n. In determining upon a rigid frame the
Count was not a pioneer even in his own country. While his
experiments were still under way, a rival, David Schwartz, who had
begun, without completing, an airship in St. Petersburg, secured in
some way aid from the German Government, which was at the moment
coldly repulsing Zeppelin. He planned and built an aluminum airship
but died before its completion. His widow continued the work amidst
constant opposition from the builders. The end was one of the many
tragedies of invention. Nobody but the widow ever believed the ship
would rise from its moorings. It was in charge of a man who had
never made an ascent. To his amazement and to the amazement of the
spectators the engine was hardly started when the ship mounted and
made headway against a stiff breeze. On the ground the spectators
shouted in wonder; the widow, overwhelmed by this reward for her
faith in her husband's genius, burst into tears of joy. But the
amateur pilot was no match for the situation. Affrighted to find
himself in mid-air, too dazed to know what to do, he pulled the
wrong levers and the machine crashed to earth. The pilot escaped,
but the airship which had taken four years to build was
irretrievably wrecked. The widow's hopes were blasted, and the way
was left free for the Count von Zeppelin.

Freed, though unwillingly, from the routine duties of his military
rank, Zeppelin thereafter devoted himself wholly to his airships. He
was fifty-three years old, adding one more to the long list of men
who found their real life's work after middle age. With him was
associated his brother Eberhard, the two forming a partnership in
aeronautical work as inseparable as that of Wilbur and Orville
Wright. Like Wilbur Wright, Eberhard von Zeppelin did not live to
witness the fullest fruition of the work, though he did see the
soundness of its principles thoroughly established and in practical
application. There is a picturesque story that when Eberhard lay on
his death-bed his brother, instead of watching by his side, took the
then completed airship from its hangar, and drove it over and around
the house that the last sounds to reach the ears of his faithful
ally might be the roar of the propellers in the air--the grand paean
of victory.

[Illustration: Photo by Press Illustrating Service.

_A French "Sausage"._]

Though Count von Zeppelin had begun his experiments in 1873 it was
not until 1890 that he actually began the