I never knew that a “public character” (that, Heaven help me, apparently is my fate since the flight) could be the target of so much mail.
“Please send me $150; it will just pay for my divorce which I must have....” So read one letter, plus details anent the necessity of the proposed separation. Autographing, I discover, is a national mania. Requests for photographs, freak suggestions, involved communications from inventors, pathetic appeals, have been numerous.
Yes, the mail has brought diverse proposals of marriage, and approximations thereof. Perhaps the widespread publication of my photograph has kept the quantity down!
Best of all the letters are those from average people about the country—mostly women—who have found some measure of satisfaction, or perhaps a vicarious thrill, in the experiment of which I happened to be a small part. For their congratulations and friendly messages I find myself always deeply grateful.
A wave of invitations almost engulfed me, and offers of employment, many of them bewilderingly generous, proved part of the harvest of notoriety. The psychology of inferring that flying the Atlantic equips one for an advertising managership or banking, leaves me puzzled.
However, the correspondence of a “goldfish” isn’t all bouquets, by any means.
Cigarettes have nearly been my downfall. Not subjectively, understand, for my indulgence is decently limited; the count, I think, shows the restrained total of three for the current year. It’s not what I did, but what I said, that caused trouble. I wickedly “endorsed” a certain cigarette which was carried by the boys on the Friendship. This I did to benefit three gallant gentlemen,—Commander Byrd, to whose South Polar Expedition I turned over my own financial proceeds, and the companions on my flight who benefited only if my name was used. Among the immediate souvenirs of my viciousness is a copy of the advertisement, torn from a newspaper and sent to me by an irate commentator. On the margin she wrote: “I suppose you drink too!”
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REAR PLATFORM STUFF