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クリスマスイブの夜、冷たく意地悪な商人のエベネーザ・スクルージは、亡くなった相棒の亡霊と、さらに三人の精霊に訪ねられます。彼らは彼に過去、現在、そして恐ろしい未来を見せます。一晩で人間が変わることができるのでしょうか？
聞きながら読む 近日公開読み上げに合わせて文がハイライトされます。
冒頭を読むEnglishReads の公開後、全文が読めます。本文は英語、メモは日本語です。
もっとやさしく？B1 のレベル別リーダー →
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.
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 sole assign, his sole residuary legatee, his sole friend, and sole 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.