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.

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.