I said I didn't want the fifty cents, but I'd go and try to find some clothes for them. I meant to go straight up to Amzi's barn and to bring the clothes back, but on the way I met Amzi with the clothes in a basket bringing them down to the island, and he said, "Somebody's goin' to be arrested for stealing father's and Squire Meredith's clothes. I saw the fellows that stole 'em, and I'm going to tell." You see, Tom and I had taken the wrong clothes, and Squire Meredith and Deacon Willetts, who had been in swimming on the deep side of the island, had been about two hours trying to play they were Zulus, and didn't need to wear any clothes, only they found it pretty hard work.
Deacon Willetts came straight to our house, and told father that his unhappy son—that's what he called me, and wasn't I unhappy, though—had stolen his clothes and Squire Meredith's; but for the sake of our family he wouldn't say very much about it, only if father thought best to spare the rods and spoil a child, he wouldn't be able to regard him as a man and a brother. So father called me and asked me if I had taken Deacon Willetts's clothes, and when I said yes, and was going to explain how it happened, he said that my conduct was such, and that I was bringing his gray hairs down, only I wouldn't hurt them for fifty million dollars, and I've often heard him say he hadn't a gray hair in his head.
And now I'm waiting up-stairs for the awful moment to arrive. I deserve it, for they say that Squire Meredith and Deacon Willetts are mornhalf eaten up by mosquitoes, and are confined to the house with salt and water, and crying out all the time that they can't stand it. I hope the feathers will work, but if they don't, no matter. I think I shall be a missionary, and do good to the heathen. I think I hear father coming in the front gate now, so I must close.
[OUR BULL-FIGHT.]
I'm going to stop improving my mind. It gets me into trouble all the time. Grown-up folks can improve their minds without doing any harm, for nobody ever tells them that their conduct is such, and that there isn't the least excuse in the world for them; but just as sure as a boy tries to improve his mind, especially with animals, he gets into dreadful difficulties.
There was a man came to our town to lecture a while ago. He had been a great traveller, and knew all about Rome and Niagara Falls and the North Pole, and such places, and father said, "Now, Jimmy, here's an opportunity for you to learn something and improve your mind go and take your mother and do take an interest in something besides games."
Well, I went to the lecture. The man told all about the Australian savages and their boomerangs. He showed us a boomerang, which is a stick with two legs, and an Australian will throw it at a man, and it will go and hit him, and come back of its own accord. Then he told us about the way the Zulus throw their assegais—that's the right way to spell it—and spear an Englishman that is mornten rods away from them. Then he showed a long string with a heavy lead ball on each end, and said the South Americans would throw it at a wild horse, and it would wind around the horse's legs, and tie itself into a bow-knot, and then the South Americans would catch the horse. But the best of all was the account of a bull-fight which he saw in Spain, with the Queen sitting on a throne, and giving a crown of evergreens to the chief bull-fighter. He said that bull-fighting was awfully cruel, and that he told us about it so that we might be thankful that we are so much better than those dreadful Spanish people, who will watch a bull-fight all day, and think it real fun.
The next day I told Mr. Travers about the boomerang, and he said it was all true. Once there was an Australian savage in a circus, and he got angry, and he threw his boomerang at a man who was in the third story of a hotel. The boomerang went down one street and up another, and into the hotel door, and up-stairs, and knocked the man on the head, and came back the same way right into the Australian savage's hand.