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His-- Ol-- - Exclusive Dispat-- New York, Nov. J-- the Detroit Free P-- has become of the di-- man, the well known-- plorer of only two-- Time, the magazine,-- Wellman was "alive a-- home at 4672 Broadway-- The New York Herald-- tinuing the story, repo-- American, the first to f-- miniature golf courses, and-- has just passed his 72nd Twenty years ago the vogue had not developed for Broadway parades under showers of ticker tape, bu Mr. Wellman has been received with as much gusto as have Admiral Byrd and Fingsford-Smith. He has stood in old-fashioned automobiles and [[?]] to the cheering throngs. He has been honored by kinds and presidents. Today he lives quietly, but he has retired from nothing, he says, other than from the headlines. He receives his friends in a library, talking, if they thirst, of other days. He will tell of the time when he departed from Spitzbergen in the American, bound for the top of the world; of his sailing away from Atlantic City in 1909 to conquer the Atlantic by air. The concern of the Detroit Free Press over his whereabouts amused him. "I haven't changed," he declared. "All my life I have been one of those people who had rather sit on a cow-catcher and watch things before you get to them than to sit in an observation car and look at them after they are gone." "I will tell you a curios thing about Andree," Mr. Wellman continued. "When I was in Spitzbergen for my trip in the America I used as a base the very spot from which Andree started northward. A hut built by Andree housed my workmen, and one of these men had been there when Andree left several years before. He told me that Andree had confided to one of the officers that he feared his expedition would result in tragedy. "Andree, however, said that he had to Spitzbergen the year before and had been obliged to postpone his Norther flight because of inadequate preparation. "He had been criticized for this in-action and some had labeled him a coward. For the sake then of his reputation, he said, he had to make the attempt that year, no matter how the expedition resulted. A powerful thing, a man's reputation; it will make one do many things. "Andree virtually committed suicide," Mr. Wellman asserted. "I know how he must have felt, too, for I have been denounced for having made similar delays." Mr. Wellman raised $25,000 in 1907, received $75,000 more from the Chicago Record-Herald and started out for the North "A thing we called the equilibrator broke," he explained. "and we had the return to Spitzbergen." He had intended to make another attempt the next summer, but Peary by that time had succeeded, and for Wellman the lure was gone. A Norwegian newspaper man told him, he said, Dr. Cook's contention as he was returning from Spitzbergen, and asked him, "What do you think of his feat?" Mr. Wellman replied: "Nothing." an expose of Dr. Cook. In 1909, on his own responsibility, he rebuilt the America at Atlantic City and planned the journey to Europe. The news had been broadcast by cable and the world waited for the start. When all was in readiness, however, the air settled in a flat calm. "Nearly a hundred policemen and life guards stood about the America," said Mr. Wellman. "They were holding her steady against the breeze which was expected momentarily. I and my five comrades had slept that night beside the big ship in her shed and we were all anxious to get away. At last all was ready and we got aboard. "Up for a trial!" I shouted, 'and if the going is good, up and over the ocean.' She rose 50 feet. Trailing the airship was the 300-foot chain of gasoline tanks which bumped over the waves. Also behind her drifted the equilibrator invented by Vaniman. Five minutes after the ship rose we were enveloped in a heavy mist." Three hours later a wireless operator received a message from the Zeppelin-like ship, saying, "Going northeast by east, still in the fine shape." Nothing was heard from the America until that evening, when a steamship
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