A Christmas Carol
2 of 138
I have endeavoured in this Ghostly little
book, to raise the Ghost of an Idea, which
shall not put my readers out of humour
with themselves, with each other, with the
season, or with me. May it haunt their
houses pleasantly, and no one wish to lay it.
Their faithful Friend and Servant, C. D.
December, 1843.
A Christmas Carol
3 of 138
Stave 1: 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 door-nail.
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 coffinnail
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.
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
eBook brought to you by
Create, view, and edit PDF. Download the free trial version.
A Christmas Carol
4 of 138
event, but that he was an excellent man of business on the
very day of the funeral, and solemnised 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 Saint Paul’s
Churchyard for instance — literally to astonish his son’s
weak mind.
Scrooge never painted out Old Marley’s name. There it
stood, years afterwards, above the warehouse door:
Scrooge and Marley. The firm was known as Scrooge and
Marley. Sometimes people new to the business called
Scrooge Scrooge, and sometimes Marley, but he answered
to both names. It was all the same to him.
Oh! But he was a tight-fisted hand at the grind- stone,
Scrooge! a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping,
clutching, covetous, old sinner! Hard and sharp as flint,
from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire;
A Christmas Carol
5 of 138
secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster. The
cold within him froze his old features, nipped his pointed
nose, shrivelled his cheek, stiffened his gait; made his eyes
red, his thin lips blue; and spoke out shrewdly in his
grating voice. A frosty rime was on his head, and on his
eyebrows, and his wiry chin. He carried his own low
temperature always about with him; he iced his office in
the dogdays; and didn’t thaw it one degree at Christmas.
External heat and cold had little influence on Scrooge.
No warmth could warm, no wintry weather chill him. No
wind that blew was bitterer than he, no falling snow was
more intent upon its purpose, no pelting rain less open to
entreaty. Foul weather didn’t know where to have him.
The heaviest rain, and snow, and hail, and sleet, could
boast of the advantage over him in only one respect. They
often ‘came down’ handsomely, and Scrooge never did.
Nobody ever stopped him in the street to say, with
gladsome looks, ‘My dear Scrooge, how are you? When
will you come to see me?’ No beggars implored him to
bestow a trifle, no children asked him what it was o’clock,
no man or woman ever once in all his life inquired the
way to such and such a place, of Scrooge. Even the blind
men’s dogs appeared to know him; and when they saw
him coming on, would tug their owners into doorways
A Christmas Carol
6 of 138
and up courts; and then would wag their tails as though
they said, ‘No eye at all is better than an evil eye, dark
master!’
But what did Scrooge care! It was the very thing he
liked. To edge his way along the crowded paths of life,
warning all human sympathy to keep its distance, was
what the knowing ones call ‘nuts’ to Scrooge.
Once upon a time — of all the good days in the year,
on Christmas Eve — old Scrooge sat busy in his countinghouse.
It was cold, bleak, biting weather: foggy withal:
and he could hear the people in the court outside, go
wheezing up and down, beating their hands upon their
breasts, and stamping their feet upon the pavement stones
to warm them. The city clocks had only just gone three,
but it was quite dark already — it had not been light all
day — and candles were flaring in the windows of the
neighbouring offices, like ruddy smears upon the palpable
brown air. The fog came pouring in at every chink and
keyhole, and was so dense without, that although the
court was of the narrowest, the houses opposite were mere
phantoms. To see the dingy cloud come drooping down,
obscuring everything, one might have thought that Nature
lived hard by, and was brewing on a large scale.
A Christmas Carol
7 of 138
The door of Scrooge’s counting-house was open that
he might keep his eye upon his clerk, who in a dismal
little cell beyond, a sort of tank, was copying letters.
Scrooge had a very small fire, but the clerk’s fire was so
very much smaller that it looked like one coal. But he
couldn’t replenish it, for Scrooge kept the coal-box in his
own room; and so surely as the clerk came in with the
shovel, the master predicted that it would be necessary for
them to part. Wherefore the clerk put on his white
comforter, and tried to warm himself at the candle; in
which effort, not being a man of a strong imagination, he
failed.
