de
hideous these sore and panting hearts? The moonlight pierced through the
thick foliage of the wood, and streamed into our faces, like invitations
to a better life. But the crippled and bleeding could not see or feel
it,--buried in the shelves of the ambulance.

CHAPTER XI.

BALLOON BATTLES.

Some days ago, as I was sitting in Central Park, under a tree no bigger
than Jonah's gourd, broiling nicely brown, and seasoning the process by
reading what the lesser weeklies said about me, I saw at the Park gate a
great phantasm, like a distended sausage, swaying to and fro as if
striving to burst, and directly the horrible thing blew upwards,
spilling all the stuffing from the case.

I saw in a moment that the apparition was a balloon, and that the
aeronaut was only emptying ballast.

Straight toward me the floating vessel came, so close to the ground that
I could hear the silk crackle and the ropes creak, till, directly, a man
leaned over the side and shouted--

"Is that you, Townsend?"

"Hallo, Lowe!"

"I want you to get on your feet and be spry about it: we have a literary
party here, and wish you to write it up. I'll let one bag of ballast go,
as we touch the grass, and you must leap in simultaneously. Thump!"

Here the car collided with the ground, and in another instant, I found
quantities of dirt spilled down my back, and two or three people lying
beneath me. The world slid away, and the clouds opened to receive me.
Lowe was opening a bottle of Heidsick, and three or four gentlemen with
_heads sick_ were unclosing the petals of their lips to get the
afternoon dew.

These were the various critics and fugitive writers of the weekly and
daily press. They looked as if they wanted to put each other over the
side of the car, but smothered their invective at my advent, as if I
were so much pearl-ash.

It was just seven o'clock, and the Park lay like a veined and mottled
blood-stone in the red sunset. The city wilted to the littleness of a
rare mosaic pin, its glittering point parting the blue scarf of the bay,
and the white bosom of the ocean swelling afar, all draped with purple
clouds like golden hair, in which the entangled gems were the sails of
the white ships.

I said this aloud, and all the party drew their lead pencils. They
forgot the occasion in my eloquence, and wanted to report me.

Just here, I drew a field-glass from the aeronaut, and reconnoitred the
streets of the city. To my dismay t