Guided Sleep Meditation & Sleep Hypnosis from Sleep Cove - A Christmas Carol Part 1 - A Bedtime Story Reading

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Starting point is 00:00:46 please go to sleepcove.com slash support. That's sleepcove.com slash support. If you can't support the show right now, please subscribe with the bell to get alerts on all new free content Thank you Have you ever gazed in wonder at the Great Pyramid Have you marvelled at the golden face of Tudankhamun

Starting point is 00:01:16 Or admired the delicate features of Queen Nefertiti If you have, you'll probably like the History of Egypt podcast Every week we explore tales of this ancient culture The history of Egypt is available wherever you get your podcasting fix. Come, let me introduce you to the world of ancient Egypt. Hello and welcome. Please listen to this recording in a place where you can safely go to sleep. In tonight's reading, I'll be reading one of the most famous Christmas stories of all time,

Starting point is 00:02:01 A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. I really hope you enjoy it. Let's begin. A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. Stave 1. Marley's Ghost Marley was dead to begin with. There was no doubt whatever about that.

Starting point is 00:02:25 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 dead as a doornail. Mind, I don't mean to say that I know of my own knowledge what there is particularly dead about a doornail.

Starting point is 00:02:53 I might have been inclined myself to regard a coffernail as the deadliest piece of ironmongery in the trade. But the wisdom of our ancestors is in the similessingly. and my unhallowed hands shall not disturb it all the country's done for. You will therefore permit me to repeat emphatically that Marley was dead as a doornail. 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 soul assign, his sole residual legality,

Starting point is 00:03:41 his sole friend and soul 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

Starting point is 00:04:12 I am going to relate If we were not perfectly convinced That Hamlet's father died before the play began There will be nothing more remarkable In the father taking a stroll at night In the easely 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 Churchyard, for instance,

Starting point is 00:04:38 literally to astonish his son's weak mind. Scrooge never painted out old Marley's name. There is 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, 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,

Starting point is 00:05:25 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, and made his eyes red, his lips thin and blue, and spoke out shrewdly in a grating voice.

Starting point is 00:05:48 A frosty rhyme was on his head and on his eyebrows and his wiry chin. He carried his eyes. own low temperature always about him. He iced his office in the dog days and didn't thore 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.

Starting point is 00:06:25 Fow 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. Nobody ever stopped him in the street to say, with gladsome looks, My dear Mr Scrooge, how are you? When were you come to see me? No beggars implored him To dispo a trifle

Starting point is 00:06:57 No children asked him What it was a 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

Starting point is 00:07:12 Would tug on their owners into doorways And upcourts And 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

Starting point is 00:07:28 To edge his way along the crowded paths of life Warning all human sympathy to keep his 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

Starting point is 00:07:51 foggy with all and you could hear the people and the court outside go wheezing up and down beating their hands upon their breasts and stamping their feet upon the pavement stones to warn them the city clocks had only just gone three

Starting point is 00:08:07 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

Starting point is 00:08:29 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 And was brewing on a large scale 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

Starting point is 00:08:51 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

Starting point is 00:09:15 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 it was the first intimation he had of his approach. Bah, said Scrooge, humbug! He had so heated himself with rapid walking in the fog and frost This nephew of Scrooge's that he was awed in a glow

Starting point is 00:09:53 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 that I'm sure I do said Scrooge Merry Christmas What right have you to be merry what reason have you to be merry, you're poor enough.

Starting point is 00:10:19 Come then, return the nephew gaily. What right you have to be dismal? What reason have you to be morose? You're rich enough. Scrooge, having no better answer, ready at the spur of the moment, said, bah again, and followed it with humbug. Don't be cross, said the nephew. What else can I be?

Starting point is 00:10:41 Return the uncle. When I live in the same. such a world of fools as this. Merry Christmas. Out upon Merry Christmas. What's Christmas time to you but a time for paying bills without money? A time for finding yourself a year older and not an hour richer. A time for balancing your books and having every item in them. There are around dozen of months presented dead against you. If I could work my will, said Scrooge indignantly, every idiot who goes about with Merry Christmas on his lips should be boiled with his own pudding

Starting point is 00:11:18 and buried with a stake of Holly through his heart he should. Uncle, pleaded the nephew. Nephew, returned the uncle sternly. Keep Christmas in your own way and let me keep it in mine. Keep it, repeated Scrooge's nephew, but you don't keep it. Let me leave it alone then, said Scrooge.

