Good evening. Welcome to the Just Sleep podcast. I'm Tasia, your host. Every week, I will read you

an old story to help you relax, put the stressful day behind you, and drift off to sleep.

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Tonight I will be reading A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens.

So lie down, close your eyes, and let me read you a story.

Stave 1, Marley's Ghost.

Marley was dead to begin with.

There's 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 unhollowed hands shall not disturb it, or the country is done for.

He will therefore permit me to repeat, emphatically, that Marley was as dead as a doork 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,

...