Litchfield enquirer., 1874-09-17
easo o-rs From Every Saturday. .a ,. ~- -. 6NTscokasNe DOWN lH A PARA.
 CHUTE. ---'

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 6snncohasNc DOWN lR A PARA CHUTE.
 4 ,t't tsscut,ar'y Fa Perona' Experience
 saF LEY esoRaE AUGUSTUS sALA. --t ts,.oi,.. 4.-4-zs< -hs1HtfaE- -Il.s1.-.i ,, .- t- 5s''i '- i Sorting the innumerahls scraps nf lutel-
 ligence which i anl compelled. for journGl-
 astlc purposes, .o eat from the newspa-
 pers every llurii!ilg E. breakfast. l came
 recently upon :. i::,rn3g:.!si,, setting fourth
 how :, certain Monsieur d.. i:Iuuf, :t Bel
 gitn, and known as Il. .'Humme Volant, ''
 had arrived in this country with the aerial
 machine he had invented. and proposed to
 give practical illustrations of the art of
 of flying at Cremorne Gardens anu else
 where. I limly Remembered to have
 seen something of the Flying Man before
 in print It was at Brussels. I think. that
 he attempted to cleave the air with artifi-
 cial wings but some contreteDlps arri-
 wing, the experiment was a failure. He
 very narrowly e-caped being smashed /;
 and the crowd-a Belgian crowd is about
 the coarsest and most savage mob imagin-
 able-tore his machine to ribbons and
 but that he timeously fled would have
 rent him in pieces as we'll. Having some
 knowledge and experience of 9ronautics
 and eronauts, noted this De Groof in a
 mental memorandum-boOk, and affixed
 the 'spar. relating to his proximate per
 formances on the looking glass. Shortly
 afterwards lighted on another paragraph,
 setting forth how the adventurous Elem
 Ing had begun to fly, and, it was claimed,
 with complete success He, standing on
 the centre of his apparatus, which com
 prised wings and tail of wicker-work GOV
 cred with silk, and which resembled, it
 was said, gigantic Japanese ''bird-kite, ''
 had been cut loose from the cord by
 which he was suspended from the car of a
 balloon; and he had descended from a considerable height in safety. Another assent and another trial of the flying ma chine were to be made. at an early date, from Cremorne, the energetic manager of ~hich-Mr. John Baum was prepared to use every precaltion to prevent this new Icarus from imperiliing his life, if the state of the weather or any other ob- vious circumstances appeared to present obstacles to the successful accomplish ment of his voyage. M. de Groof him. self was fully satisfied as to the safety of his apperatus, and as to his having at last solved the problem of human volita- tion. ''So far so good," you may say. ''So far so bad" thought, ''and worse will come," did not think that worse might come was convinced that 1t would. made a memorandum-this time in writing-of the existing state of the DeGroof business, and sent it to the editor of a newspaper. Twice in the course of a dozen lines wrote down these words, underscoring them Ga bad habit in generaD to give emphasis to my opinion "Ihis nldn sCiU be killed" I pointed out that, with however much of show of sham science his apperatus might be described, it could be nothing but h duplex parachute, and that, structurally, there could not be much difference be- tween it and the barberous and cruel old that figured in one of Ho- garth's Stages of Cruelty" and in which there is represented a cat tied between two inflated ox-bladders, and so launched by some internally mischievous boys from the top of house. The fact of such a device being popular amusement with the little blackguards of the eighteenth century (some thirty years, it will be re- prior to the beniicent discov- cry of the Montgolfers), would seem to show that the idea of parachute was an- teriOr to that of an air -halloon, and to fla vor the assumption that pussy occasion ally survived herinvoluntary aerial voyage. But then cats are accustomed to spring from heigths impossible, proportionally speaking, to human beings, and again cats have nine lives, and men fortunately have only one. I say fortunately. The vast of mankind do so much harm to each other and to themselves during their single tenure of existance, that it may be deemed proyidentially merciful that they are not permitted to enjoy new leases of life. But we will let that pass else we may drift into & discussion of the doctrine of metempsychosis-whlch way madness lies. For the rest, I frankly owned, in the memorandum of which l speak, that it was just possible for a man to come down safely in a parachute, whether of the single or umbrella, or the double or winged form and to this appended, for reasons which I shall presently ex- plain, the remark, ErpertO crede. nev- insisted that the chances against B safe descent, and in favor of the adven- turer being smashed, were at least ten thousand to one: first, because para chutes have only descending power they can only fall. they cannot rise; and next, because accidents of incalculable and impossible to foresee, may at any moment occur to throw the most constructed and cunningly de- vised machinery out of gear, and to bring about fatal disaster. In simple balloon you have always two chances of safety if you find yourself descending too rapid ly, you may throw out ballast, and, the car being frightened of so much dead weight, tie balloon Gf there be any gas in it) must consequently rise in the next, if you wish to descend, and espy a con- venient place for the purpose, yon can pull your valye-string and let out gas, so that the density of the balloon being in- 1t will gently sink. Thus you can really navigate balloon upwards and downwards but not all the rudders and fappers, or other more or less ''bogus" forms of ''steering apparatus" which have been affixed by enthusiasts or by im- pOsters-the numbers of the one and the other class are about equal in the history of Rrostatics-can ever enable the sero- naut to navigate his machine Horizontally, to one hand or the other of the air-plane on which he is sailing. He is entirely at the mercy of wind in its circuits, and they are lnnumerable. The problem of @rial ean indeed never be solved un til balloon be invented of sufficient pow CT to sustain steam-engine or some form of calorie-engendering contrivance. Then, steering the balloon will be perfectly prac- tical.
 As it happened, the editor of the jour- nal I have hinted at was too much occu- pied just then with the French crisis, or the Regulation of Public Worship Bill, or the Decoration of St. Pauls Cathedral, or the Report of the Aldulteration of Food
 Committee. to pay any attention to my suggestions. Probably if I had written to M. de Groof to warn him that he
 would be killed, he would have bidden
 me mind my own business; or, in more courteous mood, he might have demon
 strated to me, in elaborate diagrams, the Thorough feasibility of his invention, and
 his capacity for flying in forty-eight hours
 from Battersea Bridge to the Straits of
 Malacca. Possibly had I called the att
 tention of Mir. Baum to the matter, he
 might have threatened me with an action
 for libel, for limiting that anything of a