took off his cravat; put on his dressing-gown and slippers, and his nightcap; and sat down before the fire to take his gruel.<\/p>\n

It was a very low fire indeed; nothing on such a bitter night. He was obliged to sit close to it, and brood over it, before he could extract the least sensation of warmth from such a handful of fuel. The fireplace was an old one, built by some Dutch merchant long ago, and paved all round with quaint Dutch tiles, designed to illustrate the Scriptures. There were Cains and Abels, Pharaoh\u2019s daughters, Queens of Sheba, Angelic messengers descending through the air on clouds like feather-beds, Abrahams, Belshazzars, Apostles putting off to sea in butter-boats[13]<\/sup><\/a>, hundreds of figures to attract his thoughts; and yet that face of Marley, seven years dead, came like the ancient Prophet\u2019s rod[14]<\/sup><\/a>, and swallowed up the whole. If each smooth tile had been a blank at first, with power to shape some picture on its surface from the disjointed fragments of his thoughts, there would have been a copy of old Marley\u2019s head on every one.<\/p>\n

\u2018Humbug!\u2019 said Scrooge; and walked across the room.<\/p>\n

After several turns, he sat down again. As he threw his head back in the chair, his glance happened to rest upon a bell, a disused bell, that hung in the room, and communicated for some purpose now forgotten with a chamber in the highest story of the building. It was with great astonishment, and with a strange, inexplicable dread, that as he looked, he saw this bell begin to swing. It swung so softly in the outset that it scarcely made a sound; but soon it rang out loudly, and so did every bell in the house.<\/p>\n

This might have lasted half a minute, or a minute, but it seemed an hour. The bells ceased as they had begun, together. They were succeeded by a clanking noise, deep down below; as if some person were dragging a heavy chain over the casks in the wine-merchant\u2019s cellar. Scrooge then remembered to have heard that ghosts in haunted houses were described as dragging chains.<\/p>\n

The cellar-door flew open with a booming sound, and then he heard the noise much louder, on the floors below; then coming up the stairs; then coming straight towards his door.<\/p>\n

\u2018It\u2019s humbug still!\u2019 said Scrooge. \u2018I won\u2019t believe it.\u2019<\/p>\n

His colour changed though, when, without a pause, it came on through the heavy door, and passed into the room before his eyes. Upon its coming in, the dying flame leaped up, as though it cried, \u2018I know him; Marley\u2019s Ghost!\u2019 and fell again.<\/p>\n

The same face: the very same. Marley in his pigtail, usual waistcoat, tights and boots; the tassels on the latter bristling, like his pigtail, and his coat-skirts, and the hair upon his head. The chain he drew was clasped about his middle. It was long, and wound about him like a tail; and it was made (for Scrooge observed it closely) of cash-boxes, keys, padlocks, ledgers, deeds, and heavy purses wrought in steel. His body was transparent; so that Scrooge, observing him, and looking through his waistcoat, could see the two buttons on his coat behind.<\/p>\n

Scrooge had often heard it said that Marley had no bowels, but he had never believed it until now.<\/p>\n

No, nor did he believe it even now. Though he looked the phantom through and through, and saw it standing before him; though he felt the chilling influence of its death-cold eyes; and marked the very texture of the folded kerchief bound about its head and chin, which wrapper he had not observed before; he was still incredulous, and fought against his senses.<\/p>\n

\u2018How now.\u2019 said Scrooge, caustic and cold as ever. \u2018What do you want with me?\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2018Much.\u2019–Marley\u2019s voice, no doubt about it.<\/p>\n

\u2018Who are you?\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2018Ask me who I was<\/em>.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2018Who were<\/em> you then?\u2019 said Scrooge, raising his voice. \u2018You\u2019re particular, for a shade.\u2019 He was going to say \u2018to<\/em> a shade,\u2019 but substituted this, as more appropriate.<\/p>\n

