Charles Dickens

             Chapter 1 - 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 ware-house 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 blindmen'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 greeting 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.''

             ``If they would rather die,'' said Scrooge, ``they had better do it, and decrease the
             surplus population. Besides -- excuse me -- I don't know that.''

             ``But you might know it,'' observed the gentleman.

             ``It's not my business,'' Scrooge returned. ``It's enough for a man to understand his
             own business, and not to interfere with other people's. Mine occupies me
             constantly. Good afternoon, gentlemen!''

             Seeing clearly that it would be useless to pursue their point, the gentlemen
             withdrew. Scrooge resumed his labours with an improved opinion of himself, and
             in a more facetious temper than was usual with him.

             Meanwhile the fog and darkness thickened so, that people ran about with flaring
             links, proffering their services to go before horses in carriages, and conduct them
             on their way. The ancient tower of a church, whose gruff old bell was always
             peeping slily down at Scrooge out of a gothic window in the wall, became
             invisible, and struck the hours and quarters in the clouds, with tremulous vibrations
             afterwards as if its teeth were chattering in its frozen head up there. The cold
             became intense. In the main street, at the corner of the court, some labourers were
             repairing the gas-pipes, and had lighted a great fire in a brazier, round which a
             party of ragged men and boys were gathered: warming their hands and winking
             their eyes before the blaze in rapture. The water-plug being left in solitude, its
             overflowings sullenly congealed, and turned to misanthropic ice. The brightness of
             the shops where holly sprigs and berries crackled in the lamp-heat of the windows,
             made pale faces ruddy as they passed. Poulterers' and grocers' trades became a
             splendid joke: a glorious pageant, with which it was next to impossible to believe
             that such dull principles as bargain and sale had anything to do. The Lord Mayor,
             in the stronghold of the might Mansion House, gave orders to his fifty cooks and
             butlers to keep Christmas as a Lord Mayor's household should; and even the little
             tailor, whom he had fined five shillings on the previous Monday for being drunk and
             bloodthirsty in the streets, stirred up tomorrow's pudding in his garret, while his
             lean wife and the baby sallied out to buy the beef.

             Foggier yet, and colder! Piercing, searching, biting cold. If the good Saint Dunstan
             had but nipped the Evil Spirit's nose with a touch of such weather as that, instead
             of using his familiar weapons, then indeed he would have roared to lusty purpose.
             The owner of one scant young nose, gnawed and mumbled by the hungry cold as
             bones are gnawed by dogs, stooped down at Scrooge's keyhole to regale him
             with a Christmas carol: but at the first sound of God bless you, merry gentleman!
             May nothing you dismay! Scrooge seized the ruler with such energy of action that
             the singer fled in terror, leaving the keyhole to the fog and even more congenial
             frost.

             At length the hour of shutting up the counting-house arrived. With an ill-will Scrooge
             dismounted from his stool, and tacitly admitted the fact to the expectant clerk in the
             Tank, who instantly snuffed his candle out, and put on his hat.

             ``You'll want all day tomorrow, I suppose?'' said Scrooge.

             ``If quite convenient, Sir.''

             ``It's not convenient,'' said Scrooge, ``and it's not fair. If I was to stop half-a-crown
             for it, you'd think yourself ill-used, I 'll be bound?''

             The clerk smiled faintly.

             ``And yet,'' said Scrooge, ``you don't think me ill-used, when I pay a day's wages
             for no work.''

             The clerk observed that it was only once a year.

             ``A poor excuse for picking a man's pocket every twenty-fifth of December!'' said
             Scrooge, buttoning his great-coat to the chin. ``But I suppose you must have the
             whole day. Be here all the earlier next morning!''

             The clerk promised that he would; and Scrooge walked out with a growl. The office
             was closed in a twinkling, and the clerk, with the long ends of his white comforter
             dangling below his waist (for he boasted no great-coat), went down a slide on
             Cornhill, at the end of a lane of boys, twenty times, in honour of its being Christmas
             Eve, and then ran home to Camden Town as hard as he could pelt, to play at
             blindman's buff.

