A Christmas Carol Annotations Stave 1

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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 doesn't literally to astonish his son's weak mind. like Scrooge never painted out Old Marley's name. hange 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 mean with Euphanism for work highlighted his. obsession same to him. money Oh! But he was a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone, 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; secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster. contains pearl 2 so Scrooge may have some goodness beneath the hard exterior to Jack frost; he Vibra likening Scrooge. affects everybody around him with his cold, negative nature 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 dog-days; and didn't thaw it one degree at Christmas. External heat and cold had little influence on Scrooge. No warmth could warm, nor 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 enquired 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 and up courts; and then wag their tails as though they said, "No eye at all is better than an evil eye, dark master!" would 3 Implies Scrooge is not lonely 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. of all the good days in the Once upon a time year, on Christmas Eve - old Scrooge sat busy in his counting-house. 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 implies something is going a large scale. to happen. foreshadows Gods The door of Scrooge's counting-house was open, intervention trust that he might keep his eye upon his clerk, who in a Bob 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 that it looked coal. But he couldn't replenish it, for Scrooge kept the doesn't warmin maller th empronike one 1 metaphor £ implies Bobb is trapped in his job. conditions are awfulbut can't afford to leave 4 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 that happened. Why give it as a reason for not coming before 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, and I'll keep my Christmas humour to the last. So a Merry Christmas, Uncle!" "Good afternoon," said Scrooge. pay nim "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, as he was, was warmer than Scrooge; for he Admireturned them cordially. ne doesn't "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 enough Christmas. I'll retire to Bedlam.". This lunatic, in letting Scrooge's nephew out, had let two other people in. They were portly gentlemen, It was a habit with Scrooge, whenever he became thoughtful, to put his hands in his breeches pockets. Pondering on what the Ghost had said, he did so now, but without lifting up his eyes, or getting off his knees. "You must have been very slow about it, Jacob," Scrooge observed in a business-like manner, though with humility and deference. "Slow!" the Ghost repeated. "Seven years dead," mused Scrooge. "And travelling all the time?" "The whole time," said the Ghost. "No rest, no Scrooges fare peace. Incessant torture of remorse. "You travel fast?" said Scrooge. "On the wings of the wind,” replied the Ghost. “You might have got over a great quantity of ground in seven years," said Scrooge. The Ghost, on hearing this, set up another cry, and clanked its chain so hideously in the dead silence of the night, that the ward would have been justified in Semantic field of feeling trappr indicting it for a nuisance. "Oh! Captive, bound, and double-ironed,” cried the phantom, "not to know that ages of incessant labour, by immortal creatures, for this earth must pass into eternity before the good of which it is susceptible is all developed! Not to know that any Christian spirit working kindly in its little sphere, whatever it may be, will find its mortal life too short for its vast means of usefulness! Not to know that no space of regret can 24 make amends for one life's opportunities misused! Yet such was I! Oh, such was I!" "But you were always a good man of business, Jacob," faltered Scrooge, who now began to apply this repitition to himself. "Business!" cried the Ghost, wringing its hands focussing again. “Mankind was my business. The common on making welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance and benevolence were, all, my business. The han dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the helping comprehensive ocean of my business!” people rather It held up its chain at arm's length, as if that were the cause of all its unavailing grief, and flung it heavily upon the ground again. link to “At this time of the rolling year,” the spectre said, Nativity "I suffer most. Why did I walk through crowds of Showing fellow-beings with my eyes turned down, and never that raise them to that blessed Star which led the Wise was Jesus Men to a poor abode? Were there no poor homes to which its light would have conducted me?” actually poor and people Scrooge was very much dismayed to hear the worsp spectre going on at this rate, and began to quake im exceedingly. + "Hear me!" cried the Ghost. "My time is nearly hypocracy money gone." "I will," said Scrooge. "But don't be hard upon me! Don't be flowery, Jacob! Pray!" "How it is that I appear before you in a shape that 25 were linked together; none were free. Many had been personally known to Scrooge in their lives. He had white been quite familiar with one old ghost in a waistcoat, with a monstrous iron safe attached to its ankle, who cried piteously at being unable to assist a wretched woman with an infant, whom it saw below upon a door-step. The misery with them all was, clearly, that they sought to interfere, for good, in human matters, and had lost the power for ever. Whether these creatures faded into mist, or mist enshrouded them, he could not tell. But they and their spirit voices faded together; and the night became as it had been when he walked home. Some Scrooge closed the window, and examined the erdoor by which the Ghost had entered. It was double- hange locked, as he had locked it with his own hands, and the bolts were undisturbed. He tried to say "Humbug!” but stopped at the first syllable. And being, from the emotion he had undergone, or the fatigues of the day, or his glimpse of the Invisible World, or the dull conversation of the Ghost, or the lateness of the hour, much in need of repose, went straight to bed, without undressing, and fell asleep upon the instant. 28