Golden Valley chronicle., September 29, 1911, Image 4

About Golden Valley chronicle. (Beach, Billings County, N.D.) 1905-1916

Image provided by: State Historical Society of North Dakota

                
Solden Valley Chronicle
J. W. BRINTON, PUBLISHER
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THE OFFICIAL PAPER OF THE CITY OF
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Co., N. Dak., as second class mail matter
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A I N A E IN I A IT I E S
"Those who can, do those
who can't, criticize."
SLIPS OF WRITERS.
i.
Some of the Best Authors Have Made
Curious Blunders.
The haste with which Sir Walter
Scott produced the greater number
of his novels doubtless accounts for
the numerous blunders, such as
those first pointed out by his liter
ary kinsman, Robert Louis Steven
son, says Youth's Companion.
In "Rob Roy" two horsemen, rid
ing on urgent business, are made to
take six days to cover a distance of
a hundred miles, whereas on an
other occasion the same horses cov
ered fifty miles in a single day.
Stevenson also called attention to
Sir Walter's glaring mistake in
"The Antiquary," where the sun is
actually caused to set in the east
ern heavens! But, careful worker
that ho was, Stevenson himself, to
use his own words, "came to grief
over the moon" in "Prince Otto."
More than one writer has de
scribed the moon as riding high in
midheaven while in the crescent
stage—a condition of things impos
sible on any night of the year.
Victor Hugo puts into the mouth
of Charlemagne in "Aymaillot,"
the word-i, "You dream like a
scholar of Sarbonne." That famous
institution was founded in 155):,
450 years after the death of Charle
magne.
Errors of geography in fiction are
numerous enough. This graceful
romancer, Sir A. T. Quillcr Couch,
in his first published story, "Dead
Man's Rock," placed Bombay on
the east coast of India, in the bay
of Bengal, whereas geographers
agree in locating it
011
the western
shore.
Rider Haggard committed a
queer,-binndor in '•"Jess." A simple
matter of arithmetic, upon the data
supplied by the novel itself, shows
that a r-h.meter therein had grown
up and become the father of two
children before lie was in his teens.
One French .novelist used a num
ber of puppets, each labeled with
the name nf a character in his storv.
Whenever a personage died, or was
tilled in the course of the narrative,
the doil representing that character
was removed from the rest., to avoid
any accidental return to life. A
most effective finish to one of this
author's novels had to be rewritten
•when it was discovered that some
one, by accident or design, had
mixed the "dead" dolls with the
"living," with startling results.
Had Thackeray employed some
such device in "ITenry Esmond" he
might have avoided the resuscita
tion of the venerable dean of Win
chester, who writes a letter in chap
ter 9, some time after his decease
had been announced in chapter 6.
When Gas and Matches Were Novelties
We left Geneva somewhere about
1838, and I made my first acquaint
ance with England. I recollect be
ing very much struck by the gas
lighting in the streets and shops,
then recently introduced and still a
matter of interest. The master of
a lodging house taught me how gas
•was made by means of a tobacco
pipe, the bowl of which he filled
.with coal dust, covering it with put
ty and placing it in the fire. In a
short time gas enough was generat
ed to be lit at the mouthpiece. Lu
cifer matches at that time were
quite a novelty. All lighting had
previously been done by flint and
steel. At first there was a compli
cated arrangement by which the
Lucifer had to be held in a bottle
of some preparation, which lighted
it. Rubber Lucifers were of later
date.—From Wolff's "Rambling
J.A
[Copyright, 1911, by Henry M. Neely.
Copyright in Great Britain and Canada.
All rights reserved.]
I
was on the train between Phila
delphia and New York. I had
just received confirmation of my
altitude record of 9.S97 feet—the
highest man bad ever been in an aero
plane—and had read in the evening
papers that my great ambition to be
the first to go up above the coveted
10,000 mark would never be realized,
for Legagneaux bad risen 10,100 that
afternoon.
"Well," I beard one man say to an
other, "tbe.v have settled Drexel's rec
ord beyond all epiestion now. Here's
a fellow who has beaten him by 500
feet."
"Yes." said the other. "It seems to
get easier every day."
Easy: A man climbs and climbs
and strains every nerve and muscle to
the breaking point—he rights inch by
Inch, forcing a frail machine beyond
anything it was ever intended to do
he hears the creaking of the wood
work aiul the wicked singing of the
tautening wires, and he knows that
one little ounce more ol' strain, some
where. anywhere, ami it will all be
over in the most horrible of ends—he
plugs onward and upward, sick at
heart and In body, utterly weary and
hopeless, nerves gone, strength ebbing
fast, brain dizzy, ears bursting and
eyes swimming until a momentary
spell of near unconsciousness makes
him pull himself together for the
awful hell of that final plunge to
WEBil
WW
isr
WA\\\ ®V
No man will ever be able adequate
ly to describe that long, vast plunge
to earth al'ter every nerve has col
lapsed and every muscle refused to do
more work upward. I have experi
enced if more often than any living
aviator, yet even now 1 cannot recall
any detached or definite impressions
of it—nothing but a shuddering mem
ory of horrors rushing by with an aw
ful sense of defenselessness and fu
tility of effort as I fairly shrieked
through the air to earth with the
chances 100 to 1 against a safe landing.
