Where Can I Find Parts To Repair Holiday Living Christmas Yard Ornaments

          
A Christmas Ballad by Charles Dickens
          
Department 2 of 10
                          
UnsplashWe are super pumped for the holidays, and to get even more than in the mood, we'll be republishing          A Christmas Carol          by Charles Dickens.
We will share this classic Christmas story in x parts every weekday for the next ii weeks. Exist sure to subscribe to our newsletter so you don't miss whatever of the story!
If you haven't already, be sure to give Part one a read before continuing to the story below.
          The post-obit was written past Charles Dickens and originally published in 1843.        
                          
SourceMarley's Ghost — Office 2At length the hour of shutting up the counting- house arrived. With an sick-volition Scrooge dismounted from his stool, and tacitly admitted the fact to the expectant clerk in the Tank, who instantly snuffed his candle out, and put on his hat.
'You lot'll desire all twenty-four hours to-morrow, I suppose?' said Scrooge.
'If quite convenient, sir.'
'It's not convenient,' said Scrooge, 'and information technology's not fair. If I was to cease half-a-crown for information technology, you lot'd remember yourself ill- used, I'll be spring?'
The clerk smiled faintly.
'And yet,' said Scrooge, 'you don't recollect me ill-used, when I pay a 24-hour interval's wages for no piece of work.'
The clerk observed that it was only once a year.
'A poor excuse for picking a man's pocket every twenty-fifth of December!' said Scrooge, buttoning his keen-coat to the chin. 'Merely I suppose you must have the whole day. Be here all the earlier side by side morning.'
The clerk promised that he would; and Scrooge walked out with a growl. The office was closed in a twinkling, and the clerk, with the long ends of his white comforter dangling below his waist (for he boasted no bully-glaze), went downward a slide on Cornhill, at the end of a lane of boys, twenty times, in honour of its being Christmas Eve, and and then ran home to Camden Boondocks equally hard equally he could pelt, to play at blindman's-buff.
Scrooge took his melancholy dinner in his usual melancholy tavern; and having read all the newspapers, and beguiled the rest of the evening with his banker's- book, went home to bed. He lived in chambers which had one time belonged to his deceased partner. They were a gloomy suite of rooms, in a lowering pile of edifice up a chiliad, where it had so petty business concern to exist, that one could scarcely assist fancying it must have run at that place when it was a young house, playing at hide-and-seek with other houses, and forgotten the mode out once again. Information technology was old enough now, and dreary plenty, for nobody lived in it merely Scrooge, the other rooms being all permit out as offices. The yard was so dark that even Scrooge, who knew its every stone, was fain to grope with his hands. The fog and frost and so hung nigh the black old gateway of the house, that information technology seemed as if the Genius of the Weather sabbatum in mournful meditation on the threshold.
At present, it is a fact, that in that location was nix at all particular nigh the knocker on the door, except that information technology was very large. It is also a fact, that Scrooge had seen information technology, nighttime and morning, during his whole residence in that place; also that Scrooge had as little of what is chosen fancy nigh him as any man in the city of London, even including — which is a bold word — the corporation, aldermen, and livery. Let it also be borne in heed that Scrooge had not bestowed one idea on Marley, since his last mention of his 7 years' dead partner that afternoon. And and then let any human explain to me, if he tin can, how it happened that Scrooge, having his key in the lock of the door, saw in the knocker, without its undergoing any intermediate procedure of alter — not a knocker, but Marley'southward face.
Marley'due south face. It was not in bulletproof shadow as the other objects in the g were, simply had a dismal low-cal about it, like a bad lobster in a night cellar. It was not angry or ferocious, but looked at Scrooge as Marley used to look: with ghostly glasses turned upward on its ghostly forehead. The hair was curiously stirred, as if by breath or hot air; and, though the eyes were wide open up, they were perfectly motionless. That, and its livid colour, made it horrible; only its horror seemed to be in spite of the face and beyond its command, rather than a part or its 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 not conscious of a terrible sensation to which it had been a stranger from infancy, would be untrue. But he put his hand upon the primal he had relinquished, turned it sturdily, walked in, and lighted his candle.
He did pause, with a moment'south irresolution, earlier he shut the door; and he did look cautiously behind it first, as if he half-expected to exist terrified with the sight of Marley's pigtail sticking out into the hall. But there was nothing on the back of the door, except the screws and nuts that held the knocker on, and so he said 'Pooh, pooh!' and closed it with a blindside.