‘A merry Christmas, uncle! God save you!’ cried a
cheerful voice. It was the voice of Scrooge’s nephew, who
came upon him so quickly that this was the first intimation
he had of his approach.
‘Bah!’ said Scrooge, ‘Humbug!’
He had so heated himself with rapid walking in the fog
and frost, this nephew of Scrooge’s, that he was all in a
glow; his face was ruddy and handsome; his eyes sparkled,
and his breath smoked again. ‘Christmas a humbug, uncle!’
said Scrooge’s nephew. ‘You don’t mean that, I am sure?’
A Christmas Carol
8 of 138
‘I do,’ said Scrooge. ‘Merry Christmas! What right have
you to be merry? What reason have you to be merry?
You’re poor enough.’
‘Come, then,’ returned the nephew gaily. ‘What right
have you to be dismal? What reason have you to be
morose? You’re rich enough.’
Scrooge having no better answer ready on the spur of
the moment, said ‘Bah!’ again; and followed it up with
‘Humbug.’
‘Don’t be cross, uncle!’ said the nephew.
‘What else can I be,’ returned the uncle, ‘when I live in
such a world of fools as this? Merry Christmas! Out upon
merry Christmas! What’s Christmas time to you but a time
for paying bills without money; a time for finding yourself
a year older, but not an hour richer; a time for balancing
your books and having every item in ‘em through a round
dozen of months presented dead against you? If I could
work my will,’ said Scrooge indignantly, ‘every idiot who
goes about with ‘Merry Christmas’ on his lips, should be
boiled with his own pudding, and buried with a stake of
holly through his heart. He should!’
‘Uncle!’ pleaded the nephew.
‘Nephew!’ returned the uncle sternly, ‘keep Christmas
in your own way, and let me keep it in mine.’
A Christmas Carol
9 of 138
‘Keep it!’ repeated Scrooge’s nephew. ‘But you don’t
keep it.’
‘Let me leave it alone, then,’ said Scrooge. ‘Much good
may it do you! Much good it has ever done you!’
‘There are many things from which I might have
derived good, by which I have not profited, I dare say,’
returned the nephew. ‘Christmas among the rest. But I am
sure I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has
come round — apart from the veneration due to its sacred
name and origin, if anything belonging to it can be apart
from that — as a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable,
pleasant time: the only time I know of, in the long
calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one
consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of
people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers
to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on
other journeys. And therefore, uncle, though it has never
put a scrap of gold or silver in my pocket, I believe that it
has done me good, and will do me good; and I say, God
bless it!’
The clerk in the Tank involuntarily applauded.
Becoming immediately sensible of the impropriety, he
poked the fire, and extinguished the last frail spark for
ever.
A Christmas Carol
10 of 138
‘Let me hear another sound from you,’ said Scrooge,
‘and you’ll keep your Christmas by losing your situation!
You’re quite a powerful speaker, sir,’ he added, turning to
his nephew. ‘I wonder you don’t go into Parliament.’
‘Don’t be angry, uncle. Come! Dine with us
tomorrow.’
Scrooge said that he would see him — yes, indeed he
did. He went the whole length of the expression, and said
that he would see him in that extremity first.
‘But why?’ cried Scrooge’s nephew. ‘Why?’
‘Why did you get married?’ said Scrooge.
‘Because I fell in love.’
‘Because you fell in love!’ growled Scrooge, as if that
were the only one thing in the world more ridiculous than
a merry Christmas. ‘Good afternoon!’
‘Nay, uncle, but you never came to see me before that
happened. Why give it as a reason for not coming now?’
‘Good afternoon,’ said Scrooge.
‘I want nothing from you; I ask nothing of you; why
cannot we be friends?’
‘Good afternoon,’ said Scrooge.
‘I am sorry, with all my heart, to find you so resolute.
We have never had any quarrel, to which I have been a
party. But I have made the trial in homage to Christmas,
A Christmas Carol
11 of 138
and I’ll keep my Christmas humour to the last. So A
Merry Christmas, uncle!’