\u2018In life I was your partner, Jacob Marley.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2018Can you–can you sit down?\u2019 asked Scrooge, looking doubtfully at him.<\/p>\n

\u2018I can.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2018Do it, then.\u2019<\/p>\n

Scrooge asked the question, because he didn\u2019t know whether a ghost so transparent might find himself in a condition to take a chair; and felt that in the event of its being impossible, it might involve the necessity of an embarrassing explanation. But the ghost sat down on the opposite side of the fireplace, as if he were quite used to it.<\/p>\n

\u2018You don\u2019t believe in me,\u2019 observed the Ghost.<\/p>\n

\u2018I don\u2019t,\u2019 said Scrooge.<\/p>\n

\u2018What evidence would you have of my reality beyond that of your senses?\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2018I don\u2019t know,\u2019 said Scrooge.<\/p>\n

\u2018Why do you doubt your senses?\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2018Because,\u2019 said Scrooge, \u2018a little thing affects them. A slight disorder of the stomach makes them cheats. You may be an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of an underdone potato. There\u2019s more of gravy than of grave about you, whatever you are!\u2019<\/p>\n

Scrooge was not much in the habit of cracking jokes, nor did he feel, in his heart, by any means waggish then. The truth is, that he tried to be smart, as a means of distracting his own attention, and keeping down his terror; for the spectre\u2019s voice disturbed the very marrow in his bones.<\/p>\n

To sit, staring at those fixed glazed eyes, in silence for a moment, would play, Scrooge felt, the very deuce with him. There was something very awful, too, in the spectre\u2019s being provided with an infernal atmosphere of its own. Scrooge could not feel it himself, but this was clearly the case; for though the Ghost sat perfectly motionless, its hair, and skirts, and tassels, were still agitated as by the hot vapour from an oven.<\/p>\n

\u2018You see this toothpick.\u2019 said Scrooge, returning quickly to the charge, for the reason just assigned; and wishing, though it were only for a second, to divert the vision\u2019s stony gaze from himself.<\/p>\n

\u2018I do,\u2019 replied the Ghost.<\/p>\n

\u2018You are not looking at it,\u2019 said Scrooge.<\/p>\n

\u2018But I see it,\u2019 said the Ghost, \u2018notwithstanding.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2018Well.\u2019 returned Scrooge, \u2018I have but to swallow this, and be for the rest of my days persecuted by a legion of goblins, all of my own creation. Humbug, I tell you, humbug!\u2019<\/p>\n

At this the spirit raised a frightful cry, and shook its chain with such a dismal and appalling noise, that Scrooge held on tight to his chair, to save himself from falling in a swoon. But how much greater was his horror, when the phantom taking off the bandage round its head, as if it were too warm to wear in-doors, its lower jaw dropped down upon its breast.<\/p>\n

Scrooge fell upon his knees, and clasped his hands before his face.<\/p>\n

\u2018Mercy!\u2019 he said. \u2018Dreadful apparition, why do you trouble me?\u2019 \u2018Man of the worldly mind!\u2019 replied the Ghost, \u2018do you believe in me or not?\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2018I do,\u2019 said Scrooge. \u2018I must. But why do spirits walk the earth, and why do they come to me?\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2018It is required of every man,\u2019 the Ghost returned, \u2018that the spirit within him should walk abroad among his fellow-men, and travel far and wide; and if that spirit goes not forth in life, it is condemned to do so after death. It is doomed to wander through the world–oh, woe is me!–and witness what it cannot share, but might have shared on earth, and turned to happiness.\u2019<\/p>\n

Again the spectre raised a cry, and shook its chain and wrung its shadowy hands.<\/p>\n

\u2018You are fettered,\u2019 said Scrooge, trembling. \u2018Tell me why?\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2018I wear the chain I forged in life,\u2019 replied the Ghost. \u2018I made it link by link, and yard by yard; I girded it on of my own free will, and of my own free will I wore it. Is its pattern strange to you<\/em>?\u2019<\/p>\n

