Chrismas carol

The Project Gutenberg EBook of A Christmas Carol, by Charles Dickens

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Title: A Christmas Carol
A Ghost Story of Christmas

Author:Charles Dickens

Release Date: August 11, 2004 [EBook #46]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A CHRISTMAS CAROL ***

Produced by Jose Menendez

A CHRISTMAS CAROL

IN PROSE
BEING
A Ghost Story of Christmas

by Charles Dickens

PREFACE

I HAVE endeavoured in this Ghostly little book,
to raise the Ghost of an Idea, whichshall not put my
readers out of humour with themselves, with each other,
with the season, or with me. May it haunt their houses
pleasantly, and no one wish to lay it.

Their faithful Friend and Servant,
C. D.
December, 1843.

CONTENTS

Stave I: Marley's Ghost
Stave II: The First of the Three Spirits
Stave III: The Second of the Three SpiritsStave IV: The Last of the Spirits
Stave V: The End of It

STAVE I: MARLEY'S GHOST

MARLEY was dead: to begin with. There is no doubt
whatever about that. The register of his burial was
signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker,
and the chief mourner. Scrooge signed it: and
Scrooge's name was good upon 'Change, for anything he
chose to put his hand to. Old Marley was as dead asa
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 torepeat, 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 sadevent, 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 thatHamlet's Father died before the play began, there
would be nothing more remarkable in his taking a
stroll at night, in an easterly wind, upon his own ramparts,
than there would be in any other middle-aged
gentleman rashly turning out after dark in a breezy
spot--say Saint Paul's Churchyard for instance--
literally to astonish his son's weak mind.

Scrooge never painted out Old Marley's name.There it stood, years afterwards, above the warehouse
door: Scrooge and Marley. The firm was known as
Scrooge and Marley. Sometimes people new to the
business called Scrooge Scrooge, and sometimes Marley,
but he answered to both names. It was all the
same to him.

Oh! But he was a tight-fisted hand at the grind-stone,
Scrooge! a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping,
clutching, covetous,old sinner! Hard and sharp as flint,
from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire;
secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster. The
cold within him froze his old features, nipped his pointed
nose, shrivelled his cheek, stiffened his gait; made his
eyes red, his thin lips blue; and spoke out shrewdly in his
grating voice. A frosty rime was on his head, and on his...