A Ghost Story of Christmas
STAVE ONE
Marley’s Ghost
Marley was dead, to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. The register of his burial was signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker, and the chief mourner. 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. But the wisdom of our ancestors is in the simile; and my unhallowed hands shall not disturb it
Scrooge never painted out Old Marley’s name. There it stood, years afterwards, above the warehouse door Scrooge and Marley; 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, covetous, old sinner! Hard and sharp as flint, and solitary as an oyster. The cold within him froze his old features, and didn’t thaw by one degree at Christmas.
Nobody ever stopped him in the street to say, “My dear Scrooge, how are you?” No beggars implored him to bestow a trifle, no children asked him what it was o’clock.
One Christmas Eve, old Scrooge sat busy in his counting-house. It was cold, bleak, biting weather. The City clocks had only just gone three, but it was quite dark already.