T
he great Belmont Park Aero Meet, which woke New York to aviation, in October, 1910, was coming to an end. That clever new American flier, Hawk Ericson, had won only sixth place in speed, but he had won first prize in duration, by a flight of nearly six hours, driving round and round and round the pylons, hour on hour, safe and steady as a train, never taking the risk of sensational banking, nor spiraling like Johnstone, but amusing himself and breaking the tedium by keeping an eye out on each circuit for a fat woman in a bright lavender top-coat, who stood out in the dark line of people that flowed beneath. When he had descended—acclaimed the winner—thousands of heads turned his way as though on one lever; the pink faces flashing in such October sunshine as had filled the back yard of Oscar Ericson, in Joralemon, when a lonely Carl had performed duration feats for a sparrow. That same shy Carl wanted to escape from the newspaper-men who came running toward him. He hated their incessant questions—always the same: "Were you cold? Could you have stayed up longer?"
Yet he had seen all New York go mad over aviation—rather, over news about aviation. The newspapers had spread over front pages his name and the names of the other fliers. Carl chuckled to himself, with bashful awe, "Gee! can you beat it?—that'sme!" when he beheld himself referred to in editorial and interview and picture-caption as a superman, a god. He heard crowds rustle, "Look, there's Hawk Ericson!" as he walked along the barriers. He heard cautious predictions from fellow-fliers, and loud declarations from outsiders, that he was the coming cross-country champion. He was introduced to the mayor of New York, two Cabinet members, an assortment of Senators, authors, bank presidents, generals, and society rail-birds. He regularly escaped from them—and their questions—to help the brick-necked Hank Odell, from the Bagby School, who had entered for the meet, but smashed up on the first day, and ever since had been whistling and working over his machine and encouraging Carl, "Good work, bud; you've got 'em all going."
With vast secrecy and a perception that this was twice as stirring as steadily buzzing about in his Blériot, he went down to the Bowery and, in front of the saloon where he had worked as a porter four years before, he bought a copy of theEvening Worldbecause he knew that on the third page of it was a large picture of him and a signed interview by a special-writer. He peered into the saloon windows to see if Petey McGuff was there, but did not find him. He went to the street on which he had boarded in the hope that he might do something for the girl who had been going wrong. The tenement had been torn down, with blocks of others, to make way for a bridge-terminal, and he saw the vision of the city's pitiless progress. This quest of old acquaintances made him think of Joralemon. He informed Gertie Cowles that he was now "in the aviation game, and everything is going very well." He sent his mother a check for five hundred dollars, with awkward words of affection.
A greater spiritual adventure was talking for hours, over a small table in the basement of the Brevoort, to Lieutenant Forrest Haviland, who was attending the Belmont Park Meet as spectator. Theirs was the talk of tried friends; droning on for a time in amused comment, rising to sudden table-pounding enthusiasms over aviators or explorers, with exclamations of, "Is that the way it struck you, too? I'm awfully glad to hear you say that,because that's just the way I felt about it." They leaned back in their chairs and played with spoons and reflectively broke up matches and volubly sketched plans of controls, drawing on the table-cloth.
Carl took the sophisticated atmosphere of the Brevoort quite for granted. Whyshouldn'the be there! And after the interest in him at the meet it did not hugely abash him to hear a group at a table behind him ejaculate: "I think that's Hawk Ericson, the aviator! Yes, sir, that's—who—it—is!"
Finally the gods gave to Carl a new mechanic, a prince of mechanics, Martin Dockerill. Martin was a tall, thin, hatchet-faced, tousle-headed, slow-spoken, irreverent Irish-Yankee from Fall River; the perfect type of American aviators; for while England sends out its stately soldiers of the air, and France its short, excitable geniuses, practically all American aviators and aviation mechanics are either long-faced and lanky, like Martin Dockerill and Hank Odell, or slim, good-looking youngsters of the college track-team type, like Carl and Forrest Haviland.
