Gala-Days

Once there was a great noise in our house, — a thumping and battering and grating. It was my own self dragging my big trunk down from the garret. I did it myself because I wanted it done. If I had said, “Halicarnassus, will you fetch my trunk down?” he would have asked me what trunk? and what did I want of it? and would not the other one be better? and couldn't I wait till after dinner? — and so the trunk would probably have had a three-days’ journey from garret to basement. Now I am strong in the wrists and weak in the temper, therefore I used the one and spared the other, and got the trunk downstairs myself. Halicarnassus heard the uproar. He must have been deaf not to hear it, for the old ark banged and bounced, and scraped the paint off the stairs, and pitched head-foremost into the wall, and gouged out the plastering, and dented the mopboard, and was the most stupid, awkward, uncompromising, unmanageable thing I ever got hold of in my life.