‘Good afternoon,’ said Scrooge.
‘And A Happy New Year!’
‘Good afternoon,’ said Scrooge.
His nephew left the room without an angry word,
notwithstanding. He stopped at the outer door to bestow
the greetings of the season on the clerk, who cold as he
was, was warmer than Scrooge; for he returned them
cordially.
‘There’s another fellow,’ muttered Scrooge; who
overheard him: ‘my clerk, with fifteen shillings a week,
and a wife and family, talking about a merry Christmas. I’ll
retire to Bedlam.’
This lunatic, in letting Scrooge’s nephew out, had let
two other people in. They were portly gentlemen,
pleasant to behold, and now stood, with their hats off, in
Scrooge’s office. They had books and papers in their
hands, and bowed to him.
‘Scrooge and Marley’s, I believe,’ said one of the
gentlemen, referring to his list. ‘Have I the pleasure of
addressing Mr. Scrooge, or Mr. Marley?’
‘Mr. Marley has been dead these seven years,’ Scrooge
replied. ‘He died seven years ago, this very night.’
A Christmas Carol
12 of 138
‘We have no doubt his liberality is well represented by
his surviving partner,’ said the gentleman, presenting his
credentials.
It certainly was; for they had been two kindred spirits.
At the ominous word ‘liberality,’ Scrooge frowned, and
shook his head, and handed the credentials back.
‘At this festive season of the year, Mr. Scrooge,’ said
the gentleman, taking up a pen, ‘it is more than usually
desirable that we should make some slight provision for
the Poor and Destitute, who suffer greatly at the present
time. Many thousands are in want of common necessaries;
hundreds of thousands are in want of common comforts,
sir.’
‘Are there no prisons?’ asked Scrooge.
‘Plenty of prisons,’ said the gentleman, laying down the
pen again.
‘And the Union workhouses?’ demanded Scrooge. ‘Are
they still in operation?’
‘They are. Still,’ returned the gentleman, ‘I wish I
could say they were not.’
‘The Treadmill and the Poor Law are in full vigour,
then?’ said Scrooge.
‘Both very busy, sir.’
A Christmas Carol
13 of 138
‘Oh! I was afraid, from what you said at first, that
something had occurred to stop them in their useful
course,’ said Scrooge. ‘I’m very glad to hear it.’
‘Under the impression that they scarcely furnish
Christian cheer of mind or body to the multitude,’
returned the gentleman, ‘a few of us are endeavouring to
raise a fund to buy the Poor some meat and drink. and
means of warmth. We choose this time, because it is a
time, of all others, when Want is keenly felt, and
Abundance rejoices. What shall I put you down for?’
‘Nothing!’ Scrooge replied.
‘You wish to be anonymous?’
‘I wish to be left alone,’ said Scrooge. ‘Since you ask
me what I wish, gentlemen, that is my answer. I don’t
make merry myself at Christmas and I can’t afford to make
idle people merry. I help to support the establishments I
have mentioned — they cost enough; and those who are
badly off must go there.’
‘Many can’t go there; and many would rather die.’
‘If they would rather die,’ said Scrooge, ‘they had
better do it, and decrease the surplus population. Besides
— excuse me — I don’t know that.’
‘But you might know it,’ observed the gentleman.
A Christmas Carol
14 of 138
‘It’s not my business,’ Scrooge returned. ‘It’s enough
for a man to understand his own business, and not to
interfere with other people’s. Mine occupies me
constantly. Good afternoon, gentlemen!’
Seeing clearly that it would be useless to pursue their
point, the gentlemen withdrew. Scrooge returned his
labours with an improved opinion of himself, and in a
more facetious temper than was usual with him.
