Name: A Christmas Carol | Stave I: Marley's Ghost | Charles Dickens
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I have endeavoured in this Ghostly little book, to raise the Ghost of an Idea, which

shall 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.

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

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 grindstone, Scrooge! a squeezing, wrenching,

grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old sinner! Hard and

sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire; secret, and self-contained,

and solitary as an oyster. The cold within him froze his old features, nipped his pointed

nose, shrivelled his cheek, stiffened his gait; made his eyes red, his thin lips blue;

and spoke out shrewdly in his grating voice. A frosty rime was on his head, and on his

eyebrows, and his wiry chin. He carried his own low temperature always about with him;

he iced his office in the dog-days; and didn’t thaw it one degree at Christmas.

External heat and cold had little influence on Scrooge. No warmth could warm, no wintry

weather chill him. No wind that blew was bitterer than he, no falling snow was more intent upon

its purpose, no pelting rain less open to entreaty. Foul weather didn’t know where

to have him. The heaviest rain, and snow, and hail, and sleet, could boast of the advantage

over him in only one respect. They often “came down” handsomely, and Scrooge never did.

Nobody ever stopped him in the street to say, with gladsome looks, “My dear Scrooge, how

are you? When will you come to see me?” No beggars implored him to bestow a trifle,

no children asked him what it was o’clock, no man or woman ever once in all his life

inquired the way to such and such a place, of Scrooge. Even the 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

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

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

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

“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

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

“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;

“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

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A Christmas Carol | Stave I: Marley's Ghost | Charles Dickens

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