Scripture Where Samuel Made the Decision About the Baby

A Christmas Carol past Charles Dickens

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We are super pumped for the holidays, and to get even more in the mood, we'll be republishing A Christmas Ballad by Charles Dickens.

We will share this classic Christmas story in 10 parts every weekday for the adjacent two weeks. Be sure to subscribe to our newsletter so you don't miss any of the story!

If you haven't already, be sure to requite Part 1 a read earlier continuing to the story below.

The post-obit was written by Charles Dickens and originally published in 1843.

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Marley's Ghost — Function 2

At length the hour of shutting upward the counting- house arrived. With an ill-will Scrooge dismounted from his stool, and tacitly admitted the fact to the expectant clerk in the Tank, who instantly snuffed his candle out, and put on his lid.

'Yous'll want all day to-morrow, I suppose?' said Scrooge.

'If quite convenient, sir.'

'It's not convenient,' said Scrooge, 'and information technology's not fair. If I was to end half-a-crown for it, you'd retrieve yourself ill- used, I'll be leap?'

The clerk smiled faintly.

'And yet,' said Scrooge, 'you don't think me sick-used, when I pay a day's wages for no work.'

The clerk observed that it was only once a year.

'A poor alibi for picking a man's pocket every xx-fifth of Dec!' said Scrooge, buttoning his groovy-coat to the chin. 'Simply I suppose y'all must have the whole day. Be here all the before next morning.'

The clerk promised that he would; and Scrooge walked out with a growl. The office was airtight in a twinkling, and the clerk, with the long ends of his white comforter dangling below his waist (for he boasted no keen-coat), went down a slide on Cornhill, at the end of a lane of boys, twenty times, in honor of its being Christmas Eve, and then ran domicile to Camden Boondocks equally hard as he could pelt, to play at blindman's-buff.

Scrooge took his melancholy dinner in his usual melancholy tavern; and having read all the newspapers, and beguiled the rest of the evening with his banker's- book, went home to bed. He lived in chambers which had once belonged to his deceased partner. They were a gloomy suite of rooms, in a lowering pile of edifice up a yard, where it had so little business to be, that one could scarcely help fancying it must have run there when it was a young firm, playing at hide-and-seek with other houses, and forgotten the way out again. It was former plenty now, and dreary enough, for nobody lived in it only Scrooge, the other rooms being all let out as offices. The yard was then dark that even Scrooge, who knew its every stone, was fain to grope with his easily. The fog and frost so hung almost the black onetime gateway of the house, that information technology seemed as if the Genius of the Weather sat in mournful meditation on the threshold.

Now, information technology is a fact, that in that location was zilch at all particular about the knocker on the door, except that it was very large. It is also a fact, that Scrooge had seen it, dark and morn, during his whole residence in that place; also that Scrooge had as little of what is called fancy about him as any man in the city of London, even including — which is a bold word — the corporation, aldermen, and livery. Let it also be borne in listen that Scrooge had not bestowed i idea on Marley, since his last mention of his seven years' dead partner that afternoon. And then let any man explain to me, if he tin can, how it happened that Scrooge, having his key in the lock of the door, saw in the knocker, without its undergoing any intermediate process of change — not a knocker, but Marley's face.

Marley's face. It was not in impenetrable shadow as the other objects in the 1000 were, merely had a dismal light near information technology, like a bad lobster in a nighttime cellar. Information technology was not angry or ferocious, only looked at Scrooge as Marley used to wait: with ghostly spectacles turned up on its ghostly forehead. The hair was curiously stirred, as if by breath or hot air; and, though the optics were wide open, they were perfectly motionless. That, and its livid colour, fabricated it horrible; but its horror seemed to be in spite of the face up and beyond its control, rather than a function or its own expression.

As Scrooge looked fixedly at this phenomenon, information technology was a knocker once more.

To say that he was non startled, or that his blood was not witting of a terrible awareness 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.

He did pause, with a moment'southward irresolution, before he close the door; and he did expect cautiously behind it first, as if he half-expected to be terrified with the sight of Marley's pigtail sticking out into the hall. But in that location 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 business firm like thunder. Every room above, and every cask in the wine-merchant'south cellars below, appeared to accept a separate peal of echoes of its ain. Scrooge was not a human to be frightened by echoes. He fastened the door, and walked across the hall, and upwards the stairs; slowly too: trimming his candle as he went.