Starting point is 00:11:41 much good may it do to you, much good has it ever done to you. There are many things from which I might have derived good, by which I have not profited, I dare say, return the nephew. Christmas among the rest, but I am sure I have always thought of Christmas time when it has come round, apart from the veneration due to its sacred name and origin. If anything belonging to it can be apart from it,

Starting point is 00:12:11 that, as a good time, a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time, the only time I know of in their long calendar of the year, were men and women seen by one constant to open their shut up hearts freely and to think of people below them as if they were really fellow passengers to their grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys, and therefore uncle, though it has never put a scrap of gold or silver in my pockets, I believe that it has done me good, and it will do me good, and I say, God bless it. The clerk in the tank involuntary applauded, becoming immediately sensible to the improprietary. He poked the fire and distinguished the last frail spark forever. Let me hear another sound from you, said Scrooge,

Starting point is 00:13:11 and you'll keep your Christmas by losing your situation. You're quite a powerful speaker, sir, he added, turning to his nephew, I wonder you don't go into Parliament. Don't be angry, uncle. Come, dine with this tomorrow. Scrooge said that he would see him. Yes, indeed he did. He went the whole length of the expression

Starting point is 00:13:34 and said that he would see him in that extremity first. But why? Scrooge's nephew. Why? Why did you get married? said Scrooge, because I fell in love. Because you fell in love, growled Scrooge, as if that were the only thing in the world more ridiculous than a Merry Christmas. Good afternoon. Nay, Uncle, but you never came to see me before that happened. Why give it as a reason for not coming now? Good afternoon, said Scrooge. I I want nothing from you. I ask nothing of you. Why cannot we be friends? Good afternoon, said Scrooge. I am sorry with all my heart to find you so resolute.

Starting point is 00:14:24 We have never had a quarrel to which I have been a party, but I've made the trial and homage to Christmas, and I'll keep my Christmas humour to the last. So a merry Christmas, uncle. Good afternoon, said Scrooge, and a happy new year. afternoon, said Scrooge. His nephew left the room without an angry word, notwithstanding. He stopped at the outer door to bestow the greetings of the season on the clerk, who, cold as he was, was warmer than Scrooge, for he returned to them cordially. There's another fellow, muttered Scrooge, who overheard him. My clerk, with fifteen shillings a week, had a wife and a family talking about. and Merry Christmas. I'll retire to Bedlam. This lunatic in letting Scrooge's nephew out

Starting point is 00:15:19 had let two other people in. They were poorly gentlemen, pleasant to behold, and now stood with their hats off in Scrooge's office. They had books and papers in their hands and bowed to him. Scrooge and Marley's, I believe, said one of the gentlemen referring to his list. have I the pleasure of addressing Mr Scrooge or Mr. Marley? Mr. Marley has been dead these seven years. Scrooge replied, He died seven years ago this very night. We have no doubt that his liberality is well presented by his surviving partner,

Starting point is 00:16:00 said the gentleman presenting his credentials. It certainly was, for they had been two kindred spirits, at their onomous word liberality Scrooge frowned and shook his head and handed the credentials back At this festive season of the year

Starting point is 00:16:18 Mr Scrooge said the gentleman taking up a pen It is more than usual desirable That we should make some slight provision For the poor and destitute Who suffer greatly at the present time Many thousands are in want of common necessities

Starting point is 00:16:35 Hundreds of thousands are in want of common comfort, sir. Are there no prisons? asked Scrooge. Plenty of prisons, said the gentleman, laying down the pen again. And are the union workhouses? Demanded Scrooge, are they still in operation? Yes, they are still, returned the gentleman. I wish I could say they were not.

Starting point is 00:17:02 The treadmill and the poor law are in full vigour then. said Scrooge. Both very busy, sir. Oh, I was afraid from what you said at first that something had occurred to stop them in their useful course, said Scrooge. I am very glad to hear it. Under the impression that they scarcely furnish Christian cheer

Starting point is 00:17:27 of mind or body in the multitude, returned the gentleman, a few others are endeavouring to raise a fund to buy the poor some meat and drink and means of warmth. We choose this time because it is a time of all others when want is keenly felt and abundance rejoices. What shall I put you down for? Nothing, Scrooge replied.

