Scrooge was very much dismayed to hear the spectre going on at this rate, and began to quake exceedingly. “Hear me! My time is nearly gone. That is no light part of my penance," pursued the Ghost.

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.

“Business! Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business;  charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were, all, my business.   The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business!” #AChristmasCarol  #CharlesDickens

"But you were always a good man of business, Jacob," faltered Scrooge, who now began to apply this to himself. #AChristmasCarol  #CharlesDickens

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.

"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.   #AChristmasCarol  #CharlesDickens

"You might have got over a great quantity of ground in seven years," said Scrooge.

"The whole time," said the Ghost.  "No rest, no peace.  Incessant torture of remorse." "You travel fast?"  said Scrooge. "On the wings of the wind," replied the Ghost. #AChristmasCarol  #CharlesDickens

"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!" #AChristmasCarol  #CharlesDickens

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. #AChristmasCarol  #CharlesDickens

"My spirit never walked beyond our counting-house -- mark me! -- in life my spirit never roved beyond the narrow limits of our money-changing hole; and weary journeys lie before me!" #AChristmasCarol  #CharlesDickens

"It comes from other regions, Ebenezer Scrooge, and is conveyed by other ministers, to other kinds of men. Nor can I tell you what I would.  A very little more, is all permitted to me.  I cannot rest, I cannot stay, I cannot linger anywhere." #AChristmasCarol  #CharlesDickens

"Jacob," he said, imploringly.  "Old Jacob Marley, tell me more. Speak comfort to me, Jacob!" "I have none to give," the Ghost replied.   #AChristmasCarol  #CharlesDickens

Scrooge glanced about him on the floor, in the expectation of finding himself surrounded by some fifty or sixty fathoms of iron cable: but he could see nothing. #AChristmasCarol  #CharlesDickens

Scrooge trembled more and more."Or would you know," pursued the Ghost, "the weight and length of the strong coil you bear yourself? It was full as heavy and as long as this, seven Christmas Eves ago. You have laboured on it, since. It is a ponderous chain!” #AChristmasCarol  #CharlesDickens

"You are fettered," said Scrooge, trembling.  "Tell me why?" "I wear the chain I forged in life," replied the Ghost. "I made it link by link, and yard by yard; I girded it on of my own free will, and of my own free will I wore it. Is its pattern strange to you?” #AChristmasCarol  #CharlesDickens

It is doomed to wander through the world -- oh, woe is me! -- and witness what it cannot share, but might have shared on earth, and turned to happiness!" Again the spectre raised a cry, and shook its chain and wrung its shadowy hands. #AChristmasCarol  #CharlesDickens

"It is required of every man," the Ghost returned, "that the spirit within him should walk abroad among his fellowmen, and travel far and wide;  and if that spirit goes not forth in life, it is condemned to do so after death.   #AChristmasCarol  #CharlesDickens

Scrooge fell upon his knees, and clasped his hands before his face. "Mercy!" he said.  "Dreadful apparition, why do you trouble me?" "Man of the worldly mind!" replied the Ghost, "do you believe in me or not?"

At this the spirit raised a frightful cry, and shook its chain with such a dismal and appalling noise, that Scrooge held on tight to his chair, to save himself from falling in a swoon.

"Well!" returned Scrooge, "I have but to swallow this, and be for the rest of my days persecuted by a legion of goblins, all of my own creation. Humbug, I tell you! humbug!”  #AChristmasCarol  #CharlesDickens

"You see this toothpick?" "I do," replied the Ghost. "You are not looking at it," said Scrooge. "But I see it," said the Ghost, "notwithstanding." #AChristmasCarol  #CharlesDickens

Scrooge could not feel it himself, but this was clearly the case; for though the Ghost sat perfectly motionless, its hair, and skirts, and tassels, were still agitated as by the hot vapour from an oven. #AChristmasCarol  #CharlesDickens

To sit, staring at those fixed glazed eyes, in silence for a moment, would play, Scrooge felt, the very deuce with him.  There was something very awful, too, in the spectre's being provided with an infernal atmosphere of its own.   #AChristmasCarol  #CharlesDickens

Scrooge was not much in the habit of cracking jokes, nor did he feel, in his heart, by any means waggish then.

"Why do you doubt your senses?" “Because, a little thing affects them. A slight disorder of the stomach makes them cheats.

"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. #AChristmasCarol  #CharlesDickens

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.

"Who are you?" "Ask me who I was." "Who were you then?"  said Scrooge, raising his voice.   "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." #AChristmasCarol  #CharlesDickens

"How now!" said Scrooge, caustic and cold as ever. "What do you want with me?" "Much!" -- Marley's voice, no doubt about it. #AChristmasCarol  #CharlesDickens

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;

It was long, and wound about him like a tail; and it was made (for Scrooge observed it closely) of cash-boxes, keys, padlocks, ledgers, deeds, and heavy purses wrought in steel.

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.   #AChristmasCarol  #CharlesDickens

His colour changed though, when, without a pause, it came on through the heavy door, and passed into the 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. #AChristmasCarol  #CharlesDickens

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.

This might have lasted half a minute, or a minute, but it seemed an hour.  The bells ceased as they had begun, together.

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. #AChristmasCarol  #CharlesDickens

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. #AChristmasCarol  #CharlesDickens

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. "Humbug!" said Scrooge; and walked across the room. #AChristmasCarol  #CharlesDickens

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,

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.   #AChristmasCarol  #CharlesDickens

Quite satisfied, he closed his door, and locked himself in; double-locked himself in, which was not his custom.

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 as usual.  Old fire-guards, old shoes, two fish-baskets, washing-stand on three legs, and a poker. #AChristmasCarol  #CharlesDickens

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.

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.  #AChristmasCarol  #CharlesDickens

He fastened the door, and walked across the hall, and up the stairs; slowly too: trimming his candle as he went. 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;

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.   #AChristmasCarol  #CharlesDickens

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.   #AChristmasCarol  #CharlesDickens

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.  #AChristmasCarol  #CharlesDickens

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. #AChristmasCarol  #CharlesDickens