What Does This Quote Mean Business Cried the Ghost Wringing Its Hands Again

A CHRISTMAS CAROL by Charles Dickens

arley was dead: to begin with.  In that location is no doubt whatever about that.  The register of his burying was signed by the chaplain, the clerk, the undertaker, and the principal mourner.  Scrooge signed it: and Scrooge's proper name was adept upon 'Change, for anything he chose to put his manus to.  Onetime Marley was as dead every bit a door-nail.

Mind!  I don't hateful to say that I know, of my ain knowledge, what in that location is particularly dead virtually a door-nail.  I might have been inclined, myself, to regard a coffin-blast as the deadest piece of ironmongery in the trade.  But the wisdom of our ancestors is in the simile; and my unhallowed easily shall not disturb information technology, or the Country's washed for.  You will therefore permit me to repeat, emphatically, that Marley was as expressionless as a door-nail.

Scrooge knew he was dead?  Of class 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 ambassador, his sole assign, his sole residuary legatee, his sole friend and sole mourner.  And fifty-fifty Scrooge was not and so dreadfully cut upwardly by the sad event, but that he was an excellent man of business organization on the very twenty-four hours of the funeral, and solemnised it with an undoubted deal.

The mention of Marley's funeral brings me back to the signal I started from.  At that place is no dubiousness that Marley was expressionless.  This must be distinctly understood, or nil 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 aught more than remarkable in his taking a stroll at night, in an easterly wind, upon his own ramparts, than at that place would be in any other middle-aged gentleman rashly turning out after nighttime in a informal spot -- say Saint Paul's Churchyard for instance -- literally to amaze his son's weak mind.

Scrooge never painted out Old Marley'south proper noun. In that location it stood, years afterwards, above the warehouse door: Scrooge and Marley.  The house was known as Scrooge and Marley.  Sometimes people new to the business chosen Scrooge Scrooge, and sometimes Marley, only he answered to both names: it was withal to him.

Oh!  But he was a tight-fisted hand at the grind- stone, Scrooge! a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old sinner!  Difficult and abrupt every bit flint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire; secret, and cocky-contained, and lonely as an oyster.  The common cold within him froze his old features, nipped his pointed nose, shriveled his cheek, stiffened his gait; made his optics reddish, 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 ain low temperature e'er about with him; he iced his office in the dogdays; and didn't thaw information technology one degree at Christmas.

External heat and cold had fiddling influence on Scrooge.  No warmth could warm, no wintry weather chill him.  No air current 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 avowal of the advantage over him in only one respect.  They oft "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 information technology was o'clock, no man or woman always once in all his life inquired the manner 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; then would wag their tails equally though they said, "No eye at all is better than an evil eye, night master!"

Just what did Scrooge intendance?  Information technology was the very thing he liked.  To border his way forth the crowded paths of life, alert all human being sympathy to keep its altitude, was what the knowing ones phone call "nuts" to Scrooge.

One time upon a fourth dimension -- of all the skillful days in the year, on Christmas Eve -- one-time Scrooge sat busy in his counting-house.  It was cold, dour, biting weather: foggy however: and he could hear the people in the court exterior go wheezing up and down, chirapsia their hands upon their breasts, and stamping their feet upon the pavement stones to warm them.  The metropolis clocks had only just gone iii, but it was quite dark already -- it had not been light all twenty-four hour period: and candles were flaring in the windows of the neighbouring offices, like cherry smears upon the palpable brown air.  The fog came pouring in at every chink and keyhole, and was so dumbo without, that although the court was of the narrowest, the houses opposite were mere phantoms.  To see the muddied cloud come drooping downwards, obscuring everything, i might have thought that Nature lived difficult by, and was brewing on a big scale.

The door of Scrooge's counting-house was open that he might keep his middle upon his clerk, who in a dismal petty prison cell beyond, a sort of tank, was copying letters.  Scrooge had a very pocket-sized fire, but the clerk'south fire was so very much smaller that it looked like one coal.  Only he couldn't furnish it, for Scrooge kept the coal-box in his own room; and and then 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 endeavour, not being a man of a strong imagination, he failed.