The sound resounded through the house similar thunder. Every room above, and every cask in the vino-merchant'southward cellars below, appeared to take a separate peal of echoes of its own. Scrooge was not a man to be frightened by echoes. He fastened the door, and walked beyond the hall, and up the stairs; slowly as well: trimming his candle equally he went.
Y'all may talk vaguely about driving a coach-and-six upward a good old flying of stairs, or through a bad young Act of Parliament; but I hateful to say you might have got a hearse up that staircase, and taken information technology broadwise, with the splinter- bar towards the wall and the door towards the balustrades: and washed it like shooting fish in a barrel. There was plenty of width for that, and room 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 of the street wouldn't have lighted the entry too well, and so you may suppose that it was pretty night with Scrooge's dip.
Up Scrooge went, non caring a button for that. Darkness is cheap, and Scrooge liked information technology. Simply before he close his heavy door, he walked through his rooms to encounter that all was right. He had but plenty recollection of the confront to desire to do that.
Sitting-room, sleeping room, lumber-room. All as they should exist. Nobody under the table, nobody under the sofa; a small fire in the grate; spoon and basin set up; and the little saucepan of gruel (Scrooge had a cold in his head) upon the hob. Nobody nether the bed; nobody in the closet; nobody in his dressing-gown, which was hanging up in a suspicious mental attitude confronting the wall. Lumber-room equally usual. Former fire-guards, sometime shoes, two fish-baskets, washing-stand on 3 legs, and a poker.
Quite satisfied, he closed his door, and locked himself in; double-locked himself in, which was non his custom. Thus secured confronting surprise, he took off his cravat; put on his dressing-gown and slippers, and his nightcap; and sabbatum down before the fire to have his gruel.
It was a very low fire indeed; zero on such a bitter night. He was obliged to sit down close to it, and brood over it, earlier he could excerpt the least sensation of warmth from such a scattering of fuel. The fireplace was an old one, built past some Dutch merchant long agone, and paved all round with quaint Dutch tiles, designed to illustrate the Scriptures. There were Cains and Abels, Pharaohs' daughters; Queens of Sheba, Celestial messengers descending through the air on clouds like plumage-beds, Abrahams, Belshazzars, Apostles putting off to sea in butter-boats, hundreds of figures to attract his thoughts — and notwithstanding that face of Marley, seven years dead, came similar the ancient Prophet'southward rod, and swallowed up the whole. If each smooth tile had been a blank at offset, with power to shape some movie on its surface from the disjointed fragments of his thoughts, there would take been a copy of old Marley'southward head on every one.
'Humbug!' said Scrooge; and walked across the room.
After several turns, he sat down again. As he threw his caput 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 foreign, inexplicable dread, that equally he looked, he saw this bell begin to swing. It swung so softly in the offset that it scarcely made a audio; but soon it rang out loudly, and then did every bell in the house.
This might have lasted half a infinitesimal, or a minute, but information technology seemed an hr. The bells ceased as they had begun, together. They were succeeded past a clanking racket, deep downward below; equally if some person were dragging a heavy concatenation over the casks in the wine merchant's cellar. Scrooge so remembered to have heard that ghosts in haunted houses were described as dragging chains.
The cellar-door flew open with a booming sound, and so he heard the noise much louder, on the floors beneath; and then coming upwardly the stairs; then coming straight towards his door.
'It'southward humbug still!' said Scrooge. 'I won't believe it.'
His colour changed though, when, without a break, it came on through the heavy door, and passed into the room before his optics. Upon its coming in, the dying flame leaped upwardly, as though it cried 'I know him; Marley's Ghost!' and fell again.
The same face: the very aforementioned. 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 information technology 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 meet the 2 buttons on his glaze behind.
Scrooge had oft heard information technology said that Marley had no bowels, but he had never believed it until now.
No, nor did he believe it even at present. Though he looked the phantom through and through, and saw it standing before him; though he felt the chilling influence of its expiry-cold eyes; and marked the very texture of the folded kerchief bound about its caput and chin, which wrapper he had not observed before; he was still incredulous, and fought against his senses.
'How now!' said Scrooge, caustic and common cold as ever. 'What do you want with me?'
'Much!' — Marley's voice, no doubt near information technology.
'Who are you?'
'Ask me who I was.'
'Who were y'all then?' said Scrooge, raising his vocalism.
