on the
second page of the _Sphere_ an hour later, ran as follows:

HOCUS POCUS

A hoax, or as our merry ancestors would have called it, a
flam, is usually the most ephemeral and evanescent of human
devices. Like a boy's soap bubble, it glitters for a brief
moment in iridescent rotundity, then ceases to be even a
film of air. It is unsubstantial as the tail of Halley's
comet. On rare occasions, it is true, its existence is
prolonged; many worthy people are beguiled; and some
enthusiasts are so effectually hoodwinked as to persist in
their delusion, and even to form societies for its
propagation. But mankind at large is sufficiently sane to
avoid a fall into this abyss of the absurd, and, having
paid its tribute of laughter, goes its way without being a
cent the worse.

San Francisco appears to be the latest victim of The Great
Aviation Hoax, and we shall watch the progressive stages of
its disillusionment with sympathetic interest, or the
development of its newest cult with sincere commiseration.
Like many other phenomena, good and bad, this gigantic
flam, it will be remembered, took its rise in the east. Its
genesis was reported in Constantinople nearly a week ago:
then at intervals we learnt that these mysterious airmen,
one of whom with artful artlessness had adopted the plain,
respectable, and specious name of Smith, had manifested
themselves at Karachi, Penang, and Port Darwin
successively. The curtain then dropped, and the world
waited with suspense for the opening of the next act,
though there were some who suspected that the performers
had slipped away with the cash-box during the interval, and
would never be heard of again. However, the curtain has at
last rung up at the golden city of the west, and it is
certainly a mark of the ingenuity of the concocters of the
hoax that they allowed at least twenty-four hours for the
passage of the Pacific. In another column we give an
account of a visit to San Francisco, in the small hours of
this morning, from which it will be seen that the city
fathers narrowly escaped making themselves ridiculous, the
flying men having wisely disappeared before the municipal
deputation, hastily summoned from their beds, had time to
make the indi