A to Z Classics - The Complete Christmas Books and Stories

Table of Contents

A Christmas Carol A Christmas Carol First published : 1843 Stave 1: Marley’s Ghost Stave 2: The First of the Three Spirits Stave 3: The Second of the Three Spirits Stave 4: The Last of the Spirits Stave 5: The End of It

Stave 1: Marley’s Ghost

Stave 2: The First of the Three Spirits

Stave 3: The Second of the Three Spirits

Stave 4: The Last of the Spirits

Stave 5: The End of It

The Chimes

First Quarter

The Second Quarter

Third Quarter

Fourth Quarter

The Cricket on the Hearth

Chirp the First

Chirp The Second

Chirp the Third

The Battle of Life

Chapter 1 — Part the First

Chapter II— Part The Second

Chapter III— Part The Third

The Haunted Man and the Ghost’s Bargain

Chapter 1 — The Gift Bestowed

Chapter 2 — The Gift Diffused

Chapter 3 — The Gift Reversed

A Christmas Tree

What Christmas is as We Grow Older

The Poor Relation’s Story

The Child’s Story

The Schoolboy’s Story

Nobody’s Story

The Seven Poor Travellers

Chapter 1 — In the Old City of Rochester

Chapter 2 — The Story of Richard Doubledick

Chapter 3 — The Road

The Holly-Tree

First Branch — Myself

Second Branch — The Boots

Third Branch — The Bill

The Wreck of the Golden Mary

The Wreck

All That Follows was written by John Steadiman, Chief Mate.

The Perils of Certain English Prisoners

Chapter 1 — The Island of Silver-Store

Chapter 2

Chapter 3 — The Rafts on the River

Going into Society

A Message from the Sea

Chapter 1 — The Village

Chapter 2 — The Money

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5 — The Restitution

Tom Tiddler’s Ground

Chapter 1 — Picking Up Soot and Cinders

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6 — Picking Up Miss Kimmeens

Chapter 7 — Picking Up the Tinker

Somebody’s Luggage

Chapter 1 — His Leaving It Till Called For

Chapter 2 — His Boots

Chapter 3 — His Brown-Paper Parcel

Chapter 4 — His Wonderful End

Mrs. Lirriper’s Lodgings

Chapter 1 — How Mrs. Lirriper Carried on the Business

Chapter 2 — How the Parlours Added a Few Words

Mrs. Lirriper’s Legacy

Chapter 1 — Mrs. Lirriper Relates How She Went On, and Went Over

Chapter 2 — Mrs. Lirriper Relates How Jemmy Topped Up

Doctor Marigold

Mugby Junction

Chapter 1 — Barbox Brothers

Chapter 2 — Barbox Brothers and Co.

Chapter 3 — The Boy at Mugby

No Thoroughfare

The Overture

Act 1

The Curtain Rises

Enter the Housekeeper

The Housekeeper Speaks

New Characters on the Scene

Exit Wilding

Act 2

Vendale Makes Love

Vendale Makes Mischief

Act 3

In the Valley

On the Mountain

Act 4

The Clock-lock

Obenreizer’s Victory

The Curtain Falls

First published : 1843

Stave 1: Marley’s Ghost

Stave 2: The First of the Three Spirits

Stave 3: The Second of the Three Spirits

Stave 4: The Last of the Spirits

Stave 5: The End of It

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 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; 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 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 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 a large scale.