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In order to stimulate interest in what we were doing we resorted to interesting tricks.  One day I went up to the end of the rope and then crawled out of the basket and started to slide down the five hundred feet to the ground.  People stampeded in from all parts of the grounds!

"Who is hurt?  Who got killed?" they demanded [[strikethrough]].  The sheriff from Webster came over on the double and wanted to render service.  "Where is the corpse?" he inquired.

We did a landslide business that day!

The magnitude of the fair, the tremendous work expended to make it a success, and the part the aeronauts played in it cannot be over emphasized.  My part in it was small, relatively, but to me, extremely thrilling!

Secure now in m y two jobs--my kite concession and my balloon leased and operating--I began to take interest in other aeronauts, and their various equipment, who began to arrive for participation in the coming events.

Among the first to enter the contest for the $100,000 Grand Prize was ALBERTO SANTOS DUMONT.  He had distinguished himself by making a number of successful flights over, and in the vicinity of Paris.  For the St. Louis Fair, he had constructed a new and improved type of dirigible airship which he called his Number Seven.  His entire outfit, together with eight or ten French mechanics arrived at the fair on or about July 1, 1904.  His equipment was placed in one of the corridors in the big hangar.  His mechanics were anxious to examine the crate in which the balloon part of the airship was shipped and removed the cover.  Satisfied that the balloon had arrived in good condition, the cover was placed on top of the crate, to await further instruction from Dumont.