The NORTHERN POLE.
The real difficulty is for the balloon, loaded with numberless precious documents, to find its way out before winter sets in with its long cold nights and horrors. This exit must be made at any cost by directing the balloon into a wind tending to some part of the south. Mr. Andrée will certainly not pay attention to the geographical position of the spot where he is to alight. He will not care whether he lands on land or on sea. It will make no difference to him whether he sets foot on rocks or on cracking ice. He will trust equally to the frozen Atlantic or to the congelated Pacific if he can descend from cloudland above the horizon of a whaler. Russia, Siberia, Alaska, or the Northern Dominions are as good as his own country, if it is not beyond his power to reach some locality inhabited by Esquimos, Laplanders, or Samoyeds. The main point is to see The Northern Pole afloat for a long period, say a month. At all events, Mr. Ekholm calculates that the balloon will remain in the air at least fifteen or twenty days, and that during this time it will have passed over a distance of nearly four thousand miles.
In order to be quite sure to navigate in the atmosphere twelve times longer than any aeronautical run performed up to the present day (the thirty-six hours' voyage made in 1892 by M. Maurice Mallet, who has drawn the accompanying sketches), Mr. Andrée is having his balloon made absolutely impermeable, of the best and most costly material, with a new varnish and exceptional sewing. He has replaced even the usual valve at the top by two others a great deal smaller and fixed to the equator of the balloon, to be used only for ordinary manœuvres during the prolongation of the voyage, for he is determined not to make any pause, decided to fall from cloudland like a thunderbolt to the very spot selected by instantly opening his monstrous sphere with a tearing rope, to which will be attached a dagger for the grand and final moment.
[EARLY DAYS OF SUCCESSFUL MEN.]
WILLIAM EUSTIS RUSSELL.
BY LLOYD McKIM GARRISON.
If you have ever attended the Harvard-Yale football game at Springfield, and sat upon the Harvard side of the field, you must have been struck by the enthusiasm that ran along the crowded benches as a certain slender, youthful-looking gentleman passed by them looking for his seat. You might have seen the same enthusiasm break forth along those densely packed New York streets through which the great Columbian parade marched nearly two years ago, or, in Chicago, all the way from Lincoln Park to the White City, whenever among the group of Governors of the different States there appeared the same young-looking gentleman, managing his black horse with a strong hand, and sitting him with a firmness that showed the muscles of his lithe figure under his black official coat. That gentleman was William Eustis Russell, then Governor of Massachusetts, the leader of the Democratic party in his State, and the possessor of a personal popularity which is not limited by her boundaries.
When you are a Freshman in college you are apt to look upon the big Senior Captain of the university crew as a person of unusual strength and size. You never imagine that he could have been different when he was a Freshman. You think he must have been born so, and grieve because in your class there are no Freshmen like him. It is only when you yourself wake up one morning and find that you are no longer a Freshman, but a Senior and Captain of the crew, that you realize that all great men are first boys before they are anything else, and that what afterwards makes them great is pluck and character and their admiration and emulation of other great men. This is true of the greatest generals and statesmen, just as of 'varsity oarsmen. They were not always solemn men with black coats and white cravats, but boys, and probably jolly ones; and so it was with Governor Russell, whose boyhood was such a happy and hearty one that it has kept in his face the appearance of youth, which makes his accomplishments seem so remarkable.