Meanwhile the fog and darkness thickened so, that
people ran about with flaring links, proffering their
services to go before horses in carriages, and conduct them
on their way. The ancient tower of a church, whose gruff
old bell was always peeping slily down at Scrooge out of a
Gothic window in the wall, became invisible, and struck
the hours and quarters in the clouds, with tremulous
vibrations afterwards as if its teeth were chattering in its
frozen head up there. The cold became intense. In the
main street at the corner of the court, some labourers were
repairing the gas-pipes, and had lighted a great fire in a
brazier, round which a party of ragged men and boys were
gathered: warming their hands and winking their eyes
before the blaze in rapture. The water-plug being left in
solitude, its overflowing sullenly congealed, and turned to
misanthropic ice. The brightness of the shops where holly
A Christmas Carol
15 of 138
sprigs and berries crackled in the lamp heat of the
windows, made pale faces ruddy as they passed. Poulterers’
and grocers’ trades became a splendid joke; a glorious
pageant, with which it was next to impossible to believe
that such dull principles as bargain and sale had anything to
do. The Lord Mayor, in the stronghold of the mighty
Mansion House, gave orders to his fifty cooks and butlers
to keep Christmas as a Lord Mayor’s household should;
and even the little tailor, whom he had fined five shillings
on the previous Monday for being drunk and bloodthirsty
in the streets, stirred up to-morrow’s pudding in his garret,
while his lean wife and the baby sallied out to buy the
beef.
Foggier yet, and colder! Piercing, searching, biting
cold. If the good Saint Dunstan had but nipped the Evil
Spirit’s nose with a touch of such weather as that, instead
of using his familiar weapons, then indeed he would have
roared to lusty purpose. The owner of one scant young
nose, gnawed and mumbled by the hungry cold as bones
are gnawed by dogs, stooped down at Scrooge’s keyhole
to regale him with a Christmas carol: but at the first sound
of
‘God bless you, merry gentleman! May nothing you
dismay!’
eBook brought to you by
Create, view, and edit PDF. Download the free trial version.
A Christmas Carol
16 of 138
Scrooge seized the ruler with such energy of action,
that the singer fled in terror, leaving the keyhole to the fog
and even more congenial frost.
At length the hour of shutting up the counting- house
arrived. With an ill-will Scrooge dismounted from his
stool, and tacitly admitted the fact to the expectant clerk in
the Tank, who instantly snuffed his candle out, and put on
his hat.
‘You’ll want all day to-morrow, I suppose?’ said
Scrooge.
‘If quite convenient, sir.’
‘It’s not convenient,’ said Scrooge, ‘and it’s not fair. If I
was to stop half-a-crown for it, you’d think yourself illused,
I’ll be bound?’
The clerk smiled faintly.
‘And yet,’ said Scrooge, ‘you don’t think me ill-used,
when I pay a day’s wages for no work.’
The clerk observed that it was only once a year.
‘A poor excuse for picking a man’s pocket every
twenty-fifth of December!’ said Scrooge, buttoning his
great-coat to the chin. ‘But I suppose you must have the
whole day. Be here all the earlier next morning.’
The clerk promised that he would; and Scrooge walked
out with a growl. The office was closed in a twinkling,
A Christmas Carol
17 of 138
and the clerk, with the long ends of his white comforter
dangling below his waist (for he boasted no great-coat),
went down a slide on Cornhill, at the end of a lane of
boys, twenty times, in honour of its being Christmas Eve,
and then ran home to Camden Town as hard as he could
pelt, to play at blindman’s-buff.
Scrooge took his melancholy dinner in his usual
melancholy tavern; and having read all the newspapers,
and beguiled the rest of the evening with his banker’sbook,
went home to bed. He lived in chambers which had
once belonged to his deceased partner. They were a
gloomy suite of rooms, in a lowering pile of building up a
yard, where it had so little business to be, that one could
scarcely help fancying it must have run there when it was
a young house, playing at hide-and-seek with other
houses, and forgotten the way out again. It was old
enough now, and dreary enough, for nobody lived in it
but Scrooge, the other rooms being all let out as offices.
The yard was so dark that even Scrooge, who knew its
every stone, was fain to grope with his hands. The fog and
frost so hung about the black old gateway of the house,
that it seemed as if the Genius of the Weather sat in
mournful meditation on the threshold.
