to the newspapers
concerning what Mr. Edison had already accomplished with the aid of his
model electrical balloon. His laboratory was carefully guarded against
the invasion of the curious, because he rightly felt that a premature
announcement, which should promise more than could be actually fulfilled,
would, at this critical juncture, plunge mankind back again into the
gulf of despair, out of which it had just begun to emerge.

Nevertheless, inklings of the truth leaked out. The flying machine had
been seen by many persons hovering by night high above the Orange hills
and disappearing in the faint starlight as if it had gone away into the
depths of space, out of which it would re-emerge before the morning light
had streaked the east, and be seen settling down again within the walls
that surrounded the laboratory of the great inventor. At length the
rumor, gradually deepening into a conviction, spread that Edison himself,
accompanied by a few scientific friends, had made an experimental trip
to the moon. At a time when the spirit of mankind was less profoundly
stirred, such a story would have been received with complete incredulity,
but now, rising on the wings of the new hope that was buoying up the
earth, this extraordinary rumor became a day star of truth to the nations.

A Trip to the Moon.

And it was true. I had myself been one of the occupants of the car of
the flying Ship of Space on that night when it silently left the earth,
and rising out of the great shadow of the globe, sped on to the moon. We
had landed upon the scarred and desolate face of the earth's satellite,
and but that there are greater and more interesting events, the telling of
which must not be delayed, I should undertake to describe the particulars
of this first visit of men to another world.

But, as I have already intimated, this was only an experimental trip. By
visiting this little nearby island in the ocean of space, Mr. Edison
simply wished to demonstrate the practicability of his invention, and
to convince, first of all, himself and his scientific friends that it
was possible for men--mortal men--to quit and to revisit the earth at
their will. That aim this experimental trip triumphantly attained.

It would carry me into technical details that would hardly interest the
reader to describe the mechanism of Mr. Edison's flying machine. Let
it suffice to say that it depended upon the principal of electrical
attraction and repulsion. By