The Invalid’s Story Notes

The Invalids falsehood by Mark Twain a. k. a. Samuel Clemens (1835-1910) * Seems sixty and married * Really a 41 year obsolescent bachelor * two years ago he was a man of iron, a very athlete * Lost his health by helping take cable care of a box of guns on a two-hundred-mile journey by railway cardinal night in winter * belongs in Cleve push down, Ohio reached home afterward dark, in a snow-storm, and heard that his dearest boyhood friend and schoolmate, John B. Hackett, had died the day before * last note was a desire that I would take his body to his father and mother in Wisconsin * card label 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 on that point was a young associate degree examining or so it, with a card in his hands, and some tacks and a hammer * a mistake was do and it turns out(a) he was carryin g off a box of guns which that young fel number 1 had come to ship to a rifle comp any in Peoria, Illinois, and the young man had got John B. Hacketts dead body * sit atomic pile 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 give up on one end of my coffin-box (box of guns) * at the time he had never heard of the cease in my life and and so was ignorant of its character * slammed his sliding doors to, and bolted them, closed his window carry out 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 air every subtile the odor thickened more and became more gamey and hard to stand * the expressman got some wood and make fire in his stove. * Thompson (th e expressman) * felt himself growing pale and qualmish but said nothing. * Pfew I reckon it aint no cinnamon t Ive loaded up thish-yer stove with * Sometimes its uncertain whether theyre really gone(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 awful, becuz you dont know what bit theyll rise up and look at you Then, after a pause, and slightly 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. 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, its awful solemn and curus they aint nobody can get around it alls got to go conscionable everybody, as you may say. One day youre hearty and strong and abutting day hes cut down like the grass, and the places which knowed him then knows him no more forever, as Scrip tur says.Yesndeedy, its awful solemn and curus but weve all got to go, one time or another 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 the Great Compromiser by various titles, forces 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 * we took in a good fresh breath at the distressed 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 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 tell hoarsely, Dont hender me gimme the road Im a-dying gimme the road Out on the cold platform I sat down and held his crack a while, and he revived. * we hadnt 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 instant and they stopped at another station and Thompson came in with a bag * He had brought a caboodle 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 best hold * Thompson got suffocated and fell and before the Narrator dragged Thompson out by the collar the Narrator was near gone * Typhoid fever is whats going to come of this. taken from the platform an hou r youthfulr 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 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.