You may talk vaguely about driving a coach-and-6 up a good old flight of stairs, or through a bad young Human activity of Parliament; simply I hateful to say y'all might have got a hearse up that staircase, and taken it broadwise, with the splinter- bar towards the wall and the door towards the balustrades: and done it piece of cake. At that place was plenty of width for that, and room to spare; which is peradventure the reason why Scrooge thought he saw a locomotive hearse going on before him in the gloom. Half a dozen gas-lamps out of the street wouldn't have lighted the entry as well well, so you may suppose that it was pretty nighttime with Scrooge'south dip.

Upwards Scrooge went, non caring a button for that. Darkness is cheap, and Scrooge liked it. Simply before he shut his heavy door, he walked through his rooms to see that all was right. He had but enough recollection of the face up to desire to practise that.

Sitting-room, bedroom, lumber-room. All as they should exist. Nobody under the tabular array, nobody under the sofa; a minor burn down in the grate; spoon and basin ready; and the little bucket of gruel (Scrooge had a cold in his caput) upon the hob. Nobody under the bed; nobody in the closet; nobody in his dressing-gown, which was hanging up in a suspicious attitude confronting the wall. Lumber-room as usual. Old burn-guards, former shoes, ii fish-baskets, washing-stand on three legs, and a poker.

Quite satisfied, he closed his door, and locked himself in; double-locked himself in, which was not his custom. Thus secured against surprise, he took off his cravat; put on his dressing-gown and slippers, and his nightcap; and sat downwardly before the fire to take his gruel.

It was a very low fire indeed; nil on such a biting night. He was obliged to sit down close to it, and brood over information technology, before he could excerpt the least sensation of warmth from such a scattering of fuel. The fireplace was an old ane, built by some Dutch merchant long ago, and paved all round with quaint Dutch tiles, designed to illustrate the Scriptures. At that place were Cains and Abels, Pharaohs' daughters; Queens of Sheba, Celestial messengers descending through the air on clouds like feather-beds, Abrahams, Belshazzars, Apostles putting off to sea in butter-boats, hundreds of figures to attract his thoughts — and yet that confront of Marley, seven years expressionless, came similar the ancient Prophet's rod, and swallowed upward the whole. If each shine tile had been a blank at first, with power to shape some film on its surface from the disjointed fragments of his thoughts, there would have been a copy of old Marley's head on every one.

'Braggadocio!' said Scrooge; and walked across the room.

After several turns, he sat downwards again. As he threw his caput back in the chair, his glance happened to rest upon a bong, a disused bong, that hung in the room, and communicated for some purpose now forgotten with a chamber in the highest story of the building. It was with peachy astonishment, and with a strange, inexplicable dread, that as he looked, he saw this bong brainstorm to swing. It swung and so softly in the outset that information technology scarcely fabricated a sound; merely presently it rang out loudly, and so did every bell in the house.

This might have lasted one-half a minute, or a minute, but it seemed an hour. The bells ceased as they had begun, together. They were succeeded by a clanking racket, deep downwards below; as if some person were dragging a heavy concatenation over the casks in the wine merchant's cellar. 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, then he heard the noise much louder, on the floors below; and so coming up the stairs; and then coming straight towards his door.

'It'due south humbug notwithstanding!' said Scrooge. 'I won't believe it.'

His color changed though, when, without a pause, it came on through the heavy door, and passed into the room earlier his eyes. Upon its coming in, the dying flame leaped upwards, as though it cried 'I know him; Marley's Ghost!' and brutal again.

The same face up: the very same. Marley in his pigtail, usual waistcoat, tights and boots; the tassels on the latter bristling, like his pigtail, and his glaze-skirts, and the hair upon his caput. The chain he drew was clasped about his eye. Information technology was long, and wound virtually him like a tail; and it was made (for Scrooge observed it closely) of greenbacks- boxes, keys, padlocks, ledgers, deeds, and heavy purses wrought in steel. His body was transparent; and then that Scrooge, observing him, and looking through his waistcoat, could see the ii buttons on his coat behind.

Scrooge had ofttimes heard it said that Marley had no bowels, but he had never believed information technology until at present.

No, nor did he believe it even now. Though he looked the phantom through and through, and saw it standing earlier him; though he felt the chilling influence of its death-common cold eyes; and marked the very texture of the folded kerchief spring well-nigh its head and chin, which wrapper he had non observed before; he was withal incredulous, and fought against his senses.

'How now!' said Scrooge, caustic and cold as ever. 'What do you want with me?'

'Much!' — Marley's vox, no incertitude most it.

'Who are you?'

'Inquire me who I was.'

'Who were you and then?' said Scrooge, raising his voice.

'Y'all're particular, for a shade.' He was going to say 'to a shade,' but substituted this, as more advisable.

'In life I was your partner, Jacob Marley.'

'Can you — can you sit down?' asked Scrooge, looking doubtfully at him.

'I can.'

