The Invalid’s Story Notes

The Invalid's Story by Mark Twain a. k. a. Samuel Clemens (1835-1910) * Seems sixty and married * Really a 41 year old bachelor * two years ago he was â€Å"a man of iron, a very athlete† * Lost his health by helping take care of a box of guns on a two-hundred-mile journey by railway one night in winter * belongs in Cleveland, Ohio reached home after dark, in a snow-storm, and heard that his dearest boyhood friend and schoolmate, John B. Hackett, had died the day before * last utterance was a desire that I would take his body to his father and mother in Wisconsin * card marked â€Å"Deacon Levi Hackett, Bethlehem, Wisconsin† * long white-pine box fastened the card to it with tacks then put it aboard the express car then ran to the eating-room for a sandwich and some cigars * He came back and there was â€Å"a young fellow examining around it, with a card in his hands, and some tacks and a hammer† * a mistake was made and it turns out he was carrying off a box of guns which that young fellow had come to ship to a rifle company in Peoria, Illinois, and the young man had got John B. Hackett’s dead body * sat on a bale of buckets expressman – plain man of fifty, with a simple, honest, good-natured face, and a breezy, practical heartiness in his general style * package of peculiarly mature and capable Limburger cheese on one end of my coffin-box (box of guns) * at the time he had never heard of the cheese in my life and thus was ignorant of its character * â€Å"slammed his sliding doors to, and bolted them, closed his window down tight, and then went bustling around, here and there and yonder, setting things to rights, and all the time contentedly humming â€Å"Sweet By and By,† in a low tone, and flatting a good deal† * began to detect an odor on the frozen air every minute the odor thickened more and became more gamey and hard to stand * the expressman got some wood and made fire in his stove. * Thompson (the expre ssman) * felt himself growing pale and qualmish but said nothing. * â€Å"Pfew! I reckon it ain't no cinnamon ‘t I've loaded up thish-yer stove with! † * â€Å"Sometimes it's uncertain whether they're really gone or not,–seem gone, you know–body warm, joints limber–and so, although you think they're gone, you don't really know. I've had cases in my car. It's perfectly awful, becuz you don't know what minute they'll rise up and look at you! Then, after a pause, and slightly lifting his elbow toward the box, — â€Å"But he ain't in no trance! No, sir, I go bail for him! † * â€Å"Well-a-well, we've all got to go, they ain't no getting around it. Man that is born of woman is of few days and far between, as Scriptur' says. Yes, you look at it any way you want to, it's awful solemn and cur'us: they ain't nobody can get around it; all's got to go–just everybody, as you may say. One day you're hearty and strong and next day he's cut down like the grass, and the places which knowed him then knows him no more forever, as Scriptur' says.Yes'ndeedy, it's awful solemn and cur'us; but we've all got to go, one time or another; they ain't no getting around it. † * Had been dead 2 or 3 days * â€Å"Two or three years, you mean. † * They were heliotrope to him * Narrator suggested cigars * Thompson referred to the corpse by various titles, military ones, civil ones and as the stench grew, Thompson would give him a bigger title * Thompson said they should move the corpse about ten feet away * â€Å"we took in a good fresh breath at the broken pane, calculating to hold it till we got through; then we went there and bent over that deadly cheese and took a grip on the box.Thompson nodded â€Å"All ready,† and then we threw ourselves forward with all our might; but Thompson slipped, and slumped down with his nose on the cheese, and his breath got loose. He gagged and gasped, and floundered up and made a b reak for the door, pawing the air and saying hoarsely, â€Å"Don't hender me! –gimme the road! I'm a-dying; gimme the road! † Out on the cold platform I sat down and held his head a while, and he revived. * we hadn't budged the dead body * Thompson got carboy of carbolic acid from a station he drenched everything with it, rifle-box, cheese and all * the two perfumes began to mix and they had to leave the car * waltzed back and forth, freezing, and thawing, and stifling by turns * about an hour and they stopped at another station and Thompson came in with a bag * â€Å"He had brought a lot of chicken feathers, and dried apples, and leaf tobacco, and rags, and old shoes, and sulphur, and asafoetida, and one thing or another; and he, piled them on a breadth of sheet iron in the middle of the floor, and set fire to them. * the original smell stood up out of it just as sublime as ever * other smells just gave it a better hold * Thompson got suffocated and fell and before t he Narrator dragged Thompson out by the collar the Narrator was near gone * â€Å"Typhoid fever is what's going to come of this. † taken from the platform an hour later at the next station * Narrator went into a virulent fever, and knew nothing again for three weeks * He found out that he had spent that awful night with a box of rifles and cheese * the news was too late to save him because â€Å"imagination had done its work, and his health was permanently shattered† * Bermuda or any other land could bring his health back * His last trip because he is on his way home to die.