The Project Gutenberg EBook of Gala-days, by Gail Hamilton

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Title: Gala-days

Author: Gail Hamilton

Posting Date: March 27, 2009 [EBook #2385]
Release Date: November, 2000

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GALA-DAYS ***

Produced by Pat Flieger. HTML version by Al Haines.

GALA-DAYS

by

Gail Hamilton

(Mary Abigail Dodge)

1863

CONTENTS

GALA DAYS
A CALL TO MY COUNTRYWOMEN
A SPASM OF SENSE
CAMILLA'S CONCERT
CHERI
SIDE-GLANCES AT HARVARD CLASS-DAY
SUCCESS IN LIFE
HAPPIEST DAYS

GALA-DAYS

PART I

Once there was a great noise in our house,--a thumping and battering
and grating. It was my own self dragging my big trunk down from the
garret. I did it myself because I wanted it done. If I had said,
"Halicarnassus, will you fetch my trunk down?" he would have asked me
what trunk? and what did I want of it? and would not the other one be
better? and couldn't I wait till after dinner?--and so the trunk would
probably have had a three-days journey from garret to basement. Now I
am strong in the wrists and weak in the temper; therefore I used the
one 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 the
stairs, and pitched head-foremost into the wall, and gouged out the
plastering, and dented the mop-board, and was the most stupid, awkward,
uncompromising, unmanageable thing I ever got hold of in my life.

By the time I had zigzagged it into the back chamber, Halicarnassus
loomed up the back stairs. I stood hot and panting, with the inside of
my fingers tortured into burning leather, the skin rubbed off three
knuckles, and a bruise on the back of my right hand, where the trunk
had crushed it against a sharp edge of the doorway.

"Now, then?" said Halicarnassus interrogatively.

"To be sure," I replied affirmatively.

He said no more, but went and looked up the garret-stairs. They bore
traces of a severe encounter, that must be confessed.

"Do you wish me to give you a bit of advice?" he