the rickety lounge, the full skirt of the summer dress that she had put on in honor of dinner falling gracefully to the floor. In the shadows of the lofty room flickered the light of many candles set about here and there. There was a second bundle of fagots on the fire and flowers in some old pots, the morning's purchase. Eleanor had an instinct for giving the festal air even to trivial occasions. At first they had talked briskly, avoiding all roads that led backwards and downwards into the past. She had brought him at last to tell her what he had done with the ten years of freedom. And he had been forced to confess that after that lucky real estate speculation had put him in a position of ease there was not much to tell. He had had some thoughts of a book - indeed was over here now ostensibly to examine certain architectural monuments that might illustrate the book. But it had got vague

the book and he was not sure that it was altogether worth the doing. "So," his wife summed up, "it has n't been so much better than when you were hard pressed, and there never was quite enough to go around?"

"No money does n't count so much as we used to think, perhaps."

"What does count?"

Ah, yes! What did count in making up the tally of a life! In the still room the points of tapered light barely touched the woman's white face where she lay with thoughtful eyes fixed on the ceiling. As he smoked and watched her, his former wife, some old current of memory brought back the days before marriage, when he was in the ardent mood, or as she had said once with woman's brutality, "wanted me most." It was uncanny, this slipping back over a third of a lifetime to take up the thread there at the beginning, the thread they had contrived since to snarl so lamentably! There had been large and worshipful thoughts in those days.

any other woman ?"

This bold speculation touched him unpleasantly. His imagination, too, had tried to piece together a picture of what life might have been with her or another, and had given up the hopeless task. After all would they, any one of them, have come out of the sweating process of marriage better than she had!

"Much the same, I fancy!" He tried to give a gallant ring to the admission.

"Would they have irritated you brought out all the devil in you, as I used to?" she pursued ruthlessly; "made you put on your hat, so to speak, and get out? How I'd like to know!"

"It's a hard test, marriage," he remarked at random.

She sat upright, her palms clenched with sudden anguish, as if all the dreary years had swept over her in one whelming sense of despair.

"It is a hard test, God knows! for the woman. Oh, you think it was this or that in me-extravagance, willfulness, stupidity that did our business. Perhaps not. You wanted your little way and I wanted my little way—and there was never quite enough room or money for both our little ways! Was that all? Men don't hate women for their faults."

"Oh!" he protested at the word.

"More likely it's the way they do their hair, the shape of their mouth, the way they talk-oh, you can't say. Something was wrong with the combination!" She slipped back to her cushions with a light word. "Perhaps we did n't make the proper sacrifice to Juno!"

Nevertheless there were tears, almost, in the voice. He made an impatient gesture, wishing to blot out this intervening gulf of years with all its repulsive detail of the lost game, that separated them from the starting point, so long ago!

"Oh, I am not going into it," she protested. "It's dead and decently buried. But one wonders. Do you still get to

the station half an hour before train time, Alfred? What a lot of time you must have wasted these last ten years!"

She showed him that she could still laugh. He did not like this sudden shift up and down the emotional scale.

"But we stuck - after a fashion sort of half-way stuck!"

"Yes, we stuck-half-way!"

-

And there they were at the bottom. The candles flickered and smoked. The last fagot curled up economically into white ash. The woman's eyes still searched the ceiling for an answer to all the mystery. The man threw away his cigar. It was dead, almost pathetically dead all their loud discords, their silent inharmonies. Nothing it seemed could ever relight the fire of their passionate distaste. Between the before and the now there lay a field of ashes where there might have been-the fragrant carpet of life, flower-sown with tears and laughter. The mere inexorable fate of it made them calm. He said softly,

During the night the lowering sky had been swept clear of clouds, and a fresh breeze flecked the blue water of the Eolian sea, through which the dirty little coast steamer ploughed its way toward the Calabrian shore. Close together on the rear deck Marshall and his wife stood gazing high above them at the ruined temple on the eastern promontory of the island. One solitary shaft in lovely isolation, wrapped with its clinging vine, reached into the vivid blue of the heavens. "Some of it still stands · after all!" he exclaimed, pointing upwards.

"And so lovely, even in its ruin,” she murmured. His hand lightly touched her shoulder, and as the temple faded into the distance across the waves he said gently,

"We must make those green things grow over the dead volcano!"

She smiled wistfully, while the maid Annette eyed them speculatively through the cabin window.