             Scrooge took his melancholy dinner in his usual melancholy tavern; and having
             read all the newspapers, and beguiled the rest of the evening with his
             banker's-book, went home to bed. He lived in chambers which had once belonged
             to his deceased partner. They were a gloomy suite of rooms, in a lowering pile of
             building up a yard, where it had so little business to be, that one could scarcely
             help fancying it must have run there when it was a young house, playing at
             hide-and-seek with other houses, and have forgotten the way out again. It was old
             enough now, and dreary enough, for nobody lived in it but Scrooge, the other
             rooms being all let out as offices. The yard was so dark that even Scrooge, who
             knew its every stone, was fain to grope with his hands. The fog and frost so hung
             about the black old gateway of the house, that it seemed as if the Genius of the
             Weather sat in mournful meditation on the threshold.

             Now, it is a fact, that there was nothing at all particular about the knocker on the
             door, except that it was very large. It is also a fact, that Scrooge had seen it, night
             and morning, during his whole residence in that place; also that Scrooge had as
             little of what is called fancy about him as any man in the City of London, even
             including -- which is a bold word -- the corporation, aldermen, and livery. Let it also
             be borne in mind that Scrooge had not bestowed one thought on Marley, since his
             last mention of his seven-year's dead partner that afternoon. And then let any man
             explain to me, if he can, how it happened that Scrooge, having his key in the lock
             of the door, saw in the knocker, without its undergoing any intermediate process of
             change: not a knocker, but Marley's face.

             Marley's face. It was not in impenetrable shadow as the other objects in the yard
             were, but had a dismal light about it, like a bad lobster in a dark cellar. It was not
             angry or ferocious, but looked at Scrooge as Marley used to look: with ghostly
             spectacles turned up upon its ghostly forehead. The hair was curiously stirred, as if
             by breath or hot-air; and, though the eyes were wide open, they were perfectly
             motionless. That, and its livid colour, made it horrible; but its horror seemed to be
             in spite of the face and beyond its control, rather than a part of its own expression.

             As Scrooge looked fixedly at this phenomenon, it was a knocker again.

             To say that he was not startled, or that his blood was not conscious of a terrible
             sensation to which it had been a stranger from infancy, would be untrue. But he put
             his hand upon the key he had relinquished, turned it sturdily, walked in, and lighted
             his candle.

             He did pause, with a moment's irresolution, before he shut the door; and he did
             look cautiously behind it first, as if he half expected to be terrified with the sight of
             Marley's pigtail sticking out into the hall. But there was nothing on the back of the
             door, except the screws and nuts that held the knocker on, so he said ``Pooh,
             pooh!'' and closed it with a bang.

             The sound resounded through the house like thunder. Every room above, and
             every cask in the wine-merchant's cellars below, appeared to have a separate
             peal of echoes of its own. Scrooge was not a man to be frightened by echoes. He
             fastened the door, and walked across the hall, and up the stairs, slowly too:
             trimming his candle as he went.

             You may talk vaguely about driving a coach-and-six up a good old flight of stairs,
             or through a bad young Act of Parliament; but I mean to say you might have got a
             hearse up that staircase, and taken it broadwise, with the splinter-bar towards the
             wall and the door towards the balustrades: and done it easy. There was plenty of
             width for that, and room to spare; which is perhaps the reason why Scrooge
             thought he saw a locomotive hearse going on before him in the gloom.
             Half-a-dozen gas-lamps out of the street wouldn't have lighted the entry too well, so
             you may suppose that it was pretty dark with Scrooge's dip.

             Up Scrooge went, not caring a button for that: darkness is cheap, and Scrooge
             liked it. But before he shut his heavy door, he walked through his rooms to see that
             all was right. He had just enough recollection of the face to desire to do that.

             Sitting-room, bed-room, lumber-room. All as they should be. Nobody under the
             table, nobody under the sofa; a small fire in the grate; spoon and basin ready; and
             the little saucepan of gruel (Scrooge has a cold in his head) upon the hob. Nobody
             under the bed; nobody in the closet; nobody in his dressing-gown, which was
             hanging up in a suspicious attitude against the wall. Lumber-room as usual. Old
             fire-guard, old shoes, two fish-baskets, washing-stand on three legs, and a poker.

             Quite satisfied, he closed his door, and locked himself in; double-locked himself
             in, which was not his custom. Thus secured against surprise, he took off his cravat;
             put on his dressing-gown and slippers, and his night-cap; and sat down before the
             fire to take his gruel.

