be
introduced some day by the use of talking balloons. Why not?

III

SOMETHING ABOUT EXPLOSIVE BALLOONS AND THE WONDERS OF HYDROGEN

ONE day the professor told me about some rainfall experiments with
balloons that he conducted years ago for the government. There was a
theory to be tested that loud explosions at a height will make the
clouds pour down water, and some gentlemen in the Department of
Agriculture were anxious to set off as loud an explosion as possible,
say a thousand feet up in the air. Professor Myers received this
commission, and proceeded at once to Washington with a gas-balloon
twelve feet in diameter.

"Don't you think that balloon is rather small?" asked one of the
gentlemen.

"No," said Myers; "I should call it rather large."

The other man shook his head. "I'm afraid it won't make noise enough to
test our theory."

"Well," said the professor (I can see his eyes twinkling), "if this
balloon doesn't make noise enough we'll get a bigger one."

They took the balloon some miles out of Washington (the professor
insisted on this), filled it with a terribly explosive mixture of oxygen
and hydrogen, and sent it up about a quarter of a mile, with an
anchor-rope holding it and a wire hanging down to a little hand-dynamo
or blasting-machine. As they made ready to turn this dynamo, Professor
Myers lay flat on his back, eyes glued to the balloon, confident but
curious. The handle turned, a spark jumped at the other end, and the
ball of silk seemed to swell enormously and then vanish with a flash of
a thousand shivers of silk. On this came the sound--a smashing and
tearing blast louder than any thunder-crash or roar of cannon. It
flattened men to the ground, killed hundreds of little fish in a stream
near by (bursting their air-bladders), knocked over a bowling-alley like
a house of cards, frightened cattle, and brought down rain in torrents
within eight minutes. The Agricultural gentlemen were more than
satisfied, and adopted the professor's system for extended rainfall
experiments--only these (for obvious reasons) were removed to the lonely
and arid plains of distant Texas.

"It wasn't much fun living down there," said the professor; "but we got
rain whenever we wanted it."

"What would happen," I inquired, "if a very large balloon filled with
this explosive mixture were set off over a crowded city?"

The professor shook his head in his awed contemplation of this
possibility. "It would wo