cs
ee re a RE Te Te
Bellefonte, Pa., November 4, 1927
LITTLE BOY BLUE.
The little toy dog is covered with duse,
But sturdy and staunch he stands:
And the little toy soldier is red with rust,
And his musket molds in his hands.
Time was when the little toy dog was new
And the soldier was passing fair;
And that was the time when Little Boy
Blue
Kissed them and put them there.
“Now, don’t you go till I come,” he said,
“And don’t you make any noise!’
8o, toddling off to hia trundle-bed,
He dreamt of the pretty toys.
And as he was dreaming, an angel ‘song
Awakened our Little Boy Blue;
Ob, the years are many, the years are long,
But the little toy friends are true.
Ay, faithful to Little Boy Blue they stand,
Each in the same old place,
Awaiting the touch of a little hand,
The smile of a little face;
And they wondered, as waiting these long
years through,
In the dust of that little chair, |
What has become of our Little Boy Blue,
8ince he kissed them and put them there.
—FEugene Field.
Ne rr —————
THE BOY IN THE SILVER SHIP.
It was light. There was no more
rain, and the fog was lifting every
second. He got out and nodded to
Frazier. Again the motor roared
into life. “I wonder if she knows
she’ll never stop for a day and a
half, this time?” Lindley thought,
and people marveled at the smile that
came to his face.
He looked at the crowd, and dozens
of bearlike grips from the men about
him fairly crushed his hand.
“Good luck, boy,” Accord said
huskily, and Chambers, his face drawn
and tense, was wordless, but in his
handclasp was all the understanding
of brotherhood of the air.
Commander Fowler held his hand
for five long seconds, Then:
1 “So long, Slim. See you in Paris!”
. Lindley turned away in agony of
eribarrassment. He could not say
the things he wanted to say to those
great hearted sportsmen=—
nsysens hii ering roar of the en-
gine died slowly to ag, :
show dees she sound?” Lindley
evenly.
“Sounds good to me,” Frazier said,
his voice unsteady.
“Then I might as well go,” Slim
found himself saying, and he was in
the cockpit almost before the mechan-
ic was out of it.
His hand eased the throttle for-
ward as the “Spirit of St. Louis”
strained against the wheel blocks, wild
to be gone. His eyes swept the in-
struments. Gently, the throttle came
back. He took a deep breath and
and leaned out the open door.
“Pull the blocks,” he shouted, and
then:
“So long, everybody!”
The throttle went forward. Slow-
ly, the overweighted little craft start-
ed down the ash runway. Slim was
looking through his periscope, his
body strained forward over the stick
as though to help his comrade along.
The gallant monoplane did its
mightiest. He could feel it strain-
ing beneath him, and felt that it was
a living thing making a superhuman
effort to do its job. The soft, rain-
soaked earth clung to the wheels.
Ahead of him was a gully, then tele-
phone wires.
He rocked it, and felt it answer.
He was in the air—
But only for a second. The ship
dropped, and again the wheels were
held in that clinging embrace. But
there was no turning back. Sudden-
ly, there leaped into his vision the
half of a propeller thrust into the
ground ahead of him—grim remind-
er of the fate of gallant men who had
lost there lives here a year before,
starting on the mission he had set
himself.
as
He heaved back on the stick, and
again the ship answered. It was
staggering through the air, like an ov-
er burdened animal weakening under
the strain. He must keep it there, or
that gully ahead would turn him and
his beloved craft into mangled ruins.
It seemed that the indomitable
spirit flaming within him flowed
through the fingers into the ship.
With all his transcendent skill, he
fought to keep the ship in the air.
One more dip to the ground, and no
power on earth could save them. The
monoplane staggered drunkenly along
—but above the ground.
Foot by foot, with scarcely enough
flying speed even to stay level, he
forced it upward. He was white, his
eyes pools of tragedy, as the telephone
wires loomed ahead and above him.
