Comic Geek Speak presents A Christmas Carol, A Ghost Story of Christmas by Charles Dickens.

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 doorknail. 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 residually legatee, his sole friend, and soul 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 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 St. Paul's

churchyard, for instance, literally to astonish his son's weak mind. Scrooge never painted out

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