excerpt from the book..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.