Then:
“You did it, you did it!” he whis-
pered weakly, and as the wires, fairly
scraping the undercarriage, slid be-
low him, he sank back in his seat. He
leveled out a bit, as though resting
‘his hip. A mile ahead were trees.
Somehoxs he knew they would hurdle
that obstacle, The test had come, and
the ship had been equal to it. He was
not surprised when the slow-climbing
ship cleared the trees, and the song
of the motor became a hymn of tri-
umph.
~ As though the gods themselves
were smiling, the first ray of sun
burst through the thinning clouds.
And to Slim, sitting in his snugly
enclosed cockpit like a lone crusader
bound for conquest, it seemed that
a higher power was clearing the way
for him. That coast, which had been
fog-bound for days, lay smiling be-
neath the sun ag the fog fairly rolled
away ahead of him. t a hundred
miles an hour he winged his way
along, knowing every second where he
was.
Two hours later, he set his course
from Scituate, on the shores of Mass-
achusetts Bay; for Nova: Scotia. That
land flight had seemed like the hops
from San Diego—a mere preliminary.
Now, as he got halfway across on the
two hundred mile water jump, he
gazed below him at the smiling sea.
hips were here and there—
“But there won’t be any, later,”
he reminded himself.
Fog over Newfoundland he'd been
told. He hoped it wouldn't be too
thick. Perhaps there wouldn't be any.
He was unaware of the passage of
time. The figures on the clock were
meaningless, as far as actual con-
sciousness of what they indicated was
concerned. Prevading his whole being
was sort of a transcendent exaltation,
an exaltation so great that the
thought of what lay ahead of him
held no terrors. The Atlantic was
merely a difficult obstruction, requir-
ing greater ' concentration to sur-
mount. - :
Land ahead—Nova Scotia. That
would be Meteghan down there, if
his earth indicator had not failed. It
was. The time was 12:25. Again the
flying was easy as he roared up the
coast. Halifax, then Port Mulgrave,
and the electric clock said exactly
four o'clock as he pointed his ship out
over the water from the tip of Nova
Sctia and sent it hurtling into the
misty air that stretched ahead of him.
Now as the cooling air chilled him
and sullen water rolled beneath, his
face grew more set, and his eyes held
a look of deepened brooding. One
nore tiny interval over land—and
the die would be cast. Five o'clock,
six, and about seven he should sight
land again—the southern tip of New-
foundland. Be
The mist was turning into a heavy
fog that rolled in from the icy waters
of the Grand Banks. Foot by foot,
he was forced down, until at the last
the Spirit of St. Louis was darting
along less than a thousand feet above
the sullenly heaving water. His
eyes- held -almost ceaselessly fo his
compass, flitting occasionally to his
drift indicator. .
Nearly seven o’clock—and there
appeared in the eyes of his periscope
a dark line acoss the sea. He strain-
ed forward in his seat.
“Land all right,” he told himself
thankfully. “It must be Newfound-
land.”
Sr a moment he leaned back, re-
laxed.. Then his body stiffened. His
ship. dropped lower. It was the rug-
ged, bleak-looking coast of Newfound-
land, but he must find some land mark
to set his course by, The fog was so
thick he could scarcely sd anything.
He must find the elty of St. John’s,
if possible. He could, perhaps, take
his bearings from Cape Race, but he
wanted to make sure of himself by
locating the island’s chief town. He
swung the nose of the dripping mono-
plane northward, seeking about like
a hound for the scent. The northeast
ir of the southern extreme of the is-
and—
Suddenly it burst into view as he
flew northward, now less than five
hundred feet high as the fog forced
him down. There was the bay, and
there the small city. Tense as =n
drawn wire, he circled: around it
briefly, getting his bearings and set-
ting his course. Then he circled
again, methodically figuring what he
and his ship had done. Eleven hun-
dred fifty miles in a few minutes less
than twelve hours. A favoring wind
had helped the overladen ship aver-
age a hundred miles an hour, and
now it was picking up speed as its
tremendous cargo lightened. From
his fuel guage he estimated that he
had used gas at the rate of about
twelve gallons an hour.
