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[[cut off--see previous page for the beginning]] The announcement aroused great interest among balloonsters all over the city, but as only the newspaper offices--which had received telephonic invitations from Dr. Thomas's house--knew where the wind wagon experiment was to be made, there was disappointment in the hearts of many a group that had gathered in various spots around town far from the place where the trial trip was to be made.
A small crowd waited hopefully in front of the Flatiron Building under the mistaken notion that the ropes erected by the traffic squad to keep trunks in their proper lanes ad been put up by the Police Department for the double purpose of giving the doctor and his helicoptere an unobstructed course and, of course, to keep the front line of curbstone standees from being pushed out upon the asphalt by impatient thousands behind. Others bothered the policeman in Columbus Circle with anxious questions as to when "the ascension was to begin" and supplemented this with inquiries as to whether the ascension would be accompanied by trapeze work until the cops were almost tempted to speak roughly. The greatest number, however, headed straight for Herald Square.
But Dr. Thomas, purposely to avoid these mere curiosity seekers, had selected the secluded plaza at Broadway and Seventy-second street, near the entrance to the subway express station. The few that had really been invited hurried straight from their city editors' desks to the Thomas home, a few doors east of the plaza, at 172 West Seventy-second street.
In the meantime a know of interested people had gathered around the compact little three wheeled vehicle that had been drawn up to the curb in front of the doctor's house. The rain had stopped, but the odd machine was covered with tarpaulin to protect the mechanism from the dampness. From the middle of the apparatus rose what might be called an underdone mast and from this was suspended a canvas affair that an earthlubber would have described as an umbrella.
Just f'r'd of the beam a part of the super-structure hung so low that it could be seen below the frayed edges of the tarpaulin. There was evidently a big overhand aft in which, according to some of the scientists that were crawling around the affair bent on exploration was the gasolene engine that forced the overhead canvas arrangement around and around and around. The crowd had a vast store of misinformation and scattered it lavishly.
"The shafting is evidently not in place yet," explained one interested gentleman, who said he was John the Baptist, "but when it is connected with the amperes the ohms act directly on the centrifugal shaft and arouse propulsion. That principle is old. When I was on Napoleon's staff in the battle of Waterloo Marshal Ney and I tried to use it in the light artillery, but Napoleon couldn't see it."
"But where can you get new ohms in the middle of a battle?" demanded a one armed man who gave his name as Thomas A. Edison.
"Or when you're a couple of thousand miles up in the air?" chorused the one armed man's friends.
"What's to hinder a man from taking enough ohms with him?" was the quick reply of the first scientist. "If Peary had listened to me when I was executive officer of the Roosevelt he'd had filled the hold with ohms and won out. Benjamin Franklin had the right idea--a balloon composed of nothing but a big storage battery, which could be recharged while in the air during thunderstorms. But Franklin couldn't think how to get the storage battery high enough in the air, and he died of a broken heart."
And so the talk went on, some thinking one thing and others thinking other things. 
But all of the discussions lapsed into a tremendous silence as an attendant came around the corner and hurried up to the covered machine. He pulled off the tarpaulin and disclosed a very ordinary looking olive green body, on which the name was labelled in red letters "Joe's Original Lemonade Cart." Joe stood under the umbrella and started in briskly to sell his wares, but Thomas A. Edison said he never drank anything but champagne, and the crowd moved away.
Those who had already seen Dr. Thomas's helicoptere could have told the scientists long before that the tarpaulin covered cart at the curb was unlike the helicoptere in some of her lines, but fearful that the doctor had changed the machine since he had experimented briefly with it on Broadway one Sunday afternoon early in December they had kept quiet lest they make a blunder.
The helicoptere is really larger than a pushcart and is fashioned on the plan of a Florodora sextet going off stage on bicycles with all of the girls' parasols flying. In its present shape the helicoptere, or wind wagon, as it is popularly called around the Aero Club, is rigged with a bicycle seat and a fan that is propelled by a gasolene engine. The fan wings correspond to the swaying white parasols of the sextette and pull a person up and down the busy streets at will. One of the principal defects of this experimental helicoptre is that the shafting that runs from the engine to the fan is so close to the bicycle seat that when a man is being photographed while aboard he can't straighten up into an erect posture. But the helicoptre is but in embryo as yet.
The experiment yesterday had been announced over the telephone for 2 o'clock, but at 2:45 Dr. Thomas was still tinkering with bolts and things on the machine up in a factory building further north. Only two reporters had arrived, and altogether things looked blue.
Just as no more reporters arrived a few minutes later Mrs. Thomas sent Tilly the maid in to say that there wasn't going to be any experiment.
"The doctor he telephoned that the streets are too wet for an ascension," she explained with evident disappointment. "You should come up again, please, on another day."

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New York City, Friday.--Cortlandt Field Bishop and the other members of the Aero Club committee who picked St. Louis for the starting place of the race for the Bennett Aeronautical Cup, got back to town yesterday. When the race starts under the full October moon there will be at least fourteen big balloons ready for the flight, and perhaps more.
The first full moon in October is on the 19th, and the race will not be held until that date. The first week in the month of October is the big festival of the Mound City, that of the Veiled Prophet, and the business men's leagues which are behind the festival probably will postpone it for a couple of weeks so that the balloon race may be a feature of the carnival.
"We could not start before the 19th," said Mr. Bishop. "We dare not start without moonlight; it is too dangerous. The ideal wind would be one which would carry us north of west and take us into New England. We can easily beat de la Vaulx's record of 1,200 miles and still stay in our own country.
"In the race last year there were ten clubs in the international federation represented and there will be a greater number this year. The entry list was to have closed February 1, but it may be extended a month, as some of the European aeronauts seem to need considerable enlightenment on American geographical conditions and so have not sent in their entries, but may later. There probably will be from fourteen to sixteen entries, but there is gas there available for thirty or more baloons."
The ground which St. Louis has provided for the balloon park is on the eastern edge of Forest Park, which contains about ten acres. The end of a twenty-four inch gas main direct from a holder, with a capacity of 4,000,000 cubic feet, is only a few feet from the park entrance. As an exhibition of what they could do, the St. Louis committee had l'Orient filled in forty minutes. Although this balloon has a capacity of only 35,000 cubic feet, the gas plant at Pittsfield could not fill it under two hours and a half. [[cut off--see previous page for the rest]]

the source of India's richest revenue and in spite of the protests of Gladstone and other great men of England the mercenary ones prevailed and the drug is taken into China in great quantities. This drug prostitutes the Chinese people worse than rum would do, as it destroys body and soul. The Chinese and Japanese are two distinct peoples. True, they have the same slant eyes and that facial color

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