ous fate of Donaldson and Grimwood was yet fresh
in the public mind Mr. Wise published a pamphlet giving a fanciful
account of their adventures, as if related by the aeronaut. In the light
of the Wise-Burr tragedy its concluding paragraph has a singular
significance: "In the end I ask the world to deal charitably with me.
Should my body be found, give it decent burial and write for an epitaph:
'Here lies the body of a man whose reckless ambition and fear of being
accused of want of nerve have sacrificed his own life and betrayed a
fellow-mortal into the snares of death, with no higher object than to
serve the interests of a scheme which, to say the best of it, is but a
poor thing in the progress of art and refinement.'"

Donaldson was a man in many respects remarkable, in some admirable. With
scant schooling, his father gave him a thorough training as a
draughtsman and engraver. Allowed to choose for himself, he embarked in
the amusement business, his active and versatile temperament leading him
to become in turn a rope-walker, gymnast, actor, ventriloquist and,
singularly enough, electro-physician. For most of these varied callings
he had a certain adaptability by reason of his splendid physique,
perfect health, entire abstinence from stimulants, ready wit,
good-humor, fertility in expedients and promptitude and energy in
execution, as well as by the daring and ambition naturally associated
with such physical and mental qualifications. A friend writes of him:
"He was as ready to navigate a cockle-shell from the Battery to Long
Branch as he was to run a velocipede along a hundred yards of slack
wire." His drawings, particularly those illustrating aeronautical scenes
and incidents, were spirited and faithful. He tried his hand at
verse-making among the rest. The following brief outburst, written after
all the old loves had given place to that which became the absorbing
passion of his life, and printed on his letter-heads and
admission-cards, sufficiently illustrates the manner and matter of his
efforts in this direction:

There's pleasure in a lively trip when sailing through the air.
The word is given, "Let her go!"--to land I know not where.
The view is grand: 'tis like a dream when many miles from home:
My castle in the air I love, above the clouds to roam.

Not an ideal character certainly, but a complete one in its way, and
readily recognizable as belonging to a born aeronaut. The unromantic but
n