Martin Dockerill ate pun'kin pie with his fingers, played "Marching through Georgia" on the mouth-organ, admired burlesque-show women in sausage-shaped pink tights, and wore balbriggan socks that always reposed in wrinkles over the tops of his black shoes with frayed laces. But he probably could build a very decent motor in the dark, out of four tin cans and a crowbar. In A.D. 1910 he still believed in hell and plush albums. But he dreamed of wireless power-transmission. He was a Free and Independent American Citizen who called the Count de Lesseps, "Hey, Lessup." But he would have gone with Carl aeroplaning to the South Pole upon five minutes' notice—four minutes to devote to the motor, and one minute to write, with purple indelible pencil, a post-card to his aunt in Fall River. He was precise about only two things—motor-timing and calling himself a "mechanician," not a "mechanic." He became veryfriendly with Hank Odell; helped him repair his broken machine, went with him to vaudeville, or stood with him before the hangar, watching the automobile parties of pretty girls with lordly chaperons that came to call on Grahame-White and Drexel. "Some heart-winners, them guys, but I back my boss against them and ev'body else, Hank," Martin would say.
The meet was over; the aviators were leaving. Carl had said farewell to his new and well-loved friends, the pioneers of aviation—Latham, Moisant, Leblanc, McCurdy, Ely, de Lesseps, Mars, Willard, Drexel, Grahame-White, Hoxsey, and the rest. He was in the afterglow of the meet, for with Titherington, the Englishman, and Tad Warren, the Wright flier, he was going to race from Belmont Park to New Haven for a ten-thousand-dollar prize jointly offered by a New Haven millionaire and a New York newspaper. At New Haven the three competitors were to join with Tony Bean (of the Bagby School) and Walter MacMonnies (flying a Curtiss) in an exhibition meet.
Enveloped in baggy overalls over the blue flannel suit which he still wore when flying, Carl was directing Martin Dockerill in changing his spark-plugs, which were fouled. About him, the aviators were having their machines packed, laughing, playing tricks on one another—boys who were virile men; mechanics in denim who stammered to the reporters, "Oh, well, I don't know——" yet who were for the time more celebrated than Roosevelt or Harry Thaw or Bernard Shaw or Champion Jack Johnson.
Before 9.45a.m., when the race to New Haven was scheduled to start, the newspaper-men gathered; but there were not many outsiders. Carl felt the lack of the stimulus of thronging devotees. He worked silently and sullenly. It was "the morning after." He missed Forrest Haviland.
He began to be anxious. Could he get off on time?
Exactly at 9.45 Titherington made a magnificent start in his Henry Farman biplane. Carl stared till the machine was a dot in the clouds, then worked feverishly. Tad Warren, the second contestant, was testing out his motor, ready to go. At that moment Martin Dockerill suggested that the carburetor was dirty.
"I'll fly with her the way she is," Carl snapped, shivering with the race-fever.
A cub reporter from the City News Association piped, like a fox-terrier, "What time 'll you get off, Hawk?"
"Ten sharp."
"No, I mean what time will you really get off!"
Carl did not answer. He understood that the reporters were doubtful about him, the youngster from the West who had been flying for only six months. At last came the inevitable pest, the familiarly suggestive outsider. A well-dressed, well-meaning old bore he was; a complete stranger. He put his podgy hand on Carl's arm and puffed: "Well, Hawk, my boy, give us a good flight to-day; not but what you're going to have trouble. There's something I want to suggest to you. If you'd use a gyroscope——"
"Oh, beat it!" snarled Carl. He was ashamed of himself—but more angry than ashamed. He demanded of Martin, aside: "All right, heh? Can I fly with the carburetor as she is? Heh?"
"All right, boss. Calm down, boss, calm down."
"What do you mean?"
"Look here, Hawk, I don't want to butt in. You can have old Martin for a chopping-block any time you want to cut wood. But if you don't calm down you'll get so screwed up mit nerves that you won't have any control. Aw, come on, boss, speak pretty! Just keep your shirt on and I'll hustle like a steam-engine."
"Well, maybe you're right. But these assistant aviators in the crowd get me wild.... All right? Hoorray. Here goes.... Say, don't stop for anything after I get off.Leave the boys to pack up, and you hustle over to Sea Cliff for the speed-boat. You ought to be in New Haven almost as soon as I am."
Calmer now, he peeled off his overalls, drew a wool-lined leather jacket over his coat, climbed into the cockpit, and inspected the indicators. As he was testing the spark Tad Warren got away.
Third and last was Carl. The race-fever shook him.
