CHAPTER 1 Marley’s Ghost CHAPTER 2 The First of the Three Spirits CHAPTER 3 The Second of the Three Spirits CHAPTER 4 The Last of the Spirits CHAPTER 5 The End of It
Marley was dead. There is no doubt about that. The register of his burial was signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker, and the chief mourner. Even Scrooge had signed it. Old Marley was 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 administrator. His sole friend. His sole mourner. But, even Scrooge wasn’t sad at Marley’s funeral. The mention of Marley’s funeral brings me back to the beginning. Marley was dead. If you don’t believe that, then nothing wonderful can come of the story I am about to tell. Scrooge never painted over Marley’s name. There it stood, years afterward, above the warehouse door: Scrooge and Marley. Sometimes people new to the business called Scrooge Scrooge. Sometimes they called him Marley. It didn’t matter. He’d answer to both names. It was all the same to him. Oh! But Scrooge was a tightfisted hand at work. He was a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, clutching old sinner. The cold within him froze his old features. It nipped his pointed nose and shriveled his cheek. It stiffened his gait. It made his eyes red and his thin lips blue. A frosty ice was on his head, eyebrows, and wiry chin. He carried his own low temperature about with him. He iced his office in the dog days and didn’t thaw it one degree at Christmas. No warmth could warm him. No wintry weather could chill him. No wind that blew was bitterer than he. Scrooge was fouler than the foulest weather. Nobody ever stopped him in the street to ask in happy voices, “My dear Scrooge, how are you? When will you come to see me?” No beggars asked him for anything. No children asked the time. Even the blind men’s dogs appeared to know him. When they saw him coming, they tugged their owners into doorways. But what did Scrooge care? It was the very thing he liked. Once upon a time, on Christmas Eve, old Scrooge sat in his countinghouse. It was bitter outside. He could hear people in the outside court stamping their feet upon the pavement to get warm. Although it was only three o’clock, it was already dark. The entire day had been dark and dank. Candles flickered in the windows. The fog was so thick that you couldn’t make out the houses across the street. They were mere phantoms. The door of Scrooge’s countinghouse was open. He wanted to keep an eye on his clerk. Scrooge had a small fire but the clerk’s fire was much smaller. It was so much smaller that it was almost out. The clerk couldn’t replenish his fire because Scrooge kept the coal box in his own room. What choice did the clerk have but to put on his white comforter and try to warm himself with a candle? “A merry Christmas, Uncle! God save you!” cried a cheerful voice. It was the voice of Scrooge’s nephew. “Bah!” said Scrooge. “Humbug!” “You don’t mean that, Uncle,” said his nephew. “I do!” said Scrooge. “Merry Christmas? What right have you to be merry? You’re poor enough.” “Come then,” said the nephew happily. “What right do you have to be so dismal? You’re rich enough.” Scrooge had the only answer he could think of. “Bah, humbug!” “Don’t be angry, Uncle.” “What else can I be when I live in a world of fools? Merry Christmas! What’s Christmas to you but a time for paying bills without money? A time for finding yourself a year older. A time for balancing the books. If I had my way, everyone who wished a merry Christmas would be boiled in his or her own pudding. Then he’d be buried with a stake of holly through his heart.” “Uncle!” pleaded the nephew. “Nephew!” Scrooge shot back. “Keep Christmas in your own way and let me keep it in mine. What good has Christmas ever done you?” “Keep it?” repeated Scrooge’s nephew. “But you don’t keep it.” “Let me leave it alone, then,” said Scrooge. “Christmas is a good time. A kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time. The only time I know of all year when men and women open their hearts freely and help those below them. Although it has never put a scrap of gold or silver in my pocket, I believe it has done me good. It will do me good. I say, God bless it!” The clerk applauded. When he sensed Scrooge’s disgust, he poked the fire and extinguished the last frail spark forever. Scrooge glared at the clerk. “Let me hear one more word from you and you’ll lose your job forever.” He turned toward his nephew. “You are quite a powerful speaker. I wonder why you don’t go into Parliament.”
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