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There seems to be some confusion about the date- later G.B. thought date was the 12th.

Washington, September 9, 1908.
11.33, p.m.

This letter was included in a scrap book de luxe compiled by the Aero Club in honor of the occasion.


My dear Ned, 

Well, hell's popping - the gasolene motor is in the air, and man with outspread sheets is astride of it! I've just left Major [[right margin Major Squires Chief Signal Corps. [[/right margin]] S. and P,[[right margin P. may have been Augustus Post[[/right margin]] who dined with me at the Metropolitan - a simple dinner, but our spirits were as if charged with champagne from the excitement of the afternoon. Orville Wrights has broken all previous records. He flew 69 minutes in a 16 mile wind. Handled his pair of planes like a chauffeur, and rode the air as deliberately as if he were passing over a solid macadam road.
Nothing I have ever seen is comparable in action to this gliding bird save the ice-boat. There is no action of the "wings", so you do not think of birds. It has life, power, and selects its course, holds is position, so that it is unlike and unrelated to the gas bag. It is so simple, it annoys one. It is inconceivable, yet having seen it, it now seems the most natural thing in the air. One is amazed human kind has not built it before.
We returned from the Fort with Selfridge - a fine young enthusiast, who will fly this machine as soon as it becomes the property of the Government. [[right margin]] 9/17/08 Selfridge was killed next day in a flight [[/right margin]] Selfridge has been "learning a good deal about what not to do at Baddeck, in the science of aeronautics", as he put it.
I'm sorry you and father could not have been with me. I would have given anything to have had him see what I have seen