Europe as are the motor car and the bicycle. Of course, it will take much longer to make them familiar to everyone; yet nobody should lose sight of the fact that the Age of Flight is really here-that the man bird is fledged at last, and already on the wing. If you care to join him, too, the way is open, because the Wrights' flier is now on sale. Price, from $5,000.00 to $10,000.00, depending upon style and horse-power. Deliveries immediate.

Now get it out of your head, in the first place, that flying is an exceptionally dangerous pastime. To the contrary. And, at the same time, clear your mind of the idea that the Wright flier is not suited for ordinary man. If you will ask the Wrights themselves about the future of their invention, ten chances to one, their first effort will be to deprive you of a lot of of highfalutin notions. One of them is the general impression that they are going to put the railroad out of business. They grin when you suggest things like this-or that the ocean liner is doomed. And when you inquire whether the motor car is now on the way to the scrap heap, they try hard

to look polite and interested. The truth of the matter is, that the Wrights never miss a good chance to club an idea like this over the head, hitting it a good, solid thump before the idea has even had time enough to sit up and take notice. Why? Well, that's easy, too. Because the flying machine, as they will patiently tell you, seems to lack a probable, or even a remotely plausible chance of disturbing, in the least way, the present methods of transportation. Instead, it only adds one more factor to the facility of travel; and as for its first utility, hear what the Wrights themselves have to say:

"Sport first of all. After that, its use in exploration and in war. And after war . . . Oh, well, you can guess as well as we can."

But this idea, new as it will be to the average American, has already been grasped abroad. To-day, in France, there are already nearly a hundred persons who have ridden in the air; and the number is growing constantly. In America, however, a scant dozen would fill the list-a statement that many will accept as evi

dence of the American's more conservative regard for his neck. But if you'll stop to think, you'll see this can't be true; for the most daring, and the fastest and best drivers of motor cars are from the United States. Necks have nothing to do with the case. It's because, over on this side of the ocean, we haven't had the chance.

IS FLYING AS DANGEROUS AS MOTORING?

Of course, there is a certain element of danger in flying, as there is in every sport. But granting that, it is still a question in the minds of those who have tried both flying and motoring, whether the aërodrome, at its average gait of thirty-eight miles an hour, is not a safer vehicle than the automobile when it goes tearing up a road at the same rate of speed. And as between riding in an aerodrome and in a Vanderbilt cup race, ask any one who has tried which he believes to be the safer. Farman, who has given up cup racing to go into aviation, smiles when you put the question, and promptly chooses the flying machine. Furthermore, I'm told you couldn't get the Wrights into a racing auto unless you dragged them into it, and then sat on them. Because, as the two respect

Photograph by J. A. D. McCurdy.

fully and earnestly submit, they have an extremely anxious regard for both life and limb.

One of the usual questions put to Orville Wright, at the Fort Myer tests, was whether flying is hard to learn.

"That depends," he answered always. "Some persons learn to run a motor car without any trouble at all. It takes others longer. Some never learn."

Pinning him to the fact, I asked whether this was the case with the aerodrome. "It seems so," he answered, after a moment's cautious reflection.

But this question, asked by so many in a spirit of idle curiosity, is of first importance to any one considering flying as a sport. If you are a motorist, the flying machine with its engine, levers, rudders and supporting surfaces, will be more or less easy to understand-much easier, in fact, than the involved mechanism of a motor car. But in running your auto, the road is in plain sight before you, its hills and vales and turnings clearly indicated and every obstruction visible before you come to it. Furthermore, you can nearly always tell at a glance where your auto is likely to skid or bore or crimp its forward wheels. In the air, however, sight will aid

you very little. It is all a matter of sensation of feel. Still further, the road through the air is a highway among hills and hollows, a path filled with innumerable grades and pitches, cliffs, gulfs and precipices, all invisible and all in a state of chaotic, violent unrest. You must keep this in mind if you wish to fly. In motoring, you see your road; in flying, you know it only by the feel.

THE SIMPLE CONSTRUCTION OF THE FLYING MACHINE

As for the machine itself, there is very little in it that is not reduced to the utmost simplicity. In fact, one is astonished to see how really simple it is astounded that so plain and uninvolved a mechanism should have solved a problem that has vexed the world for ages.

One looks hard to find in it the fearful and the mystifying, and one finds it isn't there. Here, if you please, are two clothcovered surfaces, one above the other, each slightly concave, and, in dimension, six and one-half feet fore and aft and forty feet from tip to tip. Out in front—say, about where a wild goose would hold its head-there are two horizontal planes, also one above the other, and sixteen feet in width and two and one-half feet fore and aft. This is the forward rudder, which steers the machine up and down and also serves to hold it from pitching. Astern, about where the tail of the wild goose would be, are two six-foot, parallel planes set upright-this, the rudder that turns the flier from side to side, and, at the same time, which helps to keep the aerodrome on an even keel. A system of light wooden stanchions and steel piano wires truss the body together, and under all is a wooden skid-a sledge with narrow runner on which the aerodrome rests when it alights.

On the lower wing, a little to the right of midships, stands the engine, a fourcylinder, gasoline motor of the usual type. By a chain and sprocket gearing, it drives the two propellers, which revolve astern in opposite directions. Then there are the two seats set amidships on the forward edge of the lower wing; and, in front of them, the three levers that operate the aerodrome in its flight. The one on the left works the forward rudder; the two on

the right, set side by side, so that they may be grasped together in one hand, serve a double purpose-to steer from side to side and to maintain equilibrium. All very simple-yes.

TO FLY YOU MUST KNOW THE CHARACTER OF THE AIR

But without a clear knowledge of the air and the air's unruly character, the Wrights had never succeeded in flying. And every man that wishes to fly must learn about it, too.

Bluntly speaking, the average person knows nothing whatever about the atmosphere. Ordinarily, he regards the air as like so much water-as a great deal lighter, of course, but not differing in other respects. If it be still air, it seems to him to be like unto a stagnant pool; if the wind blows, it takes on the semblance of a flowing river. And, in each case, he is wrong. In the first place, the air is never still. In the second place, the only condition in which water draws near to the air's wild turbulence is when the river flows like a Niagara that has burst from between its banks. Even then, the water in its unrest, would fall far short of the atmosphere's riotous inconstancy. For there are always currents of heated vapor flowing upward, and currents of colder vapor flowing downward; and through this commotion, all driven onward in the tossing of the wind, whirlwinds go corkscrewing up and down and to and fro, spinning like tops, or rolling like barrels or scaling at every angle like a boomerang. Then too, the wind, moving forward, advances in huge waves like the billows of a storm-tossed sea; only there is a difference from the troubled ocean or from the leaping, whirling maeltrom in that the air never sticks to one given line or plane of direction. If, by chance, it did, man would have learned long ago to fly. But until Langley, Chanute, Pilcher, Lillienthal and then the Wrights themselves began the study of the air, the world was as far from solving the puzzle of flight as it was in the days of Darius Green.

Now in venturing upon this turmoil, two things must be provided for-balance and support. A plane surface resting inertly on the air, maintains three points in one