A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens (motivational books for women txt) ๐
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Charles Dickens wrote A Christmas Carol in 1843 and the first edition, published on 19th December, was so successful that it sold out in just six days. The publishers had to produce two further editions between Christmas and the new year to meet the demand, and the novella has never been out of print.
A Christmas Carol tells the story of a greedy money-lender, Ebeneezer Scrooge, who is first visited by the ghost of his former business partner and then by three spiritsโthe Ghost of Christmas Past, the Ghost of Christmas Present and the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come. They show Scroogeโs lack of compassion to him, compelling him to act more compassionately in the future and to honor Christmas in his heart.
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- Author: Charles Dickens
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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 down before the fire to take his gruel.
It was a very low fire indeed; nothing on such a bitter night. He was obliged to sit close to it, and brood over it, before he could extract the least sensation of warmth from such a handful of fuel. The fireplace was an old one, built by some Dutch merchant long ago, and paved all round with quaint Dutch tiles, designed to illustrate the Scriptures. There were Cains and Abels, Pharaohโs daughters, Queens of Sheba, angelic 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 face of Marley, seven years dead, came like the ancient Prophetโs rod, and swallowed up the whole. If each smooth tile had been a blank at first, with power to shape some picture on its surface from the disjointed fragments of his thoughts, there would have been a copy of old Marleyโs head on every one.
โHumbug!โ said Scrooge; and walked across the room.
After several turns he sat down again. As he threw his head back in the chair, his glance happened to rest upon a bell, a disused bell, that hung in the room, and communicated, for some purpose now forgotten, with a chamber in the highest storey of the building. It was with great astonishment, and with a strange, inexplicable dread, that, as he looked, he saw this bell begin to swing. It swung so softly in the outset that it scarcely made a sound; but soon it rang out loudly, and so did every bell in the house.
This might have lasted 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 noise deep down below as if some person were dragging a heavy chain over the casks in the wine-merchantโs 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, and then he heard the noise much louder on the floors below; then coming up the stairs; then coming straight towards his door.
โItโs humbug still!โ said Scrooge. โI wonโt believe it.โ
His colour changed, though, when, without a pause, it came on through the heavy door and passed into the room before his eyes. Upon its coming in, the dying flame leaped up, as though it cried, โI know him! Marleyโs Ghost!โ and fell again.
The same face: the very same. Marley in his pigtail, usual waistcoat, tights, and boots; the tassels on the latter bristling, like his pigtail, and his coat-skirts, and the hair upon his head. The chain he drew was clasped about his middle. It was long, and wound about him like a tail; and it was made (for Scrooge observed it closely) of cash boxes, keys, padlocks, ledgers, deeds, and heavy purses wrought in steel. His body was transparent: so that Scrooge, observing him, and looking through his waistcoat, could see the two buttons on his coat behind.
Scrooge had often heard it said that Marley had no bowels, but he had never believed it until now.
No, nor did he believe it even now. Though he looked the phantom through and through, and saw it standing before him; though he felt the chilling influence of its death-cold eyes, and marked the very texture of the folded kerchief bound about its head and chin, which wrapper he had not observed before, he was still incredulous, and fought against his senses.
โHow now!โ said Scrooge, caustic and cold as ever. โWhat do you want with me?โ
โMuch!โโ โMarleyโs voice; no doubt about it.
โWho are you?โ
โAsk me who I was.โ
โWho were you, then?โ said Scrooge, raising his voice. โYouโre particular, for a shade.โ He was going to say โto a shade,โ but substituted this, as more appropriate.
โIn life I was your partner, Jacob Marley.โ
โCan youโ โcan you sit down?โ asked Scrooge, looking doubtfully at him.
โI can.โ
โDo it, then.โ
Scrooge asked the question, because he didnโt 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. But the Ghost sat down on the opposite side of the fireplace, as if he were quite used to it.
โYou donโt believe in me,โ observed the Ghost.
โI donโt,โ said Scrooge.
โWhat evidence would you have of my reality beyond that of your own senses?โ
โI donโt know,โ said Scrooge.
โWhy do you doubt your senses?โ
โBecause,โ said Scrooge, โa little thing affects them. A slight disorder of the stomach makes them cheats. You may be an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of an underdone potato. Thereโs more of gravy than of grave about you, whatever you are!โ
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 spectreโs voice 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, too, in the spectreโs being provided with an infernal atmosphere of his own. Scrooge could not feel it himself, but this was clearly the case; for though the Ghost sat perfectly motionless, its hair, and skirts, and tassels were still agitated as by the hot vapour from an oven.
โYou see this toothpick?โ said Scrooge, returning quickly to the charge, for the reason just assigned; and wishing, though it
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