Are There Any Nail Shops Open On New Years Eve?
A CHRISTMAS CAROL past Charles Dickens
arley was expressionless: to begin with. There is no doubt whatever almost 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 proper name was proficient upon 'Alter, for annihilation he chose to put his hand to. Old Marley was as dead equally a door-nail.Mind! I don't mean to say that I know, of my ain noesis, what there is particularly dead about a door-blast. I might have been inclined, myself, to regard a bury-blast every bit the deadest slice 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 Land'south washed for. You will therefore permit me to repeat, emphatically, that Marley was equally dead every bit 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 non and then dreadfully cut up past the sad result, but that he was an first-class man of business on the very twenty-four hour period of the funeral, and solemnised it with an undoubted deal.
The mention of Marley's funeral brings me back to the bespeak I started from. There is no doubt that Marley was dead. This must be distinctly understood, or nothing wonderful tin can come of the story I am going to relate. If nosotros were non perfectly convinced that Hamlet'south Father died earlier the play began, there would be nothing more than remarkable in his taking a stroll at night, in an easterly current of air, upon his own ramparts, than there would be in any other middle-aged gentleman rashly turning out after night in a breezy spot -- say Saint Paul'southward Churchyard for instance -- literally to astonish his son'southward weak mind.
Scrooge never painted out Old Marley'due south name. In that location it stood, years afterward, to a higher place the warehouse door: Scrooge and Marley. The firm was known equally 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! Simply he was a tight-fisted hand at the grind- stone, Scrooge! a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, sometime sinner! Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire; hugger-mugger, and self-contained, and alone as an oyster. The cold within him froze his quondam features, nipped his pointed olfactory organ, shriveled 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 mentum. He carried his own depression temperature always about with him; he iced his office in the dogdays; and didn't thaw it 1 caste at Christmas.
External rut and cold had trivial 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 rain 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 simply one respect. They frequently "came down" handsomely, and Scrooge never did.
Nobody ever stopped him in the street to say, with gladsome looks, "My honey Scrooge, how are y'all? 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 homo or woman ever once in all his life inquired the way to such and such a identify, 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 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? Information technology was the very thing he liked. To edge his way along the crowded paths of life, alarm all human sympathy to go on its distance, was what the knowing ones telephone call "basics" to Scrooge.
Once upon a time -- of all the good days in the year, on Christmas Eve -- old Scrooge sat busy in his counting-business firm. Information technology was cold, bleak, biting atmospheric condition: foggy withal: and he could hear the people in the court exterior get 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 but gone three, but it was quite night already -- it had not been lite all 24-hour interval: and candles were flaring in the windows of the neighbouring offices, like carmine smears upon the palpable brownish 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 contrary were mere phantoms. To run across the dingy cloud come drooping down, obscuring everything, ane might have idea that Nature lived hard by, and was brewing on a large scale.
The door of Scrooge's counting-business firm was open that he might keep his middle upon his clerk, who in a dismal piffling cell beyond, a sort of tank, was copying letters. Scrooge had a very small fire, just the clerk'due south fire was so very much smaller that information technology looked similar one coal. But he couldn't replenish it, for Scrooge kept the coal-box in his own room; and and then surely equally 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 endeavor, not beingness a homo of a strong imagination, he failed.
"A merry Christmas, uncle! God save y'all!" cried a cheerful voice. It was the vocalization of Scrooge's nephew, who came upon him so quickly that this was the starting time intimation he had of his approach.
"Bah!" said Scrooge, "Humbug!"
He had and so heated himself with rapid walking in the fog and frost, this nephew of Scrooge'due south, that he was all in a glow; his face was ruddy and handsome; his eyes sparkled, and his jiff smoked again.
"Christmas a humbug, uncle!" said Scrooge'due south nephew. "You don't mean that, I am sure."
"I do," said Scrooge. "Merry Christmas! What right have y'all to be merry? What reason have you to be merry? You're poor plenty."
