e came, it was variously said, from Australia and America and
the South of France. He was also described quite incorrectly as the son
of a man who had amassed a comfortable fortune in the manufacture of
gold nibs and the Butteridge fountain pens. But this was an entirely
different strain of Butteridges. For some years, in spite of a loud
voice, a large presence, an aggressive swagger, and an implacable
manner, he had been an undistinguished member of most of the existing
aeronautical associations. Then one day he wrote to all the London
papers to announce that he had made arrangements for an ascent from the
Crystal Palace of a machine that would demonstrate satisfactorily that
the outstanding difficulties in the way of flying were finally solved.
Few of the papers printed his letter, still fewer were the people who
believed in his claim. No one was excited even when a fracas on the
steps of a leading hotel in Piccadilly, in which he tried to horse-whip
a prominent German musician upon some personal account, delayed his
promised ascent. The quarrel was inadequately reported, and his name
spelt variously Betteridge and Betridge. Until his flight indeed, he
did not and could not contrive to exist in the public mind. There were
scarcely thirty people on the look-out for him, in spite of all his
clamour, when about six o'clock one summer morning the doors of the big
shed in which he had been putting together his apparatus opened--it was
near the big model of a megatherium in the Crystal Palace grounds--and
his giant insect came droning out into a negligent and incredulous
world.

But before he had made his second circuit of the Crystal Palace towers,
Fame was lifting her trumpet, she drew a deep breath as the startled
tramps who sleep on the seats of Trafalgar Square were roused by his
buzz and awoke to discover him circling the Nelson column, and by the
time he had got to Birmingham, which place he crossed about half-past
ten, her deafening blast was echoing throughout the country. The
despaired-of thing was done.

A man was flying securely and well.

Scotland was agape for his coming. Glasgow he reached by one o'clock,
and it is related that scarcely a ship-yard or factory in that busy hive
of industry resumed work before half-past two. The public mind was just
sufficiently educated in the impossibility of flying to appreciate Mr.
Butteridge at his proper value. He circled the University buildings, and
dropped to within