"But just then one of my little cousins looked up in the sky and said, 'Oh, look at that funny bird!' and we all looked up, and there was a great big long bag of a thing coming right toward us, not very high up, and Uncle Silas spoke up and said 'That's a balloon,' for Uncle Silas had seen one in town when he was there visiting Cousin Glenwood, and the hired man, too. Then while we were all standing there watching it, we saw that there was a long rope that hung from the balloon most to the ground, and that it had something tied to the end of it (a big iron thing with a lot of hooks on it), and that it was swooping down straight toward us.
"Uncle Silas called out as loud as he could, 'That's the anchor! Look out!' but it was too late to look out, for it was coming as fast as the wind blew the balloon, and Uncle Silas and the hired man being loaded with the things couldn't move very quick, and the rest of us were too scared to know which way to jump, and down came that thing right among us, and I saw it catch among Uncle Silas's furniture and the hired man's, and I heard Uncle Silas say, 'Grab hold, all of you' and we all did, some one way and some another, and away we went.
"Well, it was certainly very curious how we all were lucky enough to get hold of that anchor, with all our bundles and things; but of course we could do it better than if we had not been given those nice useful tails which belong to our family. I had hold that way, and some of the others did, too. Uncle Silas didn't need to hold on at all, for some of the furniture was tied to him, and he just sat back in a chair that was hung on behind and took it easy, though he did drop some of his things when he first got aboard, and Aunt Melissy scolded him for that as soon as she caught her breath and got over being frightened and was sitting up on her part of the anchor enjoying the scenery.
THE BALLOON WENT OVER THE WIDE BLUE WATER JUST AFTER IT GOT OUR FAMILY
"I never had such a trip as that before, and never expect to have one again. The balloon went over the Wide Blue Water just after it got our family, and we were all afraid we would be let down in it and drowned; but the people who were in the balloon threw out something heavy which we thought at first they were throwing at us, but it must have been something to make the balloon go up; for we did go up until Aunt Melissy said if we'd just get a little nearer one of those clouds she'd step out on it and live there, as she'd always wanted to do since she was a child.
"Then we all sat up and held on tight, above and below, and said what a nice day it was to travel, and that we'd always travel that way hereafter; and Uncle Silas and the hired man unhooked their furniture, so they could land easier when the time came, and Aunt Melissy passed around the lunch, and we looked down and saw the water and the land again and a lot of houses and trees, and Aunt Melissy said that nobody could ever make her believe the world was that big if she hadn't seen it with her own eyes.
"And Uncle Silas and the hired man said that of course this was going pretty fast, but that they had travelled a good deal faster sometimes when they were in town with Cousin Glenwood, and pretty soon he showed us the town where Cousin Glenwood lived, and he and the hired man tried to point out the house to us, but they couldn't agree about which it was because the houses didn't look the same from up there in the air as they did from down on the ground.
"I know I shall never forget that trip. We saw ever so many different Mr. Men and Mr. Dogs, and animals of every kind, and houses that had chimneys taller than any tree, and a good many things that even Uncle Silas did not know about. Then by-and-by we came to some woods again—the biggest kind of Big Deep Woods—and we saw that we were getting close to the tree-tops, and we were all afraid we would get hit by the branches and maybe knocked off with our things.