"A merry Christmas, uncle!  God salvage you!" cried a cheerful voice.  Information technology was the voice of Scrooge'due south nephew, who came upon him so quickly that this was the offset intimation he had of his approach.

"Bah!" said Scrooge, "Braggadocio!"

He had so heated himself with rapid walking in the fog and frost, this nephew of Scrooge'south, that he was all in a glow; his confront was ruddy and handsome; his optics sparkled, and his breath smoked again.

"Christmas a humbug, uncle!" said Scrooge'south nephew.  "You don't mean that, I am sure."

"I do," said Scrooge.  "Merry Christmas!  What correct take yous to be merry?  What reason accept you lot to be merry?  You lot're poor plenty."

"Come up, then," returned the nephew gaily.  "What right accept yous to exist dismal?  What reason accept you to be morose?  You're rich enough."

Scrooge having no ameliorate 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 tin I be," returned the uncle, "when I alive in such a earth of fools as this?  Merry Christmas!  Out upon merry Christmas!  What'due south Christmas fourth dimension to you merely a fourth dimension for paying bills without money; a fourth dimension for finding yourself a year older, only not an 60 minutes 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 cached with a pale of holly through his center.  He should!"

"Uncle!" pleaded the nephew.

"Nephew!" returned the uncle, sternly, "go along Christmas in your own way, and let me keep information technology in mine."

"Keep it!" repeated Scrooge'south nephew.  "Just yous don't go along information technology."

"Permit me get out it alone, then," said Scrooge.  "Much good may it practise you!  Much skillful information technology has ever washed you!"

"There are many things from which I might have derived practiced, past which I have not profited, I dare say," returned the nephew.  "Christmas amidst the residuum.  Only I am sure I have ever thought of Christmas time, when information technology has come circular -- autonomously 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 actually were boyfriend-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures leap on other journeys.  And therefore, uncle, though it has never put a flake of gilded or silver in my pocket, I believe that it has washed me good, and will do me practiced; 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.

"Allow me hear some other audio from you," said Scrooge, "and you'll proceed your Christmas by losing your situation.  You lot'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 -- yeah, indeed he did.  He went the whole length of the expression, and said that he would run into him in that extremity first.

"But why?"  cried Scrooge'south nephew.  "Why?"

"Why did you get married?"  said Scrooge.

"Considering I savage in dear."

"Because y'all savage in love!" growled Scrooge, as if that were the simply one thing in the globe more ridiculous than a merry Christmas.  "Expert afternoon!"

"Nay, uncle, but you lot never came to come across me before that happened.  Why give it as a reason for not coming at present?"

"Good afternoon," said Scrooge.

"I want nothing from you; I inquire zero of you; why cannot nosotros be friends?"

"Good afternoon," said Scrooge.

"I am sad, with all my heart, to notice you so resolute.  We have never had any quarrel, to which I accept been a party.  But I take fabricated the trial in homage to Christmas, and I'll keep my Christmas sense of humor to the last.  So A Merry Christmas, uncle!"

"Good afternoon," said Scrooge.

"And A Happy New year!"

"Practiced afternoon!" said Scrooge.

His nephew left the room without an aroused word, withal.  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 married woman and family, talking virtually a merry Christmas.  I'll retire to Clamor."

This lunatic, in letting Scrooge'due south nephew out, had allow two other people in.  They were portly gentlemen, pleasant to behold, and now stood, with their hats off, in Scrooge's function.  They had books and papers in their easily, and bowed to him.

"Scrooge and Marley'southward, I believe," said i of the gentlemen, referring to his list.  "Accept I the pleasure of addressing Mr. Scrooge, or Mr. Marley?"

"Mr. Marley has been dead these 7 years," Scrooge replied.  "He died seven years ago, this very nighttime."