'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 downwardly?' asked Scrooge, looking doubtfully at him.
'I can.'
'Exercise it, and so.'
Scrooge asked the question, because he didn't know whether a ghost so transparent might detect himself in a condition to accept a chair; and felt that in the event of its being impossible, information technology might involve the necessity of an embarrassing explanation. Only the ghost sat down on the opposite side of the fireplace, as if he were quite used to information technology.
'Yous don't believe in me,' observed the Ghost.
'I don't.' said Scrooge.
'What show would yous accept of my reality beyond that of your senses?'
'I don't know,' said Scrooge. 'Why practise you doubt your senses?'
'Because,' said Scrooge, 'a little matter affects them. A slight disorder of the stomach makes them cheats. You may be an undigested bit of beefiness, 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 yous are!'
Scrooge was non much in the addiction of smashing jokes, nor did he experience, in his heart, past any means waggish then. The truth is, that he tried to be smart, equally a ways of distracting his own attention, and keeping down his terror; for the spectre's voice disturbed the very marrow in his bones.
To sit down, staring at those fixed glazed optics, in silence for a moment, would play, Scrooge felt, the very deuce with him. At that place was something very awful, too, in the spectre's being provided with an infernal atmosphere of its own. Scrooge could not feel it himself, but this was clearly the example; for though the Ghost sat perfectly motionless, its hair, and skirts, and tassels, were nevertheless agitated as past the hot vapour from an oven.
'You lot see this toothpick?' said Scrooge, returning quickly to the charge, for the reason simply assigned; and wishing, though it were merely for a second, to divert the vision's stony gaze from himself.
'I do,' replied the Ghost.
'You are not looking at it,' said Scrooge.
'But I run into it,' said the Ghost, 'still.'
'Well!' returned Scrooge, 'I take but to eat this, and exist for the rest of my days persecuted past a legion of goblins, all of my own creation. Braggadocio, I tell you! braggadocio!'
At this the spirit raised a frightful weep, and shook its concatenation with such a dismal and appalling dissonance, that Scrooge held on tight to his chair, to save himself from falling in a swoon. But how much greater was his horror, when the phantom taking off the bandage round its head, every bit if it were too warm to clothing indoors, its lower jaw dropped downwardly upon its breast!
Scrooge barbarous upon his knees, and clasped his hands earlier his face.
'Mercy!' he said. 'Dreadful apparition, why do y'all trouble me?'
'Man of the worldly mind!' replied the Ghost, 'exercise you believe in me or not?'
'I practice,' said Scrooge. 'I must. But why practice spirits walk the earth, and why do they come up to me?'
'Information technology is required of every homo,' the Ghost returned, 'that the spirit within him should walk abroad amongst his fellowmen, and travel far and wide; and if that spirit goes not along in life, information technology is condemned to do then afterward death. It is doomed to wander through the world — oh, woe is me! — and witness what information technology cannot share, only might have shared on globe, and turned to happiness!'
Again the spectre raised a cry, and shook its chain and wrung its shadowy hands.
'You are fettered,' said Scrooge, trembling. 'Tell me why?'
'I habiliment the chain I forged in life,' replied the Ghost. 'I fabricated it link by link, and yard by yard; I girded information technology on of my own free will, and of my ain free will I wore information technology. Is its design strange to you?'
Scrooge trembled more than and more.
'Or would you know,' pursued the Ghost, 'the weight and length of the potent coil you bear yourself? Information technology was full every bit heavy and equally long as this, seven Christmas Eves ago. Y'all 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 some fifty or sixty fathoms of iron cable: but he could see zippo.
'Jacob,' he said, imploringly. 'Onetime Jacob Marley, tell me more. Speak comfort to me, Jacob!'
'I have none to give,' the Ghost replied. 'It comes from other regions, Ebenezer Scrooge, and is conveyed by other ministers, to other kinds of men. Nor can I tell yous what I would. A very little more, is all permitted to me. I cannot rest, I cannot stay, I cannot linger anywhere. My spirit never walked across our counting-house — mark me! — in life my spirit never roved beyond the narrow limits of our money-changing hole; and weary journeys prevarication before me!'
It was a addiction 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 upwards his eyes, or getting off his knees.
'You must take been very slow about it, Jacob,' Scrooge observed, in a business organisation-like style, though with humility and deference.
'Slow!' the Ghost repeated.
