isted Dr. Jones.

"Well, let me think. If Mattie Bronson could go, it would afford me the
greatest pleasure."

"The very thing!" declared the Doctor in his usual emphatic way. "Mattie
is a lovely, brave, all-around nice girl. Let it be Mattie, by all
means."

Denison and Marsh expressed their entire satisfaction with this
arrangement.

"I will write her immediately to come and visit us, and then I am sure
that we can prevail upon her to go with us," said Mrs. Jones.

They then descended the long, slender stairway, and returned to their
home.

CHAPTER VI.

Off on a Shoreless Sea.

About the middle of April appeared the following in one of the leading
papers:

"Last night our citizens, and a tremendous overflow of visitors were
treated to the most magnificent sight their eyes ever beheld. The great
aluminum globe, about which all the world has been agog for so long,
arose and stood for three hours above the city, some two hundred and
fifty feet. The whole mighty sphere was ablaze with myriads of electric
lights, from the ball of the tapering flagstaff to the beautiful cabin
below. As it hung suspended above the city, connected with the earth by
but a slender aluminum chain that looked like a thread of silver
piercing the skies, a great hush fell upon the hundreds of thousands of
gazers below. All Nature seemed auspicious to the occasion. Scarcely a
zephyr was stirring, and the stars shone brightly down upon the scene
from cloudless skies. One hundred people, consisting of the President
and cabinet, senators, congressmen, editors, scientific and literary men
and women, were the favored party who occupied the gigantic ship.

"Suddenly there fell upon the ears of the waiting multitude the glorious
soprano voice of Mrs. Jones. So far above, yet so thrillingly sweet and
distinct, one could scarcely refrain from imagining that the Pearly
Gates had opened, and we were listening to the voice of one of the
Redeemed. But that illusion was soon dispelled, and we recognized the
familiar strains of "Star Spangled Banner." And when the whole hundred
voices swelled the splendid chorus, a great shout arose from the
multitude like the sound of many waters, beginning directly beneath the
globe, and spreading away in every direction like billows from a great
rock, dropped into the center of a quiet lake.

"And so, under the direction of Professor Marsh, brother of the
architect of the globe, a beautiful and appropriat