I love this book, and there are so many great passages in the narration that just can't be translated to film or the stage, that I thought I would post those passages that speak to me and that make this book so great. And, just because I can, I will throw in passages that did make it into film and stage versions. However, there are so many, that I'm breaking it up into four posts. Part 1 is Stave I, Part 2 is Stave II, Part 3 is Stave III, and Part 4 is Staves IV and V.
Stave I: Marley's Ghost
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.
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 Cathedral for instance - literally to astonish his son's weak mind.
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.
He carried his own low temperature always about him: he iced his office in the dog-days; and didn't thaw it one degree at Christmas.
"And therefore, uncle, though it has ever put a scrap of gold or silver in my pocket, I believe that it has done me good, and will do me good; and I say, God bless it!"
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, cold as he was, was warmer than Scrooge; for he returned them cordially.
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.
He lived in chambers that had once belonged to his deceased partner. The were a gloomy suite of rooms, on a lowering pile of building 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 house, playing at hide-and -seek with other houses, and have forgotten the way out again.
Nobody under the bed; nobody in the closet; nobody in his dressing gown, which was hanging up in a suspicious attitude against the wall.
Scrooge had often heard that Marley had no bowels, but he never believed it until now.
"Can you - can you sit down? asked Scrooge, looking doubtfully at him.
"I can."
"Do it then."
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.
"There's more gravy than of grave about you, whatever you are!"
Scrooge was not much in the habit of cracking jokes, nor did he feel, in his heart, by any means waggish then. The truth is, that he tried to be smart, as a means of distracting his own attention, and keeping down his terror, for the spectre's voice disturbed the very marrow of his bones.
"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. 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!"
"Business!" cried the Ghost, wringing his hands again. "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!"
"Why did I walk through crowds of fellow-beings with my eyes turned down, and never raise them to that blessed Star which led the Wise Men to a poor abode? Were there no poor homes to which its light would have conducted me?"
"How it is that I appear before you in a shape that you can see, I may not tell. I have sat invisible beside you many and many a day."
It was not an agreeable idea. Scrooge shivered, and wiped the perspiration from his brow.
You will be haunted," resumed the Ghost, "by Three Spirits."
Scrooge's countenance fell almost as low as the Ghost's had done.
"Look to see me no more; and look that, for your own sake, you remember what has passed between us."
The air was filled with phantoms, wandering hither and thither in restless haste, and moaning as they went. Every one of them wore chains like Marley's Ghost; some few (they might be guilty governments) were linked together; none were free.
He had been quite familiar with one old ghost, in a white 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 doorstep. The misery with them was, clearly, that they sought to interfere, for good, in human matters, and had lost the power forever.
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