'Practise information technology, then.'

Scrooge asked the question, because he didn't know whether a ghost so transparent might find himself in a condition to have a chair; and felt that in the event of its being incommunicable, it might involve the necessity of an embarrassing explanation. Simply the ghost sat down on the opposite side of the fireplace, every bit if he were quite used to it.

'You don't believe in me,' observed the Ghost.

'I don't.' said Scrooge.

'What show would you have of my reality beyond that of your senses?'

'I don't know,' said Scrooge. 'Why do you doubt your senses?'

'Because,' said Scrooge, 'a little thing affects them. A slight disorder of the tum makes them cheats. You may be an undigested fleck of beef, a absorb of mustard, a nibble of cheese, a fragment of an underdone potato. There's more of gravy than of grave about you lot, whatever you are!'

Scrooge was non much in the habit of cracking jokes, nor did he feel, in his eye, by any ways waggish then. The truth is, that he tried to be smart, every bit a means of distracting his ain attending, and keeping downwardly his terror; for the spectre'due south vocalism disturbed the very marrow in his bones.

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, also, in the spectre's beingness provided with an infernal atmosphere of its own. Scrooge could non feel it himself, merely this was conspicuously the example; for though the Ghost sat perfectly motionless, its hair, and skirts, and tassels, were nonetheless agitated as by the hot vapour from an oven.

'You see this toothpick?' said Scrooge, returning apace to the charge, for the reason just assigned; and wishing, though it were only for a 2d, to divert the vision'south stony gaze from himself.

'I do,' replied the Ghost.

'You lot are not looking at it,' said Scrooge.

'But I see it,' said the Ghost, 'notwithstanding.'

'Well!' returned Scrooge, 'I accept 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!'

At this the spirit raised a frightful cry, and shook its chain with such a dismal and appalling dissonance, that Scrooge held on tight to his chair, to relieve himself from falling in a swoon. Only how much greater was his horror, when the phantom taking off the bandage round its caput, as if it were too warm to wear indoors, its lower jaw dropped downwardly upon its breast!

Scrooge fell upon his knees, and clasped his hands earlier his face up.

'Mercy!' he said. 'Dreadful apparition, why practise you trouble me?'

'Human of the worldly mind!' replied the Ghost, 'do you believe in me or not?'

'I do,' said Scrooge. 'I must. Merely why do spirits walk the earth, and why exercise they come up to me?'

'Information technology is required of every homo,' the Ghost returned, 'that the spirit inside him should walk abroad amidst his fellowmen, and travel far and broad; and if that spirit goes not forth in life, it is condemned to practise so after decease. It is doomed to wander through the earth — oh, woe is me! — and witness what it cannot share, just might accept shared on earth, and turned to happiness!'

Again the spectre raised a weep, and shook its chain and wrung its shadowy easily.

'You are fettered,' said Scrooge, trembling. 'Tell me why?'

'I habiliment the chain I forged in life,' replied the Ghost. 'I made it link by link, and yard by 1000; I girded it on of my ain complimentary will, and of my ain free will I wore it. Is its pattern foreign to you?'

Scrooge trembled more and more.

'Or would you know,' pursued the Ghost, 'the weight and length of the strong whorl you bear yourself? It was full equally heavy and as long every bit this, 7 Christmas Eves ago. You lot accept laboured on it, since. It is a ponderous chain!'

Scrooge glanced about him on the flooring, in the expectation of finding himself surrounded past some fifty or sixty fathoms of iron cable: just he could meet cypher.

'Jacob,' he said, imploringly. 'Old Jacob Marley, tell me more. Speak condolement to me, Jacob!'

'I have none to requite,' the Ghost replied. '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. My spirit never walked across our counting-firm — mark me! — in life my spirit never roved across the narrow limits of our money-changing hole; and weary journeys lie before me!'

Information technology was a habit with Scrooge, whenever he became thoughtful, to put his easily in his breeches pockets. Pondering on what the Ghost had said, he did so now, but without lifting upwardly his eyes, or getting off his knees.

'Yous must have been very irksome most it, Jacob,' Scrooge observed, in a business-like manner, though with humility and deference.

'Slow!' the Ghost repeated.

'7 years expressionless,' mused Scrooge. 'And travelling all the time!'

'The whole time,' said the Ghost. 'No balance, no 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 slap-up quantity of ground in vii years,' said Scrooge.

The Ghost, on hearing this, prepare up some other cry, and clanked its chain so hideously in the dead silence of the dark, that the Ward would accept been justified in indicting it for a nuisance.