"We accept no doubt his liberality is well represented past 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 upwardly a pen, "information technology is more than than usually desirable that we should brand some slight provision for the Poor and Destitute, who endure profoundly 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.

"Enough of prisons," said the admirer, laying down the pen over 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 total vigour, and so?"  said Scrooge.

"Both very busy, sir."

"Oh!  I was agape, from what you lot said at showtime, 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 heed or body to the multitude," returned the admirer, "a few of us are endeavouring to enhance a fund to purchase the Poor some meat and drink and means of warmth.  Nosotros choose this fourth dimension, because it is a time, of all others, when Want is keenly felt, and Abundance rejoices.  What shall I put y'all downward for?"

"Zip!" Scrooge replied.

"You wish to be anonymous?"

"I wish to be left lonely," said Scrooge.  "Since you ask me what I wish, gentlemen, that is my respond.  I don't make merry myself at Christmas and I tin't afford to make idle people merry.  I help to support the establishments I have mentioned -- they cost enough; and those who are desperately off must go there."

"Many can't go there; and many would rather die."

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

"But yous might know it," observed the gentleman.

"It'due south not my business," Scrooge returned.  "It's plenty for a human to understand his own business organisation, and not to interfere with other people's.  Mine occupies me constantly.  Skilful afternoon, gentlemen!"

Seeing clearly that it would be useless to pursue their indicate, 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 well-nigh 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 slyly 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 subsequently as if its teeth were chattering in its frozen head upwards there.  The cold became intense.  In the principal street at the corner of the court, some labourers were repairing the gas-pipes, and had lighted a great burn down in a brazier, circular 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 beingness 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, fabricated pale faces ruddy as they passed.  Poulterers' and grocers' trades became a splendid joke; a glorious pageant, with which information technology was next to incommunicable to believe that such wearisome principles as bargain and sale had anything to do.  The Lord Mayor, in the stronghold of the mighty Mansion House, gave orders to his 50 cooks and butlers to keep Christmas every bit a Lord Mayor'southward household should; and fifty-fifty the lilliputian tailor, whom he had fined v shillings on the previous Monday for existence drunk and bloodthirsty in the streets, stirred upwards 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 skilful Saint Dunstan had but nipped the Evil Spirit's olfactory organ with a touch of such weather as that, instead of using his familiar weapons, and then indeed he would have roared to brawny purpose.  The owner of ane scant young nose, gnawed and mumbled past the hungry cold as bones are gnawed past dogs, stooped down at Scrooge'south keyhole to regale him with a Christmas carol: but at the outset audio of --

"God anoint yous, merry gentleman!
May nothing you dismay!"

Scrooge seized the ruler with such energy of activeness, that the singer fled in terror, leaving the keyhole to the fog and even more than congenial frost.

At length the 60 minutes of shutting up the countinghouse 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 desire all 24-hour interval to-morrow, I suppose?" said Scrooge.

"If quite user-friendly, sir."

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

The clerk smiled faintly.

"And yet," said Scrooge, "you don't think me ill-used, when I pay a twenty-four hour period'due south wages for no work."

The clerk observed that information technology was but once a year.

"A poor excuse for picking a human's pocket every twenty-5th of December!" said Scrooge, buttoning his bully-coat to the chin.  "Just I suppose you must have the whole day.  Be hither all the before next morning time."

The clerk promised that he would; and Scrooge walked out with a growl.  The role 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 stop of a lane of boys, twenty times, in accolade of its being Christmas Eve, and then ran home to Camden Boondocks as difficult equally 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 residue of the evening with his banker'due south-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 one thousand, where it had and then little business to be, that 1 could scarcely assistance fancying it must accept run there when it was a immature firm, playing at hibernate-and-seek with other houses, and forgotten the way out again.  Information technology was onetime plenty at present, and dreary enough, for nobody lived in it merely Scrooge, the other rooms existence all let out equally 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 equally if the Genius of the Weather sat in mournful meditation on the threshold.

