Ghosts of Departed Usurers ,,
Scrooge Extinguishes the
First
of the Three
Spirits
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.
Scrooge knew he was dead? Of course he did. How could it be
