| Show BILL t NYE FLIES HIGH His Animal Pass to Pierce the Atmosphere COMPLIMENTS TO PENiNIKGTON t A Few famous fljins Machines of the Pas Viewed From the Standpoint of the Present iI i I For THE SUNDAY HERALD By special ar rangemert with the auihorl The Pennington Air Ship company of Chicago will please accept thanks for annual pass over its lines good for self and family for one year I had wanted one very severely but I had feared that the company might not feel that I was eminent enough to be placed on the eleemosynary list The conditions on the back are not severe and I have already signed them They bind me not to stand on the platform plat-form while the car is in motion unless properly chalked or rosined They also fJ J fJfJtIJY r II t e I if 11ui 11 f I I I I i I c C1 I b jii lL F e I Q tl v I jS ATfN Iw I f lSlyp t i PIERCING THE AIR II I Ii I i I oblige me to refrain from bringing suit against the company in case of accident Of course I would not be so pesky lowdown low-down as to sue a corporation which would give me a free ride That would be as mean as that Polish gentleman whose wife gave birth to a little Pole sort of a hop pole as it wereon the 21st of February The little Pole was born on the ferryboat iMiddletown on the Staten Island ferry just off the Statue of Liberty and I suggested that they call him Liberty Pole But that has nothing to do with the case The birth of the little fellow on board a ferryboat followed by a reception presided pre-sided over by Dr Robinson who happened hap-pened to be present created general good feeling among the passengers after which quite a purse of money was raised for the mother and child Staten Islanders are not only generally well to do but generous and so it was a snug little sum which was turned over to the poor woman who being somewhat fatigued fa-tigued turned it over to her husband He took the money and went to Europe Eu-rope with it on the following day Some Men never recover from the nervous hock of becoming a father others are greatly improved by sending them to Turope This poor man seemed to real b that nothing but complete change ilHlmst < would bring back the roses to his wm cheek I3 > is over there yet Some men I i was going to say are more honored in I the breach than in the observance but tuat is incorrect TMs man ought to be I stripped and tied to the north pole1 I Then he ought to be covered with obloquy ob-loquy and annoyed to death by a never ending procession of people squeezing by him to go and get a jag while through eternity he is cursed by the evasive odor I of their cloven breaths as they file by on I their return while himself perishing for I a drink I But I am wandering I am very I grateful for the pass and if I do not avail myself of it I know of a man who used to ask me to loan him my railroad pass I will let him go perhaps in my place over the road the first time and I then when it is better ballasted I will go I myself I I have several other passes over competing com-peting lines air lines as it wereissued I years ago and decorated on the back with low cut conditions The Besnier flying machine for instance invented by a gentleman of the above name residing re-siding in Sable France issued passes some years ago and I have carried mine now until it has a careworn look which casts a gloom over aerostation and such things as that The first thing to be accomplished in successful aerostation is to overcome the force of gravity and the resistance of capitalists The next is to overcome the force of gravity or provide easy and convenient con-venient places upon which to alight The third requirement is that the aeronaut aero-naut shall be able to guide his rolling stock in such a way as to avoid running into a brighter and more beautiful world M Besnier who was a locksmith of Sable pronounced Sablay invented a flying machine which consisted of four rectangular wings arranged in pairs at opposite ends of two rods passing over the shoulders the rear extremities of the rods being connected by cords to the ankles of the remainsthe wearer I mean in order to enable his legs to pay their way by operating a rear set of wings Besnier was not able to rise from the ground and soar away like a lark but could climb to the top of a house and after putting on his wings could float off in such a way as not to hurt himself so severely as you might think that he would M Besnier once flew across a river where friends with hot spiced rum and nice dry warm clothes were waiting wait-ing for him But he never could get over his sorrow and disappointment that he could not rise from the stubble when flushed by a dog or shooed by one of his family He died at the close of tbo Seventeenth century and on his tomb are carved in French the lines Come birdie come And flywith meRe me-Re broke his leg while trying to fly G with a hired girl weighing 185 pounds In after years he wore a cork leg and when his wife wished him to fold his wings and come off the perch she would sock up his cork leg in her bureau drainer L t t J f = 11 > u and conceal the key in the family Bible I Being a Free Thinker he never discovered discov-ered the key and for many years was at themercy of his wife About a century and a quarter later Jacob Degen a prisoner at Vienna constructed con-structed an apparatus having two um brellalike wings on eaci side of the operator op-erator and worked br manual power Ee was a convict however and the rather rigid rules