             It was a very low fire indeed; nothing on such a bitter night. He was obliged to sit
             close to it, and brood over it, before he could extract the least sensation of warmth
             from such a handful of fuel. The fireplace was an old one, built by some Dutch
             merchant long ago, and paved all round with quaint Dutch tiles, designed to
             illustrate the Scriptures. There were Cains and Abels, Pharaoh's daughters,
             Queens of Sheba, Angelic messengers descending through the air on clouds like
             feather-beds, Abrahams, Belshazzars, Apostles putting off to sea in butter-boats,
             hundreds of figures to attract his thoughts; and yet that face of Marley, seven years
             dead, came like the ancient Prophet's rod, and swallowed up the whole. If each
             smooth tile had been a blank at first, with power to shape some picture on its
             surface from the disjointed fragments of his thoughts, there would have been a
             copy of old Marley's head on every one.

             ``Humbug!'' said Scrooge; and walked across the room.

             After several turns, he sat down again. As he threw his head back in the chair, his
             glance happened to rest upon a bell, a disused bell, that hung in the room, and
             communicated for some purpose now forgotten with a chamber in the highest
             story of the building. It was with great astonishment, and with a strange,
             inexplicable dread, that as he looked, he saw this bell begin to swing. It swung so
             softly in the outset that it scarcely made a sound; but soon it rang out loudly, and so
             did every bell in the house.

             This might have lasted half a minute, or a minute, but it seemed an hour. The bells
             ceased as they had begun, together. They were succeeded by a clanking noise,
             deep down below; as if some person were dragging a heavy chain over the casks
             in the wine-merchant's cellar. Scrooge then remembered to have heard that
             ghosts in haunted houses were described as dragging chains.

             The cellar-door flew open with a booming sound, and then he heard the noise
             much louder, on the floors below; then coming up the stairs; then coming straight
             towards his door.

             ``It's humbug still!'' said Scrooge. ``I won't believe it.''

             His colour changed though, when, without a pause, it came on through the heavy
             door, and passed into the room before his eyes. Upon its coming in, the dying
             flame leaped up, as though it cried, ``I know him! Marley's Ghost!'' and fell again.

             The same face: the very same. Marley in his pigtail, usual waistcoat, tights, and
             boots; the tassels on the latter bristling, like his pigtail, and his coat-skirts, and the
             hair upon his head. The chain he drew was clasped about his middle. It was long,
             and wound about him like a tail; and it was made (for Scrooge observed it closely)
             of cash-boxes, keys, padlocks, ledgers, deeds, and heavy purses wrought in steel.
             His body was transparent; so that Scrooge, observing him, and looking through
             his waistcoat, could see the two buttons on his coat behind.

             Scrooge had often heard it said that Marley had no bowels, but he had never
             believed it until now.

             No, nor did he believe it even now. Though he looked the phantom through and
             through, and saw it standing before him; though he felt the chilling influence of its
             death-cold eyes; and marked the very texture of the folded kerchief bound about
             its head and chin, which wrapper he had not observed before; he was still
             incredulous, and fought against his senses.

             ``How now!'' said Scrooge, caustic and cold as ever. ``What do you want with
             me?''

             ``Much!'' -- Marley's voice, no doubt about it.

             ``Who are you?''

             ``Ask me who I was.''

             ``Who were you then.'' said Scrooge, raising his voice. ``You're particular, for a
             shade.'' He was going to say ``to a shade,'' but substituted this, as more
             appropriate.

             ``In life I was your partner, Jacob Marley.''

             ``Can you -- can you sit down?'' asked Scrooge, looking doubtfully at him.

             ``I can.''

             ``Do it, then.''

             Scrooge asked the question, because he didn't know whether a ghost so
             transparent might find himself in a condition to take a chair; and felt that in the
             event of its being impossible, it might involve the necessity of an embarrassing
             explanation. But the ghost sat down on the opposite side of the fireplace, as if he
             were quite used to it.

             ``You don't believe in me,'' observed the Ghost.

             ``I don't,'' said Scrooge.

             ``What evidence would you have of my reality beyond that of your senses?''

             ``I don't know,'' said Scrooge.

             ``Why do you doubt your senses?''

             ``Because,'' said Scrooge, ``a little thing affects them. A slight disorder of the
             stomach makes them cheats. You may be an undigested bit of beef, a blot of
             mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of an underdone potato. There's more of
             gravy than of grave about you, whatever you are!''

             Scrooge was not much in the habit of cracking jokes, nor did he feel, in his heart,
             by any means waggish then. The truth is, that he tried to be smart, as a means of
             distracting his own attention, and keeping down his terror; for the spectre's voice
             disturbed the very marrow in his bones.

