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.
 
  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 grindstone,
           Scrooge!

    a squeezing,
           wrenching,
         grasping,
           scraping,
         clutching,
           covetous,
         old sinner!

    Hard and sharp as flint,
           from which no steel
            had ever
                  struck out generous fire;
        secret,
           and self-contained,
         and solitary as an oyster.

    The cold within him
        froze his old features,
            nipped his pointed nose,
         shrivelled his cheek,
           stiffened his gait;
        made his eyes red,
           his thin lips blue;