In some moment of rest or recreation in the open air, every one must have looked into the blue sky, seen the snowy masses of cloud, and wondered to what unknown haven they were drifting. For me, the study of the sky and the weather has an irresistible fascination. In my youth, I watched the clouds with eager interest; and in my manhood, I have spent many years in observing and pondering over the meanings of their various shapes and motions, because I believe they hold secrets of great interest to the human race. Stop the vast flow of invisible vapor of which the cloud is but a visible symbol, and within a single year every wheel of industry would cease to turn, and our own busy land would be as silent and tenantless as the great Sahara; the summer sun would no more woo the fields to verdure; and the trees of our groves and forests would be but bare and lifeless trunks. Fortunately, no such grand catastrophe is likely to occur; but the variations of rainfall from month to month, and year to year, have a very great influence on our lives and comfort; and a knowledge of the laws of these changes will aid much in increasing the good, and decreasing the evil of their effects. I have hoped to aid in wresting these secrets from nature; but the study of the clouds has also had for me another interest, because I believe that the air is one day to be the highway of human travel, and a knowledge of its currents will aid in making its navigation safe and rapid.

The Blue Hill Meteorological Observatory, with which I am connected, has won a place among the leading observatories of the world for its researches concerning the conditions of the upper air, and the director, Professor A. Lawrence

Rotch, is widely known in Europe. For this reason, when the interested aeronauts of the great nations of Europe began to make arrangements for the first international balloon contest, to be held in America, naturally they sought information from the observatory in regard to the conditions likely to be met here. All the contestants had studied the problem of the balloon and its equipment, and had provided themselves with the best balloons and instruments that the present state of the art permits. The pilots were all experienced men, and all had given much thought to the use of favorable air-currents in ballooning. The Germans, particularly appreciative of scientific knowledge and the advantages of expert advice, invited the director of the Blue Hill Observatory to go as aide in one of their balloons. Not finding it convenient to go himself, the director asked me to represent the observatory in this voyage. And so it happened that I was to undertake to map out the best air-currents for a balloon to take, in order to reach the greatest distance from its starting-point at St. Louis, and to put into actual practice what I had often planned in imagination.

Provided with heavy wraps for the balloon voyage, I arrived at St. Louis on October 20, the morning before the race. Already the air was full of eager preparation and expectancy. The newspapers contained full accounts of receptions given to the visiting aeronauts, pungent paragraphs concerning the characteristics of the individuals, and vivid descriptions of the preliminary trial trips in the balloons. Most of the aeronauts had come from far distant lands, and some of them had only a limited command of English. Under the inspiration of the Aero Club of St. Louis, many thousands of dollars had

been contributed toward the promotion of this unique race; a section of the city's gas-plant had been reserved for the purpose of making a light gas especially for the balloons, and about three hundred soldiers had been detailed from the United States Army to aid in protecting and launching the balloons. All this careful preparation assured the filling and dispatching of the balloons with exemplary promptness. On the afternoon of my arrival, I was called to meet the officials conducting the race and the contestants for the prize. At this meeting, the rules of the contest were discussed and agreed upon. It was decided that whenever any contestant came to the ground voluntarily and landed, the race was over for him; he would not be allowed to rise again; but much discussion arose in regard to the time that might be given for a contestant to free himself, if his trail-rope became entangled with objects below. It was agreed that fifteen minutes were to be allowed in case of such an accident, at the end of which time, if he had not freed himself, he was to be considered as having landed. It was decided that the distance should be measured in a straight line from St. Louis to the point of landing.

The morning of the race found me busy in aiding my German friends in the preparation of the balloons for a start. All the balloons were spread out, each on a large sheet of canvas, with the valve uppermost and the mouth next the gasmain. Next, the various lines were attached: first, a line for operating the valve and allowing the gas to escape when necessary; second, a line for ripping open the top of the balloon and thus letting out all the gas at once. This line was to be used only at the moment of landing. Its employment is comparatively new, and it is one of the most useful of the various devices for rendering ballooning safe. So secure did the pilot of our balloon, the Pommern, feel in its use that the anchor usually carried was dispensed with.

In order to place these ropes properly, a man had to crawl down through the empty balloon and come out at its mouth. After the arrangement of these details, the net to which the basket is attached when in place was quickly spread over the balloon under the skillful guidance of our pilot, Mr. Erbsloeh.

