Gala-Days | Page 3

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GALA-DAYS (1863) by "Gail Hamilton" (Abigail Dodge)

CONTENTS
GALA DAYS A CALL TO MY COUNTRYWOMEN A SPASM OF
SENSE CAMILLA'S CONCERT CHERI SIDE-GLANCES AT
HARVARD CLASS-DAY SUCCESS IN LIFE HAPPIEST DAYS

CHAPTER I
GALA-DAYS

PART I
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 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, Halicarnassus
loomed up the back stairs. I stood hot and panting, with the inside of
my fingers tortured into burning leather, the skin rubbed off three
knuckles, and a bruise on the back of my right hand, where the trunk
had 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 bore
traces 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 trunk
down-stairs, you would better cut away the underpinning, and knock
out the beams, and let the garret down into the cellar. It will make less
uproar, and not take so much to repair damages."
He intended to be severe. His words passed by me as the idle wind. I
perched on my trunk, took a pasteboard box-cover and fanned myself. I
was very warm. Halicarnassus sat down on the lowest stair and
remained silent several minutes, expecting a meek explanation, but not
getting it, 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 welcome
repentance with equal alacrity. If people thrust out their horns at me
wantonly, they very soon run against a stone-wall; but the moment they
show signs of contrition, I soften. It is the best way. Don't insist that
people shall grovel at