Stave 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 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 grind- stone,
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 dogdays; 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 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 tomorrow.'

     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
greetings 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 returned 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 overflowing 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 mighty 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 to-morrow'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 to-morrow, 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 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 years'
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 on 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 or 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, bedroom, 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 had 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-guards, 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 nightcap; 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, Pharaohs' 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 indoors, 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 fellowmen,
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 opportunity
misused! Yet such was I! Oh! such was I!'

     `But you were always a good man of business, Jacob,'
faltered 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 tomorrow, 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 at the first syllable. And
being, from the emotion he had undergone, or the fatigues of
the day, or his glimpse of the Invisible World, or the dull
conversation of the Ghost, or the lateness of the hour, much
in need of repose; went straight to bed, without undressing,
and fell asleep upon the instant.