He would try to save time. Like the others, he had planned to fly from Belmont Park across Long Island to Great Neck, and cross Long Island Sound where it was very narrow. He studied his map. By flying across to the vicinity of Hempstead Harbor and making a long diagonal flight over water, straight over to Stamford, he would increase the factor of danger, but save many miles; and the specifications of the race permitted him to choose any course to New Haven. Thinking only of the new route, taking time only to nod good-by to Martin Dockerill and Hank Odell, he was off, into the air.
As the ground dropped beneath him and the green clean spaces and innumerous towns of Long Island spread themselves out he listened to the motor. Its music was clear and strong. Here, at least, the wind was light.
He would risk the long over-water flight—very long they thought it in 1910.
In a few minutes he sighted the hills about Roslyn and began to climb, up to three thousand feet. It was very cold. His hands were almost numb on the control. He descended to a thousand feet, but the machine jerked like a canoe shooting rapids, in the gust that swept up from among the hills. The landscape rose swiftly at him over the ends of the wings, now on one side, now on the other, as the machine rolled.
His arms were tired with the quick, incessant wing-warping. He rose again. Then he looked at the Sound, and came down to three hundred feet, lest he lose his way. For the Sound was white with fog.... No wind outthere!... Water and cloud blurred together, and the sky-line was lost in a mass of somber mist, which ranged from filmy white to the cold dead gray of old cigar-ashes. He wanted to hold back, not dash out into that danger-filled twilight. But already he was roaring over gray-green marshes, then was above fishing-boats that were slowly rocking in water dully opaque as a dim old mirror. He noted two men on a sloop, staring up at him with foolish, gaping, mist-wet faces. Instantly they were left behind him. He rose, to get above the fog. Even the milky, sulky water was lost to sight.
He was horribly lonely, abominably lonely.
At five hundred feet altitude he was not yet entirely above the fog. Land was blotted out. Above him, gray sky and thin writhing filaments of vapor. Beneath him, only the fog-bank, erupting here and there like the unfolding of great white flowers as warm currents of air burst up through the mist-blanket.
Completely solitary. All his friends were somewhere far distant, in a place of solid earth and sun-warmed hangars. The whole knowable earth had ceased to exist. There was only slatey void, through which he was going on for ever. Or perhaps he was not moving. Always the same coil of mist about him. He was horribly lonely.
He feared that the fog was growing thicker. He studied his compass with straining eyes. He was startled by a gull's plunging up through the mist ahead of him, and disappearing. He was the more lonely when it was gone. His eyebrows and cheeks were wet with the steam. Drops of moisture shone desolately on the planes. It was an unhealthy shine. He was horribly lonely.
He pictured what would happen if the motor should stop and he should plunge down through that flimsy vapor. His pontoonless frail monoplane would sink almost at once.... It would be cold, swimming. How long could he keep up? What chance of being found? He didn't want to fall. The cockpit seemed so safe, with its familiarwatch and map-stand and supporting-wires. It was home. The wings stretching out on either side of him seemed comfortingly solid, adequate to hold him up. But the body of the machine behind him was only a framework, not even inclosed. And cut in the bottom of the cockpit was a small hole for observing the earth. He could see fog through it, in unpleasant contrast to the dull yellow of the cloth sides and bottom. Not before had it daunted him to look down through that hole. Now, however, he kept his eyes away from it, and, while he watched the compass and oil-gauge, and kept a straight course, he was thinking of how nasty it would be to drop, drop downthere, and have to swim. It would be horribly lonely, swimming about a wrecked monoplane, hearing steamers' fog-horns, hopeless and afar.
As he thought that, he actually did hear a steamer hoarsely whistling, and swept above it, irresistibly. He started; his shoulders drooped.
More than once he wished that he could have seen Forrest Haviland again before he started. He wished with all the poignancy of man's affection for a real man that he had told Forrest, when they were dining at the Brevoort, how happy he was to be with him. He was horribly lonely.
He cursed himself for letting his thoughts become thin and damp as the vapor about him. He shrugged his shoulders. He listened thankfully to the steady purr of the engine and the whir of the propeller. Hewouldget across! He ascended, hoping for a glimpse of the shore. The fog-smothered horizon stretched farther and farther away. He was unspeakably lonely.