Starting point is 00:17:56 You wish to be anonymous? I wish to be left alone, said Scrooge. Since you ask me what I wish, gentlemen. That is my answer. I don't make merry myself at Christmas, and I can't afford to make idle people merry. I helped to support the establishments I've mentioned may cost enough,

Starting point is 00:18:19 and those who are badly off must go there. But many can't go there, and many would die. If they would rather die, said Scrooge, they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population. besides, excuse me, I don't know that. But you might know it, observe the gentleman. It's not my business, Scrooge returned.

Starting point is 00:18:46 It's enough for a man to understand his own business and not to interfere with other peoples. Mine occupies me constantly. Good afternoon, gentlemen. Seeing clearly that it would be useless to pursue their point, the gentleman withdrew. Scrooge resumed his labours, with an improved opinion of himself, and in a more facetious temper that was usual with him. Meanwhile the fog and darkness thickened so, that people ran about with flaring links, proffering their services to go before horses and carriages

Starting point is 00:19:22 and conduct them on their way. The ancient tower of a church whose gruffold bell was always peeping, slyly down at Scrooge, out of a gothic window in the wall, became invisible and struck the hours and quarters in the clouds, with tremulous vibrations afterwards, as if its teeth were chattering in its frozen head up there. The cold became intense. In the main street, at the corner of the court, some labourers were repairing the gas pipes, and had lighted a great fire in a Brasier, round with a party of ragged men and boys were gathered, warming their hands and winking their eyes before the blaze and rapture. The water plug being left in solitude, its overflowing suddenly congealed and turned to misanthropic ice. The brightness of the shops were

Starting point is 00:20:21 holly sprigs and berries crackled in the lamp heat of the windows, made pale faces ruddy as they passed. Poulterers and grosses trades became a splendid joke, a glorious pageant, with which it was next to impossible to believe that such dull principles as bargain in sale had anything to do. The Lord Mayor, in the stronghold of the mighty mansion house, gave orders to his 50 cooks and butler's to keep Christmas as a Lord Mayor's household should, and even the little tailor whom he had fined five shillings on the previous

Starting point is 00:21:00 Monday for being drunk and bloodthirsty in the streets stirred up tomorrow's pudding in his garret while his lean wife and the baby sallied round out to buy the beef fogier yet and colder piercing

Starting point is 00:21:15 searching biting cold if the good St Dunstan had but nipped the evil spirit's nose with a touch of such weather as that instead of using his familiar weapons, then indeed he would have roared to lusty purpose. The owner of one scant young nose, gnawed and mumbled by the hungry cold as bones are gnawed by dogs,

Starting point is 00:21:40 stooped down at Scrooge's keyhole to regale him with a Christmas carol, but at the first sound of, God bless you, merry gentlemen, may nothing you dismay? Scrooge seized the ruler with some. such energy of action that the singer fled in terror, leaving the keyhole to the fog, an even more congenial frost. At length the hour of shutting up the counting house arrived, with an ill-will scrooge dismounted from his stool, and tactedly admitted a fact to the expectant clerk in the tank who instantly snuffed his candle out and put on his hat.

Starting point is 00:22:21 you'll want all day tomorrow i suppose said scrooge if quite convenient sir it's not convenient said scrooge and it's not fair if i was to stop half a crown for you you'll think yourself ill used i'll be bound the clerk smiled faintly and yet said scrooge you don't think me ill used when i pay your day's wages for no work the clerk observed that it was merely once a year. A poor excuse for picking a man's pocket every 25th of December, said Scrooge, buttoning his great coat to the chin. But I suppose you must have the whole day. Be here all the earlier next morning. The clerk promised that he would,

Starting point is 00:23:11 and Scrooge walked past out with a growl. The office was closed in a twinkling, and the clerk, with the long ends of his white comforter, Dangling blow his waist, for he boasted no great coat, went down a slide on Cornwall, and the end of a lane of boys, 20 times, in honour of its being Christmas Eve, and then ran home to Camden Town, as hard as he could, to play at Blindman's buff. Scrooge took his melanchony dinner in his usual melanchony tavern, and having read all the newspapers and beguiled the rest of the evening with his

Starting point is 00:23:51 banker's book, went home to bed. He lived in chambers which had once belonged to his deceased partner. They were a gloomy suite of rooms, in a lowering pile of building up a yard, where it had so little business to be, but one could scarcely help fancying it must have run there when it was a young house, playing at hide-and-seek with other houses, and have forgotten the way out again. It was old enough now. and dreary enough, for nobody lived in it but Scrooge, the other rooms being all let out as officers. The yard was so dark that even Scrooge, who knew its every stone,