Before noon, all the balloons were ready to receive the supply of gas which was to carry them aloft, and within less than two hours afterward, the gas-main being connected with all the balloons simultaneously, they became swelling globes, some twenty-five or thirty feet in diameter, towering above the ground and gently oscillating in the breeze.

As a check on the movements of the contestants and to provide material for a study of the race afterward, the Aero Club at St. Louis gave each contestant a sealed, self-recording barometer, which traced on a sheet every movement of the balloon in a vertical direction, and thus showed at what height it was sailing at each moment in its course, making it impossible for any contestant to descend to earth without a record of the event. These packages were placed in the baskets of the balloons by the judges themselves, with instructions that they were to be returned with the seal unbroken immediately after landing.

In addition to these instruments we had recording barometers of our own, thermometers of a delicate kind for recording temperature, and compasses of various sizes and shapes. In use, the thermometers are whirled outside of the basket of the balloon as far as one can reach, in order that the temperature may be obtained away from the balloon and not be affected by the temperature of the observers' bodies.

The rules of the contest were that the balloons should ascend following one another in rapid succession. That in which I was to aid and of which Oscar Erbsloeh was the pilot, was assigned by lot the first place in the list. We were provided with red envelopes by the committee, with in

structions to throw them overboard at the end of each two hours and as near as possible to towns, so that they might more readily be found. We also had a number of blanks placed in envelopes addressed to various newspapers, which we were requested to fill out and throw overboard, giving our position and speed at the time.

Before all this preparation was complete, throngs had begun to gather to see the race. Nearly an hour before the time of our departure, the streets immediately around the balloon-field were dense with people. During this last hour, crowds came streaming in from every direction. All the surrounding towns and cities contributed to the gathering, and some sightseers had come from as far as Boston and New York. Before the ascent of the first balloon, every seat on the stands erected for ticket-holders was taken, and a crowd, estimated by the newspapers at 300,000, surrounded the field of operations to witness the first race of this kind ever held in America.

Five minutes before the time of starting, Mr. Glidden, the time-keeper, began to call off the elapsing minutes, and then during the last minute, the elapsing intervals of ten seconds. This was a hurried period of final preparation; sandbags for ballast were hung all around our basket, which was the smallest of the nine, until its dimensions seemed nearly doubled. Finally, after several bags of ballast had been added and removed, the balance was adjusted so as to give only a slight excess of lift, and the Pommern was ready to carry Mr. Erbsloeh and myself on our long journey. A few seconds after four o'clock the order to depart was given. We grasped the hands of our friends in a final farewell, the restraining hands of the soldiers were removed, and slowly the earth began to recede from us. A wild, tumultuous cheer burst from the waiting thousands and I waved my hat in return to the waving hats and handkerchiefs below. The balloon was rising and moving northward without the slightest jar or jolt, such as one ordinarily asso

ciates with motion, and it was difficult to realize that we were not stationary and the world spinning beneath us. Soon the great city of St. Louis lay spread out below us as on a map. The houses and street-cars looked like toys and the men like creeping ants.

The upper currents of the atmosphere in the United States almost always move toward some point between northeast and southeast, usually nearly east. We had discussed our course the previous evening at dinner, and Mr. Erbsloch, deferring to my opinion about the best current to take, agreed to seek this upper current immediately after leaving St. Louis, and to make directly for the Atlantic coast, going south of the lake region. We wished to reach the coast as far north as possible, because in that direction the land stretched to the greatest distance from St. Louis, and it was agreed that we should ascend or descend as was necessary during the voyage in order to find favoring currents. About half an hour before the ascent of our balloon, one of the small sounding balloons which were then being liberated daily from St. Louis by Mr. S. P. Fergusson for Professor Rotch, was set free, somewhat in advance of the usual hour, for the purpose of aiding the balloonists. The air-currents near the earth's surface were toward the north, or northwest; but this small balloon showed that the eastward upper current which we sought was to be found at a height of about one mile and a half, and, throwing out sufficient ballast, we rose at once to find it. This manoeuvre rendered our balloon one of the most conspicuous in the race, as is shown by the following remarks from the St. Louis Republic on the morning following the race:

"The Pommern first, and then the America, made the brightest marks in the sky. Experts said the Anjou held the most gas, but the German far and away was the most conspicuous in the heavens. High and far she soared, and far and high went the others, but always was the Pommern the most majestic. Long after