Left to himself, Shiel strolled along the Strand into the Victoria Gardens, where he bought an evening paper, and sat down to read it. The first thing that caught his eye was—
"MAGIC IN LONDON"
"This morning the West End received a shock. About twelve o'clock, a gentleman, fashionably dressed, turned into Bond Street from Piccadilly, and when opposite Messrs. Truefitt's prepared to cross over. The street happened just then to be blocked by a long line of taxis. The gentleman, however, had no intention of waiting till they had passed. Measuring the distance from one pavement to the other with his eyes, he jumped about fifteen feet into the air and cleared the intervening space without the slightest apparent effort—a feat that literally paralysed with astonishment all who beheld it. On being remonstrated with by a policeman, who was highly perplexed as to whether such extraordinary conduct constituted a breach of the peace or not, the gentleman calmly leaped over the policeman's head, and striking out with arms and legs swam through the air.
"Continuing in this fashion, the cynosure of all eyes—even the traffic being suspended to watch him—he passed along Bond Street into Oxford Street, where he once more alighted on his feet. On being questioned by a representative of the Press, it transpired he was Mr. Kelson, one of the partners in the Modern Sorcery Company Ltd., whose wonderful performances at their Hall, in Cockspur Street, have already been reported in these columns."
"I should well like to know how that flying trick is done," Shiel said to himself. "According to Kelson it is entirely a question of will power. I'll see if I can't develop my concentrative faculty and introduce a few of the same performances in our show. I'll go to the Hall and try them now."
But his preliminary efforts were certainly far from successful. He jumped off chairs saying to himself, "I'll fly! I will fly," and he struck out heroically each time, but the result was always the same—gravity conquered—he fell.
Had he not been so much in love with Gladys, he would have desisted; as it was, the more he bumped and bruised himself, the more determined he was to go on trying. In fact, flying with him became a mania; and according to the daily journals, his was by no means the only case. All over England people were trying to fly. An old lady, in Gipsy Hill, appeared in the Police Court to answer a charge of causing annoyance to her neighbours by practising flying, from off her bed, at night. Her bulk being large and her will power apparently small, she yielded to gravity and landed on the ground with prodigious bumps, which set everything in the room vibrating, and which could be plainly heard in the adjoining houses, through the thin brick walls on either side of her room.
An old gentleman in Guilsborough had an extremely narrow escape. Being warned on no account to practise flying in the house or garden, lest his grandchildren should see him and want to do the same, he retired to the seclusion of an old, disused and dilapidated coach house. Here, in the upper storey, he practised by the hour together. He climbed on to a stool which he had taken there for the purpose, and when he fancied he had acquired the right amount of concentration, he sprang into the air, arriving, presumably through want of will power, on the floor. For two whole days he practised—bump—bump—bump—and the more he bumped, the more he persevered. At last, however, the floor gave way, and with loud cries of "I will! I will!" he fell on the ground floor, ten feet below! He was unable to go on experimenting, owing to a broken leg and a fractured collar-bone.
In Aylsham, Norfolk, there had been a perfect epidemic among the children for trying aeronic gravity. Rudolph Crabbe, aged five, after listening to an account of the performances at the Modern Sorcery Company's Hall, which his father had read aloud, sprang off the dining-room table crying out "I will fly! I will stay in the air." Fortunately, he fell on the tabby cat, which somewhat broke the shock of concussion, and he escaped unhurt.
In College Road, Clifton, Bristol, an octogenarian thinking he would add novelty to the Jubilee celebrations at the College, leaped off the roof of his house, crying, "I'll fly over the Close! I will fly over the Close!"—and broke his neck.