Charles Dickens: A Christmas Carol

Stave 1: Marley's Ghost (continued)

The Ghost, on hearing this, set up another cry, and clanked its chain so hideously in the dead silence of the night, that the Ward would have been justified in indicting it for a nuisance.

`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. 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. Not to know that no space of regret can make amends for one life's opportunity misused! Yet such was I! Oh! such was I!'

`But you were always a good man of business, Jacob,' faltered Scrooge, who now began to apply this to himself.

`Business!' cried the Ghost, wringing its 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!'

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 year,' the spectre said `I suffer most. 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!'

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 time is nearly gone.'

`I will,' said Scrooge. `But don't be hard upon me! Don't be flowery, Jacob! Pray!' `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.'