r
the safety of others that made him the man out of a million best worth
trusting in any emergency where a bold heart and ready wit may avert
disaster.

Donaldson's days were never dull.

The day preceding our ascent his balloon was released with insufficient
lifting power. As soon as he rose above neighboring roofs, a very high
southeast wind caught him, and, before he had time to throw out
ballast, drove his basket against the flagstaff on the Gilsey House
with such violence that the staff was broken, and the basket
momentarily upset, dumping two ballast bags to the Broadway sidewalk
where they narrowly missed several pedestrians.

That he himself was not dashed to death was a miracle. But to him this
was no more than a bit unusual incident of the day's work.

The reporters assigned as mates on this skylark in the _Barnum_ were
Alfred Ford, of the _Graphic_; Edmund Lyons, of the _Sun_; Samuel
MacKeever, of the _Herald_; W. W. Austin, of the _World_ (every one of
these good fellows now dead, alas!) and myself, representing the
_Tribune_.

Lyons, MacKeever, and myself were novices in ballooning, but the two
others had scored their bit of aeronautic experience. Austin had made
an ascent a year or two before at San Francisco, was swept out over the
bay before he could make a landing, and, through some mishap, dropped
into the water midway of the bay and well out toward Golden Gate, where
he was rescued by a passing boat. Ford had made several balloon
voyages, the most notable in 1873, in the great _Graphic_ balloon.

After the voyage of the _Barnum_ was first announced and it became
known that the _Tribune_ would have a pass, everybody on the staff
wanted to go. For weeks it was the talk of the office. Even grave
graybeards of the editorial rooms were paying court for the preference
to Mr. W. F. G. Shanks, that prince of an earlier generation of city
editors, who of course controlled the assignment of the pass. But when
at length the pass came, the enthusiasm and anxiety for the distinction
waned, and it became plain that the piece of paper "Good for One Aerial
Trip," etc., must go begging.

At that time I was assistant night city editor, and a special detail to
interview the Man in the Moon was not precisely in the line of my
normal duties. I was therefore greatly surprised (to put it
conservatively) when, the morning before the ascent, Mr. Shanks, in
whose family I was then living, routed me out of bed