Dog Eared Page: A Christmas Carol

Monday, December 15, 2014

Dickens, dog eared page, book, literature, a christmas carol, marley, scrooge
Illustration credit: unknown. Contact me if you know. 
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...Scrooge never painted out Old Marley's name. There it stood, years afterwards, above the ware-house 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, shriveled 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.

-A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens

5 comments

  1. Oooh, what a compelling passage! I love these little posts of yours. It makes me happy to read something when I haven't had the chance to actually sit down and read for pleasure in such a long time. And you should know by now I'm a sucker for illustrations.

    Hope your holidays are going swell, Kristian!! <3

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    1. I'm glad you are enjoying this! Happy holidays Ali!

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  2. The last time I read this was in high school, so I need to read it again, but I always make time for A Muppet Christmas Carol :)

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    1. In high school we performed A Christmas Carol. As prep, we did look at about 10 different movie versions. I think the Muppets was the best one (though there was an old 1930s version that was pretty scary).

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  3. Do you suppose this was the first time someone said, "dead as a door nail"?
    My favorite movie versions are Mickey Mouse and Mr. Magoo

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