Through a tear in the mist he saw sunshine reflected from houses on a hill, directly before him, perhaps one mile distant. He shouted. He was nearly across. Safe. And the sun was coming out.
Two minutes later he was turning north, between the water and a town which his map indicated as Stamford.The houses beneath him seemed companionable; friendly were the hand-waving crowds, and factory-whistles gave him raucous greeting.
Instantly, now that he knew where he was, the race-fever caught him again. Despite the strain of crossing the Sound, he would not for anything have come down to rest. He began to wonder how afar ahead of him were Titherington and Tad Warren.
He spied a train running north out of Stamford, swung over above it, and raced with it. The passengers leaned out of the windows, trainmen hung perilously from the opened doors of vestibuled platforms, the engineer tooted his frantic greetings to a fellow-mechanic who, above him in the glorious bird, sent telepathic greetings which the engineer probably never got. The engineer speeded up; the engine puffed out vast feathery plumes of dull black smoke. But he drew away from the train as he neared South Norwalk.
He was ascending again when he noted something that seemed to be a biplane standing in a field a mile away. He came down and circled the field. It was Titherington's Farman biplane. He hoped that the kindly Englishman had not been injured. He made out Titherington, talking to a group about the machine. Relieved, he rose again, amused by the ant-hill appearance as hundreds of people, like black bugs, ran toward the stalled biplane, from neighboring farms and from a trolley-car standing in the road.
He should not have been amused just then. He was too low. Directly before him was a hillside crowned with trees. He shot above the trees, cold in the stomach, muttering, "Gee! that was careless!"
He sped forward. The race-fever again. Could he pass Tad Warren as he had passed Titherington? He whirled over the towns, shivering but happy in the mellow, cool October air, far enough from the water to be out of what fog the brightening sun had left. The fieldsrolled beneath him, so far down that they were turned into continuous and wonderful masses of brown and gold. He sang to himself. He liked Titherington; he was glad that the Englishman had not been injured; but it was good to be second in the race; to have a chance to win a contest which the whole country was watching; to be dashing into a rosy dawn of fame. But while he sang he was keeping a tense lookout for Tad Warren. He had to pass him!
With the caution of the Scotchlike Norwegian, he had the cloche constantly on the jiggle, with ceaseless adjustments to the wind, which varied constantly as he passed over different sorts of terrain. Once the breeze dropped him sidewise. He shot down to gain momentum, brought her to even keel, and, as he set her nose up again, laughed boisterously.
Never again would he be so splendidly young, never again so splendidly sure of himself and of his medium of expression. He was to gain wisdom, but never to have more joy of the race.
He was sure now that he was destined to pass Tad Warren.
The sun was ever brighter; the horizon ever wider, rimming the saucer-shaped earth. When he flew near the Sound he saw that the fog had almost passed. The water was gentle and colored like pearl, lapping the sands, smoking toward the radiant sky. He passed over summer cottages, vacant and asleep, with fantastic holiday roofs of red and green. Gulls soared like flying sickles of silver over the opal sea. Even for the racer there was peace.
He made out a mass of rock covered with autumn-hued trees to the left, then a like rock to the right. "West and East Rock—New Haven!" he cried.
The city mapped itself before him like square building-blocks on a dark carpet, with railroad and trolley tracks like flashing spider-webs under the October noon.
So he had arrived, then—and he had not caught Tad Warren. He was furious.
He circled the city, looking for the Green, where (in this day before the Aero Club of America battled against over-city flying) he was to land. He saw the Yale campus, lazy beneath its elms, its towers and turrets dreaming of Oxford. His anger left him.
He plunged down toward the Green—and his heart nearly stopped. The spectators were scattered everywhere. How could he land without crushing some one? With trees to each side and a church in front, he was too far down to rise again. His back pressed against the back of the little seat, and seemed automatically to be trying to restrain him from this tragic landing.
The people were fleeing. In front there was a tiny space. But there was no room to sail horizontally and come down lightly. He shut off his motor and turned the monoplane's nose directly at the earth. She struck hard, bounced a second. Her tail rose, and she started, with dreadful deliberateness, to turn turtle. With a vault Carl was out of the cockpit and clear of the machine as she turned over.
