many a summer's night saw thousands of disappointed
sightseers tramping the long road back to Washington. The climax
came when on a clear but breezy day Wilbur Wright announced that the
machine was in perfect condition and could meet its tests readily,
but that in order to win a bigger bonus, he would postpone the
flight for a day with less wind. All over Washington the threat was
heard that night that Congress would vote no more money for
aviation, and whether or not the incident was the cause, the
sequence was that the American Congress was, until the menace of war
with Germany in 1916, the most niggardly of all legislative bodies
in its treatment of the flying corps. When the Wrights did finally
fly they made a triumphant flight before twelve thousand spectators.
The test involved crossing the Potomac, going down its north side to
Alexandria, and then back to Fort Myer. Ringing cheers and the
crashing strains of the military band greeted the return of the
aviator, but oblivious to the enthusiasm Wilbur Wright stood beside
his machine with pencil and pad computing his bonus. It figured up
to five thousand dollars, and the reporters chronicled that the
Wrights knew well the difference between solid coin and the bubble
of reputation.

[Illustration: Wright Glider.]

But this seemingly cold indifference to fame and single-minded
concentration on the business of flying on the part of the Wrights
was in fact of the utmost value to aviation as an art and a science.
They were pioneers and successful ones. Their example was heeded by
others in the business. In every way they sought to discourage that
wild reaching after public favour and notoriety that led aviators to
attempt reckless feats, and often sacrifice their lives in a foolish
effort to astonish an audience. No one ever heard of either of the
Wright brothers "looping-the-loop," doing a "demon glide," or in any
other fashion reducing the profession of aviation to the level of a
circus. In a time when brave and skilful aviators, with a mistaken
idea of the ethics of their calling, were appealing to sensation
lovers by the practice of dare-devil feats, the Wrights with
admirable common sense and dignity stood sturdily against any such
degradation of the aviator's art. In this position they were joined
by Glenn Curtis, and the influence of the three was beginning to be
shown in the reduced number of lives sacrificed in these follies
when the Great War broke upon the w