Starting point is 00:24:34 was feigned to grope with his hands. The fog and frost so hung about the black old gateway of the house, that it seemed as if the genius of the weather sat in mournful meditation on the threshold. now it is a fact that there was nothing at all particular about the knock on the door, except that it was very large. It is also a fact that Scrooge had seen it night and morning during his whole residence in that place. Also that Scrooge had as little of what is called fancy about him as any man in the city of London, even including which is a bold world,

Starting point is 00:25:16 the corporation, aldermen and livery. Let it also be born in mind that Scrooge had not bestowed one thought on Marley since his last mention of his seven years dead partner that afternoon. And then let any man explain to me, if he can, how it happened that Scrooge, having his key in the lock of the door, saw in the knocker without its undergoing any intermediate process of, change, not a knocker, but Marley's face. Marley's face. It was not in impenetrable shadow, as the other objects in the yards were, but had a dismal light about it, like a bad lobster

Starting point is 00:26:02 in a dark cellar. It was not angry or ferocious, but looked at Scrooge as Marley used to look, with ghostly spectacles turned up on its ghostly forehead. The hair was curiously stirred, as if by breath of hot air, and though the eyes were wide open, they were perfectly motionless. That and its livid colour made it horrible, but its horror seemed to be in spite of the face and beyond its control, rather than a part of his own expression. As Scrooge looked fixedly at this phenomenon, it was a knocker again, to say that he was not startled, or that his blood was, was not conscious of a terrible sensation to which he had been a stranger from infancy would be untrue,

Starting point is 00:26:53 but he put his hand upon the key he had relinquished, turned it sturdily, walked in, enlightened his candle. He did pause with the moment's irresolution, before he shut the door and he did look cautiously behind it first, as if he half expected to be terrified with the same. sight of Marley's pigtail sticking out into the hall. But there was nothing on the back of the door except the screws and the nuts that held the knocker on. So he said, poo-poo, and he closed it with a bang. The sound resounded through the house like thunder. Every room above and every cask in the wine merchant cellars below appeared to have a separate peal of echoes of its own. Scrooge was not a man

Starting point is 00:27:46 be frightened by echoes. He fastened the door and walked across the hall and up the stairs slowly too trimming his candle as he went. You may talk vaguely about driving a coach and sicks up a good flight of stairs, or through a bad young actor parliament. But I mean to say that you might have got a hearse up that staircase and taken it broadwise, with a splinter bar towards the wall and the door towards the balustrades and done it easily. There was plenty of width for that and reamed to spare, which is perhaps the reason why Scrooge thought he saw a locomotive hearse going on before him in the gloom. Half a dozen gas lamps out on the street wouldn't have lighted the entry too well,

Starting point is 00:28:36 so you may suppose that it was pretty dark with Scrooge's dip. Up Scrooge went, not caring above, for that. Darkness is cheap and Scrooge liked it, but before he shut his heavy door, he walked through his rooms to see that all was right. He had just enough recollection of the face to desire to do that. Sitting room, bedroom, lumber room, all as they should be. Nobody under the table, no one under the sofa, a small fire in the grate, spoon and basin, spoon and basin ready and the little saucepan of gruel. Scrooge had a cold in his head, upon the hob. Nobody under the bed, nobody in the closet. No one in this dressing gown which was hanging up

Starting point is 00:29:28 in a suspicious attitude against the wall. Lumber room as usual, old fireguard, old shoes, two fish baskets, washing stand on three legs, and a poker. Quite satisfied. He was a, he closed his door and locked himself in, double locked himself in, which was not his custom. Thus secured against his surprise, he took off his cravat, but 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 little least sensation of warmth from a handful of fuel. The fireplace was an old one, built by some

Starting point is 00:30:21 Dutch merchant long ago and paved all around with quaint Dutch tiles designed to illustrate the scriptures. There were Canaan abels, faire as daughters, queens of Sheba, angelic messengers descended through the air on clouds, like feather beds, Abraham's, Belshazzar's, Apostles putting off to sea and butter boats, hundreds of figures to attract his thoughts, and yet that face of Marley, seven years dead, came like the ancient prophet's rod and swallowed up the hole. If each smooth tile had been a blanket first,

Starting point is 00:31:02 with power to shape some picture on its surface from the disjointed fragments of his thoughts, there would have been a copy of old Marley's head on everyone. humbug said Scrooge and walked across the room. After several turns he sat down again and 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 story of the building. It was with great astonishment and with a strange inexplicable dread

Starting point is 00:31:43 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 it soon 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 bell 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 merchant cellar.

