The balloon didn't stay up very long. It began to come slowly down, and when it struck the ground, the way that cat started on a run for the barn, and tried to get underneath it with the balloon all on fire behind her, was something frightful to see. By the time I could get to her and cut her loose, a lot of hay took fire and began to blaze, and Tom ran for the fire-engine, crying out "Fire!" with all his might.
The firemen happened to be at the engine-house, though they're generally all over town, and nobody can find them when there is a fire. They brought the engine into our yard in about ten minutes, and just as Sue and the cook and I had put the fire out. But that didn't prevent the firemen from working with heroic bravery, as our newspaper afterwards said. They knocked in our dining-room windows with axes, and poured about a thousand hogsheads of water into the room before we could make them understand that the fire was down by the barn, and had been put out before they came.
This was all the Professor's fault, and it has taught me a lesson. The next time anybody wants me to improve my mind I'll tell him he ought to be ashamed of himself.
[OUR NEW WALK.]
For once I have done right. I always used to think that if I stuck to it, and tried to do what was right, I would hit it some day; but at last I pretty nearly gave up all hope, and was beginning to believe that no matter what I did, some of the grown-up folks would tell me that my conduct was such. But I have done a real useful thing that was just what father wanted, and he has said that he would overlook it this time. Perhaps you think that this was not very encouraging to a boy; but if you had been told to come up-stairs with me my son as often as I have been, just because you had tried to do right, and hadn't exactly managed to suit people, you would be very glad to hear your father say that for once he would overlook it.
Did you ever play you were a ghost? I don't think much of ghosts, and wouldn't be a bit afraid if I was to see one. There was once a ghost that used to frighten people dreadfully by hanging himself to a hook in the wall. He was one of those tall white ghosts, and they are the very worst kind there is. This one used to come into the spare bedroom of the house where he lived before he was dead, and after walking round the room, and making as if he was in dreadfully low spirits, he would take a rope out of his pocket, and hang himself to a clothes-hook just opposite the bed, and the person who was in the bed would faint away with fright, and pull the bedclothes over his head, and be in the most dreadful agony until morning, when he would get up, and people would say, "Why how dreadful you look your hair is all gray and you are whiternany sheet." One time a man came to stay at the house who wasn't afraid of anything, and he said, "I'll fix that ghost of yours; I'm a terror on wooden wheels when any ghosts are around, I am." So he was put to sleep in the room, and before he went to bed he loosened the hook, so that it would come down very easy, and then he sat up in bed and read till twelve o'clock. Just when the clock struck, the ghost came in and walked up and down as usual, and finally got out his rope and hung himself; but as soon as he kicked away the chair he stood on when he hung himself, down came the hook, and the ghost fell all in a heap on the floor, and sprained his ankle, and got up and limped away, dreadfully ashamed, and nobody ever saw him again.
Father has been having the front garden walk fixed with an askfelt pavement. Askfelt is something like molasses, only four times as sticky when it is new. After a while it grows real hard, only ours hasn't grown very hard yet. I watched the men put it down, and father said, "Be careful and don't step on it until it gets hard or you'll stick fast in it and can't ever get out again. I'd like to see half a dozen meddlesome boys stuck in it and serve them right." As soon as I heard dear father mention what he'd like, I determined that he should have his wish, for there is nothing that is more delightful to a good boy than to please his father.
That afternoon I mentioned to two or three boys that I knew were pretty bad boys that our melons were ripe, and that father was going to pick them in a day or two. The melon patch is at the back of the house, and after dark I dressed myself in one of mother's gowns, and hid in the wood-shed. About eleven o'clock I heard a noise, and looked out, and there were six boys coming in the back gate, and going for the melon patch. I waited till they were just ready to begin, and then I came out and said, in a hollow and protuberant voice, "Beware!"