The Religious Life of the Zu?i Child

o long unbroken as that of the good airship Barnum, made thirty-three years ago. Of her captain and crew of five men,

age of a total elapsed time of twenty-six hours and seven minutes. In the interim she made four landings, the first of no more than ten minutes; the second, twenty; t

g over four hundred miles, which gave her the record of second place in the his

age of twenty-six hours, seven minutes was then and remained the world's endurance record until 1900;

dited under the old custom of a little less than twelve hundred miles, while the actual distance under the new rules is between eight hundred and nine hundred miles, the time being nin

f a balloon larger than any theretofore made in this country. His purpose in building it was to attempt to break all previous records for time and distance, and he invited each of five daily city papers of that time to send re

ant sunshine and clear sky, with

g daily short ascents of an hour or two from the Hippodrome in a small balloon-as a feature of the performance. Sometimes he ascended in a basket, at other times with naught but a trapeze swinging beneath the concentrating ring of his bal

courage and resource when responsible for the safety of others that made him the man out of a m

days were

st wind caught him, and, before he had time to throw out ballast, drove his basket against the flagstaff on the Gilsey House with such violence that t

a miracle. But to him this was no more tha

aphic; Edmund Lyons, of the Sun; Samuel MacKeever, of the Herald; W. W. Austin, of the Wo

wo before at San Francisco, was swept out over the bay before he could make a landing, and, through some mishap, dropped into the water midway of the bay and we

ve graybeards of the editorial rooms were paying court for the preference to Mr. W. F. G. Shanks, that prince of an earlier generation of city editors, who of course controlled the assignment o

t precisely in the line of my normal duties. I was therefore greatly surprised (to put it conservatively) wh

know is that we are in a hole. Before the ticket came every one wanted to go, from John R. G. Hassard do

d assignment was not to be refused

rome, loaded down with wraps and a heavy basket nigh bursting with good

ht fright than at any stage of the actual voyage; the balloon appeared such a hopelessly frail fabric to support even its own car and equipment. The light cord net enclosing the great gas-bag

eir joy over the prospect of delving into its generous depths was short-lived. The load as Donaldson had planned it was all aboard, weight carefully adjusted to what he considered a proper excess lifting power to carry us safely up

e applause ceased and that awful hush fell upon the vast audience which is rarely experienced except in the pre

t the air, stood stationary for a moment, and t

dropping away beneath us to depths unknown. Every cord and rope of the huge fabric was tensely taut, the basket firm and solid beneath our feet. Indeed, the balloon, with nothing more substantial in her construction than cloth and twine, and hempen

s of Morse telegraph paper-the people the dots, the vehicles the dashes. Central Park, with its winding waters, was transformed into a superb mantle of dark green velvet splashed with silver, worthy of a royal fête. Behind us lay t

ath us, lay-home. Should we ever see it again? This thought I am sure came to all of us. I know it came to me. But the perfect steadiness of the balloon won our confidence, and we soon gave ourselves up to the gratification of our enviable pos

basket to reach and pass Donaldson a rope he asked for, I leaned so far over that

ss) so many have when looking down from even the minor height of a step-ladder. In all the long hours he was with us, I do not recall his once standing erect in the basket, and when others of us pe

uds." Many-colored, these little circulars as they fell beneath us looked like a flight of giant butter-flies, and we kept on throwing out handfuls of them until our pilot warned us we were wasting so much weight we should soon b

iry perch which he had been occupying since our start on the concentrating ring, when one of us asked how long he

a journey, and shall be compelled to drop you one by one. So you had best draw

t the deuce do you mean by 'drop' us?" Indeed, the question must have been on three other tongues as well, for Donaldson's reply

he order of our going,

ons third, Ford f

d like the toy craft on the lake in Central Park were whistling a shr

Weehawken, we found ourselves cruising nor

rope was trailing on the ground. Within hailing distance of people beneath us, a curious condition was observed. We could hear distinctly all they said, though we could not make

traightened, they performed somersaults such as our pilot vowed no acrobat could equal. And yet the balance of the balloon is so fine that even a child of ten can pull one down, if only it has strength enough to withstand occasi

out gas and dropped us, bang! upon the lake. Running at a speed of twelve or fifteen miles an hour, we hit the water with a tremendous shock, bounded thirty or forty feet into the air, descended again and li

