No!" I answered promptly.

"Well, then, here it is. The next time you design to bring a trunk
downstairs, 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 your feet before you accept their apology.
That is not magnanimous. Let mercy temper justice. It is a hard thing
at best for human nature to go down into the Valley of Humiliation; and
although, when circumstances arise which make it the only fit place for
a person, I insist upon his going, still, no sooner does he actually
begin the descent than my sense of justice is appeased, my natural
sweetness of disposition resumes sway, and I trip along by his side
chatting as gayly as if I did not perceive it was the Valley of
Humiliation at all, but fancied it the Delectable Mountains. So, upon
the first symptoms of placability, I answered cordially,--

"Halicarnassus, it has been the ambition of my life to write a book of
travels. But to write a book of travels, one must first have travelled."

"Not at all," he responded. "With an atlas and an encyclopedia one can
travel around the world in his arm-chair."

"But one cannot have personal adventures," I said. "You can, indeed, sit
in your arm-chair and describe the crater of Vesuvius; but you cannot
tumble into the crater of Vesuvius from your arm-chair."

"I have never heard that it was necessary to tumble in, in order to have
a good view of the mountain."

"But it is necessary to do it, if one would make a readable book."

"Then I should let the book slide,--rather than slide myself."

"If you would do me the honor to listen," I said, scornful of his
paltry attempt at wit, "