Eastward stretched the Atlantic—
nineteen hundred miles of it—-to Ire-
and. Again he verified his course.
The slightest deviation would mean
hundreds of miles off course at the
other end of the flight. He had
plenty of gasoline, and plenty of oil.
Ahead of him the motor was firing
without a break, and below him, his
second self, The Spirit of St. Louis,
| seemed to be straining ahead as he
pointed it eastward. Cs
His eyes were the eyes of a man in
a trance, and his lips worked as his
hand caressed the throttle, now at
three-quarters.
“Here we go,” he whispered, as
they—he and his ship—hurled them-
selves into the fog, which blotted out
tke land as though Newfoundland had
been wiped from the earth. Just
a few feet below him, huge
white-topped waves, like the teeth
of a monster lying hungrily in wait
for prey, leaped at the ghostship.
He was utterly alone, save for his
ship. The fog had swallowed up the
ship and the man whom the world was
watching.
He never dreamed, as he hurtled
along through the gradually lighten-
ing fog, that he was being borne on
the hopes and prayers of three hun-
dred and fifty million people. He did
not know that he had searcely gone
fifty miles beyond Newfoundland be-
fore the world was aware of the fact
that he was out over the sea, nor that:
in gorgeous theatres men and women
were standing in silent prayer for
him. He would have been stunned
at the mere idea that there was
scarcely a home in the western world
or a street corner in a town, where
his name was not on someone’s lips,
and his fate close to someone’s heart.
He would have smiled his bashful,
boyish smile, and flushed with embar-
rassment, had he ever been told that
he had gathered within himself the
dreams of the world he had left be-
hind, and that he in his silver ship
was the physical symbol of what
earthbound mortals of the watching
world dreamed they would like to be.
He wag just a flyer, taking a chance
to prove what a ship and a man could
do, writing another page in the his-
tory of the game he loved, and the
only reward he wanted was the op-
portunity to march in the vanguard of
the air.
Momentarily, as his motor roared
its song of defiance to sea and fog,
he weakened. He found himself
taut and overwrought as his eyes
strained into the opaque mist, and
saw the darkly brooding pot of water
below him rise perilously closer.
“Have I got to go through this for-
ever?” he exploded, and it seemed
that the strain of fourteen continuous
hours -in the :air - had frayed his
nerves, and broken the iron control
with which he held himself.
“Guess I'll climb,” he decided sud-
denly, and the temporary nervousness
was over. He was again the cool’
flyer, as he thrst the throttle all the
way on, and sent his ship upward in-
to a blank wall of mist.
He kept it level, and in a gradual
climb, with the help of his banking
and climbing indicators. His eyes
of | were on the little bubbles almost con-
stantly. He could not see fifteen feet
in any direction. Hunched in his tiny
cckpit with the fog like a shroud
about him and the open sea beneath
him, he leveled out at five thousand
feet, and the song of the motor, drop-
ped into a lower key as he throttled
it, was like the voice of a friend from
out the limitless loneliness that was
s. iy
A half hour later, and suddenly the
silver ship hurled itself out of the fog.
Above him was a darkening sky, be-
low him a blue-gray sea that stirred
itself in long swells, like a monster,
stretching. Stars winked on as the
heavens darkened, and the water be-
game a white-splotched floor below
m.
He wasn’t hungry, but he munched a
sandwich—bis first food. To his dy-
ing day he will never know what that
sandwich was made of.
As night fell, shortly after nine
o'clock, the motor seemed to run with
a smoother rythm, and the ship, as
though to reassure him, was bounding
more buoyantly through the smooth
air. To the north of him, like ghos*-
ly rafts, great icebergs glinted in the
wan starlight. Then a great, heav-
ing sea of ice floes. And ever the
twain—ship and pilot—rushed on into
the night, farther and farther from
possible rescue, and nearer and nearer
to their goal, twenty-two hundred
miles away. ;
Again he was unconscious of the
passage of time. Flying was auto-
matic, now, and his sustained exalta-
tion sped the time on wings. He
thought of nothing in particular. The
consciousness of his goal was always
with him, and yet in the background.