A Christmas Carol
18 of 138
Now, it is a fact, that there was nothing at all particular
about the knocker on the door, except that it was very
large. It is also a fact, that Scrooge had seen it, night and
morning, during his whole residence in that place; also
that Scrooge had as little of what is called fancy about him
as any man in the city of London, even including —
which is a bold word — the corporation, aldermen, and
livery. Let it also be borne in mind that Scrooge had not
bestowed one thought on Marley, since his last mention of
his seven years’ dead partner that afternoon. And then let
any man explain to me, if he can, how it happened that
Scrooge, having his key in the lock of the door, saw in the
knocker, without its undergoing any intermediate process
of change — not a knocker, but Marley’s face.
Marley’s face. It was not in impenetrable shadow as the
other objects in the yard were, but had a dismal light
about it, like a bad lobster in a dark cellar. It was not angry
or ferocious, but looked at Scrooge as Marley used to
look: with ghostly spectacles turned up on its ghostly
forehead. The hair was curiously stirred, as if by breath or
hot air; and, though the eyes were wide open, they were
perfectly motionless. That, and its livid colour, made it
horrible; but its horror seemed to be in spite of the face
A Christmas Carol
19 of 138
and beyond its control, rather than a part or its own
expression.
As Scrooge looked fixedly at this phenomenon, it was a
knocker again.
To say that he was not startled, or that his blood was
not conscious of a terrible sensation to which it had been a
stranger from infancy, would be untrue. But he put his
hand upon the key he had relinquished, turned it sturdily,
walked in, and lighted his candle.
He did pause, with a moment’s irresolution, before he
shut the door; and he did look cautiously behind it first, as
if he half-expected to be terrified with the sight of
Marley’s pigtail sticking out into the hall. But there was
nothing on the back of the door, except the screws and
nuts that held the knocker on, so he said ‘Pooh, pooh!’
and closed it with a bang.
The sound resounded through the house like thunder.
Every room above, and every cask in the wine-merchant’s
cellars below, appeared to have a separate peal of echoes of
its own. Scrooge was not a man to be frightened by
echoes. He fastened the door, and walked across the hall,
and up the stairs; slowly too: trimming his candle as he
went.
A Christmas Carol
20 of 138
You may talk vaguely about driving a coach-and-six up
a good old flight of stairs, or through a bad young Act of
Parliament; but I mean to say you might have got a hearse
up that staircase, and taken it broadwise, with the splinterbar
towards the wall and the door towards the balustrades:
and done it easy. There was plenty of width for that, and
room to spare; which is perhaps the reason why Scrooge
thought he saw a locomotive hearse going on before him
in the gloom. Half a dozen gas-lamps out of the street
wouldn’t have lighted the entry too well, so you may
suppose that it was pretty dark with Scrooge’s dip.
Up Scrooge went, not caring a button for that.
Darkness is cheap, and Scrooge liked it. But before he shut
his heavy door, he walked through his rooms to see that
all was right. He had just enough recollection of the face
to desire to do that.
Sitting-room, bedroom, lumber-room. All as they
should be. Nobody under the table, nobody under the
sofa; a small fire in the grate; spoon and basin ready; and
the little saucepan of gruel (Scrooge had a cold in his head)
upon the hob. Nobody under the bed; nobody in the
closet; nobody in his dressing-gown, which was hanging
up in a suspicious attitude against the wall. Lumber-room
A Christmas Carol
21 of 138
as usual. Old fire-guards, old shoes, two fish-baskets,
washing-stand on three legs, and a poker.
Quite satisfied, he closed his door, and locked himself
in; double-locked himself in, which was not his custom.
Thus secured against surprise, he took off his cravat; put
on his dressing-gown and slippers, and his nightcap; and
sat down before the fire to take his gruel.