"Come up, then," returned the nephew gaily. "What right take you to be dismal? What reason have y'all to be morose? You lot're rich plenty."
Scrooge having no improve reply gear up 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 can I be," returned the uncle, "when I alive in such a earth of fools equally this? Merry Christmas! Out upon merry Christmas! What's Christmas time to yous but a fourth dimension for paying bills without money; a fourth dimension 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 circular dozen of months presented expressionless against you? If I could piece of 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 stake of holly through his heart. He should!"
"Uncle!" pleaded the nephew.
"Nephew!" returned the uncle, sternly, "proceed Christmas in your own way, and let me go on it in mine."
"Go on it!" repeated Scrooge'due south nephew. "But you don't proceed it."
"Let me get out it solitary, then," said Scrooge. "Much good may it exercise y'all! Much practiced it has ever done you!"
"There are many things from which I might take derived good, past which I have not profited, I dare say," returned the nephew. "Christmas among the rest. Just I am sure I have always thought of Christmas time, when information technology has come up circular -- apart from the veneration due to its sacred proper name and origin, if anything belonging to it can be autonomously from that -- as a skillful time: a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant fourth dimension: the simply time I know of, in the long calendar of the yr, when men and women seem by 1 consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people beneath them every bit if they really were swain-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures spring 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 proficient, and will exercise me good; and I say, God bless information technology!"
The clerk in the tank involuntarily applauded: becoming immediately sensible of the venial, he poked the fire, and extinguished the last fragile spark for ever.
"Let me hear another audio from you," said Scrooge, "and you'll keep your Christmas by losing your situation. Y'all're quite a powerful speaker, sir," he added, turning to his nephew. "I wonder yous don't go into Parliament."
"Don't be angry, uncle. Come! Dine with us tomorrow."
Scrooge said that he would run into him -- yep, indeed he did. He went the whole length of the expression, and said that he would see him in that extremity commencement.
"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 desire nothing from yous; I ask zip of you lot; why cannot we be friends?"
"Good afternoon," said Scrooge.
"I am distressing, with all my heart, to detect you then resolute. We take never had any quarrel, to which I have been a party. But I have fabricated the trial in homage to Christmas, and I'll go along my Christmas humor to the last. Then A Merry Christmas, uncle!"
"Good afternoon," said Scrooge.
"And A Happy New year's day!"
"Skillful afternoon!" said Scrooge.
His nephew left the room without an angry give-and-take, notwithstanding. He stopped at the outer door to bequeath the greetings of the season on the clerk, who common cold as he was, was warmer than Scrooge; for he returned them cordially.
"There's another young man," muttered Scrooge; who overheard him: "my clerk, with 15 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'south office. They had books and papers in their easily, and bowed to him.
"Scrooge and Marley'due south, I believe," said one of the gentlemen, referring to his listing. "Have I the pleasure of addressing Mr. Scrooge, or Mr. Marley?"
"Mr. Marley has been dead these seven years," Scrooge replied. "He died vii 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 give-and-take "liberality," Scrooge frowned, and shook his head, and handed the credentials back.
"At this festive season of the year, Mr. Scrooge," said the admirer, taking up a pen, "information technology is more than usually desirable that we should make some slight provision for the Poor and Destitute, who endure greatly at the present fourth dimension. Many thousands are in want of mutual necessaries; hundreds of thousands are in want of common comforts, sir."
"Are in that location no prisons?" asked Scrooge.
"Plenty of prisons," said the gentleman, laying downwards the pen again.
"And the Spousal relationship workhouses?" demanded Scrooge. "Are they still in performance?"
"They are. Still," returned the gentleman, "I wish I could say they were non."
"The Treadmill and the Poor Constabulary are in full vigour, and then?" said Scrooge.
"Both very busy, sir."
"Oh! I was afraid, from what you said at beginning, that something had occurred to finish them in their useful form," 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 united states of america are endeavouring to raise a fund to buy the Poor some meat and drink and ways of warmth. Nosotros 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?"
