A Decided Loss (1832) / Loss of Breath (1835)

Read A Decided Loss / Loss of Breath

These are two versions of a single story. The plot of the first runs thus: The narrator is berating his wife when he loses his breath. He searches the house but cannot find it and cannot, as a consequence, speak in any but gutteral tones.

But he is able to save face before his wife by pretending to have an enthusiasm for tragic theater. He grimaces and leers at his wife in perfect imitation of an actor for the popular stage and croaks out his explanation. Having thus "put his house in order", he boards a coach with the design of fleeing the country--but a fellow passenger applies a mirror to his lips and, thinking him a corpse, throws him out. He is then taken by an innkeeper and prepared for burial. Once prepared and left alone, two cats approach and fight one another for the privilege of devouring his nose. He escapes the cats (less a few ounces of flesh) by leaping out a window.

Unfortunately, he leaps into a hangman's cart carrying a robber who bears an exact resemblance to him. The robber leaps from the cart, the guards awake, the hero is flogged and hanged. He dances very well on the rope but, aside from chafing, suffers no inconvenience. But--again, unfortunately--he is delivered to a doctor as a specimen for dissection. His struggles to free himself are taken for the interesting influence of a galvanic battery and, after the doctor has removed his viscera, he dies. To which I need only add that the story is told in the past tense and first person.

"Loss of Breath" expands the story slightly, by the addition of a few incidents at the end. It is the longer and inferior of the two. T.O. Mabbott did not care for either version, but I think "A Decided Loss" an amusing story for those who enjoy a concerted absurdity.