Scrooge trembled more and more.<\/p>\n

\u2018Or would you know,\u2019 pursued the Ghost, \u2018the weight and length of the strong coil you bear yourself? It was full as heavy and as long as this, seven Christmas Eves ago. You have laboured on it, since. It is a ponderous chain!\u2019<\/p>\n

Scrooge glanced about him on the floor, in the expectation of finding himself surrounded by some fifty or sixty fathoms of iron cable: but he could see nothing.<\/p>\n

\u2018Jacob,\u2019 he said, imploringly. \u2018Old Jacob Marley, tell me more. Speak comfort to me, Jacob.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2018I have none to give,\u2019 the Ghost replied. \u2018It comes from other regions, Ebenezer Scrooge, and is conveyed by other ministers, to other kinds of men. Nor can I tell you what I would. A very little more is all permitted to me. I cannot rest, I cannot stay, I cannot linger anywhere. My spirit never walked beyond out counting-house–mark me!– in life my spirit never roved beyond the narrow limits of our money-changing hole; and weary journeys lie before me.\u2019<\/p>\n

It was a habit with Scrooge, whenever he became thoughtful, to put his hands in his breeches pockets. Pondering on what the Ghost had said, he did so now, but without lifting up his eyes, or getting off his knees.<\/p>\n

\u2018You must have been very slow about it, Jacob,\u2019 Scrooge observed, in a business-like manner, though with humility and deference.<\/p>\n

\u2018Slow!\u2019 the Ghost repeated.<\/p>\n

\u2018Seven years dead,\u2019 mused Scrooge. \u2018And travelling all the time?\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2018The whole time,\u2019 said the Ghost. \u2018No rest, no peace. Incessant torture of remorse.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2018You travel fast?\u2019 said Scrooge.<\/p>\n

\u2018On the wings of the wind,\u2019 replied the Ghost.<\/p>\n

\u2018You might have got over a great quantity of ground in seven years,\u2019 said Scrooge.<\/p>\n

The Ghost, on hearing this, set up another cry, and clanked its chain so hideously in the dead silence of the night, that the Ward[15]<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0would have been justified in indicting it for a nuisance.<\/p>\n

\u2018Oh! captive, bound, and double-ironed,\u2019 cried the phantom, \u2018not to know, that ages of incessant labour by immortal creatures, for this earth must pass into eternity before the good of which it is susceptible is all developed! Not to know that any Christian spirit working kindly in its little sphere, whatever it may be, will find its mortal life too short for its vast means of usefulness! Not to know that no space of regret can make amends for one life\u2019s opportunity misused! Yet such was I! Oh! such was I!\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2018But you were always a good man of business, Jacob,\u2019 faltered Scrooge, who now began to apply this to himself.<\/p>\n

\u2018Business!\u2019 cried the Ghost, wringing its hands again. \u2018Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were, all, my business. The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business!\u2019<\/p>\n

It held up its chain at arm\u2019s length, as if that were the cause of all its unavailing grief, and flung it heavily upon the ground again.<\/p>\n

\u2018At this time of the rolling year,\u2019 the spectre said, \u2018I suffer most. Why did I walk through crowds of fellow-beings with my eyes turned down, and never raise them to that blessed Star which led the Wise Men[16]<\/sup><\/a>\u00a0to a poor abode? Were there no poor homes to which its light would have conducted me?\u2019<\/p>\n

Scrooge was very much dismayed to hear the spectre going on at this rate, and began to quake exceedingly.<\/p>\n

\u2018Hear me!\u2019 cried the Ghost. \u2018My time is nearly gone.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2018I will,\u2019 said Scrooge. \u2018But don\u2019t be hard upon me. Don\u2019t be flowery, Jacob! Pray!\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2018How it is that I appear before you in a shape that you can see, I may not tell. I have sat invisible beside you many and many a day.\u2019<\/p>\n

