“The trial trip was made from the back yard of our house, and nobody was present except Lije and Aristophanes, for my brother was a little shy of exhibiting his inventions in public, owing to their habit of proving failures. The kite was laid on the ground, and Aristophanes was strapped to it and told that he must keep perfectly cool and remember everything that he might see in the clouds. When all was ready, the kite was leaned up against the side of the barn, with the tail neatly coiled so that it would not foul anything, and then Elijah, taking a good run with the string over his shoulder, had the satisfaction of making the kite climb up as if it had been made by the best boy kite-builder in town.
“Holding the string was rather a tough job, for the kite pulled tremendously, and Lije was not a strong man. However, he paid out the line as fast as he could, and so managed to keep the kite steady. He was a little afraid that it would accidentally get away from him, so he tied the end of the string round his waist. There was where he made his great mistake.
“ELIJAH’S FLYING-MACHINE.”
“The kite attracted a good deal of attention in the town, and everybody agreed that the figure in the middle of the kite was a remarkably good representation of a darky, but nobody thought for a moment that it was a genuine darky. Lije had forgotten, in estimating the amount of tail that the kite required, the fact that the wind might rise while the kite was in the air, and that in such case the amount of tail might not be enough to keep it from diving. That is just what happened. After the kite had run out all the string and was as high as the string would let it go, the wind increased and the kite began to dive. Now, everybody knows that diving is one of the most dangerous things a kite can do, and that unless it can be stopped it is sure to bring the kite down and smash it to pieces. Moreover, in this particular case there was Aristophanes, who was pretty sure to be frightened by the diving of the kite—that is, supposing that he was awake. When a kite dives the only remedy is to give it string. As Lije had no more string to let out he was obliged to do the next best thing, which was to slack the string by running with it toward the kite. That stopped the diving, but only for a moment. Every time that Lije tried to stop running and managed to hold back a little against the kite, it would begin to dive again, and about half the time was describing circles in the air and turning Aristophanes upside down. However, Lije knew that so long as he could keep the kite from dashing itself to the ground the darky would come to no harm.
“The wind kept on increasing and the kite pulled harder than ever. Even if Lije had not wanted to run, the kite would have dragged him. He went through the town at about eight miles an hour, yelling to everybody he met, ‘Gimme some string!’ But nobody understood what he said, and they all thought that it was a good joke to see a fat little man careering over the country in tow of a big kite. Of course they supposed that Lije was acting of his own free will and accord. They knew that he was peculiar in his ways, and they fancied that he was taking a little holiday after his hard work. So beyond encouraging him to keep it up and remarking to one another that ‘Lije was the most amusing darned fool in the county,’ they paid no attention to his outcries.
“My brother was not used to active exercise and had next to no wind. The longer he ran with the kite, the more he felt convinced that a tragedy was about to happen. If he kept on running he believed he would drop dead with stoppage of the heart, and if he stopped running he knew that the kite would dash Aristophanes to pieces; and though, of course, it was not as if Aristophanes had been a white boy, still there was the chance that his parents would be disagreeable if he were killed. They were ordinary ignorant darkies, with no sort of love for science. But Lije had grit in him, in spite of all the science that he had pumped into his head. He stuck to the kite-string, and ran his level best until the moment came when he was unable to catch another breath. Then he threw himself against a telegraph pole and clung to it with all his might. The kite couldn’t drag him away from it, and so it gave one tremendous dive, and Lije felt by the sudden slackening of the string that the kite had reached the ground.
