Name: A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens Audiobook with subtitles and a warm fire. Read by Greg Wagland.
Uploaded: 2023-07-27T08:22:15.000Z
Duration: 3 h 14 min 37 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

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

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

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

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 St. Paul's Church-yard, 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

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"

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

The door of Scrooge's counting-house was open, that he might keep his

eye upon his clerk, who in a dismal little cell beyond, a sort of tank,

was copying letters. Scrooge had a very small fire, but the clerk's fire

was so very much smaller that it looked like one coal. But he couldn't

replenish it, for Scrooge kept the coal-box in his own room; and so

surely as the clerk came in with the shovel, the master predicted that

it would be necessary for them to part. Wherefore the clerk put on his

white comforter, and tried to warm himself at the candle; in which

effort, not being a man of strong imagination, he failed.

"A merry Christmas, uncle! God save you!" cried a cheerful voice. It was

the voice of Scrooge's nephew, who came upon him so quickly that this

was the first intimation he had of his approach.

He had so heated himself with rapid walking in the fog and frost, this

nephew of Scrooge's, that he was all in a glow; his face was ruddy and

handsome; his eyes sparkled, and his breath smoked again.

"Christmas a humbug, uncle!" said Scrooge's nephew. "You don't mean

"I do," said Scrooge. "Merry Christmas! What right have you to be merry?

What reason have you to be merry? You're poor enough."

"Come, then," returned the nephew gaily. "What right have you to be

dismal? What reason have you to be morose? You're rich enough."

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A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens Audiobook with subtitles and a warm fire. Read by Greg Wagland.

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