rate, and then, I admit, things do not appear so very bad. Accustomed as
I am to this mode of travelling, I cannot get over a kind of giddiness
whenever a balloon passes us in a current directly overhead. It always
seems to me like an immense bird of prey about to pounce upon us and
carry us off in its claws. One went over us this morning about sunrise,
and so nearly overhead that its drag-rope actually brushed the network
suspending our car, and caused us very serious apprehension. Our captain
said that if the material of the bag had been the trumpery varnished
"silk" of five hundred or a thousand years ago, we should inevitably
have been damaged. This silk, as he explained it to me, was a fabric
composed of the entrails of a species of earth-worm. The worm
was carefully fed on mulberries--kind of fruit resembling a
water-melon--and, when sufficiently fat, was crushed in a mill. The
paste thus arising was called papyrus in its primary state, and went
through a variety of processes until it finally became "silk." Singular
to relate, it was once much admired as an article of female dress!
Balloons were also very generally constructed from it. A better kind of
material, it appears, was subsequently found in the down surrounding
the seed-vessels of a plant vulgarly called euphorbium, and at that time
botanically termed milk-weed. This latter kind of silk was designated as
silk-buckingham, on account of its superior durability, and was usually
prepared for use by being varnished with a solution of gum caoutchouc--a
substance which in some respects must have resembled the gutta percha
now in common use. This caoutchouc was occasionally called Indian rubber
or rubber of twist, and was no doubt one of the numerous fungi. Never
tell me again that I am not at heart an antiquarian.

Talking of drag-ropes--our own, it seems, has this moment knocked a man
overboard from one of the small magnetic propellers that swarm in ocean
below us--a boat of about six thousand tons, and, from all accounts,
shamefully crowded. These diminutive barques should be prohibited from
carrying more than a definite number of passengers. The man, of course,
was not permitted to get on board again, and was soon out of sight, he
and his life-preserver. I rejoice, my dear friend, that we live in an
age so enlightened that no such a thing as an individual is supposed
to exist. It is the mass for which the true Humanity cares. By-the-by,
talking of Humanity, do