HE WENT TWENTY FEET RIGHT UP INTO THE AIR.
I know I ought to have waved my red rag, so as to rescue Tom, but I was so interested that I forgot all about it, and the bull caught up with Tom. I should think he went twenty feet right up into the air, and as he came down he hit the Queen of Spain, and knocked her about six feet right against Mr. McGinnis, who had come down to the pasture to stop the fight.
The doctor says they'll all get well, though Tom's legs are all broke, and his sister's shoulder is out of joint, and Mr. McGinnis has got to get a new set of teeth. Father didn't do a thing to me—that is, with anything—but he talked to me till I made up my mind that I'd never try to learn anything from a lecturer again, not even if he lectures about Indians and scalping-knives.
[OUR BALLOON.]
I've made up my mind that half the trouble boys get into is the fault of the grown-up folks that are always wanting them to improve their minds.
I never improved my mind yet without suffering for it. There was the time I improved it studying wasps, just as the man who lectured about wasps and elephants and other insects told me to. If it hadn't been for that man I never should have thought of studying wasps.
One time our school-teacher told me that I ought to improve my mind by reading history, so I borrowed the history of Blackbeard the Pirate, and improved my mind for three or four hours every day. After a while father said, "Bring that book to me, Jimmy, and let's see what you're reading," and when he saw it, instead of praising me, he— But what's the use of remembering our misfortunes? Still, if I was grown up, I wouldn't get boys into difficulty by telling them to do all sorts of things.
There was a Professor came to our house the other day. A Professor is a kind of man who wears spectacles up on the top of his head and takes snuff and doesn't talk English very plain. I believe Professors come from somewhere near Germany, and I wish this one had stayed in his own country. They live mostly on cabbage and such, and Mr. Travers says they are dreadfully fierce, and that when they are not at war with other people, they fight among themselves, and go on in the most dreadful way.