Oblivious of the clamorous crowd which was pressing in about him, cutting off the light, replacing the clean smell of gasoline and the upper air by the hot odor of many bodies, he examined the monoplane and found that she had merely fractured the propeller and smashed the rudder.
Some one was fighting through the crowd to his side—Tony Bean—Tony the round, polite Mexican from the Bagby School. He was crying: "Hombre, what a landing! You have saved lives.... Get out of the way, all you people!"
Carl grinned and said: "Good to see you, Tony. What time did Tad Warren get here? Where's——"
"He ees not here yet."
"What? Huh? How's that? Do I win? That——Say, gosh! I hope he hasn't been hurt."
"Yes, you win."
A newspaper-man standing beside Tony said: "Warren had to come down at Great Neck. He sprained his shoulder, but that's all."
"That's good."
"But you," insisted Tony, "aren't you badly jarred, Hawk?"
"Not a bit."
The gaping crowd, hanging its large collective ear toward the two aviators, was shouting: "Hoorray! He's all right!"—As their voices rose Carl became aware that all over the city hundreds of factory-whistles and bells were howling their welcome to him—the victor.
The police were clearing a way for him. As a police captain touched a gold-flashing cap to him, Carl remembered how afraid of the police that hobo Slim Ericson had been.
Tony and he completed examination of the machine, with Tony's mechanician, and sent it off to a shop, to await Martin Dockerill's arrival by speed-boat and racing-automobile. Carl went to receive congratulations—and a check—from the prize-giver, and a reception by Yale officials on the campus. Before him, along his lane of passage, was a kaleidoscope of hands sticking out from the wall of people—hands that reached out and shook his own till they were sore, hands that held out pencil and paper to beg for an autograph, hands of girls with golden flowers of autumn, hands of dirty, eager, small boys—weaving, interminable hands. Dizzy with a world peopled only by writhing hands, yet moved by their greeting, he made his way across the Green, through Phelps Gateway, and upon the campus. Twisting his cap and wishing that he had taken off his leather flying-coat, he stood upon a platform and heard officials congratulating him.
The reception was over. But the people did not move. And he was very tired. He whispered to a professor:"Is that a dormitory, there behind us? Can I get into it and get away?"
The professor beckoned to one of the collegians, and replied, "I think, Mr. Ericson, if you will step down they will pass you into Vanderbilt Courtyard—by the gate back of us—and you will be able to escape."
Carl trusted himself to the bunch of boys forming behind him, and found himself rushed into the comparative quiet of a Tudor courtyard. A charming youngster, hatless and sleek of hair, cried, "Right this way, Mr. Ericson—up this staircase in the tower—and we'll give 'em the slip."
From the roar of voices to the dusky quietude of the hallway was a joyous escape. Suddenly Carl was a youngster, permitted to see Yale, a university so great that, from Plato College, it had seemed an imperial myth. He stared at the list of room-occupants framed and hung on the first floor. He peeped reverently through an open door at a suite of rooms.
He was taken to a room with a large collection of pillows, fire-irons, Morris chairs, sets of books in crushed levant, tobacco-jars and pipes—a restless and boyish room, but a real haven. He stared out upon the campus, and saw the crowd stolidly waiting for him. He glanced round at his host and waved his hand deprecatingly, then tried to seem really grown up, really like the famous Hawk Ericson. But he wished that Forrest Haviland were there so that he might marvel: "Look at 'em, will you! Waiting forme!Can you beat it? Some start for my Yale course!"
In a big chair, with a pipe supplied by the youngster, he shyly tried to talk to a senior in the great world of Yale (he himself had not been able to climb to seniorhood even in Plato), while the awed youngster shyly tried to talk to the great aviator.
He had picked up a Yale catalogue and he vaguely ruffled its pages, thinking of the difference between itsrange of courses and the petty inflexible curriculum of Plato. Out of the pages leaped the name "Frazer." He hastily turned back. There it was: "Henry Frazer, A.M., Ph.D., Assistant Professor in English Literature."
Carl rejoiced boyishly that, after his defeat at Plato, Professor Frazer had won to victory. He forgot his own triumph. For a second he longed to call on Frazer and pay his respects. "No," he growled to himself, "I've been so busy hiking that I've forgotten what little book-learnin' I ever had. I'd like to see him, but——By gum! I'm going to begin studying again."
