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Show Balloon Racing. The racing of balloons is becoming one of the most popular outdoor sports, and we have hopes that it will be many years before any one Invents an indoor variety of the game. Exhilarating and exciting to the extreme, ex-treme, the balloon race has caught the fancy of the public. The anchors have also caught several yearling shoats, barn roofs, stake-and-rider fences and one of them caught a hired man asleep in the hay field in southern ' Indiana' and yanked him aloft so suddenly sud-denly that he thought it was judgment day and confessed to a great many things that had been blamed on other people, before he realized his error. The modus operandi of a balloon race is to assemble the contesting balloons in a flock and fill them with gas. At a given signal the ropes are cut and the great bags arise and dash madly hither and yon in their efforts to win. Each balloon is man-ney man-ney by a captain and a pilot. All the captain and pilot have to do is to furnish their pictures to the newspapers newspa-pers and walk home after the balloon comes down, unless they carry railroad rail-road fare with them. A captain trying try-ing to command a balloon or a pilot trying to pilot it has about as much chance of success as you or I, gentle reader, when we endeavor to convince a hen that she does not want to set. After the balloons start in the race they go in all directions. That is the great charm about the sport. Nobody No-body knows where a balloon will go. It is as irresponsible as a thistledown. Two or three hours after the start one of the balloons comes down on the Baptist church In the next county seat, and after the captain has detached detach-ed himself from the spire he explains that he could have stayed up for a week, but that the gas leaked or he couldn't find the right current of air. That is one annoyance in the sport. A captain will go up and hunt every-where every-where for the right current, and not be able to lay his hand on It, although he could have sworn it was right where he thought It should he. The other balloons drop from time to time in widely separated sections of the country, speeding in their mad flight with all the abandon of a bunch of empty barrels rolling down hlll. The last balloon to come down wins the race; the captain and pilot walk to the nearest town and wire home for money. Already the sporting blood of the country is being warmed. Soon tho thoroughbred balloon will appear, and gentlemen farmers will have their balloon stables. Old balloons that have taken purses In many a contest con-test will be rewarded by being turned out to air for the rest of their lives. Tbe gas companies are very enthusiastic enthu-siastic over the sport. |