The roar of the motor had become
hypnotic, lulling his senses info 4
vague dreaminess.’
e scarcely looked ahead. Occa-
sionally he gazed down at the water
patiently waiting to destroy him, but
he rarely thought of what the fail-
ure of two of those cylinders ahead
of him would mean. His ship would
not fail—why, it couldn’! It was
his own— j
“A ship!” he said suprisedly, and
it was almost unpleasant to come out
of his trance, and realize what that
single twinkling light meant. The
knowledge that below him, a boat was
plowing through the water, brought
no sense of comforting safety to. him.
It brought not even 'a momentar
thrill of companionship, nothing would,
now. He was alone, a demigod wing-
ing his way through the air—and that
Teant the height of happiness for
m, ;
The light dropped behind, and dis-
appeared back of one of the growing
number of white piles that sailed in
stately splendor across his path.
Midnight—more than five hundred
miles from shore. : ;
“Plenty of gas, plenty of gas!” be-.
came the refrain of the Wright as he
made a mental calculation from his
fuel guage. .
Another light shone on the clear
night. Far to the south some vessel
was plowing its own lonely way across
the swelling sea.
Another hour passed. Time didn’t
exist. The sky seemed lightening,
while the clouds thickened and grew
larger. He was conscious of occa-
sional puffs of wind, too, that some-
times lifted the wings of his ship.
The water became lighter as the
stars went out, and the cloud seem-
ed to turn grey.
i He looked at his clock unbelieving-
v.
“Gosh, it hasn’t stopped, has it?”
was the thought that flashed into his
mind.
Had he been five or six hours more
than he thought, out over the sea?
“No, that much ‘gas hasn’t been
used up—Holy Moses! What a dumb
bell I am!” he told himself disgusted-
ly. “Nights are shorter in this coun-
try!” < " :
In a few minutes, he was winging
along in the broad daylight—and it
was not yet two o'clock. But as day-
light came, the clouds seemed to mass
together in menacing gray piles. Now -
he was leaning forward, his eyes fiit-
ting from compasses to the periscope.
A huge bank of mist lay directly
ahead. It would be only a mile or
so to go northward, so he could get
around it. His eyes. on the earth in-
ductor compass and the clock, he
turned his ship and darted along on
the very fringe of the cloud. He must
turn the ship southward the same
number of degrees, for the same
length of time, to get back on his
course.
As he banked around the cloud,
others seemed to be closing in on all
sides. ; '
“I've got to go through!” he told
himself grimly, “or I won’t know
where IT am!” i
He turned southward, eyes on the
compass, and a few seconds later his
ship was swallowed up in the fog.
And: he had become a drawn taut
mechanism, with narrowed eyes and
bounding heart as he realized ‘the
truth. The sleet rattled against his
ship like the continuous roll of musk-
etry, and before his eyes, his win
struts were being coated with ice.
few minutes of that, and the curva-
ture of the wings would change, his
ship become unmanageable—
“I've got to dive to melt it—I can’t
get over!” he thought with sinking
heart, and shoved the stick ahead. It
would melt, at a lower altitude. If
it didn’t—he thought of himself
afloat in hig litle raft, and strove to
blot the suggestion. Meanwhile, his
ship flashed downward at almost two
hundred miles an hour.
“Thank goodness for the all-metal
prop!” he thought as he darted
through blackness. The altimeter
dropped swiftly. He was white fac-
ed and tight-lipped, and his eyes look-
ed disaster in the face, as his ship be-
came wing heavy—so much so that he
had to fight the stick to keep it level.
Fifteen hndred feet, a thousand.
