over that--clean over it.
We was used to the balloon now and not afraid any more, and didn't want
to be anywheres else. Why, it seemed just like home; it 'most seemed as
if I had been born and raised in it, and Jim and Tom said the same. And
always I had had hateful people around me, a-nagging at me, and pestering
of me, and scolding, and finding fault, and fussing and bothering, and
sticking to me, and keeping after me, and making me do this, and making
me do that and t'other, and always selecting out the things I didn't want
to do, and then giving me Sam Hill because I shirked and done something
else, and just aggravating the life out of a body all the time; but up
here in the sky it was so still and sunshiny and lovely, and plenty to
eat, and plenty of sleep, and strange things to see, and no nagging and
no pestering, and no good people, and just holiday all the time. Land, I
warn't in no hurry to git out and buck at civilization again. Now, one of
the worst things about civilization is, that anybody that gits a letter
with trouble in it comes and tells you all about it and makes you feel
bad, and the newspapers fetches you the troubles of everybody all over
the world, and keeps you downhearted and dismal 'most all the time, and
it's such a heavy load for a person. I hate them newspapers; and I hate
letters; and if I had my way I wouldn't allow nobody to load his troubles
on to other folks he ain't acquainted with, on t'other side of the world,
that way. Well, up in a balloon there ain't any of that, and it's the
darlingest place there is.

We had supper, and that night was one of the prettiest nights I ever see.
The moon made it just like daylight, only a heap softer; and once we see
a lion standing all alone by himself, just all alone on the earth, it
seemed like, and his shadder laid on the sand by him like a puddle of
ink. That's the kind of moonlight to have.

Mainly we laid on our backs and talked; we didn't want to go to sleep.
Tom said we was right in the midst of the Arabian Nights now. He said it
was right along here that one of the cutest things in that book happened;
so we looked down and watched while he told about it, because there ain't
anything that is so interesting to look at as a place that a book has
talked about. It was a tale about a camel-driver that had lost his camel,
and he come along in the desert and met a man, and says:

"Have you run across a stray camel to-day?"

And the man says: