power. I'll see if I can't develop my concentrative faculty and
introduce a few of the same performances in our show. I'll go to the
Hall and try them now."

But his preliminary efforts were certainly far from successful. He
jumped off chairs saying to himself, "I'll fly! I will fly," and he
struck out heroically each time, but the result was always the
same--gravity conquered--he fell.

Had he not been so much in love with Gladys, he would have desisted;
as it was, the more he bumped and bruised himself, the more determined
he was to go on trying. In fact, flying with him became a mania; and
according to the daily journals, his was by no means the only case.
All over England people were trying to fly. An old lady, in Gipsy
Hill, appeared in the Police Court to answer a charge of causing
annoyance to her neighbours by practising flying, from off her bed, at
night. Her bulk being large and her will power apparently small, she
yielded to gravity and landed on the ground with prodigious bumps,
which set everything in the room vibrating, and which could be plainly
heard in the adjoining houses, through the thin brick walls on either
side of her room.

An old gentleman in Guilsborough had an extremely narrow escape. Being
warned on no account to practise flying in the house or garden, lest
his grandchildren should see him and want to do the same, he retired
to the seclusion of an old, disused and dilapidated coach house. Here,
in the upper storey, he practised by the hour together. He climbed on
to a stool which he had taken there for the purpose, and when he
fancied he had acquired the right amount of concentration, he sprang
into the air, arriving, presumably through want of will power, on the
floor. For two whole days he practised--bump--bump--bump--and the more
he bumped, the more he persevered. At last, however, the floor gave
way, and with loud cries of "I will! I will!" he fell on the ground
floor, ten feet below! He was unable to go on experimenting, owing to
a broken leg and a fractured collar-bone.

In Aylsham, Norfolk, there had been a perfect epidemic among the
children for trying aeronic gravity. Rudolph Crabbe, aged five, after
listening to an account of the performances at the Modern Sorcery
Company's Hall, which his father had read aloud, sprang off the
dining-room table crying out "I will fly! I will stay in the air."
Fortunately, he fell on the tabby cat, which somewhat broke the shock
of concussion, a