It was not an agreeable idea. Scrooge shivered, and wiped the perspiration from his brow.<\/p>\n

\u2018That is no light part of my penance,\u2019 pursued the Ghost. \u2018I am here to-night to warn you, that you have yet a chance and hope of escaping my fate. A chance and hope of my procuring, Ebenezer.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2018You were always a good friend to me,\u2019 said Scrooge. \u2018Thank\u2019ee.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2018You will be haunted,\u2019 resumed the Ghost, \u2018by Three Spirits.\u2019<\/p>\n

Scrooge\u2019s countenance fell almost as low as the Ghost\u2019s had done.<\/p>\n

\u2018Is that the chance and hope you mentioned, Jacob?\u2019 he demanded, in a faltering voice.<\/p>\n

\u2018It is.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2018I–I think I\u2019d rather not,\u2019 said Scrooge.<\/p>\n

\u2018Without their visits,\u2019 said the Ghost, \u2018you cannot hope to shun the path I tread. Expect the first to-morrow, when the bell tolls One.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2018Couldn\u2019t I take them all at once, and have it over, Jacob?\u2019 hinted Scrooge.<\/p>\n

\u2018Expect the second on the next night at the same hour. The third upon the next night when the last stroke of Twelve has ceased to vibrate. Look to see me no more; and look that, for your own sake, you remember what has passed between us!\u2019<\/p>\n

When it had said these words, the spectre took its wrapper from the table, and bound it round its head, as before. Scrooge knew this, by the smart sound its teeth made, when the jaws were brought together by the bandage. He ventured to raise his eyes again, and found his supernatural visitor confronting him in an erect attitude, with its chain wound over and about its arm.<\/p>\n

The apparition walked backward from him; and at every step it took, the window raised itself a little, so that when the spectre reached it, it was wide open.<\/p>\n

It beckoned Scrooge to approach, which he did. When they were within two paces of each other, Marley\u2019s Ghost held up its hand, warning him to come no nearer. Scrooge stopped.<\/p>\n

Not so much in obedience, as in surprise and fear: for on the raising of the hand, he became sensible of confused noises in the air; incoherent sounds of lamentation and regret; wailings inexpressibly sorrowful and self-accusatory. The spectre, after listening for a moment, joined in the mournful dirge; and floated out upon the bleak, dark night.<\/p>\n

Scrooge followed to the window: desperate in his curiosity. He looked out.<\/p>\n

The air was filled with phantoms, wandering hither and thither in restless haste, and moaning as they went. Every one of them wore chains like Marley\u2019s Ghost; some few (they might be guilty governments) were linked together; none were free.<\/p>\n

Many had been personally known to Scrooge in their lives. He had been quite familiar with one old ghost, in a white waistcoat, with a monstrous iron safe attached to its ankle, who cried piteously at being unable to assist a wretched woman with an infant, whom it saw below, upon a door-step. The misery with them all was, clearly, that they sought to interfere, for good, in human matters, and had lost the power for ever.<\/p>\n

Whether these creatures faded into mist, or mist enshrouded them, he could not tell. But they and their spirit voices faded together; and the night became as it had been when he walked home.<\/p>\n

Scrooge closed the window, and examined the door by which the Ghost had entered. It was double-locked, as he had locked it with his own hands, and the bolts were undisturbed. He tried to say \u2018Humbug!\u2019 but stopped at the first syllable. And being, from the emotion he had undergone, or the fatigues of the day, or his glimpse of the Invisible World, or the dull conversation of the Ghost, or the lateness of the hour, much in need of repose; went straight to bed, without undressing, and fell asleep upon the instant.<\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n<\/div>\n

