darkness reigns and spirits linger,

we invite you to venture into the

chilling world of...

A Christmas Carol.

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 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 doornail.

"I don't mean to say that I know of my

own knowledge what there is particularly

dead about a doornail. I might have been

inclined myself to

regard a coffin-nail as

the deadest piece of iron-mongery in the

trade. But the wisdom of our

ancestors is in the simile,

and my unhallowed hands shall not disturb

it, or the countries done

for. You will, therefore,

permit me to repeat, emphatically, that

Marley was as dead as a doornail."

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 solemnized 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 St.

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 knew 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,

generous fire, secret and

secret and self-contained and solitary as

an oyster. The cold within

him froze his old features,

features, nipped his

nipped his pointed nose, shriveled his

cheek, stiffened his gait,

stiffened his gait, made his eyes red,

made his eyes red, his thin

his thin lips blue, and

lips blue, and spoke out shrewdly in his

grating voice. A frosty

rhyme was on his head and on his

eyebrows and his wiry chin. He carried

his own low temperature

always about with him.

about with him. He iced

He iced his office in the dog days and

didn't thaw at one degree at Christmas.

didn't thaw at one degree at Christmas.

Christmas. External heat and cold had

External heat and cold had little

influence on Scrooge. No warmth could

warm, no wintry weather

could warm, no wintry weather

chill him. No wind that blew was bitterer

than he. No falling snow was

more intent upon its purpose.

purpose, no pelting rain less

No pelting rain less open to entreaty.

open to entreaty. Foul weather didn't

Foul weather didn't know where to have

him. The heaviest rain

heaviest rain and snow and hail

and snow and hail and sleet could boast

of the advantage over

him in only one respect.

over him in only one respect. They often

They often came down handsomely, and

Scrooge never did. Nobody ever stopped

him in the street to say

to say with gladsome looks,

with gladsome looks, "My dear Scrooge,

"My dear Scrooge, how are you? When will

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 a clock no man or woman

a clock no man or woman

ever once in all his life

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,

of life, warning all human sympathy to

warning all human sympathy to keep its

distance, was what the

knowing one's call nuts to Scrooge. Once

upon a time, of all the good

days in the year on Christmas

year on Christmas Eve,

eve, old Scrooge sat busy in his counting

house. It was cold,

bleak, biting weather,

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.

stones to warm them.

The city clocks had only just gone three,

but it was quite dark

already. It had not been light

already. It had not been light all

all day, and candles were flaring in the

windows of the neighboring

offices like ruddy smears upon

the palpable brown air. The fog came

pouring in at every chink and keyhole,

pouring in at every chink and keyhole and

and was so dense without

that, although the court was of the

narrowest, the house's 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

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. "Bye!" said Scrooge.

"Bast," 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.

that he was all in a glow. His face was

His face was ruddy and handsome, his eyes

sparkled, and his breath smoked again.

again. "Christmas a hum--"

"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.

"A Merry Christmas, uncle!

God save you!" cried a cheerful voice.

"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

and 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,"

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!"

"Uncle!"

pleaded the nephew.

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.

charitable, pleasant time,

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