It was a very low fire indeed; nothing on such a bitter
night. He was obliged to sit close to it, and brood over it,
before he could extract the least sensation of warmth from
such a handful of fuel. The fireplace was an old one, built
by some Dutch merchant long ago, and paved all round
with quaint Dutch tiles, designed to illustrate the
Scriptures. There were Cains and Abels, Pharaohs’
daughters; Queens of Sheba, Angelic messengers
descending through the air on clouds like feather-beds,
Abrahams, Belshazzars, Apostles putting off to sea in
butter-boats, hundreds of figures to attract his thoughts —
and yet that face of Marley, seven years dead, came like
the ancient Prophet’s rod, and swallowed up the whole. If
each smooth tile had been a blank at first, with power to
shape some picture on its surface from the disjointed
fragments of his thoughts, there would have been a copy
of old Marley’s head on every one.
A Christmas Carol
22 of 138
‘Humbug!’ said Scrooge; and walked across the room.
After several turns, he sat down again. As he threw his
head back in the chair, his glance happened to rest upon a
bell, a disused bell, that hung in the room, and
communicated for some purpose now forgotten with a
chamber in the highest story of the building. It was with
great astonishment, and with a strange, inexplicable dread,
that as he looked, he saw this bell begin to swing. It swung
so softly in the outset that it scarcely made a sound; but
soon it rang out loudly, and so did every bell in the house.
This might have lasted half a minute, or a minute, but
it seemed an hour. The bells ceased as they had begun,
together. They were succeeded by a clanking noise, deep
down below; as if some person were dragging a heavy
chain over the casks in the wine merchant’s cellar. Scrooge
then remembered to have heard that ghosts in haunted
houses were described as dragging chains.
The cellar-door flew open with a booming sound, and
then he heard the noise much louder, on the floors below;
then coming up the stairs; then coming straight towards
his door.
‘It’s humbug still!’ said Scrooge. ‘I won’t believe it.’
His colour changed though, when, without a pause, it
came on through the heavy door, and passed into the
A Christmas Carol
23 of 138
room before his eyes. Upon its coming in, the dying flame
leaped up, as though it cried ‘I know him; Marley’s
Ghost!’ and fell again.
The same face: the very same. Marley in his pigtail,
usual waistcoat, tights and boots; the tassels on the latter
bristling, like his pigtail, and his coat-skirts, and the hair
upon his head. The chain he drew was clasped about his
middle. It was long, and wound about him like a tail; and
it was made (for Scrooge observed it closely) of cashboxes,
keys, padlocks, ledgers, deeds, and heavy purses
wrought in steel. His body was transparent; so that
Scrooge, observing him, and looking through his
waistcoat, could see the two buttons on his coat behind.
Scrooge had often heard it said that Marley had no
bowels, but he had never believed it until now.
No, nor did he believe it even now. Though he looked
the phantom through and through, and saw it standing
before him; though he felt the chilling influence of its
death-cold eyes; and marked the very texture of the folded
kerchief bound about its head and chin, which wrapper he
had not observed before; he was still incredulous, and
fought against his senses.
‘How now!’ said Scrooge, caustic and cold as ever.
‘What do you want with me?’
A Christmas Carol
24 of 138
‘Much!’ — Marley’s voice, no doubt about it.
‘Who are you?’
‘Ask me who I was.’
‘Who were you then?’ said Scrooge, raising his voice.
‘You’re particular, for a shade.’ He was going to say ‘to a
shade,’ but substituted this, as more appropriate.
‘In life I was your partner, Jacob Marley.’
‘Can you — can you sit down?’ asked Scrooge, looking
doubtfully at him.
‘I can.’
‘Do it, then.’
Scrooge asked the question, because he didn’t know
whether a ghost so transparent might find himself in a
condition to take a chair; and felt that in the event of its
being impossible, it might involve the necessity of an
embarrassing explanation. But the ghost sat down on the
opposite side of the fireplace, as if he were quite used to it.
‘You don’t believe in me,’ observed the Ghost.
‘I don’t.’ said Scrooge.
‘What evidence would you have of my reality beyond
that of your senses?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Scrooge.
‘Why do you doubt your senses?’
A Christmas Carol
25 of 138
‘Because,’ said Scrooge, ‘a little thing affects them. A
slight disorder of the stomach makes them cheats. You
may be an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a
crumb of cheese, a fragment of an underdone potato.
There’s more of gravy than of grave about you, whatever
you are!’
No comments:
Post a Comment