n going
with it, of ten or twelve miles an hour. On this "skycycle" Professor
Myers has paddled hundreds of miles, not trying to go against the wind,
but selecting currents from the many available ones that favor his
purpose. "What is the use," says he, "of fighting the wind when you can
make the wind fight for you? People who take trains or boats wait for a
certain hour or a certain tide, in the same way we wait for a certain
wind current, and there is never long to wait, for the wind blows in
totally different directions at different altitudes."

"Can you know with precision," I asked, "about these varying currents?"

"We can know a good deal by studying the clouds and by observations with
kites and other instruments. And we would soon know much more if
experimenters would work on these lines of conquering nature by yielding
to her rather than opposing her."

In my talks with Professor Myers, of which there were many, we went
first into the spectacular side of ballooning, the more obviously
interesting part, stories of hair-breadth escapes and thrilling
adventure, of the fair lady who assumed marriage vows sailing aloft over
Herkimer County, of Carlotta's recent trip, ninety miles in sixty
minutes with natural gas in the bag, of the English aeronaut who leaped
from his car to death in the sea that a comrade might be saved through
the lessened weight, of two lovesick Frenchmen who duelled with pistols
from rival balloons, while all Paris gaped in wonder from the earth and
shuddered when one silken bag, pierced by a well-aimed shot, dashed down
to death with principal and second. And many more of that kind which, I
must say, leave one far from convinced on the non-danger point.

Then the professor dwelt upon various odd things about balloons--this,
for instance, that the rapid rise of an air-ship makes an aeronaut
suffer the same pain and pressure on his ear-drums that a diver knows,
only now the air presses from inside the head outward. And relief from
this pain is found, as the diver finds it, by repeatedly opening the
mouth and swallowing.

[Illustration: PROFESSOR MYERS IN HIS "SKYCYCLE."]

And he spoke of the strangest illusions of sight. The balloon is always
standing still to the person in it, while the earth rushes madly along,
forty, sixty, ninety miles an hour. As you shoot up the first half mile
the ground beneath you seems to drop away into a deepening bowl, while
the horizon sweeps up like a loosened