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1 MARLEY was dead: to begin with. There is no doubt
2 whatever about that. The register of his burial was
3 signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker,
4 and the chief mourner. Scrooge signed it: and
5 Scrooge's name was good upon 'Change, for anything he
6 chose to put his hand to. Old Marley was as dead as a
7 door-nail.
9 Mind! I don't mean to say that I know, of my
10 own knowledge, what there is particularly dead about
11 a door-nail. I might have been inclined, myself, to
12 regard a coffin-nail as the deadest piece of ironmongery
13 in the trade. But the wisdom of our ancestors
14 is in the simile; and my unhallowed hands
15 shall not disturb it, or the Country's done for. You
16 will therefore permit me to repeat, emphatically, that
17 Marley was as dead as a door-nail.
19 Scrooge knew he was dead? Of course he did.
20 How could it be otherwise? Scrooge and he were
21 partners for I don't know how many years. Scrooge
22 was his sole executor, his sole administrator, his sole
23 assign, his sole residuary legatee, his sole friend, and
24 sole mourner. And even Scrooge was not so dreadfully
25 cut up by the sad event, but that he was an excellent
26 man of business on the very day of the funeral,
27 and solemnised it with an undoubted bargain.
29 The mention of Marley's funeral brings me back to
30 the point I started from. There is no doubt that Marley
31 was dead. This must be distinctly understood, or
32 nothing wonderful can come of the story I am going
33 to relate. If we were not perfectly convinced that
34 Hamlet's Father died before the play began, there
35 would be nothing more remarkable in his taking a
36 stroll at night, in an easterly wind, upon his own ramparts,
37 than there would be in any other middle-aged
38 gentleman rashly turning out after dark in a breezy
39 spot--say Saint Paul's Churchyard for instance--
40 literally to astonish his son's weak mind.