Hidden away in the youngster's bedroom for a nap, he dreamed uncomfortably of Frazer and books. That did not keep him from making a good altitude flight at the New Haven Meet that afternoon, with his hastily repaired machine and a new propeller. But he thought of new roads for wandering in the land of books, as he sat, tired and sleepy, but trying to appear bright and appreciative, at the big dinner in his honor—the first sacrificial banquet to which he had been subjected—with earnest gentlemen in evening clothes, glad for an excuse to drink just a little too much champagne; with mayors and councilmen and bankers; with the inevitable stories about the man who was accused of stealing umbrellas and about the two skunks on a fence enviously watching a motor-car.
Equally inevitable were the speeches praising Carl's flight as a "remarkable achievement, destined to live forever in the annals of sport and heroism, and to bring one more glory to the name of our fair city."
Carl tried to appear honored, but he was thinking: "Rats! I'll live in the annals of nothin'! Curtiss and Brookins and Hoxsey have all made longer flights than mine, in this country alone, and they're aviators I'm not worthy to fill the gas-tanks of.... Gee! I'm sleepy! Got to look polite, but I wish I could beat it.... Let's see. Now look here, young Carl; starting in to-morrow, you begin to read oodles of books. Let's see. I'll start out withForrest's favorites. There'sDavid Copperfield, and that book by Wells,Tono-Bungay, that's got aerial experiments in it, andJude the Ob—, Obscure, I guess it is, andThe Damnation of Theron Ware(wonder what he damned), andMcTeague, andWalden, andWar and Peace, andMadame Bovary, and some Turgenev and some Balzac. And something more serious. Guess I'll try William James's book on psychology."
He bought them all next morning. His other belongings had been suited to rapid transportation, and Martin Dockerill grumbled, "That's a swell line of baggage, all right—one tooth-brush, a change of socks, and ninety-seven thousand books."
Two nights later, in a hotel at Portland, Maine, Carl was plowing through the Psychology. He hated study. He flipped the pages angrily, and ran his fingers through his corn-colored hair. But he sped on, concentrated, stopping only to picture a day when the people who honored him publicly would also know him in private. Somewhere among them, he believed, was the girl with whom he could play. He would meet her at some aero race, and she would welcome him as eagerly as he welcomed her.... Had he, perhaps, already met her? He walked over to the writing-table and scrawled a note to Gertie Cowles—regarding the beauty of the Yale campus.
(Editor's Note: The following pages are extracts from a diary kept by Mr. C. O. Ericson in a desultory fashion from January, 1911, to the end of April, 1912. They are reprinted quite literally. Apparently Mr. Ericson had no very precise purpose in keeping his journal. At times it seems intended asmateriafor future literary use; at others, as comments for his own future amusement; at still others, as a sort of long letter to be later sent to his friend, Lieut. Forrest Haviland, U.S.A. I have already referred to them in myPsycho-Analysis of the Subconscious with Reference to Active Temperaments, but here reprint them less for their appeal to us as a scientific study of reactions than as possessing, doubtless, for those interested in pure narrative, a certain curt expression of somewhat unusual exploits, however inferior is their style to a more critical thesis on the adventurous.)
M
ay 9, (1911). Arrived at Mineola flying field, N. Y. to try out new Bagby monoplane I have bought. Not much accomodation here yet. Many of us housed in tents. Not enough hangars. We sit around and tell lies in the long grass at night, like a bunch of kids out camping. Went over and had a beer at Peter McLoughlin's today, that's where Glenn Curtiss started out from to make his first flight for Sci. Amer. cup.
Like my new Bagby machine better than Blériot in many respects, has non-lifting tail, as should all modern machines. Rudder and elevator a good deal like the Nieuport. One passenger. Roomy cockpit and enclosed fuselage. Blériot control. Nearer streamline thanany American plane yet. Span, 33.6 ft., length 24, chord of wing at fuselage 6´ 5´´. Chauviere propeller, 6´ 6´´, pitch 4´ 5´´. Dandy new Gnôme engine, 70 h.p., should develop 60 to 80 m.p.h.
