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.
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 dead as a door-nail.
