Dickens Charles. A Christmas Carol

Webster’s Thesaurus Edition for PSAT, SAT, GRE, LSAT, GMAT, and AP English Test Preparation.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.