A_Christmas_Carol_NT.pdf

A Christmas Carol

Charles Dickens

This eBook is designed and published by Planet PDF. For more free

eBooks visit our Web site at http://www.planetpdf.com/ .

A Christmas Carol

I have endeavoured in this Ghostly little

book, to raise the Ghost of an Idea, which

shall not put my readers out of humour

with themselves, with each other, with the

season, or with me. May it haunt their

houses pleasantly, and no one wish to lay it.

Their faithful Friend and Servant, C. D.

December, 1843.

2 of 138

eBook brought to you by

A Christmas Carol

Create, view, and edit PDF. Download the free trial version.

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

3 of 138

A Christmas Carol

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;

4 of 138

A Christmas Carol

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

5 of 138

Plik z chomika:

Inne pliki z tego folderu:

Inne foldery tego chomika: