. Sometimes,
however, he would call out "Dog flies! Fox flies!" or some other
like impossibility to catch us. If any one raised a finger then
he was made to pay a forfeit. Now my playmates never failed to
wink and smile mockingly at me when one of them called "Man
flies!" for at the word I would always raise my finger very high,
as a sign of absolute conviction, and I refused with energy to
pay the forfeit. The more they laughed at me the happier I was,
hoping that some day the laugh would be on my side.

Among the thousands of letters which I received after winning the
Deutsch prize (a prize offered in 1901 for sailing around the
Eiffel Tower) there was one that gave me peculiar pleasure. I
quote from it as a matter of curiosity:

"Do you remember, my dear Alberto, when we played together
'Pigeon Flies!'? It came back to me suddenly when the news of
your success reached Rio. 'Man flies!' old fellow! You were right
to raise your finger, and you have just proved it by flying round
the Eiffel Tower.

"They play the old game now more than ever at home; but the
name has been changed, and the rules modified since October 19,
1901. They call it now 'Man flies!' and he who does not raise his
finger at the word pays the forfeit."

The story of Santos-Dumont affords a curious instance of a boy being
obsessed by an idea which as a man he carried to its successful
fruition. It offers also evidence of the service that may accrue to
society from the devotion of a dilettante to what people may call a
"fad," but what is in fact the germ of a great idea needing only an
enthusiast with enthusiasm, brains, and money for its development.
Because the efforts of Santos-Dumont always smacked of the amateur
he has been denied his real place in the history of aeronautics,
which is that of a fearless innovator, and a devoted worker in the
cause.

Born on one of those great coffee plantations of Brazil, where all
is done by machinery that possibly can be, Santos-Dumont early
developed a passion for mechanics. In childhood he made toy
airplanes. He confesses that his favourite author was Jules Verne,
that literary idol of boyhood, who while writing books as wildly
imaginative as any dime tale of redskins, or nickel novel of the
doings of "Nick Carter" had none the less the spirit of prophecy
that led him to forecast the submarine, the