'Oh! convict, bound, and double-ironed,' cried the phantom, 'not to know, that ages of ceaseless labour, by immortal creatures, for this world must pass into eternity before the practiced of which it is susceptible is all developed. Non to know that whatsoever Christian spirit working kindly in its picayune sphere, whatever it may be, volition find its mortal life too short for its vast means of usefulness. Not to know that no space of regret can make amends for 1 life'southward opportunity misused! Yet such was I! Oh! such was I!'

'Just you were e'er a skillful human being of business, Jacob,' faltered Scrooge, who at present began to utilise this to himself.

'Business concern!' cried the Ghost, wringing its easily again. 'Flesh was my business concern. The mutual welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were, all, my business. The dealings of my trade were just a drop of h2o in the comprehensive ocean of my business organisation!'

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.

'At this time of the rolling yr,' the spectre said 'I suffer nearly. Why did I walk through crowds of boyfriend- beings with my eyes turned downwardly, and never raise them to that blessed Star which led the Wise Men to a poor abode! Were in that location no poor homes to which its light would have conducted me!'

Scrooge was very much dismayed to hear the spectre going on at this rate, and began to quake exceedingly.

'Hear me!' cried the Ghost. 'My fourth dimension is near gone.'

'I will,' said Scrooge. 'But don't be hard upon me! Don't exist flowery, Jacob! Pray!' 'How it is that I appear before you in a shape that you lot can encounter, I may not tell. I have sat invisible beside yous many and many a day.'

It was non an agreeable thought. Scrooge shivered, and wiped the perspiration from his brow.

'That is no low-cal part of my penance,' pursued the Ghost. 'I am hither to-dark to warn yous, that you have all the same a chance and hope of escaping my fate. A hazard and hope of my procuring, Ebenezer.'

'You were always a skillful friend to me,' said Scrooge. 'Thank 'ee!'

'Yous volition be haunted,' resumed the Ghost, 'by Three Spirits.'

Scrooge'south countenance cruel near as low every bit the Ghost's had done.

'Is that the chance and promise you lot mentioned, Jacob?' he demanded, in a unpleasing voice.

'It is.'

'I — I recollect I'd rather not,' said Scrooge.

'Without their visits,' said the Ghost, 'you cannot hope to shun the path I tread. Expect the start tomorrow, when the bell tolls 1.'

'Couldn't I take 'em all at once, and have it over, Jacob?' hinted Scrooge.

'Expect the second on the next night at the aforementioned hour. The third upon the side by side night when the last stroke of Twelve has ceased to vibrate. Look to encounter me no more; and look that, for your own sake, y'all call back what has passed between us!'

When information technology had said these words, the spectre took its wrapper from the table, and spring it round its head, as before. Scrooge knew this, by the smart sound its teeth made, when the jaws were brought together by the bandage. He ventured to raise his optics again, and plant his supernatural visitor confronting him in an erect attitude, with its chain wound over and about its arm.

The apparition walked backward from him; and at every step information technology took, the window raised itself a little, so that when the spectre reached information technology, it was wide open up. Information technology beckoned Scrooge to arroyo, which he did. When they were within two paces of each other, Marley's Ghost held up its hand, warning him to come no nearer. Scrooge stopped.

Non and so much in obedience, as in surprise and fear: for on the raising of the paw, he became sensible of confused noises in the air; breathless sounds of lamentation and regret; wailings inexpressibly sorrowful and cocky-accusatory. The spectre, afterward listening for a moment, joined in the mournful dirge; and floated out upon the bleak, dark night.

Scrooge followed to the window: drastic in his curiosity. He looked out.

The air was filled with phantoms, wandering hither and thither in restless haste, and moaning equally they went. Every one of them wore chains similar Marley's Ghost; some few (they might be guilty governments) were linked together; none were free. Many had been personally known to Scrooge in their lives. He had been quite familiar with one sometime ghost, in a white waistcoat, with a monstrous atomic number 26 prophylactic fastened to its ankle, who cried piteously at being unable to help a wretched adult female with an baby, whom it saw beneath, upon a door-pace. The misery with them all was, clearly, that they sought to interfere, for good, in homo 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 dwelling house.

Scrooge airtight the window, and examined the door past which the Ghost had entered. It was double-locked, as he had locked it with his own hands, and the bolts were undisturbed. He tried to say 'Humbug!' only stopped at the first syllable. And beingness, from the emotion he had undergone, or the fatigues of the twenty-four hour period, or his glimpse of the Invisible World, or the irksome conversation of the Ghost, or the lateness of the 60 minutes, much in need of repose; went straight to bed, without undressing, and fell asleep upon the instant.

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Source: https://medium.com/the-mission/a-christmas-carol-by-charles-dickens-aaf8e8817850

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