they know it all, and so they won't take people's advice, but always go
their own way, which makes everybody forsake them and despise them, and
that is perfectly natural. If they was humbler, and listened and tried to
learn, it would be better for them.

The part the professor was in was like a boat, and was big and roomy, and
had water-tight lockers around the inside to keep all sorts of things in,
and a body could sit on them, and make beds on them, too. We went aboard,
and there was twenty people there, snooping around and examining, and old
Nat Parsons was there, too. The professor kept fussing around getting
ready, and the people went ashore, drifting out one at a time, and old
Nat he was the last. Of course it wouldn't do to let him go out behind
US. We mustn't budge till he was gone, so we could be last ourselves.

But he was gone now, so it was time for us to follow. I heard a big
shout, and turned around--the city was dropping from under us like a
shot! It made me sick all through, I was so scared. Jim turned gray and
couldn't say a word, and Tom didn't say nothing, but looked excited. The
city went on dropping down, and down, and down; but we didn't seem to be
doing nothing but just hang in the air and stand still. The houses got
smaller and smaller, and the city pulled itself together, closer and
closer, and the men and wagons got to looking like ants and bugs crawling
around, and the streets like threads and cracks; and then it all kind of
melted together, and there wasn't any city any more it was only a big
scar on the earth, and it seemed to me a body could see up the river and
down the river about a thousand miles, though of course it wasn't so
much. By and by the earth was a ball--just a round ball, of a dull color,
with shiny stripes wriggling and winding around over it, which was
rivers. The Widder Douglas always told me the earth was round like a
ball, but I never took any stock in a lot of them superstitions o' hers,