Starting point is 00:32:19 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 and coming straight towards.

Starting point is 00:32:41 his door. It's humbug still, said Scrooge. I won't believe it. His colour changed though when, without a pause, it came on through the heavy door and passed into the room before his eyes. Upon it coming in, the dying flame leaped up as though it cried. I know him, Marley's ghost, and fell again. The same face. the very same, Marley in his pigtail, usual waistcoat, tights and boots, the tassel of the latter bristling like his pig tail and his coat skirts and the hair upon his head. The chain he drew was clasp about his middle. It was long and wound around him like a tail, and it was made, for Scrooge observed it closely, of cash boxes, keys, padlocks, ledgers, ledges, deeds and heavy purses wrought in steel. His body was transparent, so that Scrooge observing him

Starting point is 00:33:50 and looking through his waistcoat could see the two buttons on his coat behind. Scrooge had often heard it said that Marley had no boughs, 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 through and saw it standing before him, though he felt the chilling influence of its deaf,

Starting point is 00:34:18 cold eyes and marked the very texture of the folded kerchief bound about its head and chin, which rapper he had not observed before, he was still incredulous and fought against his senses. How now, said Scrooge, caustic and cold as ever. What do you want with me? Much, Marley's voice, no doubt about it. Who are you? Ask me who I was. Who were you then? Said Scrooge raising his voice.

Starting point is 00:34:54 You're particular for a shade. He was going to say to a shade, but substituted this, as more appropriate. In life, I was your partner, Jacob Marley. Can you? Can you sit down? down? asked Scrooge, looking doubtfully at him. I can. Do it then. Scrooge asked the question, because he didn't 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

Starting point is 00:35:32 of an embarrassing explanation. But the ghost sat down on the opposite side of the fireplace, as if he were quite used to it. You don't believe me, observe the ghost. I don't, said Scrooge. What evidence would you have of my reality beyond that of your senses? I don't know, said Scrooge. Why do you doubt your senses? said Marley.

Starting point is 00:36:04 Because, said Scrooge, a little thing affects them, A slight disorder of the stomach makes them cheats. You may be an undigested bitter beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of an underdone potato. There's more of gravy than of grave about you, whatever you are.

Starting point is 00:36:27 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 spectre's 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 juice with him. There was something very awful too in the spectres being provided with an infernal atmosphere of its own.

Starting point is 00:37:04 Scrooge could not feel it himself, but this was very 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. You see this toothpick, said Scrooge, returning quickly to the charge, for the reason just assigned in wishing, though it was not only for a second to divert. to the vision's stony gaze from himself. I do, replied the ghost. You are not looking at it, said Scrooge. But I see it, said the ghost, notwithstanding. Well, returned Scrooge, I have but to swallow this

Starting point is 00:37:52 and be for the rest of my days persecuted by a legion of goblins all of my own creation. Humbug, I tell you, humbug. And why would they come to me? It is required of every man, the ghost returned, that the spirit within him should walk abroad among his fellow men and travel far and wide, and if the spirit goes not forth in life, it is condemned to do so after death. It is doomed to wander through the world. Oh, woe is me, and witness what it cannot share, but might have shared on earth, and turn to happiness. Again the spectre raised a cry and shook its chain and wrung its shadowy hands. You are fettered, said Scrooge trembling.

Starting point is 00:38:45 Tell me why. I wear the chain I forged in life, replied the ghost. I made it link by link and yard by yard. I girded it on of my own free will, and of my own free will I wore it. It is a pattern strange to you? Scrooge trembled more and more. Or would you know, pursued the ghost, the weight and length of the strong coil you bear yourself?

Starting point is 00:39:16 It was full as heavy as long as this. Seven Christmas Eve's ago. You have laboured on it since. It is a ponderous chain. Scrooge glanced about him on the floor, in the expectation of finding himself surrounded by 50 or 60, fathoms of iron cable, but he could see nothing. Jacob, he said imploringly,

Starting point is 00:39:42 Oh, Jacob Marley, tell me more. Speak comfort to me, Jacob. I have known to give, Magos replied. It comes from other regions, Ebenezer Scrooge. It is conveyed by other ministers to other kinds of men. Nor can I tell you what I would. A very little more is all permitted to me, I cannot rest, I cannot stay, I cannot linger anywhere.

Starting point is 00:40:11 My spirit never walked beyond our counting house, marked me. In life my spirit never roved beyond the narrow limits of our money-changing hole and wearies journeys lie before me. It was a habit with Scrooge whenever he became thoughtful to put his hands in his breeches' pockets, pondering on what the ghost had said. He did so now, but without. lifting his eyes or getting off his knees. You must have been very slow about it, Jacob.

Starting point is 00:40:42 Scrooge observed, in a business-like manner, through the humility of difference. Slow, the ghost repeated. Seven years dead, Muse Scrooge, and travelling all the time. The whole time, said the ghost. No rest, no peace, incessant torture of remorse. You travel fast, said Scrooge On the wings of the wind, replied the ghost You might have got over a great quantity of ground in seven years, said Scrooge

Starting point is 00:41:15 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 could 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 might be, will find its

Starting point is 00:41:56 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 imply this to himself. Business, cried the ghost, wringing its hands again. Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business.

Starting point is 00:42:30 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 was the cause of all its availing 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 the crowns of fellow beings, with my eyes turned down and never raised 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 dismayed to hear the spectre going on at this rate, and began to quake exceedingly. Hear me, cried the ghost.

Starting point is 00:43:27 my time is nearly gone. I will, said Scrooge, but don't be hard upon me. Don't be flowery, Jacob, pray. How is it that I appear before you in a shape that you can see? I may not tell you, I have sat invisible beside you many and many a day.

Starting point is 00:43:49 Is that the chance and hope you mention Jacob? He demanded in a faltering voice. It is. I, I think I'd rather not, said Scrooge. Without their visits, said the ghost, you cannot hope to shun the path I tread. Expect the first tomorrow. And when the bell tolls, one. Couldn't I take them all at once and have it over, Jacob?

Starting point is 00:44:18 Hinted Scrooge, expect the second on the next night at the same hour. The third upon the next night, when their last stroke of twelve has ceased to vibrate. Look to see me no more, and look that, for your own sake, you remember what has passed between us. When it had said these words, the spectre took its wrapper from the table

Starting point is 00:44:42 and bound it round its head, and as before, Scrooge knew this by the smart sound its teeth made when the jaws were brought together by the bandage. He ventured to raise it, his eyes again and found his supernatural visitor confronting him in an erect attitude with its chain wound over and about its arm. The apparition walked backwards from him and at every step it took the window raised itself a little so that when the spectre reached it, it was wide open.

Starting point is 00:45:18 It beckoned Scrooge to approach, which he did. When they were within two paces of each other, Mali's ghost held up his hand, warning him to come no nearer. Scrooge stopped, not so much in obedience as in surprise and fear, for on the raising of the hand, he became sensible of confused noises in the air, incoherent sounds of lamention and regret, wailings, inexpressibly sorrowful and self-accusatory. The spectre, after listening for a moment, joined in the mournful dirge and floated out upon the bleak, dark night. Scrooge followed to the window, desperate in his curiosity.

Starting point is 00:46:09 He looked out. The air filled with phantoms, wandering hither and thither in restless haste and moaning as they went. Every one of them wore chains like Marley's ghosts. Some few, they might be guilty, governments, were linked together. None were free. Many had been personally known to Scrooge in their lives. He was quite familiar with one old ghost, in a white waistcoat with a monstrous iron safe attached to its ankle,

Starting point is 00:46:44 who cried piteously at being unable to assist a wretched woman with an infant. whom it saw below upon a doorstep. The misery with them all was clearly that they sought to interfere for good in human matters and had lost the power forever. Whether these creatures faded into mist or mist enshrouded them, he could not tell, but they and their spirit voices faded together and the night became as it had been when he walked to him. home. Scrooge closed the window and examined the door by which the ghost had entered. It was double

Starting point is 00:47:27 locked, as he had locked it with his own hands, and the bolts were undisturbed. He tried to say humbug, but stopped at the first syllable, and being from the emotion he had undergone, or the fatigues of the day, or his glimpse of the invisible world, or the dull conversation, of the ghost, all the lateness of the hour, which in need of repose went straight to bed, without undressing, and fell asleep upon the instant.

Guided Sleep Meditation & Sleep Hypnosis from Sleep Cove - A Christmas Carol Part 1 - A Bedtime Story Reading

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