             To sit, staring at those fixed, glazed eyes, in silence for a moment, would play,
             Scrooge felt, the very deuce with him. There was something very awful, too, in the
             spectre's being provided with an infernal atmosphere of its own. Scrooge could
             not feel it himself, but this was clearly the case; for though the Ghost sat perfectly
             motionless, its hair, and skirts, and tassels, were still agitated as by the hot vapour
             from an oven.

             ``You see this toothpick?'' said Scrooge, returning quickly to the charge, for the
             reason just assigned; and wishing, though it were only for a second, to divert the
             vision's stony gaze from himself.

             ``I do,'' replied the Ghost.

             ``You are not looking at it,'' said Scrooge.

             ``But I see it,'' said the Ghost, ``notwithstanding.''

             ``Well!'' returned Scrooge, ``I have but to swallow this, and be for the rest of my
             days persecuted by a legion of goblins, all of my own creation. Humbug, I tell you;
             humbug!''

             At this the spirit raised a frightful cry, and shook its chain with such a dismal and
             appalling noise, that Scrooge held on tight to his chair, to save himself from falling
             in a swoon. But how much greater was his horror, when the phantom taking off the
             bandage round its head, as if it were too warm to wear in-doors, its lower jaw
             dropped down upon its breast!

             Scrooge fell upon his knees, and clasped his hands before his face.

             ``Mercy!'' he said. ``Dreadful apparition, why do you trouble me?''

             ``Man of the worldly mind!'' replied the Ghost, ``do you believe in me or not?''

             ``I do,'' said Scrooge. ``I must. But why do spirits walk the earth, and why do they
             come to me?''

             ``It is required of every man,'' the Ghost returned, ``that the spirit within him should
             walk abroad among his fellow-men, and travel far and wide; and if that spirit goes
             not forth in life, it is condemned to do so after death. It is doomed to wander
             through the world -- oh, woe is me! -- and witness what it cannot share, but might
             have shared on earth, and turned to happiness!''

             Again the spectre raised a cry, and shook its chain, and wrung its shadowy hands.

             ``You are fettered,'' said Scrooge, trembling. ``Tell me why?''

             ``I wear the chain I forged in life,'' replied the Ghost. ``I made it link by link, and yard
             by yard; I girded it on of my own free will, and of my own free will I wore it. Is its
             pattern strange to you?''

             Scrooge trembled more and more.

             ``Or would you know,'' pursued the Ghost, ``the weight and length of the strong coil
             you bear yourself? It was full as heavy and as long as this, seven Christmas Eves
             ago. You have laboured on it, since. It is a ponderous chain!''

             Scrooge glanced about him on the floor, in the expectation of finding himself
             surrounded by some fifty or sixty fathoms of iron cable: but he could see nothing.

             ``Jacob,'' he said, imploringly. ``Old Jacob Marley, tell me more. Speak comfort to
             me, Jacob.''

             ``I have none to give,'' the Ghost replied. ``It comes from other regions, Ebenezer
             Scrooge, and is conveyed by other ministers, to other kinds of men. Nor can I tell
             you what I would. A very little more, is all permitted to me. I cannot rest, I cannot
             stay, I cannot linger anywhere. My spirit never walked beyond our counting-house
             -- mark me! -- in life my spirit never roved beyond the narrow limits of our
             money-changing hole; and weary journeys lie before me!''

             It was a habit with Scrooge, whenever he became thoughtful, to put his hands in
             his breeches pockets. Pondering on what the Ghost had said, he did so now, but
             without lifting up his eyes, or getting off his knees.

             ``You must have been very slow about it, Jacob,'' Scrooge observed, in a
             business-like manner, though with humility and deference.

             ``Slow!'' the Ghost repeated.

             ``Seven years dead,'' mused Scrooge. ``And travelling all the time?''

             ``The whole time,'' said the Ghost. ``No rest, no peace. Incessant torture of
             remorse.''

             ``You travel fast?'' said Scrooge.

             ``On the wings of the wind,'' replied the Ghost.

             ``You might have got over a great quantity of ground in seven years,'' said
             Scrooge.

             The Ghost, on hearing this, set up another cry, and clanked its chain so hideously
             in the dead silence of the night, that the Ward would have been justified in indicting
             it for a nuisance.

             ``Oh! captive, bound, and double-ironed,'' cried the phantom, ``not to know, that
             ages of incessant labour by immortal creatures, for this earth must pass into
             eternity before the good of which it is susceptible is all developed. Not to know
             that any Christian spirit working kindly in its little sphere, whatever it may be, will
             find its mortal life too short for its vast means of usefulness. Not to know that no
             space of regret can make amends for one life's opportunities misused! Yet such
             was I! Oh! such was I!''

