The Charles Dickens Christmas MEGAPACK™ Read online

  Contents

  COPYRIGHT INFO

  A NOTE FROM THE PUBLISHER

  The MEGAPACK™ Ebook Series

  A CHRISTMAS CAROL

  THE CHIMES

  THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH

  THE BATTLE OF LIFE

  THE HAUNTED MAN AND THE GHOST’S BARGAIN

  A CHRISTMAS TREE

  NOBODY’S STORY

  THE SCHOOLBOY’S STORY

  THE CHILD’S STORY

  THE POOR RELATION’S STORY

  THE SEVEN POOR TRAVELLERS

  THE HOLLY-TREE—THREE BRANCHES

  THE WRECK OF THE GOLDEN MARY

  THE TRIAL FOR MURDER

  GOING INTO SOCIETY

  SOMEBODY’S LUGGAGE

  MRS. LIRRIPER’S LODGINGS

  MRS LIRRIPER’S LEGACY

  DOCTOR MARIGOLD

  BARBOX BROTHERS

  BARBOX BROTHERS AND CO.

  THE BOY AT MUGBY

  THE SIGNAL-MAN

  NO THOROUGHFARE

  WHAT CHRISTMAS IS AS WE GROW OLDER

  COPYRIGHT INFO

  The Charles Dickens Christmas MEGAPACK™ is copyright © 2014 by Wildside Press, LLC. All rights reserved.

  * * * *

  The MEGAPACK™ ebook series name is a trademark of Wildside Press, LLC. All rights reserved.

  A NOTE FROM THE PUBLISHER

  The “Christmas Story” (often a “Christmas Ghost Story”) was a popular Victorian tradition. Charles Dickens, who surely needs no introduction today, took part with gusto—and I am delighted to include not just the “standard fare” of A Christmas Carol, but a total of 25 stories he penned for Yuletide reading.

  Enjoy!

  —John Betancourt

  Publisher, Wildside Press LLC

  www.wildsidepress.com

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  Over the last few years, our MEGAPACK™ ebook series has grown to be our most popular endeavor. (Maybe it helps that we sometimes offer them as premiums to our mailing list!) One question we keep getting asked is, “Who’s the editor?”

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  A CHRISTMAS CAROL

  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 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 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. 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 dog-days; 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.