The Invalid’s Story Notes

The Invalids fable 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 a while of iron, a very athlete * woolly his health by helping take care of a rap of guns on a two-hundred-mile journey by railway iodin night cartridge clip in winter * belongs in Cleveland, Ohio reached base of operations after dark, in a snow-storm, and heard that his dearest boyhood friend and schoolmate, John B. Hackett, had died the day onwards * make it utterance was a desire that I would take his ashes to his don and mother in Wisconsin * card marked Deacon Levi Hackett, Bethlehem, Wisconsin * long white-pine turning point fastened the card to it with tacks past put it aboard the express car thusly ran to the eating-room for a sandwich and some cigars * He came back and at that place was a young fellow examining around it, with a card in his hands, and some tacks and a hammer * a mistake was do and it turns b ulge out he was carrying off a box of guns which that young fellow had stupefy to ship to a rifle company in Peoria, Illinois, and the young man had got John B. Hacketts dead body * sat on a bale of buckets expressman plain man of fifty, with a simple, honest, good-natured face, and a breezy, interoperable heartiness in his general style * package of peculiarly bestride and capable Limburger cheese on one end of my coffin-box (box of guns) * at the time he had n constantly heard of the cheese in my life and thusly was ignorant of its character * 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 Sweet By and By, in a low tone, and flatting a good deal * began to detect an odor on the frozen denudate every bite the odor thickened more and became more naughty and hard to stand * the expressman got some wood and made fire in his stov e. * Thompson (the expressman) * felt himself growing pale and qualmish further said nothing. * Pfew I believe it aint no cinnamon t Ive loaded up thish-yer stove with * sometimes its uncertain whether theyre really asleep(p) or not,seem gone, you knowbody warm, joints limberand so, although you think theyre gone, you dont really know. Ive had cases in my car. Its perfectly abominable, becuz you dont know what minute theyll rise up and wait at you Then, after a pause, and fairly lifting his elbow toward the box, But he aint in no trance No, sir, I go bail for him * Well-a-well, weve all got to go, they aint no getting around it. earthly concern 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, its awful solemn and curus they aint nil can get around it alls got to gojust everybody, as you may say. One day youre hearty and strong and next day hes push down down like the grass, and the places which knowed him t hen knows him no more forever, as Scriptur says.Yesndeedy, its awful solemn and curus but weve all got to go, one time or another(prenominal) they aint no getting around it. * Had been dead 2 or 3 days * Two or three years, you mean. * They were heliotrope to him * Narrator suggested cigars * Thompson referred to the stiff by various titles, military ones, civil ones and as the stench grew, Thompson would take a shit him a bigger title * Thompson said they should move the corpse near ten feet away * we took in a good fresh breather 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 snatch on the box.Thompson nodded 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 break for the door, pawing the air and saying hoarsely, Dont hender me gimme the road Im a-dying gimme the road forth on the cold platform I sat down and held his distributor point a while, and he revived. * we hadnt budged the dead body * Thompson got carboy of carbolic acid from a transport he drenched everything with it, rifle-box, cheese and all * the two perfumes began to mix and they had to pull the car * waltzed back and forth, freezing, and thawing, and stifling by turns * about an minute of arc and they halt at another station and Thompson came in with a bag * 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 shroud iron in the middle of the floor, and set fire to them. * the original expression 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 the Narrator dragged Thompson out by the collar the Narrator was near gone * Typho id fever is whats going to come of this. taken from the platform an hour later at the next station * Narrator went into a sultry 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 tidings was too late to save him because 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.