Now, information technology is a fact, that there was nothing at all particular about the knocker on the door, except that information technology was very large.  It is likewise a fact, that Scrooge had seen information technology, dark and morn, 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, fifty-fifty including -- which is a bold word -- the corporation, aldermen, and livery.  Allow it also be borne in mind that Scrooge had not bestowed 1 idea on Marley, since his last mention of his 7 years' dead partner that afternoon.  And and then let any man explain to me, if he tin, how it happened that Scrooge, having his key in the lock of the door, saw in the knocker, without its undergoing whatever intermediate process of change -- non 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 low-cal about it, similar a bad lobster in a dark cellar.  Information technology was not angry or ferocious, but looked at Scrooge as Marley used to look: with ghostly spectacles turned upwards on its ghostly forehead.  The hair was curiously stirred, as if by jiff or hot air; and, though the eyes were broad open, they were perfectly motionless.  That, and its livid color, fabricated it horrible; but its horror seemed to exist in spite of the face and across 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 witting of a terrible sensation to which it had been a stranger from infancy, would be untrue.  But he put his paw upon the primal he had relinquished, turned it sturdily, walked in, and lighted his candle.

He did intermission, with a moment'southward irresolution, before he close the door; and he did expect cautiously behind it first, equally if he half-expected to be terrified with the sight of Marley'south pigtail sticking out into the hall. But there was nada on the dorsum of the door, except the screws and nuts that held the knocker on, so he said "Pooh, pooh!" and airtight it with a bang.

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

You lot may talk vaguely about driving a coach-and-vi up a good old flight of stairs, or through a bad immature Human action of Parliament; merely I mean to say you might have got a hearse up that staircase, and taken information technology broadwise, with the splinter-bar towards the wall and the door towards the balustrades: and done it like shooting fish in a barrel.  In that location was enough of width for that, and room to spare; which is possibly the reason why Scrooge thought he saw a locomotive hearse going on before him in the gloom.  One-half a dozen gas-lamps out of the street wouldn't have lighted the entry too well, so you may suppose that information technology was pretty dark with Scrooge's dip.

Up Scrooge went, not caring a push for that. Darkness is cheap, and Scrooge liked it.  But before he shut his heavy door, he walked through his rooms to run across that all was right.  He had but plenty recollection of the face up to want to do that.

Sitting-room, bedroom, lumber-room.  All every bit they should be.  Nobody under the tabular array, 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 upwards in a suspicious attitude against the wall.  Lumber-room as usual.  Old burn down-guards, quondam shoes, two fish-baskets, washing-stand on iii 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 confronting surprise, he took off his cravat; put on his dressing-gown and slippers, and his nightcap; and sat down before the burn down to take his gruel.

It was a very low burn indeed; null on such a bitter night.  He was obliged to sit down close to information technology, and brood over it, before he could excerpt the least sensation of warmth from such a handful of fuel.  The fireplace was an onetime i, built by some Dutch merchant long ago, and paved all round with quaint Dutch tiles, designed to illustrate the Scriptures.  At that place 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 bounding main in butter-boats, hundreds of figures to concenter his thoughts -- and yet that face of Marley, seven years dead, came similar the ancient Prophet'southward rod, and swallowed upwards 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'southward head on every one.

"Humbug!" said Scrooge; and walked beyond the room.

After several turns, he sat down over again.  As he threw his head back in the chair, his glance happened to balance 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 foreign, inexplicable dread, that as he looked, he saw this bell begin to swing.  It swung so softly in the outset that it scarcely fabricated a sound; but soon it rang out loudly, and so did every bong in the house.

This might have lasted half a infinitesimal, or a minute, only it seemed an hour.  The bells ceased as they had begun, together.  They were succeeded by a clanking racket, deep down below; as if some person were dragging a heavy chain over the casks in the wine merchant'due south 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 audio, and and then he heard the noise much louder, on the floors beneath; then coming up the stairs; and then coming straight towards his door.