Martin Dockerill my mechanician is pretty cute. He said to me to-day when we were getting work-bench up, "I bet a hat the spectators all flock here, now. Not that you're any better flier than some of the other boys, but you got the newest plane for them to write their names on."
Certainly a scad of people butting in. Come in autos and motor cycles and on foot, and stand around watching everything you do till you want to fire a monkey wrench at them.
Hank Odell has joined the Associated Order of the Pyramid and just now he is sitting out in front of his tent talking to some of the Grand Worthy High Mighties of it I guess—fat old boy with a yachting cap and a big brass watch chain and an Order of Pyramid charm big as your thumb, and a tough young fellow with a black sateen shirt and his hat on sideways with a cigarette hanging out of one corner of his mouth.
Since I wrote the above a party of sports, the women in fade-away gowns made to show their streamline forms came butting in, poking their fingers at everything, while the slob that owned their car explained everything wrong. "This is a biplane," he says, "you can see there's a plane sticking out on each side of the place where the aviator sits, it's a new areoplane (that's the way he pronounced it), and that dingus in front is a whirling motor." I was sitting here at the work-bench, writing, hot as hell and sweaty and in khaki pants and soft shirt and black sneakers, and the Big Boss comes over to me and says, "Where is Hawk Ericson, my man." "How do I know," I says. "When will he be back," says he, as though he was thinking of getting me fired p. d. q. for being fresh. "Next week. He ain't come yet."
He gets sore and says, "See here, my man, I read in the papers to-day that he has just joined the flying colony. Permit me to inform you that he is a very good friend of mine. If you will ask him, I am quite sure that he will remember Mr. Porter Carruthers, who was introduced to him at the Belmont Park Meet. Now if you will be so good as to show the ladies and myself about——" Well, I asked Hawk, and Hawk seemed to be unable to remember his friend Mr. Carruthers, who was one of the thousand or so people recently introduced to him, but he told me to show them about, which I did, and told them the Gnôme was built radial to save room, and the wires overhead were a frame for a little roof for bad weather, and they gasped and nodded to every fool thing I said, swallowed it hook line and sinker till one of the females showed her interest by saying "How fascinating, let's go over to the Garden City Hotel, Porter, I'm dying for a drink." I hope she died for it.
May 10: Up at three, trying out machine. Smashed landing chassis in coming down, shook me up a little. Interesting how when I rose it was dark on the ground but once up was a little red in the east like smoke from a regular fairy city.
Another author out to-day bothering me for what he called "copy."
Must say I've met some darn decent people in this game though. To-day there was a girl came out with Billy Morrison of the N. Y. Courier, she is an artist but crazy about outdoor life, etc. Named Istra Nash, a red haired girl, slim as a match but the strangest face, pale but it lights up when she's talking to you. Took her up and she was not scared, most are.
May 11: Miss Istra Nash came out by herself. She's thinking quite seriously about learning to fly. She sat around and watched me work, and when nobody was looking smoked a cigarette. Has recently been in Europe, Paris, London, etc.
Somehow when I'm talking to a woman like her I realize how little I see of women with whom I can be really chummy, tho I meet so many people at receptions etc. sometimes just after I have been flying before thousands of people I beat it to my hotel and would be glad for a good chat with the night clerk, of course I can bank on Martin Dockerill to the limit but when I talk to a person like Miss Nash I realize I need some one who knows good art from bad. Though Miss Nash doesn't insist on talking like a high-brow, indeed is picking up aviation technologies very quickly. She talks German like a native.
Think Miss Nash is perhaps older than I am, perhaps couple of years, but doesn't make any difference.
Reading a little German to-night, almost forgot what I learned of it in Plato.
May 14, Sunday: Went into town this afternoon and went with Istra to dinner at the Lafayette. She told me all about her experiences in Paris and studying art. She is quite discontented here in N. Y. I don't blame her much, it must have been bully over in Paree. We sat talking till ten. Like to see Vedrines fly, and the Louvre and the gay grisettes too by heck! Istra ought not to drink so many cordials, nix on the booze you learn when you try to keep in shape for flying, though Tad Warren doesn't seem to learn it. After ten we went to studio where Istra is staying on Washington Sq. several of her friends there and usual excitement and fool questions about being an aviator, it always makes me feel like a boob. But they saw Istra and I wanted to be alone and they beat it.
