n whose business it is to look danger in the eye (and look they
do without flinching) as they fare over river and sea, and under river
and sea, in search of wrecks.
THE BALLOONIST
I
HERE WE VISIT A BALLOON FARM AND TALK, WITH THE MAN WHO RUNS IT
I NEVER knew a man who has been so many things (and been them all fairly
well) as has Carl Myers of Frankfort, New York. They call him
"Professor" Myers ever since he took to ballooning, years ago; but they
might call him Dr. Myers, for he has studied medicine, or Wrestler
Myers, for he is skilled in all tricks of assault and defense, Japanese
and others, or Banker Myers, for he spent years in financial dealings,
or Printer Myers, for he still sets up his own type, or Telegrapher
Myers, or Lecturer Myers, or Carpenter Myers, or Photographer Myers.
All these callings (and some others) Myers has pursued with eagerness
and success, only making a change when driven to it by his thirst for
varied knowledge and his guiding principle, "I refuse to let this world
bore me." To-day the professor is sixty years old (a thin, wiry,
sharp-eyed little man), yet I suspect some boys of sixteen who read
these pages feel older than he does. You ought to hear him laugh! or
tell about the air-ship that has carried him over thirteen States! or
describe his "balloon farm" at Frankfort! I don't know when I have
enjoyed myself more than during three days Professor Myers spent with me
some time ago.
[Illustration: "BALLOON-CLOTH BY HUNDREDS OF YARDS."]
Suppose we begin with the balloon farm, which is certainly a queer
place. It is a joke in the neighborhood that the professor plants his
balloon crop in the spring, gathers it in the fall, and stores it away
through the winter. Certain it is that in summer-time the visitor (and
visitors come in swarms) sees fields marked off in rows with stakes and
cross-poles, on which balloon-cloth by hundreds of yards seems to be
growing (really, it is drying); and other fields, that look like an
Eskimo village, with houses of crinkly yellowish stuff (really,
half-inflated balloons); and groups of men boiling varnish in great
kettles which are always getting on fire and may explode; and other men
working nimbly at the knitting of nets; and others experimenting with
parachutes; and the professor paddling away at the height of three
thousand feet for his afternoon "skycycle" sail; and Mme. Carlotta, the
celebrated aeronaut (also the professor'
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