قراءة كتاب A Christmas Carol
تنويه: تعرض هنا نبذة من اول ١٠ صفحات فقط من الكتاب الالكتروني، لقراءة الكتاب كاملا اضغط على الزر “اشتر الآن"
href="@public@vhost@g@gutenberg@html@files@24022@[email protected]#img11" tag="{http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml}a">144
IN BLACK AND WHITE
| Tailpiece | vi |
| Tailpiece to List of Coloured Illustrations | x |
| Tailpiece to List of Black and White Illustrations | xi |
| Heading to Stave One | 3 |
| They were portly gentlemen, pleasant to behold | 12 |
| On the wings of the wind | 28-29 |
| Tailpiece to Stave One | 34 |
| Heading to Stave Two | 37 |
| He produced a decanter of curiously light wine and a block of curiously heavy cake | 50 |
| She left him, and they parted | 60 |
| Tailpiece to Stave Two | 65 |
| Heading to Stave Three | 69 |
| There was nothing very cheerful in the climate | 75 |
| He had been Tim's blood-horse all the way from church | 84-85 |
| With the pudding | 88 |
| Heading to Stave Four | 111 |
| Heading to Stave Five | 137 |
| Tailpiece to Stave Five | 147 |
STAVE ONE
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 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 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 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 St. Paul's Churchyard, for instance—literally to
