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.

I was so anxious to show father that I had listened to the lecture that I made a boomerang just like the one the lecturer had. When it was done, I went out into the back yard, and slung it at a cat on the roof of our house. It never touched the cat, but it went right through the dining-room window, and gave Mr. Travers an awful blow in the eye, besides hitting Sue on the nose. It stopped right there in the dining-room, and never came back to me at all, and I don't believe a word the lecturer said about it. I don't feel courage to tell what father said about it.

Then I tried to catch Mr. Thompson's dog, that lives next door to us, with two lead balls tied on the ends of a long string. I didn't hit the dog any more than I did the cat, but I didn't do any harm except to Mrs. Thompson's cook, and she ought to be thankful that it was only her arm, for the doctor said that if the balls had hit her on the head they would have broken it, and the consequences might have been serious.

It was a good while before I could find anything to make an assegai out of; but after hunting all over the house, I came across a lovely piece of bamboo about ten feet long, and just as light as a feather. Then I got a big knife-blade that hadn't any handle to it, and that had been lying in father's tool-chest for ever so long, and fastened it on the end of the bamboo. You wouldn't believe how splendidly I could throw that assegai, only the wind would take it, and you couldn't tell when you threw it where it would bring up. I don't see how the Zulus ever manage to hit an Englishman; but Mr. Travers says that the Englishmen are all so made that you can't very well miss them. And then perhaps the Zulus, when they want to hit them, aim at something else. One day I was practising with the assegai at our barn-door, making believe that it was an Englishman, when Mr. Carruthers, the butcher, drove by, and the assegai came down and went through his foot, and pinned it to the wagon. But he didn't see me, and I guess he got it out after a while, though I never saw it again.

But what the lecturer taught us about bull-fights was worse than anything else. Tom McGinnis's father has a terrible bull in the pasture, and Tom and I agreed that we'd have a bull-fight, only, of course, we wouldn't hurt the bull. All we wanted to do was to show our parents how much we had learned about the geography and habits of the Spaniards.

Tom McGinnis's sister Jane, who is twelve years old, and thinks she knows everything, said she'd be the Queen of Spain, and give Tom and me evergreen wreaths. I got an old red curtain out of the dining-room, and divided it with Tom, so that we could wave it in the bull's face. When a bull runs after a bull-fighter, the other bull-fighter just waves his red rag, and the bull goes for him and lets the first bull-fighter escape. The lecturer said that there wasn't any danger so long as one fellow would always wave a red rag when the bull ran after the other fellow.

Pretty nearly all the school came down to the pasture to see our bull-fight. The Queen of Spain sat on the fence, because there wasn't any other throne, and the rest of the fellows and girls stood behind the fence. The bull was pretty savage; but Tom and I had our red rags, and we weren't afraid of him.

As soon as we went into the pasture the bull came for me, with his head down, and bellowing as if he was out of his mind. Tom rushed up and waved his red rag, and the bull stopped running after me, and went after Tom, just as the lecturer said he would.

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.