Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol

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 for anything

he chose to put his hand to.

Old Marley was as dead as a doornail.

This must be distinctly understood

or nothing wonderful can come of the story

I'm going to relate.

Scrooge knew he was dead.

Of course he did.

How could it be otherwise?

That Scrooge and he were partners for...

I don't know how many years.

Scrooge was his sole executor,

his sole administrator,

his sole residuary legatee,

his sole friend,

and soul mourner.

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.

It was all the same to him.

Oh, but he was a tightfisted hand at the grindstone,

was Scrooge.

A squeezing, wrenching, grasping,

scraping, clutching, covetous old sinner!

Secret and self-contained

and solitary as an oyster.

Nobody ever stopped him in the street to say,

"My dear Scrooge, how are you?"

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 blind men's dogs, when they saw him coming on,

would tug their owners into doorways.

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!

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.

The city clocks had only just gone three,

but it was quite dark already

and candles were flaring in the windows

like ruddy smears upon the palpable brown air.

The fog came pouring in at every chink and keyhole,

and was so dense without

the houses opposites were mere phantoms.

The door of Scrooge's office was open

that he might keep his eye upon his clerk, Bob Cratchit,

who in a dismal little cell 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.

The clerk tried to warm himself with 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, Fred,

who had so heated himself with rapid walking in the fog

and frost that he was all in a glow

and his breath smoked again.

"Bah!" said Scrooge. "Humbug!"

Oh, Christmas a humbug, Uncle?

You don't mean that, I'm sure!

I do!

Merry Christmas!

What right have you to be merry?

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

- Oh, come then! 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!"

Oh, don't be cross, Uncle!

Well, what else can I be?

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.

If I could work my will,

every idiot who goes about with,

"Merry Christmas" on his lips

should be boiled in his own pudding

and buried with a stake of holly through his heart.

Uncle!

Nephew!

Keep Christmas in your own way and let me keep it in mine.

Keep it? But you don't keep it!

Let me leave it alone then!

Much good, may it do you.

Much good it has ever done you!

Well, there are many things

from which I might have derived good

by which I have not profited, I dare say.

But Christmas among the rest?

Well, I've always thought of Christmas time as a good time,

a kind, forgiving, charitable time.

The only time I know of when men

and women seem by one consent

to open their shut up hearts freely

and think of people below them

as if they really were fellow passengers to the grave.

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 involuntarily applauded.

- Let me hear another sound from you, Cratchit,

and you'll keep your Christmas by losing your situation.

You're quite a powerful speaker, sir!

I wonder you don't go into Parliament.

- Oh, don't be angry, Uncle. Come dine with us tomorrow!

- Scrooge said that he would see him in, 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?

Well, why did you get married?

Well, because I fell in love!

- "Because you fell in love," growled Scrooge.

As if that were the only 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!

- I want nothing from you. I ask nothing of you.

Why cannot we be friends?

Good afternoon!

- Look, I'm 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 humor to the last.

So a merry Christmas, Uncle!

Good afternoon!

And a happy New Year!

Good afternoon!

- His nephew left the room without an angry word,

not withstanding, and stopped at the outer door

to exchange the greetings of the season with the clerk

who, cold as he was, was warmer than Scrooge.

Merry Christmas to you, Cratchit.

There's another fellow.

My clerk with 15 shillings a week and a wife

and family talking about a merry Christmas.

I'll retire to bedlam.

And a happy New Year!

- The clerk, in letting Scrooge's nephew out,

had let two other gentlemen in

who stood with their hats off in Scrooge's office.

Oh, Scrooge and Marley's, I believe?

Have with the pleasure of addressing Mr. Scrooge

or Mr. Marley?

- Mr. Marley has been dead these seven years.

He died seven years ago this very night.

- Well, we have no doubt his liberality is well represented

by his surviving partner.

My credentials, sir.

At the ominous word "liberality,"

Scrooge frowned and handed the credentials back.

- Well, at this festive season of the year, Mr. Scrooge,

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

and hundreds of thousands

are in want of common comforts, sir.

Are there no prisons?

Well, plenty of prisons.

- And the union workhouses, are they still in operation?

- They are still. I wish I could say they were not.

- Oh, I was afraid from what you said at first

that something had occurred to stop them

in their useful course.

I'm very glad to hear it.

- Well, a few of us are endeavoring 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 we put you down for?

Nothing!

Oh, you wish to be anonymous?