"It's humbug even so!" said Scrooge.  "I won't believe it."

His color changed though, when, without a pause, it came on through the heavy door, and passed into the room before his optics.  Upon its coming in, the dying flame leaped up, every bit though it cried, "I know him; Marley's Ghost!" and cruel again.

The same face up: 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 concatenation he drew was clasped about his heart.  It was long, and wound about him like a tail; and information technology was fabricated (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 oftentimes heard it said that Marley had no bowels, but he had never believed it until at present.

No, nor did he believe it even now.  Though he looked the phantom through and through, and saw it continuing before him; though he felt the spooky influence of its expiry-common cold optics; and marked the very texture of the folded kerchief leap well-nigh its caput and chin, which wrapper he had not observed earlier: he was however incredulous, and fought against his senses.

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

"Much!" -- Marley'due south voice, no doubt most information technology.

"Who are you lot?"

"Ask me who I was."

"Who were you and 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 advisable.

"In life I was your partner, Jacob Marley."

"Can you -- tin can you lot sit down?"  asked Scrooge, looking doubtfully at him.

"I can."

"Do it and 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 result of its being incommunicable, it might involve the necessity of an embarrassing explanation.  Simply 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 y'all uncertainty your senses?"

"Because," said Scrooge, "a little thing affects them. A slight disorder of the tum makes them cheats.  Yous may be an undigested chip of beefiness, a absorb of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of an underdone potato.  There's more of gravy than of grave about yous, whatsoever you are!"

Scrooge was not much in the habit of cracking jokes, nor did he feel, in his heart, past whatsoever means waggish then.  The truth is, that he tried to be smart, as a means of distracting his ain attending, and keeping downwards his terror; for the spectre's voice disturbed the very marrow in his basic.

To sit, staring at those stock-still glazed eyes, in silence for a moment, would play, Scrooge felt, the very deuce with him.  In that location was something very atrocious, too, in the spectre'south existence provided with an infernal atmosphere of its own.  Scrooge could not feel it himself, only this was clearly the case; for though the Ghost sat perfectly motionless, its hair, and skirts, and tassels, were all the same agitated as past the hot vapour from an oven.

"You see this toothpick?"  said Scrooge, returning chop-chop to the charge, for the reason simply assigned; and wishing, though information technology were only for a 2d, to divert the vision'south stony gaze from himself.

"I do," replied the Ghost.

"Yous are non 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 residuum of my days persecuted by a legion of goblins, all of my ain creation.  Humbug, I tell you!  humbug!"

At this the spirit raised a frightful cry, and shook its chain with such a dismal and appalling racket, 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 caput, as if it were too warm to wear indoors, its lower jaw dropped downwards upon its chest!

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

"Mercy!" he said.  "Dreadful bogeyman, 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 homo," the Ghost returned, "that the spirit within him should walk abroad amid his fellowmen, and travel far and wide; and if that spirit goes not forth in life, information technology is condemned to do and then after death.  It is doomed to wander through the world -- oh, woe is me! -- and witness what it cannot share, merely 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 concatenation 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 volition, and of my own free will I wore it.  Is its pattern strange to y'all?"

Scrooge trembled more and more than.

"Or would you lot 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 agone.  You have laboured on information technology, since. Information technology 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 cablevision: merely he could see aught.

"Jacob," he said, imploringly.  "Old Jacob Marley, tell me more.  Speak condolement to me, Jacob!"

"I accept 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 tin I tell you lot what I would.  A very piddling more, is all permitted to me.  I cannot rest, I cannot stay, I cannot linger anywhere.  My spirit never walked across our counting-house -- mark me! -- in life my spirit never roved beyond the narrow limits of our coin-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, just without lifting upwards his eyes, or getting off his knees.

"You must take been very dull most it, Jacob," Scrooge observed, in a business concern-similar manner, though with humility and deference.

"Ho-hum!" the Ghost repeated.

