I

HERE WE VISIT A BALLOON FARM AND TALK, WITH THE MAN WHO RUNS IT

I NEVER knew a man who has been so many things (and been them all fairly well) as has Carl Myers of Frankfort, New York. They call him "Professor" Myers ever since he took to ballooning, years ago; but they might call him Dr. Myers, for he has studied medicine, or Wrestler Myers, for he is skilled in all tricks of assault and defense, Japanese and others, or Banker Myers, for he spent years in financial dealings, or Printer Myers, for he still sets up his own type, or Telegrapher Myers, or Lecturer Myers, or Carpenter Myers, or Photographer Myers.

All these callings (and some others) Myers has pursued with eagerness and success, only making a change when driven to it by his thirst for varied knowledge and his guiding principle, "I refuse to let this world bore me." To-day the professor is sixty years old (a thin, wiry, sharp-eyed little man), yet I suspect some boys of sixteen who read these pages feel older than he does. You ought to hear him laugh! or tell about the air-ship that has carried him over thirteen States! or describe his "balloon farm" at Frankfort! I don't know when I have enjoyed myself more than during three days Professor Myers spent with me some time ago.

"BALLOON-CLOTH BY HUNDREDS OF YARDS."

Suppose we begin with the balloon farm, which is certainly a queer place. It is a joke in the neighborhood that the professor plants his balloon crop in the spring, gathers it in the fall, and stores it away through the winter. Certain it is that in summer-time the visitor (and visitors come in swarms) sees fields marked off in rows with stakes and cross-poles, on which balloon-cloth by hundreds of yards seems to be growing (really, it is drying); and other fields, that look like an Eskimo village, with houses of crinkly yellowish stuff (really, half-inflated balloons); and groups of men boiling varnish in great kettles which are always getting on fire and may explode; and other men working nimbly at the knitting of nets; and others experimenting with parachutes; and the professor paddling away at the height of three thousand feet for his afternoon "skycycle" sail; and Mme. Carlotta, the celebrated aëronaut (also the professor's wife), making an ascension now and then from the front lawn in a chosen one of her twenty-odd balloons.

"FIELDS THAT LOOK LIKE AN ESKIMO VILLAGE."