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 as a  

door nail. Mind! I don't mean  to say that I know, of my  

own knowledge, what there  is particularly dead about  

a door nail. I might have  been inclined, myself, to  

regard a coffin nail as the  deadest piece of ironmongery  

in the trade. But the wisdom of our ancestors is in the simile; and my unhallowed hands  

shall not disturb it, or  the Country's done for. You  

will therefore permit me to  repeat, emphatically, that  

Marley was as dead as a door nail. Scrooge  knew he was dead? Of course he did. How  

could it be otherwise? Scrooge and he were partners for I don't know how many years. Scrooge  

was his sole executor, his  sole administrator, his sole  

assign, his sole residuary  legatee, his sole friend, and  

sole mourner. And even  Scrooge was not so dreadfully  

cut up by the sad event, but  that he was an excellent  

man of business on the very day of the funeral, and solemnised it with an undoubted bargain.  

The mention of Marley's funeral brings me back to the point I started from.  

There is no doubt that Marley was dead. This must be distinctly understood, or  

nothing wonderful can come  of the story I am going  

to relate. If we were not  perfectly convinced that  

Hamlet's Father died before the play began, there would be nothing more remarkable in his taking a  

stroll at night, in an easterly  wind, upon his own ramparts,  

than there would be in any other middle aged gentleman rashly turning  

out after dark in a breezy spot say Saint Paul's Churchyard for instance  

literally to astonish his son's weak mind. Scrooge  never painted out Old Marley's name. There it  

stood, years afterwards, above the warehouse door: Scrooge and Marley. The firm was known as  

Scrooge and Marley. Sometimes people new to the business called Scrooge Scrooge,  

and sometimes Marley, but he answered to both names. It was all the  

same to him. Oh! But he was a tight  fisted hand at the grind stone,  

Scrooge! a squeezing,  wrenching, grasping, scraping,  

clutching, covetous, old sinner!  Hard and sharp as flint,  

from which no steel had ever  struck out generous fire;  

secret, and self contained,  and solitary as an oyster. The  

cold within him froze his old  features, nipped his pointed  

nose, shrivelled his cheek,  stiffened his gait; made his  

eyes red, his thin lips blue;  and spoke out shrewdly in his  

grating voice. A frosty rime  was on his head, and on his  

eyebrows, and his wiry chin.  He carried his own low  

temperature always 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 blind men'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 very much smaller  that it looked like one  

coal. But he couldn't  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.  

"A merry Christmas, uncle! God save you!" cried a cheerful voice. It was the voice of Scrooge's  

nephew, who came upon him  so quickly that this was  

the first intimation he had of his approach. "Bah!" said Scrooge, "Humbug!"  

He had so heated himself  with rapid walking in the  

fog and frost, this nephew  of Scrooge's, that he was  

all in a glow; his face was  ruddy and handsome; his  

eyes sparkled, and his breath smoked again. "Christmas a humbug, uncle!" said Scrooge's  

nephew. "You don't mean that, I am sure?" "I do," said Scrooge. "Merry Christmas! What  

right have you to be merry? What reason have you to be merry? You're poor enough."  

"Come, then," returned the nephew gaily. "What right have you to be dismal? What reason have you  

to be morose? You're rich enough." Scrooge having no better answer ready on the spur  

of the moment, said, "Bah!"  again; and followed it up  

with "Humbug." "Don't be cross, uncle!" said the nephew.  

"What else can I be," returned the uncle, "when I live in such a world of fools as this?  

Merry Christmas! Out upon merry  Christmas! What's 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  'em through a round dozen  

of months presented dead against you? If I could work my will," said Scrooge indignantly,  

"every idiot who goes about  

with 'Merry Christmas' on his lips, should be boiled with his own pudding, and buried  

with a stake of holly through  his heart. He should!"  

"Uncle!" pleaded the nephew. "Nephew!" returned the  

uncle sternly, "keep Christmas in your own way, and let me keep it in mine."  

"Keep it!" repeated Scrooge's nephew. "But you don't keep it."  

"Let me leave it alone,  then," said Scrooge. "Much  

good may it do you! Much good it has ever done you!"  

"There are many things from which I might have derived good,  

by which I have not profited, I dare say," returned the nephew. "Christmas 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!" 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.  

"Let me hear another sound from you," said  

Scrooge, "and you'll keep  your Christmas by losing  

your situation! You're quite a powerful speaker, sir," he added, turning to his  

nephew. "I wonder you don't go into Parliament."  

"Don't be angry, uncle. Come!  Dine with us to morrow."  

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.  

"But why?" cried Scrooge's nephew. "Why?" "Why did you get married?" said Scrooge.  

"Because I fell in love." "Because you fell in love!"  

growled Scrooge, as if that were the only one  

thing in the world more ridiculous than a merry Christmas. "Good afternoon!"  

"Nay, uncle, but you never came to see me before that happened. Why give it as a reason for not  

coming now?" "Good afternoon," said Scrooge.  

"I want nothing from you; I ask nothing of you; why cannot we be friends?"  

"Good afternoon," said Scrooge. "I 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'll keep my Christmas  

humour to the last. So A  Merry Christmas, uncle!"  

"Good afternoon!" said Scrooge. "And A Happy New Year!"  

"Good afternoon!" said Scrooge. His nephew  left the room without an angry word,  

notwithstanding. He stopped at the outer door to bestow the greetings of the  

season on the clerk, who, cold as he was, was warmer than Scrooge;  

for he returned them cordially.  

"There's another fellow," muttered Scrooge; who overheard him: "my clerk, with fifteen  

shillings a week, and a  

wife and family, talking about a merry Christmas. I'll retire to Bedlam."  

This lunatic, in letting  Scrooge's nephew out, had  

let two other people in.  They were portly gentlemen,  

pleasant to behold, and now  stood, with their hats off,  

in Scrooge's office. They had books and papers in their hands, and bowed to him.  

"Scrooge and Marley's, I  believe," said one of the  

gentlemen, referring to his  list. "Have I the pleasure  

of addressing Mr. Scrooge, or Mr. Marley?" "Mr. Marley has been dead these seven years,"  

Scrooge replied. "He died  seven years ago, this very  

night." "We have no doubt his  

liberality is well represented by his surviving partner,"  

said the gentleman, presenting his credentials. 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.  

"At this festive season of  the year, Mr. Scrooge,"  

said the gentleman, taking  up a pen, "it 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."  

"Are there no prisons?" asked Scrooge. "Plenty of prisons," said the gentleman,  

laying down the pen again.  

"And the Union workhouses?" demanded Scrooge. "Are they still in operation?"  

"They are. Still," returned  the gentleman, "I wish  

I could say they were not." "The Treadmill and the Poor  

Law are in full vigour, then?" said Scrooge.  

"Both very busy, sir." "Oh! I was afraid, from what you said at first,  

that something had occurred to stop them in their useful course," said Scrooge. "I'm very glad to  

hear it." "Under the impression that they scarcely furnish  

Christian cheer of mind or  body to the multitude,"  

returned the gentleman, "a  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?"  

"Nothing!" Scrooge replied. "You wish to be anonymous?"  

"I wish to be left alone,"  said Scrooge. "Since you  

ask me what I wish, gentlemen, that  is my answer. I don't make merry  

myself at Christmas and I can't 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."  

"Many can't go there; and  many would rather die."