en he met the end,
we may be certain that he had walked hand in hand with Death too long to
greatly dread the final embrace. May we not think of him now as feasting
his spirit on the splendid visions of that Promised Land which,
Moses-like, it was permitted him to see prefigured in its earthly type?
Throughout his adventures, too generally known to require more than
passing allusion, one sees the same passionate devotion to the grand and
sublime in sight and sensation, the same calm disregard of danger,
whether exploding his balloon at an altitude of thirteen thousand feet
and coolly noting the "fearful moaning noise caused by the air rushing
through the network and the gas escaping above," preparing to test a
lifelong theory of a steady easterly current by attempting to make it
the medium of crossing the Atlantic, or participating with La Mountain
and others in a voyage which, begun at St. Louis at 6.30 P.M., July 1,
1859, met daybreak at Fort Wayne, extended over the length of Lake Erie,
included a view of Niagara from the altitude of a mile, and finally,
after skirmishing within thirty feet of the storm-tossed waves of Lake
Ontario for fifty miles and ploughing a tornado-track through a dense
forest, terminated in a treetop near Sackett's Harbor, Jefferson county,
New York, at 2.20 P.M.--twelve hundred miles in nineteen hours and forty
minutes! Puck's promise kept! the seven-league boots outdone!

[Illustration: JOHN WISE.]

Upon his son, Charles E. Wise, and his grandson, John Wise, Jr., he
bestowed his skill and engrafted his enthusiasm. The latter began his
aeronautical career with his teens, and though not yet out of them has
made over forty ascensions. One of these excursions, made in the autumn
of 1875 from Waynesburg, Greene county, Pennsylvania, sufficiently
demonstrates, if any demonstration is needed, that a boy's luck and
pluck are equal to anything. It had been raining the proverbial
pitchforks all day, and the hydrogen oozed into the gas-bag with even
more than its accustomed sluggishness. The curiosity of a country crowd
was not easily damped, however, and the basket was finally attached and
Master Johnny stepped on board. The aerostat sensibly refused to
consider the proposition for an ascension, although urged by the
successive relinquishment of barometer, lunch, water-bottle, coat,
drag-rope and grapnel. As a last resort, the entire lower third of the
gas-bag, which was uninflated, was cut away, the