change
of position. Stand with your legs apart, straddling from edge to edge of
the basket, and by throwing your weight first on one foot and then on
the other you will give a polliwog movement to the big bag above you,
and it will go wriggling upward head-first some hundreds of feet. Or if
you would make it descend (all this the professor explained to me),
stand with your feet together in the middle of the basket, and, catching
the balloon-neck at both sides, stretch your arms wide apart so that the
fabric forms a chisel-edge, then sway your hips forward as far as you
can, then back as far as you can, and keep doing this. Now the
wriggling process is reversed; and this time the basket goes first,
"tail wagging the dog," and the balloon descends.

[Illustration: MME. CARLOTTA STEERING A BALLOON BY TIPPING THE
FOOT-BOARD.]

This ability to rise or fall at will allows Mme. Carlotta to pass easily
from one train of clouds to another, and, by long study of these
cross-moving aerial trains, she is able to pick out the one she wants
for a certain destination with almost the precision of a foot-passenger
selecting his particular street-car or changing from one to another. And
in descending she has learned to steer forward or back, to left or
right, by tipping the basket foot-board in the direction she wishes to
take. The balloon follows the lowest edge of the foot-board as a ship
follows her rudder.

An almost incredible instance of the skill attained by Carlotta in these
experiments was furnished some dozen years ago at Ottawa, where she made
an ascension never forgotten by the people of that city. It was a grand
occasion in honor of Queen Victoria's gift of the Crystal Palace to her
loyal subjects, and Canada had rarely seen such a gathering. Twenty-five
thousand people, as was estimated, were packed inside the Exposition
grounds to see the aeronaut rise to the clouds. And there at the
appointed time stood Carlotta on a raised platform, with the multitude
about her, waiting for the balloon. She wore a short skirt over a
gymnasium suit, and made an attractive picture with her fine figure and
golden-bronze hair. So thought various city dignitaries, who chatted
with her admiringly while the crowd surged about them.

Meantime Professor Myers was anxiously watching the manoeuvers of some
Indians hired by a committee to tow the balloon from gas-works two miles
distant, where it had been filled. This was rather against the
pr