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Some of the elderly ladies in the neighborhood held a sort of a council of war against me, and by the assistance of some of my distant relatives determined to have a jury of lunacy to pass on me. They averred, that any poor man who would attempt to spend his hard earnings in such a foolish contrivance ought to be sent to the lunatic assylum [[asylum]]. In a clandestine manner they sent a celebrated doctor to watch my proceedings, and having part of my machinery under way, he became somewhat interested in the matter and so far forgot his mission as to approve of my plans and ideas, helping me along by good advice. And upon this being discovered by my well meaning friends, they next assailed the Doctor with diagonal insinuations that he looked more into the neck of a Balloon shaped bottle, than he did into the tube of a telescope. This caused my friend the doctor to change front, and in this attitude he put my dear friends hors du combat, and they were bound to drop their opposition to my scheme.

It is really surprising how singular the mass of mankind can act. One old woman can set a whole neighborhood into commotion: and upon a very trivial idea or assumption. There seems to be a law of moral infection as epidemic in its force, as that which spreads the small-pox. It will run through a thickly populated and badly ventillated [[ventilated]] neighborhood with a facility equal to the diffusion of vapor engendered by the frying of onions and potatoes in pot grease. I had partially ascertained this phisiological [[psychological]] fact before I commenced the structure of a flying apparatus. Nevertheless, such impediments in the moral world are not the best calculated to foster an improving and progressive spirit. It is vain for any one to look for friendship or friends in a new undertaking until some degree of success has been attained. If you fail, the general response is, "we knew he was a fool," but if you succeed, every little pettifogger will have it be that always knew you were a genius.