"Zip!" Scrooge replied.
"You wish to be anonymous?"
"I wish to be left alone," said Scrooge. "Since yous inquire 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 assist to support the establishments I have mentioned -- they cost enough; and those who are badly off must go in that location."
"Many tin can't go there; and many would rather die."
"If they would rather dice," said Scrooge, "they had better do information technology, and decrease the surplus population. Besides -- alibi 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'south. Mine occupies me constantly. Practiced 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 bong was ever 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 after as if its teeth were chattering in its frozen head up there. The cold became intense. In the primary street at the corner of the courtroom, some labourers were repairing the gas-pipes, and had lighted a groovy fire in a brazier, circular which a party of ragged men and boys were gathered: warming their easily and winking their optics before the blaze in rapture. The water-plug being left in solitude, its alluvion sullenly congealed, and turned to misanthropic ice. The effulgence of the shops where holly sprigs and berries crackled in the lamp heat of the windows, made pale faces cerise as they passed. Poulterers' and grocers' trades became a splendid joke; a glorious pageant, with which it was next to incommunicable to believe that such dull principles as deal and sale had anything to do. The Lord Mayor, in the stronghold of the mighty Mansion Business firm, gave orders to his fifty cooks and butlers to continue Christmas equally a Lord Mayor'due south 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 beefiness.
Foggier notwithstanding, and colder! Piercing, searching, bitter common cold. If the good Saint Dunstan had but nipped the Evil Spirit's nose with a bear on of such weather equally that, instead of using his familiar weapons, then indeed he would accept roared to brawny purpose. The possessor of one scant young nose, gnawed and mumbled past the hungry cold every bit basic are gnawed by dogs, stooped down at Scrooge'south keyhole to regale him with a Christmas carol: only at the first sound of --
May nothing you dismay!"
Scrooge seized the ruler with such free energy of action, that the vocalist fled in terror, leaving the keyhole to the fog and fifty-fifty more than congenial frost.
At length the hour of shutting up the coffer arrived. With an ill-volition 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 lid.
"You lot'll want all twenty-four hours 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 cease half-a-crown for it, y'all'd think yourself ill-used, I'll be bound?"
The clerk smiled faintly.
"And all the same," said Scrooge, "you don't think me ill-used, when I pay a day's wages for no piece of work."
The clerk observed that it was only once a year.
"A poor excuse for picking a man'southward pocket every xx-fifth of December!" said Scrooge, buttoning his great-coat to the chin. "Just I suppose yous must have the whole day. Exist here all the earlier side by side forenoon."
The clerk promised that he would; and Scrooge walked out with a growl. The part was closed in a twinkling, and the clerk, with the long ends of his white comforter dangling beneath his waist (for he boasted no great-coat), went down a slide on Cornhill, at the terminate of a lane of boys, 20 times, in honour of its being Christmas Eve, so ran home to Camden Town every bit 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'southward-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 upward a 1000, where it had so footling business organization to be, that one could scarcely help fancying information technology must have run there when it was a young house, playing at hide-and-seek with other houses, and forgotten the way out once again. It was old plenty now, and dreary plenty, for nobody lived in information technology but Scrooge, the other rooms being 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 blackness old gateway of the house, that it seemed as if the Genius of the Weather condition saturday in mournful meditation on the threshold.
Now, it is a fact, that at that place was nothing at all particular almost the knocker on the door, except that it was very large. Information technology 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 virtually him as any man in the urban center of London, even including -- which is a bold word -- the corporation, aldermen, and livery. Let it likewise 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 and so let any man explicate to me, if he can, how it happened that Scrooge, having his primal 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 non in impenetrable shadow as the other objects in the yard were, but had a dismal lite near information technology, like a bad lobster in a dark cellar. It was non angry or ferocious, but looked at Scrooge as Marley used to expect: with ghostly spectacles turned upward on its ghostly forehead. The pilus was curiously stirred, every bit if by breath or hot air; and, though the eyes were broad open, they were perfectly motionless. That, and its livid colour, made information technology horrible; only its horror seemed to be in spite of the face up and beyond its command, rather than a part or its own expression.
