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June 1. Saturday at Baddeek 31.

WHAT WE ARE COMING TO
BY JACK ROBINSON

JIMSON WEED asked me the other day: "What is the difference between a roof window in a bakeshop and a man who goes up in an airship?" 
"I said I should have to plead guilty. "One," he answered, "is a pie-skylight and the other is a sky-pilot."
I knocked him down and strode away haughtily. 
But the use of the term "sky-pilot" is becoming more frequent every day. Formerly it referred to a person, a saver of souls; but in this sense it is rapidly becoming obolete [obsolete]. I have never, to be sure, been nearer a balloon trip than a sky-scraper roof to watch the fireworks; but then, most people have never been on the roof of a two story cottage.
A sky-pilot is a man who pilots a balloon or airship.  Some folks have an idea that to go up in a balloon all you have to do is to get in the basket and yell to the man to let go the rope, when the balloon bounds gladly upward; this is an error.
It seems to the spectators to bound gladly upward, but to the balloonist the earth falls away suddenly with a dull, thudless motion. To themselves the aeronauts seem to be quiescent. The birdlike sphere is in the clouds and the sky-pilot heaves over some sand and a long-drawn sigh.
Again the balloon hounds up etherward with the silent motion of a swallow. 

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It is said that the poise of a balloon in midair is so delicate that it could be moved up or down with the weight of the little finger, provided one had a little finger long enough to reach it; but in that case it wouldn't be a little finger any longer; that is, a long finger any--but you see what I mean. Now, the monster bag, freed of its weight, bounds aloft. If it is pleasant that day, the sunshine strikes it, expanding the gas, sometimes to twice its volume; thus, a man starting out with only $7 worth of gas suddenly finds he has $14 worth. This is the only method ever discovered of getting the best of a gas company.
The balloon shoots to heights empyreal. Now the sky-pilot, if he is "on his job," must recover that sand; this he does by steering into the first sand storm he meets and taking a tipcart load aboard.
In fact, aerocraft are steered entirely by sand, and this brings us to the main topic. 
Sand is indispensable to balloning or airshippery, if you want to go up, you throw out some sand, and if you want to go faster, you shake a corn-popper full of sand out over the unsuspecting public. A balloon without sand is like a warship without coal.
Years ago, it is said, the Standard Oil Company found itself so burdened with a by-product called the speedway at Palm Beach, Fla.? Yea, all Florida itself, for the whole state is a sand-bar. And the sand dunes of St.Joe, Mich., which now greet the homebound mariner from Chicago on his four-hour steam across the lake?
All to be taken aboard balloons, a bushel at a time, perhaps, and dumped promiscuously upon the inland landscape wherever the caprice of the kiteist decides. Will this [?] throw the earth out of balance in time?
Land marks will buy up all the sand dunes from Watch Hill. R. I., to the old Kearney lots in San Francisco, and put a fancy price on sand, and then we shall have a sand trust. Sandpaper will advance we shall have a sand trust. Sandpaper will advance to so tremendous a price that we shall no longer be able to afford it to scratch matches upon, but will be forced to resort to the old primitive method devised by Father Adam.
Sand will be too high-priced to use in mortar, and sandbaggers will be forced out of business unless they become able to devise some other silent means of paralyzing the inoffensive citizen. It will be too dear to spread on slippery sidewalks in winter, and locomotives will have to slide along on greasy tracks, for the same hox will have been regulated to the junk
[?] will have no place

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