oose from the aggregated
avoirdupois of all who can lay hands upon it, and wrench great branches
from the forest giants over which it skims. Doubtless, to the
disheartening influence of a practical knowledge of the real
difficulties in the way of aerial navigation is due the fact that the
great mass of those who have attempted it have been scientists without
practice, or fools without either scientific training or experimental
data.

However strongly, as devout utilitarians, we may feel it our duty to
disapprove, officially, of a class so little necessary to the body
politic, aeronauts are interesting talkers, being able, like
Shakespeare's Moor, to speak of "most disastrous chances, of _moving_
accidents by flood and field, of antres vast and deserts idle, rough
quarries, rocks and hills whose heads touch heaven."

Among American aeronauts none possessed a larger fund of such thrilling
incident or greater enthusiasm for his calling than he who recently paid
that last penalty which ever hovers over its followers--the venerable
John Wise. His autobiography, _Through the Air_, is a prose poem on the
glories of Cloudland. The following extract from a private letter
written by him in 1876, after an aeronautical career of forty years,
comprising nearly five hundred ascensions, illustrates this enthusiasm
and his views on the sanitary aspect of aeronautics: "I claim that the
balloon is the best sanitarium within the grasp of enervated humanity. I
can demonstrate its utility, by theory and by fact, for all chronic
diseases and for the improvement of the mental and physical functions.
Elevate a person ten or twelve thousand feet above the sea-level and his
whole texture expands: a wrinkled, cadaverous person fills out as plump
as a youth. Then the beauty and magnitude of the scenery within the
scope of vision exalt the mental faculties, soul and body become
exhilarated, the appetite is quickened and all the symptoms of
convalescence ensue. Why, my dear friend, I am bound to ascribe my
health and vigor at the age of over sixty-eight to my profession, and
only for that do I persist in it. When I make up my mind to rust and die
I will give up balloon-ascensions."

Since Mr. Wise was not of a nature to be easily reconciled to "rust and
die," can we doubt that the great transit could have come to him at no
kinder season than when it should seem but a brief pausing on his upward
flight? Though it will never be known just how or wh