             ``But you were always a good man of business, Jacob,'' faultered Scrooge, who
             now began to apply this to himself.

             ``Business!'' cried the Ghost, wringing its hands again. ``Mankind was my
             business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance,
             and benevolence, were, all, my business. The dealings of my trade were but a
             drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business!''

             It held up its chain at arm's length, as if that were the cause of all its unavailing
             grief, and flung it heavily upon the ground again.

             ``At this time of the rolling year,'' the spectre said, ``I suffer most. Why did I walk
             through crowds of fellow-beings with my eyes turned down, and never raise them
             to that blessed Star which led the Wise Men to a poor abode? Were there no poor
             homes to which its light would have conducted me!''

             Scrooge was very much dismayed to hear the spectre going on at this rate, and
             began to quake exceedingly.

             ``Hear me!'' cried the Ghost. ``My time is nearly gone.''

             ``I will,'' said Scrooge. ``But don't be hard upon me! Don't be flowery, Jacob!
             Pray!''

             ``How it is that I appear before you in a shape that you can see, I may not tell. I
             have sat invisible beside you many and many a day.''

             It was not an agreeable idea. Scrooge shivered, and wiped the perspiration from
             his brow.

             ``That is no light part of my penance,'' pursued the Ghost. ``I am here to-night to
             warn you, that you have yet a chance and hope of escaping my fate. A chance and
             hope of my procuring, Ebenezer.''

             ``You were always a good friend to me,'' said Scrooge. ``Thank'ee!''

             ``You will be haunted,'' resumed the Ghost, ``by Three Spirits.''

             Scrooge's countenance fell almost as low as the Ghost's had done.

             ``Is that the chance and hope you mentioned, Jacob?'' he demanded, in a faltering
             voice.

             ``It is.''

             ``I -- I think I'd rather not,'' said Scrooge.

             ``Without their visits,'' said the Ghost, ``you cannot hope to shun the path I tread.
             Expect the first to-morrow, when the bell tolls One.''

             ``Couldn't I take 'em all at once, and have it over, Jacob?'' hinted Scrooge.

             ``Expect the second on the next night at the same hour. The third upon the next
             night when the last stroke of Twelve has ceased to vibrate. Look to see me no
             more; and look that, for your own sake, you remember what has passed between
             us.''

             When it had said these words, the spectre took its wrapper from the table, and
             bound it round its head, as before. Scrooge knew this, by the smart sound its teeth
             made, when the jaws were brought together by the bandage. He ventured to raise
             his eyes again, and found his supernatural visitor confronting him in an erect
             attitude, with its chain wound over and about its arm.

             The apparition walked backward from him; and at every step it took, the window
             raised itself a little, so that when the spectre reached it, it was wide open.

             It beckoned Scrooge to approach, which he did. When they were within two paces
             of each other, Marley's Ghost held up its hand, warning him to come no nearer.
             Scrooge stopped.

             Not so much in obedience, as in surprise and fear: for on the raising of the hand,
             he became sensible of confused noises in the air; incoherent sounds of
             lamentation and regret; wailings inexpressibly sorrowful and self-accusatory. The
             spectre, after listening for a moment, joined in the mournful dirge; and floated out
             upon the bleak, dark night.

             Scrooge followed to the window: desperate in his curiosity. He looked out.

             The air was filled with phantoms, wandering hither and thither in restless haste,
             and moaning as they went. Every one of them wore chains like Marley's Ghost;
             some few (they might be guilty governments) were linked together; none were free.
             Many had been personally known to Scrooge in their lives. He had been quite
             familiar with one old ghost, in a white waistcoat, with a monstrous iron safe
             attached to its ankle, who cried piteously at being unable to assist a wretched
             woman with an infant, whom it saw below, upon a door-step. The misery with them
             all was, clearly, that they sought to interfere, for good, in human matters, and had
             lost the power for ever.

             Whether these creatures faded into mist, or mist enshrouded them, he could not
             tell. But they and their spirit voices faded together; and the night became as it had
             been when he walked home.

             Scrooge closed the window, and examined the door by which the Ghost had
             entered. It was double-locked, as he had locked it with his own hands, and the
             bolts were undisturbed. He tried to say ``Humbug!'' but stopped.