I told
him I was a bit tender in that locality and the ferrule of his
umbrella was sharp. He would not listen. He kept on jabbing me.
Something broke! We started back down to earth. We fell faster
and faster. We fell nine miles, and after that I began to get
used to it. Then I saw the earth beneath and it was rising up to
meet us.
A town was below--a town that grew larger and larger as we neared
it. I could make out the bonded indebtedness, and the Carnegie
Library, and the moving-picture palaces, and the new dancing parlor,
and other principal points of interest.
At the rate we were falling we were certainly going to make an
awful splatter in that town when we hit. I was sorry for the
street-cleaning department.
We fell another half mile or so. A spire was sticking up into the
sky directly beneath us, like a spear, to impale us. By a supreme
effort I twisted out of the way of that spire, only to strike
squarely on top of the roof of a greenhouse back of the parsonage,
next door.
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