A Christmas Carol

Purchase one of 1st World Library's Classic Books and help support our free internet library of downloadable eBooks. 1st World Library-Literary Society is a non-profit educational organization. Visit us online at www.1stWorldLibrary.ORG - 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.