"Anybody can climb for height,"
said Morane. "The thing is to get
down again."
Climbing the Air Stairs.
That fellow who said that it was
"getting easier all the time" should
have seen the beautiful Bleriot as she
swept gracefully off the ground with
me that^day at Point Breeze and as
she flew, without effort and with
scarcely a tremor, in the first wide
preliminary circles as I mounted the
first 2.000 feet.
Easy! That would have looked easy
enougp certainly. The machine must
have looked like a great gull or a
buzzard floating on the breeze, and I
suppose I" might have been sound
asleep In her for all the spectators on
the ground could have seen of motion
or of effort on my part.
Then came the clouds, and 1 -worked
my way up through them, hoping that
they would not be thick nor last long.*
for above the clouds in the sunlight
are the wickedest gusts, and it means
fight., fight, fight, all the time.
The hand of the aneroid barometei
to front of me kept creeping round ani
round as I mounted. The first 2.00
feet were told off quickly, and the*
more and more slowly the ludicatoi
wefitas 1 entered the thinner strata ol
the upper a'»r and began the struggle
^ERPPLANE
hhsthono IUSXZX
L—Flirting With Death at 10.000 Feet
to pass the thousand marks. Three,
four, five, six thousand I passed, each
one taking an Increasing length of time
and requiring more of physical effort
and mental and nervous strain.
Soon the hand of the aneroid began
to caper back and forth. I knew 1
was mounting steadily, but the little
Instrument did not show it and finally
flopped back near the starting point
and stayed there. The aneroid had
evidently gone higher than It was ever
Intended to go and was completely out
of commission.
A barograph, which Is a recording
barometer, had been tied about my
neck, and I took one band from the
control and turned the face of the baro
graph up toward me. Through the
glass front I could see the purple line
that had traced my ascent. I felt sure
that 1 must be near the top. It seemed
ages'since I had started, and the ter
rible cold was beginning to penetrate
even the thick, fur lined clothing that
I had made particularly for this flight.
My bands were beginning to get numb,
and 1 felt that my ears would burst
with the pressure from inside my Bead
or, rather, with the lessening of the
pressure outside.
But one sight of the barograph made
me grit my teeth and shove the nose
of the Bleriot a good deal higher than
wisdom warranted. Instead of being
near the coveted 10,000 mark, I was
barely passing the 8,000 line.
No words of mine can express the
disappointment and the discourage
ment of that moment. I was almost
'V )f
A\\W,
"i have no wouds to describe that descent."
earth, to leave him practically help
less when at lust he does reach the
ground—and they call all this easy!
"all Jn." yet I had still the two hard
est stages of my journey to cover—
the bitter fight of jumping and falling,
jumping and falling, during the ilual
500 feet, and last, but most awful of
all, the horrors of that descent where
the chances were 100 to 1 against me.
laughing: at 10,009 Feet.
There was nothing for it, however,
but to continue the tight upward.
So I doggedly fixed my mind upon
the magic figures 10,000 and mounted
again. Below me there was nothing
but space. The filmy clouds formed a
haze which completely shut the earth
from my view, and I seemed like an
impudent little fly buzzing around im
portantly In the vastness of infinitude.
The thought struck me as being rather
droll, and I laughed aloud.
Then I remembered how a friend of
mine had come to me at the hangar
before I started and. with a quizzical
expression on his face, as though he
knew I was not serious, asked:
"Are you really going for attitude to
day?"
"Yes," I answered.
"Do you think you have any chance
of making it?" he asked.
"There's always a chance," I replied
and jumped into the machine.
Since then I have thought over that
short conversation a score of times and
I have failed to find In it anything
amusing. Yet away up there in a lone
liness wlio_se vastness and impressive
ness only Legagneaux and I of all liv
ing men can appreciate, with the mo
tor buzzing and whirling and humming
and spitting, seemingly to accentuate
the very vastness of the solitude and
make it even more awe Inspiring than
it is to the floating balloonist—away
up there, passing close to the 9,000 foot
mark—the two questions and their aif
swers struck me as being the most
droll tilings I had ever heard, and 4,
started to laugh boisterously like a
drunken sailor In a low taproom.
