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[[image - drawing of a basket suspended under a large gas balloon]]

THE EVENT OF THE DAY.

THE BALLOON ASCENSION.

PROF. WISE ON THE AIR-FLOAT--THE FIRST OF A SERIES OF EXPERIMENTS--AN INTERESTING SPECTACLE. 

  Puck is beginning to girdle the earth. Balloons are drifting from Buffalo, N.Y., to Salem, N.J. Some are going in the opposite direction. What, with the various local currents, and Wise's great eastward current girdling the globe, may not be done with balloons in the way of travel? Gentle reader, think not that mankind is doomed to grope over the rugged scrags and cliffs of this mundane surface. A purer and smoother going element hovers over our heads. The fleecy clouds have been going to and fro as we watched them for the past ten days. May not the comet be whisking his auroral tail in our attenuated atmosphere at the present time. Certainly, the weather for a while past has been remarkable phenomenal. Floods, tornadoes, and cloud bursts have beset the land.
  There appears to be a war of the elements. It is a good thing that friend Parkhurst makes the periodicity of the comet a thousand years of more, since it is more than probable that nobody but itself that is cutting up these meteorological shindies in our staid and sober atmosphere. It is to be hoped that our astronomers will determine its orbit to be a hyperbola of the most tangential order, so that it may fly the track of an orbitular course, and never show its likes again in our solar system.
  If. Prof. Wise can do anything in the way of giving its tail a raking with the HERALD-BALLOON, he will do the State some service, and a vote of thanks will be due him from a grateful people. At all events it is to be hoped that balloons will now be turned to some profitable account. To go up in tights on a broom handle is bringing the thing back to our Darwinian ancestry. If we do owe our origin to the monkey, it is no reason that we should try our best to ape the monkey. The order of the day is onward and upward. From human to angel is the destiny of air navigation.
  Every balloon that carries up the intelligence enough with it to embrace a single progressive idea is so much in the scale of onward civilization. God has made the world for man, not man for the world. If we but use the intellect he has endowed us with we shall learn to fly. He taught the prophets of old to do this thing, and why not the artisans of modern days?
  The world moves, and we must move with it "nolens. volens;" to spring from its solid crust into its ambrosial ether, is only the blessing of fairly earned rewards.
  Prof. John Wise is about making a series of experiments upon the atmosphere. This afternoon he will ascend from a point near Forty-second and Market street, in West Philadelphia, with the EVENING HERALD Balloon which was expressly constructed for scientific purposes. His experiment to-day will be in accordance with the nature of the air. Should the weather be calm he proposes to mount to a four mile altitude and at that height test the ozonic condition of air with potassium iodide.
  Should providence, however, favor him with a thunder storm when the balloon is inflated, he proposes to mount up into the nimbus cloud and make further explorations as to its temperature and vortical action. Should none of these conditions present themselves, and the southeast wind that has prevailed for several days, continue to blow, he proposes to take advantage of this, and remain afloat all night, using a compensating balance line, with which he can keep in thus local surface current during the whole night.
  By the use of the balance rope the æronaut can rise and fall, or in other words, come down to the earth, or go up above it without the expenditure of gas or ballast. This latter condition would suit the Prof. admIrably just at the present time, as then he could make for the lakes and Canada, as we see by the Ontario papers that he is posted to make an ascension from Stratford, the capital of Perth county, in Ontario. THE DAILY EVENING HERALD will spare no pains in giving its readers a fair and full report of the results as soon as it shall obtain them, by telegraph of otherwise.

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Grass Widows.
  A Paris correspondent tells the following story: "There are in Pairs many public places of resort in which ladies are not to enter without being accompanies by some representative of the sterner sex. Among these places is the concert of the Champs Elysee, so favorably know by American travelers who go there to enjoy the fresh, cool air of the gardens while listening to the strains of a very remarkable band of musicians. Quite recently a lady presented herself at the gate and was stopped by the controleur ticket receiver: 'Pardon, Madam, ladies cannot go in alone.' The lady, with unfeigned candor: 'But, sir, how am I going to do that? My poor husband has just died--the day before yesterday.'"

  --The Orkney Herald gives an amusing account of an incident which occured [[occurred]] in the parish church of Birsay some years ago. During the singing of the first psalm a goose entered the church and quietly waddled up the passage toward the pulpit just as the precentor had got out the tune and almost come to a standstill--a not very unusual occurrence at that time. The minister, observing the goose, leaned over the side of the pulpit, and addressing the church officer, said, "R----, put out the goose." The functionary not observing the presence of the feathered parishioner, and supposing that the minister's direction had reference to the precentor, marched up to that individual, and to the no small amusement of the meagre congregation, collared him, saying at the same time, "Come out o' that, fallow!"

  --A farmer gives this bit of advice, which contains a good hint: "If you want boys to stay on the farm, don't bear on too hard when the boy is turning the grindstone."