A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens, narrated by Darren Marler.

Stave One, 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 doornail.

Mind, I don't mean to say that I know of my own knowledge what there is particularly dead

about a doornail.

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 doorknail. 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 solemnized 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'm 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, and 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 St. Paul's Churchyard, for instance, literally to astonish his son's weak mind.

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