governing prison life interfered with his experiments The jailer would allow him to fly to a height of fifty feet but had a cord attached to the machine so that Degen could not escape es-cape One day he cut the rope and soared away into the ether blue but as he was putting his thumb to his nose in an attitude atti-tude of derision the warden his off wing buckled to and a moment later he fell with a dismal plunk into a mortar bed just outside penitentiary After that he wore look of chastened sorrow and a truss The great difficulty experienced the flying machine men of all ages is to overcome over-come the atmospheric influences sufficiently suffi-ciently to float the stock Besnier wanted also to be able to rise by his own unaided efforts like a self made and soeMess statesman He wanted to be able to light out when shooed but whether he shooed or shooed not he died unsatisfied Poor man he did not know whether he shooed or shooed not skip through the aeronaut This is what I call a reciprocity joke It is for use in our trade with England Poetry written by Lord Tennyson taken in exchange Better jokes offered however i how-ever in trade for Tennjsons earlier work done when he was poet In the manufacture of flying machines ma-chines we are apt to forget that the pectoral muscles of a bird are greater than all the other combined muscular I tissue of the fowl put together while in j man the pectoral muscles comprise only oneseventieth of those in the body So man must rely upon extraneous methods of propulsion and artificial flying becomes be-comes extremely difficult In the middle of the present century a bill was introduced into the house of commons by Mr Roebuck incorporate I a compauy for tho purpose of working a gigantic flying machine also the stockholders stock-holders It comprised a horizontal plane made of wire and hollow wooden bars arranged ar-ranged on tho principle of a trussed girder and covered with silk I presume pre-sume tho motto of the company was the same as that on the silver dollarIn God We Trussed I This plane was furnished with a propeller pro-peller driven by a steam engine ° A tail capable of being brought to any desired angle according to whether the owner felt elated or depressed I presumewas arranged so that when the power acts to propel the machine by inclining the tail upward the resistance offered by the air will cause the machine to rise and when the tail is reversed the machine ma-chine is propelled downward and passes through a plane more or less inclined to the horizon as the inclination of the tail is greater or less The inclination of the tail however was intensely downward an inclination in which the stockholders shared The machine ma-chine was designed for carrying freight passengers and mail but so far most all shippers are sending merchandise and mail by other routes The whole apparatus appa-ratus weighed 3000 pounds and therefore there-fore made quite a large dent in one of the planets on her trial trip I The tail had an area of 1500 square feet and when jauntily thrown over the dashboard had a tendency to obstruct the view This machine also was unable to rise from its jimson weeds and soar away into the empyrean blue like a sandhill crane but had to be scooted along a I iff 11 11 l 11m IGf WtIlkJ1 i I rfiJ iL11 I t I UIiW i 1I11 Ii tI Jill t I t I I I l 3 i I i f I I II n j I M I ri II I F 1 Iut l 1 lil I 1 t 1 i 1 fJ 11 f i111 1 l 1 I r u tti 1 I f tj11 f I Zi l U 1 I idL < f1 L Ii F I 1I rhj j 4lt r 1 II 4 I COME nJROIE 7 4 J jl c 0 Eo fl 1 l n 11I1 f rle fl1 I 1 l I fi kp 1iJf J l I rH I i i fr i I Ai I s Y r b I liIi 9 11 I 7 t12 f J Iii 1 I I tl i II I I ih Il 9 I Jl w Illy lw1 I t l hl I j li hAT 9 t h-AT THE GRAVE OF DES IEn railroad track at great speed down hill till the proper velocity was attained and then by depressing the tail it was supposed sup-posed to rise like an eagle and bark the shins of planets yet unborn It did not do so You can get the stock low or suburban property will betaken be-taken in exchange My annual pass has expired So has the inventor When he took his flying machine out of the round house he was the picture of health When he was next seen it was eight years later and a lad 11 years old went up and got him out of the top of a tree He had changed a great deal He had lost most of his hair Also his head But his teeth were found buried in the trunk of the treo and they had the name of the maker in the roof of the plate So he was identified I wish I had room to go on with the history of flying machines and aeronautics aero-nautics in this country butit would take too long to even publish the obituaries of he inventors All have been confident confi-dent but all have failed That is no reason however why the matter should not yet succeed in the future Far be it from me to speak slightingly of the I glorious possibilities in store for us It is only a few years since a passel of bright young humorists sat on the banks of the Hudson and laughed till they ached as they watched the awkward floating thrashing machine of Robert Fulton But where are they today They are dead and no man seeks to dig out the mass and read their unremembered names They laughed and then they died Fulton considered and lived on He laughs best who laughs last If you desire to make a hit laugh at some of your own odd breaks But ifyon want oblivion to have a cinch upon your fame laugh at the shiny elbows and ragged knees of genius and progress |