Bladentown on the farm of Miss Charlotte Thompson, a charming actress of the day whose "Jane Eyre" and "Fanchon" are still pleasant memories to old theatre-goers. Loading our balloon with stones to anchor it, our party paid her a visit and were cordially received. An invitation to join us hazarded by Don

ast we could see the river, a winding ribbon of silver. We were running low, barely more than 200 feet high. Below us the great drag rope was hissing through meadows, roaring over fences, cr

e length of rope is trailing through the valley that had been dragging on the hill. This habit of the balloon produces startling effects. Drifting swiftly toward a rocky precipitous hillside against which it seem

nging habit, winding round trees or other objects, that may at any moment upset basket and aeronauts. On this trip our drag rope tore sections out of scores of fences, upset many haystacks, i

ted gray walls making one fancy he was looking down into the inner court of some great mediaeval castle. Then we drifted

nder the feeble light of the waning moon. No part of our voyage was more impressive, no scene more awe-inspiring. It was a region of such weird lights and gruesome shadows as no f

rom Gaines's Mill to Gettysburg, but in none of them was there a scene which impressed me a

nning low before a stiff breeze, half our drag rope on the ground. The rope began to roar across roofs and upset chimneys with shrieks and crashes that set the folk within believing the end of the world had come. Instantly the streets were filled

ess and without any extraordinary incident, all but the watch lying idly in the bottom of t

ome circulars usually proved sufficient. Indeed, only eight pounds of ballast were used from the time we left Miss Thompson

12.00 to 2.00, Lyons and myself from 2.00 to 3.0

et with a sandbag for a pillow. The rest of us slept little through the night and talked

e steeply to summits probably fifteen hundred feet above us. Beneath us a little village lay, snuggled cosily between two small meeting brooks, all dim under the mists of early

boys! Lo

the mountain-top, when, lo! a miracle. The phenomenon of sunrise was reversed! We our very selves instead had risen on the sun! T

usual level and were running swiftly before a sti

boys, for

to seize the stays when the rope tautened with a shock that nearly turned the basket upside down, spilled out our water-bucket and some ballast, left MacKeever and myself hangi

gan a terri

an trapped in a net, the gas-bag writhed, twisted, bulged, shrank, gathered into a ball and sprang fiercely out. The loose folds of canvas sucked up until hal

s cool and smiling, and, taking the only precaution possible, stood with a sheath-knif

in mighty bounds that threw us off our feet and tossed the great drag rope about like a whip-l

that held more delicacies than substantials. So Donaldson proposed a descent and began looking for a likely place.

had others the night before, and presently were flying through the air in prodigious if ungraceful somersaults. Amazed but unhurt, they agai

clear that we must sacrifice either our stomachs or our gas, Donaldson held open the safety valve until we were once more safely landed on m

oons near the village of Greenport, four miles from Hudson

bursting with honest journalistic zeal for a "beat," saw an opportunity to win satisfaction greater even than that of keeping on with us. So he, too, left us here, with the result that the Graphic published a full story of the voyage up to this point, Saturday afternoon,

ant pies on yellow earthen plates, gigantic in size, pale of crust, though anything but anaemic of contents. Lyons finished nearly the half of one before our reascent

s holding to our ropes and leaning on the basket, and later we realized we had not

ometer was sweeping across the dial at a terrific rate. I glanced at Donaldson and saw him smile. Then I looked back the barometer and saw the hand had stopped-at 10,200 feet! How long we were ascending we did not know. Certain it is that the impressions described were all there was time for, and that when Do

ies yet done with us, for at the end of our tug at the anchor rope, I found| had been kneeling very precisely in the middle of pie No. 2, and had contrived to absorb most of it into the knees of my trousers. Thus at the end of the day, come

ce became intolerable, until the buzz of a fly or the croak of a frog would have been music to our ears. Here was absolute

ssed above a thunderstorm, saw the lightning play beneath us, felt our whole fabric tremble at its shock-and were glad enough when we had left it well behind. Seen from a great height, the earth looked to

the Mountain House of the Catskills. And thereabouts we drifted in cross-currents until nearly 4.00 p.m., when a heavy so

miles north of Ottawa. So we rose to 12,500 feet, seeking an easterly or westerly current, but without avail. We could not escape the southerly gale. Prudence, therefore, dictated a landing befo

Barnum ended at 6.07 p.m. on the farm of

Chicago-and to this day the fate of the stanch cra