Litchfield enquirer., 1874-09-17

Tn your part of the sky, when you have passed through the lowermost banks of vapor, and look down on the feecy, float ing masses beneath you, yon experience a momentary feeling of pride--sheer@ asi- l nine pride; or how, being free from clouds, you look down and see stretching around you the great green earth, and immediate l ly below, London, diminished to the size | of model i'll 9 museum, St. Paui's seem ing no bigger than pea, and the Monu- l ment looking no longer than pin, while the smoke of London seems stationary
 over 1t thin, sleazy, blue blanket in two strips, one for the Middlesex and one for | the Surrey side, and cut precisely to the shape of the cit ty and suburbs, through
 the whole running the glinting river, like a skein of quicksilver. I must mention that my view of the wondrous panorama around and beneath was somewhat imped- ed by fact that we were top-hampered by 8 quantity of toy-balloons, mere inflated linen bags, fashioned as lions, dragons, fish, and other preposterous forms, and all emblazoned with the cogniZance of the Symposium. These wetched little tlfles l were directly the cause of our nndoing The aeronaut had instructions to cut the windbags adrift when he ascended short distance, in order that they might amuse the gO6enaOuches of Brompton and the Pullman Road, and scatter advertisements of the Symposium far and wide. Thus the little old man, during the first five minutes of ascent, had been so busoy with his pocket-knife, loosing these ridiculous iRpedimenta, that he had for gotten precautlOn very necessary to our safety. While the balloon is on the ground 1t IS customary to close the neck of the machine by means of handkerchief taed in slip-knot, in order to prevent the ad- mixture of the heavy lower stratum of at mospheric air with the more buoyant car buretted hydrogen inside the balloon
 Directly the balloon ascends the prudent aeronant slips off the handkerchief. Our aeronant, busted with his trumpery wind bags, did no such thing. The assistant may have been unaware that the thing ought to be done. He cried out gleefuIly that we had risen to the altitude of one mile-that We were just over Pullman Church, and that We were about to cross the Thames. Just then 1 heard a sharp cracking report, precisely like that of a musket-shot, above my head. The ballo- on had burst. It could scarcely, under the circumstances, have done anything but burst. The gas in the machine had be- come rarefed. and had rapidly expanded. It could not escape from above, the valve was closed; it could not escape from be- low, the neck was closed. So it went to smash, just as an inflated and air-tight bag of paper goes to smash between the palms of q schoolboy's hands,
 So we teil, as stone falls, half a mile.
 When We ascended, it had appeared to me that the earth was sinking beneath us Now the globe-ields, houses, lamp-posts, chlnney-p posts-seemed to be rushing up to us with literally inconceivable rapidity. There was in particular one tall church. steeple, which by the celerity of its ap- proach appeared to be horribly anxious that should be impaled on it's apex. It could not have been Pullman Church; but whatever and wherever was the edifce, it was there rushing up at me; and declare that the grotesqueness of the position of impaiement-all legs and wings, like . cock-chafer-distinctly and visibly occur red to me delcare also, sans oh1'aies, that there arose before me no ''panora- ma of my early life or of my bygone acts and deeds, as such panoramas are said to have arisen before the eyes of persons re- scued at the very last instant from hang ing or drowning. Yeti do plainly and ! heard a voice cry with an oath, s.Let go!' and '' Cut! cut!' and that a knife was thrust into my hand; and it seemed after wards that tho assistant and had pitched out all the ballast in the ballcon-bags and all-and that I had cut away the grap- nel or anchor from the side of the car. That had done so was plain from two of my fingers being jagged across by the knife. What become of grapnel We never knew; but if 1t had fallen in a populous street 1t would i'll all probability have kill ed somebody. The heavy bags of ballast too must have fallen like stones. The final thing remember during our descent was droll enough. Just before the balloon left the Pre- dOrsay, my dear, kind brother had thrown over my shoulders light paletot, observing with laugh that might feel it rather cold
 "up there" l donned this garment as we ascended, and I remember saying as We came laundering down, ''Charley's coat will be torn to ribbons" So much for panoramic effects when the jaws of death seem to be yawning for us To the possession of what is ordinarily termed
 presence of mind'' on the occasion, I disdainfully decline to lay claim. What tI did in the matter of the grapnel and the ballast was done mechanically and well-nigh unconsciously; and I was des- perately and mortally terrified. A few days after the accident i met the aeron- auts assistant, and had the curiosity to sound him as to my demeanor during the fall. 'Sir, he very candidly replied, you kept your mouth wide open, and you aoere as blue Gs yo,1 breeches." I had been clad at the time in light summer attire. "And you?" continued. We'll out of it. " quoth the aeronaut's assistant, who was seemingly philosopher; and SO went his way.
 Meanwhile term is well-nish inap- propriate. since there was scarcely any while" to be ''mean"-the aeronanut. who looked like sailor, had not lost his presence of mind, and had not been idle. He saw at glance, this brave little old mar, ,-although he had been forgetful in the matter of the slip-knotted handker- chief,-wherein our single chance of safe ty lay. He jumped up into the shrouds of the balloon, cut the cords which at tached the neck of the machine to the hoop. and away to the very top of the net ting flew the whole of the exhausted silk body of the sausage. Then 1t formed a cupola of the approved umbrella pattern -it formed 11arachute! It steadied in- stantly. There was no collapse, and down we came swiftly but easily, in slanting direction, alighting among the cabbages in a market-garden, Fulham Fields. The car struck the elastic earth with violence, and rebounded, clearing hedge, a dis tance of some twenty feet. Then the silk and the netting and the hoop and the car itself fell atop of us among the cabbages.
 We were dragged forth from the ruins of the Sausage, only to be hustled and robbed of all the money in our pockets by ruff fianly crew of working market-gardeners: and the proprietor of the light cart who
 do not know whether it can he called on any but an Irish principle coincidence: but it is still curious to remember that about ten wears afterwards Twas on the verge of losing my life in consequent of an accident closely analogous to that which made an end of the Sausage
 Balloon was on board the Great Eastern on her first trial trip from Long Reach to Portland.
 The portion of one of the tunnels passing through the ladies' saloon was encircled bv a thin casing of iron, calleda ''steam jacket" and this was filled with cold water to prevent the
 heat of the funnel becoming uncomfortable to