He could ‘scarcely: control the mono-
plane, now, and seconds would tell the
tale.
| spirit reservoir.
dle of the Atlantic, he scarcely: re-
the ice coating on the ship turn to
water. He was but fifty feet high.
Now he wag down to ten feet, he had
tobe, tosde. .
A few seconds later he leaned for-
ward hope in his eyes. There was
light ahead, but even as he flashed
forth from the storm, he knew that
his temporary exultation had been!
premature. All around him were
more clouds, down to the very water,
and on every side. |
he renewed the fight, the fight
that seemed never-ending. He bank-
er around the first cloud, eyes glued to
his compass, and with motor full on,
climbed at the same time. Banking
and circling, striving to calculate in!
minutes and degrees the changes in
his course in order to compensate
for them when he had a chance, he
inched his way upward on a tortuous
course. Three times, below five thou-
sand feet, he was forced into a few
seconds of that deadly rain of sleet
and snow, but each time he fought
through in time.
Six thousand feet, and there loom-
ed above him, from horizon to hori- |
zon, a dense wall of black mist. He
could never get over it, and again the
silvery ship rushed downward, and |
for taunt miles he skipped along,
barely above the waves that flung
themselves upward like wolves leap- |
ing at their prey. The rain pound-
ed against the ship, and suddenly a
great wave, twenty-five feet high,
rushed like a charging monster from !
out the opaque storm.
He cried out, as he pulled the ship '
back, and as it answered, its under-'
carriage was wet with the creamy
foam that was like teeth on the crest
of the water. 2
Then, as a momentary surcease
from the deadly strain, came an in-
terval of a minute during which time
he must decide between two things.
He was in the clear, but another mass
of sleet-filled mist was marching to-
ward him. It was not so high, and
he decided to go over it. With the
motor roaring ifs loudest and the
tachometer needle wobbling as the
ship vibrated, he elimbed desperately.
Circling and ducking back, chancing
a minute of sleet at a time, he work-
ed his way upward. He handled the
ship with the matchless skill that was
his, ag his brain almost unconsciously
kept track of his deviations from com-
pass course.
. Ten thousand feet high, he sank
back and wiped the beads of icy
sweat from his lined forehead. He
wag above them, but miles ahead,
higher ones, their tops scraping the
very sky, were coming toward him.
And they never stopped. Hour af-
ter tragic hour went by, as he fought
his fight. A dozen times he was forc-
ed to rush downward through the icy
particles which drove against his
ship in savage, deadly millions, and
then almost to dodge the waves in a
driving downpour of rain. Then up
again, fighting for every inch of al-
titude, making a thousand life-and-
death decisions every honr, sometimes
attaining a moment’s peace two miles
in the air, only to see coming toward
him, in ceaseless phanlanxes the army
of the air. His ship thrown about in
the swirling cauldrons of the winds,
his body a network of nerves strained
to the breaking point, sleepless and
without food, he fought until he could
fight no longer. Not even the blurred
song of the motor that had never fail-
ed him could help him now.
“I've got to turn back—I can’t
make it!” he thought desparingly, as
another gargantuan cloud, that seem-
ed to cover the sea and the sky at
once, forced him into another heart-
breaking fight.
Flesh and blood could stand no
more. He was through—
And then it was that the strength
he had stored up through the years
seemed to well from some mysterious
The blood of Vik-
ings, who had conquered the sea a
thousand years before surged hot
through his veins. In a sort of su-
blime madness he flung back his head,
and to the great gray monsters who
rolled down on the battered dauntless
ship he cried his challenge to do their
worst—and fought on.
He felt a ferocious joy in the fight,
now. He flung his ship into the teeth
of the storm of gods, and it seemed
that he helped to lift on. Two hands
on the stick, sometimes, to combat the
winds that strove to tear it to pieces,
cheating the waves that would de-
vour him one minute, and fighting
for precious altitude the next, he
clung to his course. In the very mid-
alized where he was or what he was
doing, as he and his ship fought their
great gray enemies, and beat off bil-
lions of missiles that sought to batter
them. A thousand times the ship was
almost out of his control, until he
gritted his teeth and brought it level
in the lower rain.
It was eleven o'clock, but he did
not know it, when his bloodshot eyes,
peering through the periscope, for a
second, before going back to the com-
pass needle, discerned a lightening
ahead. He lifted his ship over a wave,
and as though to dare the sea, drop-
ped it down again to look. A mo-
ment’s respite was ahead, he decided,
and then another round in the fight
that would go on until he and the
monoplane were battered into ruins—
He stared ahead stupidly as the
plane flashed forth into a smiling
sunlight on an almost tranquil sea.
These were great rollers, but they
were not pricked by rain. And as
far as he could see, there was not a
cloud in the sky.
For a moment, he scarcely could
comprehend that his fight was over.
Utterly spent, he mechanically sent
the ship into the climb. His dulled
mind began to work. Eleven o'clock
—if he was still on his course, within
five hours he should sight land.
For the moments, though, that
thought meant little. A five hun-
dred feet, he leveled the ship, and
munched half of a sandwich. He
threw the other half out the window.
He had no desire for food. He was
so tired—
: He: caught himself just in time.
For a minute or .two, he had been
flying in_ his sleep-—sleep with his
eyes wide open. He strove to combat
He gasped with relief, as he saw |
| briefly through his periscope,
below him
overcome him. He seemed without
feeling incapable of thought.
“Snap out of it!” he told himself
suddenly and his weary body straight-
ened. ;
He looked over his instruments,
and then it was that something elec-
tric seemed to course through his
veins. He was on the way to Parts
already only five hours from land.
| The worst part of the Atlantic was
conquered. All that it meant came
to him, and his dulled eyes
brightened and strength flowed from
his mind to his body. And as his
eyes rested on the motor cylinders
before him, he was ashamed. Th
ship was no more his brain child—
it .was a mighty thing, more worthy
of trust than he.
‘With each minute, his exultation
mounted higher. bg
An hour passed, and as he gazed
he
leaned forward.
“Land!” he cried aloud, and his
heart was pumping like mad.
He had made terrific speed—must
been a strong tail wind—
“Where is it?” he asked himself in:
bewilderment, as that island he had
seen disappeared. :
He slumped back in his seat, and
then the boyish smile flickered across
his drawn face.
“A mirage—and I was crazy
enough to believe it,” he chided him-
self. “Wake up Slim, wake up!”
Two hours that were: meaningless
chunks of time, and what he saw he
knew was no mirage. There were
fishing vessels ahead—he must be
nearing land!
And then there assailed his sud-
denly super-stimulated mind all the
dread possibilities to which he had
given no thought for hours. He had
tried to remain on his course—but
had he? He might be hundreds of
miles from it. But there must be
land, somewhere, not too far away.
Impulsively he cut the motor, and
sent the ship into a steep dive. For
a second he held it in a semi-stall
above one of the vessels. Vague
white faces looked up at him wonder-
ingly.
“Am I on the road to Ireland?”
he ‘yelled at the top of his voice, and
then laughed at himself.
“They couldn’t hear,” he chuckled—
an exultant chuckle as he pushed the
throttle forward and the motor an-
swered.
He knew he was close to land. He
felt that he had finished the flight al-
ready. But only for a minute. As
he got a grip on himself, and the cool
‘placidity of mind that was normally
-his, returned to him, he realized that
‘he was still looking over water to the
horizon. ’ :
: Nevertheless, his eye barely. left
the periscope before him from then
on, and he searched the sky line with
mounting eagerness. His speed, he
dared not try to calculate; the storm
had made that impossible. "And the
thught, which seemed despicable ‘to
him, still would recur:
Suppose the motor ‘should fail—
after eighteen hours over the ocean!”
But it did not. When he actually
did see land, the motor seemed to lift
its song into a pean of triumph, and
the ship seemed to increase its speed
as though it, too, saw that narrow
black line in front of it.
It was no mirage, this. It was land.
A rocky coast.
“Ireland, by the mighty!” the young
flyer told himself slowly. “Got to
turn south, of course, set my course
again, and it’s only six hundred miles
now.”
And 1:30 in the afternoon. In a
few moments, his last doubt wags dis-
sipated, as the outlines of the shore
coincided exactly with
Dingle Bay. .
“That was lucky,” he told himself.
“Only a few miles off my course, with
that storm. And I'm in Europe!”
Starry eyed, the feel of victory
within him, he sent his ship higher
and higher and rushed along on his
nearly completed journey. The short
hop to England was made, it seemed
to him, in but a moment, as he sped
over the rolling, park-like terrian of
Britain, he went still higher to cross
the channel. = He felt superstitious
about that strip of water, somehow.’
“Just my luck to come in that,
now!” he told himself, and laughed
then with almost hysterical exuber-
ance. :
“We have won, we have won, we
have won,” sung the mighty little mo-
tor, minute after minute.
As darkness fell, his glowing eyes
picked out Bayeaux, near the arm of
the channel noted on his map as
‘Seine Bas. so:
“An hour and a half more, an hour
and a half more!” the motor was sing-
ing in his ears, and his body was afire.
~ “Pipe down, big boy, pipe down,”
he talked to himself. “A forced land-
ing in the dark could cook your ‘goose
right now, as easy as the Atlantic
could.”
And again he was the constrained
flying man, his joyousness suppressed
into a quiet happiness such as he had
never known before.
“Now to the Seine River—can't
miss it—and Paris!” he thought, and
with his whole being set on the goal,
the significance of it he temporarily
forgot. He just must get there that
was all.
A full fifty miles from Paris, his
eyes discerned the lights of it. A slim
golden arrow—the Eiffel = tower—
beckoned him. Tiny lights that seem-
ed to be rockets danced like fireflies
below huge lines of light shooting
upward into the black sky. Rockets,
and the searchlights of the aero-
drome,
With his goal in sight, all he could
think was:
“If the motor should fail now!”
But it did not. He was two miles
high, because he wanted plenty of
gliding distance should the engine
that had carried him thirty-six hun-
dred miles without a miss, fail at the
end of its cruel strain. And two miles
high he still was, as he peered down
on the brightly lighted field that he
knew must be the Le Bourget air-
port. There were the lights of myr-
iad cars, and a dense black mass that
must be people, waiting.
He cut the throttle gradually, so
the drowsiness that was trying to
gently that it was like a caress. The
: motor seemed to
The |
i clothes.
die thankfully, as
1 very tired, © = Ho
And then, winging down silently
through the night in graceful spirals,
he strove to comprehend what that
field below him meant. And he could
rot. A vision had come true, and all
that he had yearned for would be his.
His silver plane had become a dreams
ship that had carried him to the har-
bor of his heart’s desire. And his
eyes were wet as he patted the side of
the cockpit, and said huskily: .
“You did it, old girl, you did it!”
He landed smoothly, but he was in
a trance. Suddenly his body went
limp, and he gazed stupidly at a tor-
rent of black figures sweeping across
the field toward him. He knew, later,
that ‘twenty-five thousand frenzied
people had burst all barriers to rol}
over him in a tidal wave of humanity.
He could not move, it seemed, save
to cut the motor dead in order to have
the propeller .still when those people
arrived. As the leaders swept up to
him, he thrust his head from the
cockpit, and smiled,
“Well, I made it,” he found himself
saying, but it was scarcely heard by
a living soul, he knew.
In a daze, he felt himself lifted’
from the cockpit, felt himself" swaying"
on the shoulders of a dozen men, the
center of a sea of humanity, mad with
excitement. He was dropped, and he’
fought to keep from being trampled.
A sea of faces, indistinguished words
in French battering at his ears, woe
men in tears and men shouting them-
selves hoarse—
He was whirled about, and saw the
crowd around the ship. They were
tearing at it—souvenirs—
In a trice his brain cleared, and he
found himself shouting:
“The ship, the ship! Don’t let them:
hurt it. Don’t let them do that!”
But it was useless. For a second,
he felt that he himself was being
mangled. But he was helpless. Again
he was lifted to the shoulders of the
strangers. :
A car forced itself through the
mass that was fairly hurling his tired’
body over a surface of hands. Smil--
ing uncertainly, he felt himself whisk--
ed into the car, and two French offic--
ers were pumping his hand as the au--
to sped across the field to the com-
mandant’s office.
. Drawn faced and grimy, hair fall--
Ing over eyes that were burning with:
an almost unearthly glow, he ank in-
to a ‘chair. He shook a thousand
hands, smiling always, and then a
distinguished looking man with a
shock of gray hair burst through the
men about him and took the fiyer’s
hand in both of his.
“I'm Ambassador Merrick,” he said’
unsteadily, “and-—Captaln, you're the'
hero of the whole world this night!”
“Thank you, sir,” Lindy said smil~
ingly, “but that’s going a little bit
too far, isn’t it?” There certainly
was a lot of excitement, he thought.
It hadn’t been such a tough flight,
all in all.
A half hour later he was at the
Embassy, spirited there as though by
magic, safe from the tens of thous-
ands of men and women who would
have worn his tired body out with:
thei¥ adulation. Some hot milk, a
bath—and the happiest youth in all’
Christendom has laid himself down:
to sleep in pajamas belonging to the:
Ambassador of the United States to:
France. 2
Gosh, but he was tired. His long
legs bent slightly to fit the bed, his
hair spread over the pillow, he had
time ‘to think.
“Well I'm here. Everybody sure-
is marvelous to me. I'll bet Mother,
and Billy and the Major and the boys:
get a little kick out of it. I wonder
—what—they’re doing now—""
The door opened slightly, but the
Ambassador stopped ‘as he saw the
doubled-up fiugre beneath the bed
Outside a mob was singing
and cheering, but Slim was. sleeping
like a tired baby. The Ambassador
closed the door softly. Fed
Three minutes later a message was
flashing across the Atlantic, follow-
ing’ SIim’s own, previously-sent mes-
sage: :
“Warmest congratulations. Your
incomparable son has done me the
honor. to be my guest. He is in fine
condition, and is sleeping sweetly be-
neath his country’s roof.” —Ameri-
en ‘Boy. From the Reformatory Rec-
ord.
though
The Real Music
One will lose no music by not at:
tending: thie oratorios and operas, The:
really inspiring: melodies are cheap
and universal; and are as audible to:
the poor man's son: as to the rich
man’s, Listening: to the harmonies of
the universe is not allied to dissipa-
tion: My neighbors have gone to the
vestry to hear Ned Kendal, the bugler,
tonight; but: I! am come forth to the
hills to hear my bugler in the hori-
zom 1 can forego the seeming ad:
| vantages of cities without misgiving
No: heavenly strain is lost to the ear
that is fitted to hear it.—Thoreau.
Aquarium Cement
Cement for panes in aquariums is
produced: from litharge and glycerin,
The former must be as finely pow
dered as possible and the glycerin:
very condensed, of a sirupy consist-
ency and limpid. Mix the two ingredi-
ents into a semi-liquid paste, coat the
places; or pour the tough mass into
the respective cavity, and press inte
it the part to be cemented on. The
surplus oozing out must be removed
at once and the place cleaned, as the
putty hardens very rapidly.
Found at Last
‘Phe harrassed-looking man was be
ing shown over some works.
*That machine,” said his guide,
“does the work of 30 men,”
The man smiled glumly,
“kt last,” he said, “I have seen what
my wife should have married.”
———————————
——The Watchman gives all the:
news while it is news.