As Scrooge looked fixedly at this phenomenon, information technology was a knocker again.
To say that he was non startled, or that his blood was not conscious of a terrible awareness to which it had been a stranger from infancy, would be untrue. Only he put his hand upon the cardinal he had relinquished, turned information technology sturdily, walked in, and lighted his candle.
He did pause, with a moment's irresolution, earlier he shut the door; and he did expect cautiously behind it get-go, as if he half-expected to exist terrified with the sight of Marley's pigtail sticking out into the hall. But at that place was nothing on the back of the door, except the screws and nuts that held the knocker on, then 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 vino-merchant'southward cellars below, appeared to have a separate peal of echoes of its own. Scrooge was not a homo 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 nigh driving a coach-and-6 upwards a good old flight of stairs, or through a bad young Deed of Parliament; merely I mean to say y'all might have got a hearse upwards that staircase, and taken it broadwise, with the splinter-bar towards the wall and the door towards the balustrades: and done it piece of cake. There was enough of width for that, and room to spare; which is maybe the reason why Scrooge thought he saw a locomotive hearse going on earlier him in the gloom. Half a dozen gas-lamps out of the street wouldn't take lighted the entry likewise well, and then yous may suppose that it was pretty nighttime with Scrooge's dip.
Up Scrooge went, non caring a button for that. Darkness is cheap, and Scrooge liked it. Simply before he shut his heavy door, he walked through his rooms to see that all was correct. He had simply plenty recollection of the face up to want to practice that.
Sitting-room, bedchamber, lumber-room. All as they should be. Nobody under the table, nobody nether the sofa; a pocket-size burn down in the grate; spoon and bowl ready; and the footling saucepan of gruel (Scrooge had a common cold in his head) upon the hob. Nobody under the bed; nobody in the cupboard; nobody in his dressing-gown, which was hanging up in a suspicious attitude against the wall. Lumber-room every bit usual. Quondam fire-guards, onetime 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 burn down to take his gruel.
It was a very depression fire indeed; nothing on such a bitter dark. He was obliged to sit close to it, and brood over it, earlier he could extract the to the lowest degree sensation of warmth from such a scattering of fuel. The fireplace was an one-time one, built past some Dutch merchant long agone, 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 similar plumage-beds, Abrahams, Belshazzars, Apostles putting off to sea in butter-boats, hundreds of figures to attract his thoughts -- and yet that face of Marley, 7 years dead, came like the aboriginal 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 caput on every one.
"Humbug!" said Scrooge; and walked beyond the room.
After several turns, he sabbatum down again. Every bit he threw his head back in the chair, his glance happened to rest upon a bong, 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 bang-up astonishment, and with a strange, inexplicable dread, that as he looked, he saw this bell begin to swing. It swung so softly in the beginning that it scarcely fabricated a sound; but before long it rang out loudly, and then did every bong in the house.
This might have lasted half a minute, or a infinitesimal, simply information technology 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'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.
"Information technology's humbug still!" said Scrooge. "I won't believe information technology."
His colour changed though, when, without a intermission, it came on through the heavy door, and passed into the room before his eyes. Upon its coming in, the dying flame leaped upward, as though information technology cried, "I know him; Marley's Ghost!" and cruel once again.
Scrooge had often heard information technology said that Marley had no bowels, simply 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 continuing before him; though he felt the chilling influence of its death-common cold eyes; and marked the very texture of the folded kerchief spring about its caput and chin, which wrapper he had non observed before: he was yet incredulous, and fought against his senses.
"How now!" said Scrooge, caustic and common cold as ever. "What exercise you want with me?"