"Crazy." I thought, and as the,
thought flashed across my mind with"
all the horrible possibilities of a loos
of mebtality and mehtal balance near
ly two miles above the earth—with the
slightest mlsmovement spelling awful
death—I pulled myself together again
and made a final desperate effort to
cross the 10,000 mark.
It was Impossible for me to know
whether I had succeeded or not The
last few feet were such a bitter strug
gle up and down, up and down,
through the thin air that I cotald not
look at the barograph and Indeed could
not see the line the one time I did try.
Finally, utterly exhausted and numb
both In body and mind, I gave up the
struggle and turned the nose of the
Bleriot toward the earth.
The Drop to Earth.
I have no words to describe that de
scent It would sound like the veriest
drivel if I should try, tor only a man
trained to repression of superlatives
could give an idea of its horrors with
out making it seem like silly, exaggera
tion.
Every reader has probably gone
down fifteen or twenty floors in an ex
press elevator. Do you remember how
dizzy and sick at the stomach it made
you?
My descent was made at the rate of
a vertical mile in about two minutes
while-1 was traveling ^horizontally at
the rate of seventy or seventy-five
miles an hour. In other words, my
vertical speed downward was about
four times as fast as that of the fast
est elevator, and I had the added
strain of the tremendous horizontal
momentum.
The effect of this rapid descent is
almost paralyzing. Those who have
traveled under the new Pennsylvania
railroad tunnels to New York have
felt the effect of the pressure of air
against the eardrums. This Is about
one-tenth the effect that is made upon
the ears •when descending in an aero
plane from a great height. In my
case in coming down from 9,897 feet
at my tremendous rate of speed my
ears felt that they woulc". burst, and
the top of my head felt as though it
would fly off at any moment. Added
to this came the feeling of nausea,
which grew and grew until my head
swam, and just for one moment I am
sure I lost consciousness. This occur
red, I should say, at a height of be
tween 7,000 and 8,000 feet.
Again, I had to bring all my self
control to my rescue, but my nervous
energy was ebbing fast, and I remem
ber wondering how much longer I
should be able to fight back the utter
collapse that I knew was coming soon.
You must remember that all this
was occurring when I had only an ap
proximate idea of how high above the
earth I was and when I had absolute
ly no idea of my geographical posi
tion. After I had passed through the
upper strata of clouds at a height of
some 4,000 feet I had not again seen
the earth except for little drifting
patches of indistinct drab as I flew
over the rifts in the vapor, and I did
not know whether I was one mile or
a hundred from Philadelphia. And
now I was descending so fast and
was so nearly helpless, both physical
ly and mentally, that I could do noth
ing except keep the Bleriot on the
proper slant to give the best descent
with the least possible strain.
Astray In Skyland.
My first sight of the earth as I drop
ped from the lower fringes of the
clouds showed me that I was doomed
to another disappointment. Not a
sign of a city was in sight. Not a sin
gle landmark that I had been told to
look out for was to be seen. Instead
there were farm land and forest, plow
ed fields and orchards and nowhere so
much as a smooth meadow fit for mo
1o alight upon without smashing up.
For the third time I saw Death, as
it were, sitting grinning on the gaso
line tank in front of me. My head
swain, and again, with that awful
feeling of nausea, I seemed to lose
consciousness for a fleeting moment.
Then the sight of a small field brought
me back to my senses, and I circled
again to come upon it from the best
direction.
Fortunately for me, I made a per
fect landing. It was probably the in
stinct that comes of long practice that
kept me from smashing up on coming
to the ground, for I know that my
brain was no longer working and my
muscles were incapable of obeying a
mental command.
I must have sat there helplessly in
the machine for fully five minutes,
mumbling meaningless things to my
self, until I saw a woman coming to
ward me. Then I stretched myself,
half rose and sprawled rather than
climbed down from my seat to the
ground. But even then I could not
stand without help.
I found that I had landed In Ore
land, about fourteen miles northwest
of my starting point in Philadelphia.
The After Effect.
Later came the dismaying announce
ment that a test of my barograph (a
rough reading- of, which had showed
approximately 9,970 feet) gave me only
a little more than 9.400 feet. But the
officials of the Aero Club of Pennsyl
vania. under whose auspices the flight
had been made, were sure that a mis
take had been made somewhere and
so turned the Instrument over to
Georjje S. Bliss, head of the United
States weather bureau in Philadel
phia. To the Indefatigable and gener
ous efforts of this official we owe the
fact that the final official reading of
9,897 feet, was given after tests to
which no .barograph had ever been
subjected before. That was the world's
record for only a short time, for a day
or two later came Legagneaux's" won
derful feut. when be ascended 10,49l
feet and made it impossible for me to
realise my fond hope of being the first
man to pass the 10,000 mark.
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