Tom he couldn’t hold himself he was so worked up with gladness and astonishment to be in such a celebrated place, and he just dripped history from every pore, seemed to me. He said he couldn’t scarcely believe he was standing on the very identical spot the prince flew from on the Bronze Horse. It was in the Arabian Night times, he said. Somebody give the prince a bronze horse with a peg in its shoulder, and he could git on him and fly through the air like a bird, and go all over the world, and steer it by turning the peg, and fly high or low and land wherever he wanted to. When he got done telling it there was one of them uncomfortable silences that comes, you know, when a person has been telling a whopper and you feel sorry for him and wish you could think of some way to change the subject and let him down easy, but git stuck and don’t see no way, and before you can pull your mind together and _do_ something, that silence has got in and spread itself and done the business. I was embarrassed, Jim he was embarrassed, and neither of us couldn’t say a word. Well, Tom he glowered at me a minute, and says: “Come, out with it. What do you think?” I says: “Tom Sawyer, _you_ don’t believe that, yourself.” “What’s the reason I don’t? What’s to hender me?” “There’s one thing to hender you: it couldn’t happen, that’s all.” “What’s the reason it couldn’t happen?” “You tell me the reason it _could_ happen.” “This balloon is a good enough reason it could happen, I should reckon.” “_Why_ is it?” “_Why_ is it? I never saw such an idiot. Ain’t this balloon and the bronze horse the same thing under different names?” “No, they’re not. One is a balloon and the other’s a horse. It’s very different. Next you’ll be saying a house and a cow is the same thing.” “By Jackson, Huck’s got him ag’in! Dey ain’t no wigglin’ outer dat!” “Shut your head, Jim; you don’t know what you’re talking about. And Huck don’t. Look here, Huck, I’ll make it plain to you, so you can understand. You see, it ain’t the mere _form_ that’s got anything to do with their being similar or unsimilar, it’s the _principle_ involved; and the principle is the same in both. Don’t you see, now?” I turned it over in my mind, and says: “Tom, it ain’t no use. Principles is all very well, but they don’t git around that one big fact, that the thing that a balloon can do ain’t no sort of proof of what a horse can do.” “Shucks, Huck, you don’t get the idea at all. Now look here a minute—it’s perfectly plain. Don’t we fly through the air?” “Yes.” “Very well. Don’t we fly high or fly low, just as we please?” “Yes.” “Don’t we steer whichever way we want to?” “Yes.” “And don’t we land when and where we please?” “Yes.” “How do we move the balloon and steer it?” “By touching the buttons.”