'Seven years dead,' mused Scrooge. 'And travelling all the time!'
'The whole time,' said the Ghost. 'No rest, no peace. Incessant torture of remorse.'
'Yous 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.
The Ghost, on hearing this, ready upward another weep, 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, spring, and double-ironed,' cried the phantom, 'not to know, that ages of incessant labour, by immortal creatures, for this earth must pass into eternity earlier the proficient of which it is susceptible is all developed. Not to know that any Christian spirit working kindly in its petty sphere, whatever information technology may be, will find its mortal life too brusque for its vast means of usefulness. Not to know that no space of regret can brand amends for one life'due south opportunity misused! Even so such was I! Oh! such was I!'
'Just you lot were e'er a good human of business organization, Jacob,' faltered Scrooge, who now began to apply this to himself.
'Concern!' cried the Ghost, wringing its hands again. 'Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my concern; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were, all, my business. The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive body of water of my business concern!'
Information technology 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 footing over again.
'At this time of the rolling twelvemonth,' the spectre said 'I suffer virtually. 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 dwelling! 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 fourth dimension is nearly gone.'
'I will,' said Scrooge. 'But don't be difficult upon me! Don't be flowery, Jacob! Pray!' 'How it is that I announced earlier you in a shape that you lot can see, I may not tell. I have saturday invisible beside y'all many and many a day.'
Information technology was non an agreeable idea. Scrooge shivered, and wiped the perspiration from his forehead.
'That is no calorie-free part of my penance,' pursued the Ghost. 'I am here to-night to warn you, that you have nevertheless a chance and hope of escaping my fate. A gamble and hope of my procuring, Ebenezer.'
'Y'all were ever a adept friend to me,' said Scrooge. 'Thank 'ee!'
'You volition be haunted,' resumed the Ghost, 'by Three Spirits.'
Scrooge's countenance fell almost equally low as the Ghost's had done.
'Is that the chance and hope yous mentioned, Jacob?' he demanded, in a unpleasing 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, when the bong tolls One.'
'Couldn't I have 'em all at once, and have it over, Jacob?' hinted Scrooge.
'Look the 2nd on the next night at the same hour. The third upon the next night when the concluding stroke of Twelve has ceased to vibrate. Look to see me no more than; and look that, for your ain sake, you lot remember what has passed between u.s.a.!'
When it had said these words, the spectre took its wrapper from the table, and bound information technology circular its head, every bit earlier. Scrooge knew this, by the smart audio its teeth made, when the jaws were brought together past the bandage. He ventured to heighten his eyes again, and found his supernatural visitor confronting him in an erect mental attitude, with its chain wound over and about its arm.
The bogeyman walked backward from him; and at every step information technology took, the window raised itself a fiddling, and then that when the spectre reached it, it was wide open. It beckoned Scrooge to approach, which he did. When they were inside 2 paces of each other, Marley'due south Ghost held upwardly its hand, alarm 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 dislocated noises in the air; incoherent sounds of lamentation and regret; wailings inexpressibly sorrowful and cocky-accusatory. The spectre, after listening for a moment, joined in the mournful chant; and floated out upon the bleak, dark nighttime.
Scrooge followed to the window: drastic in his curiosity. He looked out.
The air was filled with phantoms, wandering hither and thither in restless haste, and moaning as they went. Every one of them wore chains like Marley'due south Ghost; some few (they might be guilty governments) were linked together; none were gratis. Many had been personally known to Scrooge in their lives. He had been quite familiar with one one-time ghost, in a white waistcoat, with a monstrous iron prophylactic attached to its ankle, who cried piteously at being unable to assist a wretched woman with an baby, whom it saw below, upon a door-step. The misery with them all was, clearly, that they sought to interfere, for good, in human being matters, and had lost the power for ever.
Whether these creatures faded into mist, or mist enshrouded them, he could non tell. Only they and their spirit voices faded together; and the nighttime became as it had been when he walked home.
Scrooge airtight the window, and examined the door by which the Ghost had entered. It was double-locked, every bit he had locked it with his ain hands, and the bolts were undisturbed. He tried to say 'Humbug!' but stopped at the get-go syllable. And being, from the emotion he had undergone, or the fatigues of the twenty-four hour period, or his glimpse of the Invisible Globe, or the wearisome conversation of the Ghost, or the lateness of the hour, much in need of repose; went straight to bed, without undressing, and fell asleep upon the instant.
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