  1. \"Change\": a place of (financial or commercial) exchange, as in the King's or Queen's Exchange (1601); a money changer's office (1569); the \"Burse\" or Exchange built in London by Sir Thomas Gresham in 1566 received from Queen Elizabeth I the name of the Royal Exchange. ↵<\/a><\/li>
  2. \u201cto come down\u201d: slang, \u201cto give money.\u201d ↵<\/a><\/li>
  3. \u201cnuts to someone\u201d: slang, a source of pleasure. ↵<\/a><\/li>
  4. The office in which the accounts and money of a business are kept. ↵<\/a><\/li>
  5. A hoax or sham. ↵<\/a><\/li>
  6. Job, position. ↵<\/a><\/li>
  7. A lunatic hospital endowed by Henry VIII in 1547, derived from St. Mary of Bethlehem Hospital, which took in lunatics as early as 1377. ↵<\/a><\/li>
  8. Under the Poor Law Amendment Act<\/em> of 1834, workhouses for the reception of the destitute were set up by 21 administrative districts in England and Wales. Notorious for denying civil liberties, they often separated family members and destroyed human dignity. As a result, most of the poorest people went to great lengths to avoid this degrading solution. ↵<\/a><\/li>
  9. Since the first appearance of Thomas Malthus\u2019s Essay on the Principle of Population<\/em> in 1803, concern grew that Britain had too many mouths to feed. See Malthus: \u201cA man who is born into a world already possessed, if he cannot get subsistence from his parents, on whom he has a just demand, and if society do not want his labour, has no claim of right<\/em> to the smallest portion of food, and, in fact, has no business to be where he is. At nature\u2019s mighty feast there is no vacant cover for him. She tells him to be gone\u2026\"(503). ↵<\/a><\/li>
  10. St. Dunstan (924-988). Patron saint of smiths. Legend recounts that he clamped red hot tongs on the devil\u2019s nose. ↵<\/a><\/li>
  11. Imagination. In Hard Times<\/em> (1854), Dickens\u2019s satire on the overly materialistic philosophy of certain political economists, fancy was discouraged in favour of facts. See esp., HT<\/em>, I, 2. ↵<\/a><\/li>
  12. A room where disused or bulky items are kept. ↵<\/a><\/li>
  13. A three-piece porcelain container that used water to keep butter soft and spreadable. ↵<\/a><\/li>
  14. A reference to Exodus 7:12 in which Aaron\u2019s rod, transformed into a serpent, swallowed up all the serpents produced by the magicians of the Pharoah. ↵<\/a><\/li>
  15. A patrolman employed by the ward or administrative division of a town or city. ↵<\/a><\/li>
  16. cf. Matthew 2: 1-3. ↵<\/a><\/li><\/ol><\/div>","protected":false},"author":17,"menu_order":2,"template":"","meta":{"pb_show_title":"on","pb_short_title":"","pb_subtitle":"","pb_authors":["charles-dickens"],"pb_section_license":"public-domain"},"chapter-type":[],"contributor":[59],"license":[78],"class_list":["post-242","chapter","type-chapter","status-publish","hentry","contributor-charles-dickens","license-public-domain"],"part":239,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/opentextbc.ca\/englishliterature\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/242","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/opentextbc.ca\/englishliterature\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/opentextbc.ca\/englishliterature\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/chapter"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/opentextbc.ca\/englishliterature\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"version-history":[{"count":19,"href":"https:\/\/opentextbc.ca\/englishliterature\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/242\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2497,"href":"https:\/\/opentextbc.ca\/englishliterature\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/242\/revisions\/2497"}],"part":[{"href":"https:\/\/opentextbc.ca\/englishliterature\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/parts\/239"}],"metadata":[{"href":"https:\/\/opentextbc.ca\/englishliterature\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/242\/metadata\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/opentextbc.ca\/englishliterature\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=242"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"chapter-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/opentextbc.ca\/englishliterature\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapter-type?post=242"},{"taxonomy":"contributor","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/opentextbc.ca\/englishliterature\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/contributor?post=242"},{"taxonomy":"license","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/opentextbc.ca\/englishliterature\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/license?post=242"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}