The Barre daily times. (Barre, Vt.) 1897-1959, 1910-12-07
How II Feels To Fly.

James Hooper, who rode as a passen-
ger in an Antoinette aeroplane, answers
this oft-repeated question in the Christ
mas Eyerybody's. Describing the way
in which they left the ground he says:
"And then good Lord, what is that!
At first | thought that we had struck
an abandoned quarry and were HURTING
through pile Of stones. Then more
plausibly, that we had passed from the
grassy plain to a road OF torn-up ma
cadam But neither of these SUPPOSE
tons answered quite the question put
to me by my senses We seemed TO
roll on medium singularly hard. Hard
and smooth, and yet sown with rough
ness. 1t felt as if we were upon
road Of adamant laid upon the bedrock
of the earth, and as if upon this adaman-
tine road pebbles hard aud faceted like
diamonds were strewn. Upon the hard,
smooth subsurface the machine glided
level, but excited to furious trepida
ton by the bristlng diamonds, We
are going through a roek-pile, | said
to myself, returning to my first unsat-
istactory and yet more plausible sup
position From the gentle earth We had
passed to the ways Of the air. That
adamantine, resilient, and diamond brist-
ling surface upon which we rode now, it
was the azure of the skies IT was
ozone, it was ether, it was everything
that is hazy and impalpabe and blue
and it felt like metal, like rock, like
chrome-steel, like the compressed bowels
of some planet smashed between two
suns. | was flying, and it was like drill
ing | was feeling the earth, and the
earth was following me, Jealous and
yigilant, gripping me, stubbornly and i'm
placably, with its earth sensations.
From the first, / had lost my sense
of direction and of the cardinal points,
and seemed hurtling aimlessly through
vast nowhere. A most distressing,
disgusting sensation. / felt like that
man who had lost his shadow. Worse
than that shad0wless person, ! felt as
if springing upward in the ether, | had
lett my entire personality pasted back
there upon the earth
"And OF the landscape | could bring
back nothing clear 1t was always a
wbirling blur of a landscape; a land
scape painted by an artist using too
fluid colors; a landscape photographer
cut Of focus. The trees ran together;
they merged with the land The land
soped into the sky. and the sky into
the land Roads writhed vivid an in
slant like snakes, and then sank back
into the plain 1t was the shifting,
dissolving, liquid landscape Of an uncer-
tain dream.
"The sun was setting. Each time as
we faced it now, we coursed gigantically
toward it. a homing dragon making for
a fabulous cavern a1ame with gold.
Kuller at length took the beast high
over the center of the plain and cut off
the power.
"Then | flew; for the first time flew.
For the first time felt that was
dying, and it was because / was fall
ing The trepidation beneath me had
stopped; the wind had ceased: the hid
eous tumult slipped off into a breathless
silence. It was as if from the sweat
and oil and tumult Of toll we had sud,
denly passed into the purity and hush of
the high spaces. We seemed to hover
there a moment. motionless Then a
long, slender and tipping ecstasy and
we were upon the earth, by the sheds.