Once there was a great noise in our house,—a thumping and batteringand grating. It was my own self dragging my big trunk down from thegarret. I did it myself because I wanted it done. If I had said,"Halicarnassus, will you fetch my trunk down?" he would have asked mewhat trunk? and what did I want of it? and would not the other one bebetter? and couldn't I wait till after dinner?—and so the trunk wouldprobably have had a three-days journey from garret to basement. Now Iam strong in the wrists and weak in the temper; therefore I used theone 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 thestairs, and pitched head-foremost into the wall, and gouged out theplastering, and dented the mop-board, and was the most stupid, awkward,uncompromising, unmanageable thing I ever got hold of in my life.
By the time I had zigzagged it into the back chamber, Halicarnassusloomed up the back stairs. I stood hot and panting, with the inside ofmy fingers tortured into burning leather, the skin rubbed off threeknuckles, and a bruise on the back of my right hand, where the trunkhad crushed it against a sharp edge of the doorway.
"Now, then?" said Halicarnassus interrogatively.
"To be sure," I replied affirmatively.
He said no more, but went and looked up the garret-stairs. They boretraces of a severe encounter, that must be confessed.
"Do you wish me to give you a bit of advice?" he asked.
"No!" I answered promptly.
"Well, then, here it is. The next time you design to bring a trunkdown-stairs, you would better cut away the underpinning, and knock outthe beams, and let the garret down into the cellar. It will make lessuproar, and not take so much to repair damages."
He intended to be severe. His words passed by me as the idle wind. Iperched on my trunk, took a pasteboard box-cover and fanned myself. Iwas very warm. Halicarnassus sat down on the lowest stair and remainedsilent several minutes, expecting a meek explanation, but not gettingit, swallowed a bountiful piece of what is called in homely talk,"humble-pie," and said,—
"I should like to know what's in the wind now."
I make it a principle always to resent an insult and to welcomerepentance with equal alacrity. If people thrust out their horns at mewantonly, they very soon run against a stone-wall; but the moment theyshow sig