The sign that hung above the door still read Scrooge and Marley, though Marley had been dead for 7 years.
Marley was dead to begin with. There is no doubt about that. His burial was signed by the clergyman and by Scrooge. Old Marley was as dead as a door-nail . You must know that or nothing else seems magical . Scrooge was Marley's business partner in life.
Description: 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.
