Now and then in the night I would almost yield to a wild impulse and catch those pantaloons off the hook, to rush out and go to Canada with them, and then I would softly go through the pockets and hang them back again.
It was an awful night. When morning dawned at last, and I took the pillow out of my ear and looked in the delirious and soap-spattered mirror, I saw that my beautiful hair, which had been such a source of pride to me ten years ago, had disappeared in places. I paid my bill, called the attention of the landlord to the fact that I had not taken those pantaloons and 'betrayed' his trust, and then I went away.
Flying Machines.
A long and exhaustive examination of the history of flying machines enables me to give briefly some of the main points of a few, for the benefit of those who may be interested in this science. I give what I do in order to prepare the public to take advantage of the different methods, and be ready at once to fly as soon as the weather gets pleasant.
A Frenchman invented a flying-machine, or dofunny, as we scientists would term it, in 1600 and something, whereby he could sail down from the woodshed and not break his neck. He could not rise from the ground like a lark and trill a few notes as he skimmed through the sky, but he could fall off an ordinary hay stack like a setting hen, with the aid of his wings. His name was Besnier.
One hundred and twenty-five years after that a prisoner at Vienna, named Jacob Dagen, told the jailer that he could fly. The jailer seemed incredulous, and so Jake constructed a pair of double barrel umbrellas, that worked by hand, and fluttered with his machine into the air fifty feet. He came down in a direct line, and in doing so ran one of the umbrellas through his thorax. I am glad it is not the custom now to wear an umbrella in the thorax.
In England, during the present century, several inventors produced flying machines, but in an evil hour agreed to rise on them themselves, and so they died from their injuries. Some came down on top of the machines, while others preceded their inventions by a few feet, but the result was the same. The invention of flying machines has always been handicapped, as it were, by this fact Men invent a flying machine and then try to ride it and show it off, and thus they are prevented by death from perfecting their rolling stock and securing their right of way.
In 1842, Mr. William Henderson got out a “two-propeller” machine, and tried to incorporate a company to utilize it for the purpose of carrying letters, running errands, driving home the cows, lighting the Northern Lights and skimming the cream off the Milky Way, but it didn't seem to compete very successfully with other modes of travel, and so Mr. Henderson wrapped it up in an old tent and put it away in the hay-mow.