"7 years expressionless," mused Scrooge.  "And travelling all the fourth dimension!"

"The whole fourth dimension," said the Ghost.  "No rest, no peace.  Incessant torture of remorse."

"You travel fast?"  said Scrooge.

"On the wings of the air current," replied the Ghost.

"You might have got over a slap-up quantity of footing 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 take been justified in indicting information technology for a nuisance.

"Oh!  captive, spring, and double-ironed," cried the phantom, "not to know, that ages of incessant labour, by immortal creatures, for this world 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, volition observe its mortal life too short for its vast means of usefulness.  Non to know that no space of regret can brand amends for one life's opportunity misused!  Still such was I!  Oh!  such was I!"

"Simply you were ever a adept human of business, Jacob," faltered Scrooge, who now began to apply this to himself.

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

Information technology held upwards its chain at arm's length, as if that were the cause of all its unavailing grief, and flung it heavily upon the footing again.

"At this time of the rolling year," the spectre said "I suffer virtually.  Why did I walk through crowds of fellow-beings with my eyes turned down, and never heighten them to that blest Star which led the Wise Men to a poor habitation!  Were there no poor homes to which its light would accept conducted me!"

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

"Hear me!" cried the Ghost.  "My time is near gone."

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

"How information technology is that I announced before yous in a shape that you tin come across, I may not tell.  I have sat invisible abreast you lot 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 hither to-night to warn you, that yous have yet a chance and hope of escaping my fate.  A gamble and hope of my procuring, Ebenezer."

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

"You volition be haunted," resumed the Ghost, "by Three Spirits."

Scrooge'due south eyebrow brutal almost every bit depression equally the Ghost'southward had done.

"Is that the chance and promise you lot mentioned, Jacob?"  he demanded, in a faltering voice.

"It is."

"I -- I think I'd rather non," said Scrooge.

"Without their visits," said the Ghost, "you cannot hope to shun the path I tread.  Look the kickoff tomorrow, when the bell tolls one."

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

"Wait the second on the adjacent night at the aforementioned hour.  The third upon the next night when the last stroke of twelve has ceased to vibrate.  Look to come across me no more than; and look that, for your ain sake, you lot recall what has passed betwixt us!"

When it had said these words, the spectre took its wrapper from the table, and jump it circular its head, as before.  Scrooge knew this, by the smart sound its teeth fabricated, when the jaws were brought together by the bandage.  He ventured to enhance his eyes again, and establish 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 footstep information technology took, the window raised itself a little, and so that when the spectre reached it, information technology was wide open.  Information technology beckoned Scrooge to arroyo, which he did.  When they were within 2 paces of each other, Marley's Ghost held upward its manus, warning him to come no nearer.  Scrooge stopped.

Non then much in obedience, every bit in surprise and fear: for on the raising of the mitt, he became sensible of confused noises in the air; incoherent sounds of lamentation and regret; wailings inexpressibly sorrowful and cocky-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 costless.  Many had been personally known to Scrooge in their lives.  He had been quite familiar with i quondam ghost, in a white waistcoat, with a monstrous fe condom attached to its talocrural joint, who cried piteously at being unable to assist a wretched woman with an baby, whom it saw below, upon a door-footstep.  The misery with them all was, conspicuously, that they sought to interfere, for good, in human being matters, and had lost the ability 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 nighttime became every bit it had been when he walked abode.

Scrooge airtight the window, and examined the door past which the Ghost had entered.  Information technology was double-locked, every bit he had locked it with his own easily, and the bolts were undisturbed.  He tried to say "Humbug!" just stopped at the showtime syllable.  And beingness, from the emotion he had undergone, or the fatigues of the solar day, or his glimpse of the Invisible World, or the tedious conversation of the Ghost, or the lateness of the hr, much in demand of tranquility; went straight to bed, without undressing, and fell asleep upon the instant.

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Source: https://www.stormfax.com/1dickens.htm

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