Mind!  I don't mean to say that I know, of my own knowledge, what there
isparticularly 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 handsshall not disturb it, or the Country's done for.  You
will therefore permitme to repeat, emphatically, that Marley was as
dead as a door-nail.                -- Charles Dickens, "A Christmas
Carol"