Every time I try to improve my mind with science I resolve that I will
never do it again, and then I always go and do it. Science is so
dreadfully tempting that you can hardly resist it. Mr. Travers says that
if anybody once gets into the habit of being a scientific person there
is little hope that he will ever reform, and he says he has known good
men who became habitual astronomers, and actually took to prophesying
weather, all because they yielded to the temptation to look through
telescopes, and to make figures on the black-board with chalk.
I was reading a lovely book the other day. It was all about balloons and
parachutes. A parachute is a thing that you fall out of a balloon with.
It is something like an open umbrella, only nobody ever borrows it. If
you hold a parachute over your head and drop out of a balloon, it will
hold you up so that you will come down to the ground so gently that you
won't be hurt the least bit.
I told Tom McGinnis about it, and we said we would make a parachute, and
jump out of the second-story window with it. It is easy enough to make
one, for all you have to do is to get a big umbrella and open it wide,
and hold on to the handle. Last Saturday afternoon Tom came over to my
house, and we got ready to try what the book said was "a pleasing
scientific experiment."
We didn't have the least doubt that the book told the truth. But Tom
didn't want to be the first to jump out of the window--neither did
I--and we thought we'd give Sue's kitten a chance to try a parachute,
and see how she liked it. Sue had an umbrella that was made of silk, and
was just the thing to suit the kitten. I knew Sue wouldn't mind lending
the umbrella, and as she was out making calls, and I couldn't ask her
permission, I borrowed the umbrella and the kitten, and meant to tell
her all about it as soon as she came home. We tied the kitten fast to
the handle of the umbrella, so as not to hurt her, and then dropped her
out of the window. The wind was blowing tremendously hard, which I
supposed was a good thing, for it is the air that holds up a parachute,
and of course the more wind there is, the more air there is, and the
better the parachute will stay up.
The minute we dropped the cat and the umbrella out of the window, the
wind took them and blew them clear over the back fence into Deacon
Smedley's pasture before they struck the ground. This was all right
enough, but the parachute didn't stop after it struck the ground. It
started across the country about as fast as a horse could run, hitting
the ground every few minutes, and then bouncing up into the air and
coming down again, and the kitten kept clawing at everything, and
yowling as if she was being killed. By the time Tom and I could get
down-stairs the umbrella was about a quarter of a mile off. We chased it
till we couldn't run any longer, but we couldn't catch it, and the last
we saw of the umbrella and the cat they were making splendid time
towards the river, and I'm very much afraid they were both drowned.
Tom and I came home again, and when we got a little rested we said we
would take the big umbrella and try the pleasing scientific experiment;
at least I said that Tom ought to try it, for we had proved that a
little silk umbrella would let a kitten down to the ground without
hurting her, and of course a great big umbrella would hold Tom up all
right. I didn't care to try it myself, because Tom was visiting me, and
we ought always to give up our own pleasures in order to make our
visitors happy.
After a while Tom said he would do it, and when everything was ready he
sat on the window-ledge, with his legs hanging out, and when the wind
blew hard he jumped.
[Illustration: HE LIT RIGHT ON THE HAN'S HEAD.]
It is my opinion, now that the thing is all over, that the umbrella
wasn't large enough, and that if Tom had struck the ground he would
have been hurt. He went down awfully fast, but by good-luck the grocer's
man was just coming out of the kitchen-door as Tom came down, and he lit
right on the man's head. It is wonderful how lucky some people are, for
the grocer's man might have been hurt if he hadn't happened to have a
bushel basket half full of eggs with him, and as he and Tom both fell
into the eggs, neither of them was hurt.
They were just getting out from among the eggs when Sue came in with
some of the ribs of her umbrella that somebody had fished out of the
river and given to her. There didn't seem to be any kitten left, for Sue
didn't know anything about it, but father and Mr. McGinnis came in a few
minutes afterwards, and I had to explain the whole thing to them.
This is the last "pleasing scientific experiment" I shall ever try. I
don't think science is at all nice, and, besides, I am awfully sorry
about the kitten.