"Much!" -- Marley's voice, no incertitude about it.
"Who are yous?"
"Inquire me who I was."
"Who were y'all 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 than appropriate.
"In life I was your partner, Jacob Marley."
"Can yous -- can yous sit down?" asked Scrooge, looking doubtfully at him.
"I can."
"Exercise it so."
Scrooge asked the question, because he didn't know whether a ghost so transparent might detect himself in a condition to accept 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 downwardly on the opposite side of the fireplace, as if he were quite used to it.
"Y'all 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 lilliputian 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 nibble of cheese, a fragment of an underdone irish potato. In that location'due south more than of gravy than of grave well-nigh y'all, whatever you are!"
Scrooge was not much in the habit of smashing jokes, nor did he feel, in his centre, by any means waggish and then. The truth is, that he tried to be smart, equally a means of distracting his own attention, and keeping down his terror; for the spectre's vox disturbed the very marrow in his bones.
To sit, staring at those fixed glazed optics, in silence for a moment, would play, Scrooge felt, the very deuce with him. There was something very awful, too, in the spectre's existence provided with an infernal atmosphere of its own. Scrooge could not experience it himself, but this was conspicuously the case; for though the Ghost sabbatum perfectly motionless, its pilus, and skirts, and tassels, were still agitated as past the hot vapour from an oven.
"Y'all see this toothpick?" said Scrooge, returning rapidly to the charge, for the reason only 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.
"Just I see information technology," said the Ghost, "notwithstanding."
"Well!" returned Scrooge, "I accept simply to eat this, and be for the rest of my days persecuted by a legion of goblins, all of my own cosmos. Braggadocio, I tell you! braggadocio!"
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 salve himself from falling in a swoon. But how much greater was his horror, when the phantom taking off the bandage circular its caput, equally if information technology were also warm to article of clothing indoors, its lower jaw dropped downward upon its chest!
Scrooge fell upon his knees, and clasped his hands before his face.
"Mercy!" he said. "Dreadful bogeyman, why practice you trouble me?"
"Man of the worldly mind!" replied the Ghost, "do you believe in me or non?"
"I do," said Scrooge. "I must. But why do spirits walk the globe, and why do they come to me?"
"Information technology is required of every human being," the Ghost returned, "that the spirit inside him should walk abroad among his fellowmen, and travel far and broad; and if that spirit goes not along in life, it is condemned to do so after expiry. It is doomed to wander through the world -- oh, woe is me! -- and witness what it cannot share, merely might accept shared on world, and turned to happiness!"
Over 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 wearable the concatenation I forged in life," replied the Ghost. "I made it link by link, and g by 1000; I girded it on of my own gratuitous volition, and of my own free will I wore information technology. Is its pattern foreign to you lot?"
Scrooge trembled more and more than.
"Or would you know," pursued the Ghost, "the weight and length of the stiff coil yous bear yourself? It was full as heavy and as long as this, seven Christmas Eves ago. Yous accept laboured on information technology, since. It is a ponderous concatenation!"
Scrooge glanced about him on the floor, in the expectation of finding himself surrounded past some fifty or sixty fathoms of iron cablevision: but he could see nothing.
"Jacob," he said, imploringly. "One-time 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 past other ministers, to other kinds of men. Nor tin 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 across our counting-house -- marking me! -- in life my spirit never roved across 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 then now, but without lifting upward his eyes, or getting off his knees.
"You must have been very wearisome about it, Jacob," Scrooge observed, in a business-like manner, though with humility and deference.
"Slow!" the Ghost repeated.
"Seven years expressionless," mused Scrooge. "And travelling all the time!"
"The whole time," said the Ghost. "No balance, no peace. Ceaseless torture of remorse."
"You lot 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 another cry, and clanked its concatenation so hideously in the expressionless silence of the night, that the Ward would have been justified in indicting it for a nuisance.
