An eager desire of improvement is one of the
most hopeful and noble qualities of the American
mind; but, like all other virtues, it has its unripe
and sour side. Out of the enormous number of
patents registered every year in that noble
building in Washington, "the Patent Office,"
a large proportion are for absurd and chimerical
purposes. I will not declare that I have
not seen patents for shelling peas and picking
fowls. The great incitement to invention in
America is the necessity of economising labour.
Labourers are dear, because labourers are scarce.
Hence the washing and mangling machines—
the machines for paring apples and brushing
clothes—the wheels and pulleys to draw corks,
and to toast cheese.

At New York I was the spectator of an
amusing instance of short-lived "sensation."
One day when I went into William-street to
see rny friend, Mr. Ezra Doggerbank, a South
American merchant, I found that amiable man,
with his feet much higher than his head, rocking
himself as if he were a sleepless baby, and
reading the Daily Stinger.

"Well, I guess," said he, "you'd better go
right off and pay your twenty-five cents to see
this Frenchman kill himself in the Knickerbocker
Gardens."

"Go and see a Frenchman kill himself!
What do you mean, Mr. Doggerbank?" said I,
innocent of my American friend's meaning.

The merchant then (biting his cigar as if it
wanted to escape) proceeded to tell me that the
Stinger announced that at two o'clock that
day Monsieur Horace Goujat would ascend from
the Knickerbocker Gardens in a thin paper
balloon, filled with hot air—an experiment never
made since the days of Mongolfier, the original
inventor of the balloon. The Stinger then got
quite learned (what a blessing to Stingers cheap
encyclopaedias are!), and gave a long jumbled
list of horrible balloon accidents, and ended by
entreating all its (the Stinger's) readers to go
and venture their twenty-five cents, as there could
be no doubt the brave Frenchman would perish
in the attempt. Here the Stinger became classical,
and quoted a line of Latin Delectus about
the fate of Phaeton.

I left Mr. Doggerbank apparently trying to
stand on his head in his rocking-chair, and at a
distance looking as if he were balancing the
mantelpiece on his toes, and hurried to the
Knickerbocker Gardens—not from any morbid
desire to see a hairbrained egotist throw away
his life, but rather to observe how the New
Yorkers would view the matter.

The street cars were full—there was a crowd
setting in for the Gardens. I felt rather guilty
in being one of them; but temporised with
myself to the effect that my stopping away
would not have hindered the performance, that
I was a solitary stranger here, and was
influencing no one by my example.

I pay my twenty-five cents at the wicket,
receive my ticket, and pass on. The crowd is
talking of the danger of the attempt.

"Certain death, mister," says a greasy-haired
rowdy before me: licking his yellow lips, as a
vulture would grind his beak.

I follow the crowd down a winding walk to a
space towards which all the other shady walks
seem to centre. I find under a horizontal
rigging arranged for rope-dancing, a circular
enclosure surrounded by a rude paling, round
which some two or three hundred seedy readers
of the Stinger are congregated. Inside the
enclosure are two or three New York policemen in
large flat shakos and blue frock-coats, the French
aëronaut, and several assistants. The balloon
itself, folded in flat square sections, depends
from the rope line that stretches some forty
feet overhead. It was constructed of that thin
brown Manilla paper which tradesmen use for
their finer parcels—not strong grocery paper.
Below, within the circus, are a bottle, and a tub
full of straw; and that large wicker washing-
basket, says somebody, is the car.

A balloon of frail structure, the reader says
to himself, but of course of equable texture,
carefully looked over, and with all dangerous
flaws patched up or strengthened?

Not a bit of it. Why the Frenchman, that
little swarthy apish man in the shirt-sleeves and
white trousers, is actually now, ten minutes
before he ascends, standing on two boxes looking
over the vast area of paper, and stopping flaws
with patches of pasted paper! Already, in five
minutes, I have seen him caulk a dozen holes,
and any one of these would have cost him his
life. The myrmidons with the rope, keep lowering
it and raising the balloon as he alternately
wants fresh folds to examine, or wishes
removed what he has already inspected.

Now, this being nearly completed, the brass
band march in and take their places with
mechanical joyfulness and triumph. If the
whole town council of New York were, in
Japanese emulation, to perform The Happy
Despatch before the very eyes of that brass
band, I don't think it would rouse or excite that
imperturbable body of performers.

Now, they have paid out yards and yards of
those paper folds, and the balloon may be raised
ready for inflation. Creek goes the rope, up
rustle the bales of paper; now the air-ship
is erect, and begins slowly to feel the wind
breathing within it—now it slowly widens and
dilates—now it shakes forth its loose reefs, and
globes out.

There is a sort of unrestrainable murmur
of approval given by us, as if the balloon were
a voluntary agent, and had done a really clever
thing. The Frenchman, who has been hitherto
perfectly self-collected, but very bustling (as
little people always seem to me chronicly to be),
performs some preparatory experiments.

He produces some paper balloons; to one of
them he ties a small tin tray full of spirits of
wine. This he lights, and, swift as a bubble in a
long champagne-glass, up goes the little fire-ship.
Away over the tall trees it skims, far, far away to
the south, burning tranquilly like a floating beacon
in the wind-swept blue. Another buzz; the
fire balloon has behaved most creditably, and