"Oh! convict, bound, and double-ironed," cried the phantom, "not to know, that ages of incessant labour, by immortal creatures, for this world must laissez passer into eternity before the good of which it is susceptible is all developed. Not to know that any Christian spirit working kindly in its petty sphere, whatever information technology may be, will find its mortal life likewise short for its vast means of usefulness. Not to know that no infinite of regret tin make apology for one life's opportunity misused! Withal such was I! Oh! such was I!"
"Merely you were always a proficient man of concern, Jacob," faltered Scrooge, who now began to apply this to himself.
"Business!" cried the Ghost, wringing its easily again. "Mankind was my concern. The common welfare was my business concern; clemency, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were, all, my business. The dealings of my trade were but a drop of h2o in the comprehensive ocean of my business!"
It held upward its concatenation at arm'southward length, as if that were the cause of all its unavailing grief, and flung it heavily upon the ground once more.
"At this fourth dimension of the rolling twelvemonth," the spectre said "I suffer nearly. Why did I walk through crowds of beau-beings with my eyes turned down, and never raise them to that blessed Star which led the Wise Men to a poor habitation! 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. "Simply don't be hard upon me! Don't be flowery, Jacob! Pray!"
"How it is that I announced before yous in a shape that you can see, I may not tell. I have saturday invisible beside you many and many a day."
It was not an amusing thought. Scrooge shivered, and wiped the perspiration from his brow.
"That is no calorie-free office of my penance," pursued the Ghost. "I am here to-night to warn you, that you have notwithstanding a chance and promise of escaping my fate. A chance and hope of my procuring, Ebenezer."
"You were always a good friend to me," said Scrooge. "Give thanks `ee!"
"You lot volition exist haunted," resumed the Ghost, "past Three Spirits."
Scrooge's eyebrow savage almost as low equally the Ghost's had done.
"Is that the chance and hope you mentioned, Jacob?" he demanded, in a faltering voice.
"It is."
"I -- I remember I'd rather not," said Scrooge.
"Without their visits," said the Ghost, "you cannot promise to shun the path I tread. Look the first tomorrow, when the bell tolls one."
"Couldn't I take `em all at once, and have it over, Jacob?" hinted Scrooge.
"Await the 2d on the next dark at the aforementioned hr. The tertiary upon the side by side night when the terminal stroke of twelve has ceased to vibrate. Look to see me no more than; and look that, for your own sake, you think what has passed between us!"
When information technology had said these words, the spectre took its wrapper from the table, and leap information technology round its head, as before. Scrooge knew this, by the smart sound its teeth fabricated, when the jaws were brought together past the bandage. He ventured to heighten his optics again, and establish his supernatural visitor confronting him in an erect attitude, with its concatenation wound over and virtually its arm.
The apparition walked backward from him; and at every pace it took, the window raised itself a little, so that when the spectre reached it, it was wide open. Information technology beckoned Scrooge to approach, which he did. When they were within two paces of each other, Marley'southward Ghost held up its manus, alarm him to come no nearer. Scrooge stopped.
Non 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, afterwards listening for a moment, joined in the mournful chant; and floated out upon the bleak, night 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 ane 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 ane quondam ghost, in a white waistcoat, with a monstrous iron safe attached to its ankle, who cried piteously at existence unable to assist a wretched adult female with an baby, whom information technology saw beneath, upon a door-step. The misery with them all was, clearly, that they sought to interfere, for practiced, in human being matters, and had lost the power for always.
Whether these creatures faded into mist, or mist enshrouded them, he could non tell. But they and their spirit voices faded together; and the night became as it had been when he walked home.
Scrooge airtight the window, and examined the door by which the Ghost had entered. Information technology was double-locked, as he had locked it with his own easily, and the bolts were undisturbed. He tried to say "Humbug!" merely 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 hr, much in need of repose; went straight to bed, without undressing, and barbarous asleep upon the instant.
Source: http://stormfax.com/1dickens.htm
Posted by: whittenforris.blogspot.com
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