This is really dawn but I'll date it May 14, which is yesterday. No sleep for me to-night, I'm afraid. Going to fly around NY in aerial derby this afternoon. Must get plenty sleep now.
May 15: Won derby, not much of an event though. Struck rotten currents over Harlem River, machine rolled like a whale-back.
Istra out here to-morrow. Glad. But after last night afraid I'll get so I depend on her, and the aviator that keeps his nerve has to be sort of a friendless cuss some ways.
May 16: Istra came out here. Seems very discontented. I'm afraid she's the kind to want novelty and attention incessantly, she seems to forget that I'm pretty busy.
May 17: Saw Istra in town, she forgot all her discontent and her everlasting dignity and danced for me then came over and kissed me, she is truly a wonder, can hum a French song so you think you're among the peasants, but she expects absolute devotion and constant amusing and I must stick to my last if a mechanic like me is to amount to anything.
May 18: Istra out here, she sat around and looked bored, wanted to make me sore, I think. When I told her I had to leave to-morrow morning for Rochester and couldn't come to town for dinner etc. she flounced home. I'm sorry, I'm mighty sorry; poor kid she's always going to be discontented wherever she is, and always getting some one and herself all wrought up. She always wants new sensations yet doesn't want to work, and the combination isn't very good. It'd be great if she really worked at her painting, but she usually stops her art just this side of the handle of a paint-brush.
Curious thing is that when she'd gone and I sat thinking about her I didn't miss her so much as Gertie Cowles. I hope I see Gertie again some day, she is a good pal.
Istra wanted me to name my new monoplane Babette, because she says it looks "cunning" which the Lord knows it don't, it may look efficient but not cunning. But I don't think I'll name it anything, tho she says that shows lack of imagination.
People especially reporters are always asking me this question, do aviators have imagination? I'm not sureI know what imagination is. It's like this stuff about "sense of humor." Both phrases are pretty bankrupt now. A few years ago when I was running a car I would make believe I was different people, like a king driving through his kingdom, but when I'm warping and banking I don't have time to think about making believe. Of course I do notice sunsets and so on a good deal but that is not imagination. And I do like to go different places; possibly I take the imagination out that way—I guess imagination is partly wanting to be places where you aren't—well, I go when I want to, and I like that better.
Anyway darned if I'll give my monoplane a name. Tad Warren has been married to a musical comedy soubrette with ringlets of red-brown hair (Istra's hair is quite bright red, but this woman has dark red hair, like the color of California redwood chips, no maybe darker) and she wears a slimpsy bright blue dress with the waist-line nearly down to her knees, and skirt pretty short, showing a lot of ankle, and a kind of hat I never noticed before, must be getting stylish now I guess, flops down so it almost hides her face like a basket. She's a typical wife for a 10 h.p. aviator with exhibition fever. She and Tad go joy riding almost every night with a bunch of gasoline and alcohol sports and all have about five cocktails and dance a new Calif. dance called the Turkey Trot. This bunch have named Tad's new Wright "Sammy," and they think it's quite funny to yell "Hello Sammy, how are you, come have a drink."
I guess I'll call mine a monoplane and let it go at that.
July 14: Quebec. Lost race Toronto to Quebec. Had fair chance to win but motor kept misfiring, couldn't seem to get plugs that would work, and smashed hell out of elevator coming down on tail when landing here. Glad Hank Odell won, since I lost. Hank has designednew rocker-arm for Severn motor valves. All of us invited to usual big dinner, never did see so many uniforms, also members of Canadian parliament. I don't like to lose a race, but thunder it doesn't bother me long. Good filet of sole at dinner. Sat near a young lieutenant, leftenant I suppose it is, who made me think of Forrest Haviland. I miss Forrest a lot. He's doing some good flying for the army, flying Curtiss hydro now, and trying out muffler for military scouting. What I like as much as anything about him is his ease, I hope I'm learning a little of it anyway. This stuff is all confused but must hustle off to reception at summer school of Royal College for Females. Must send all this to old Forrest to read some day—if you ever see this, Forrest, hello, dear old man, I thought about you when I flew over military post.
Later: Big reception, felt like an awful nut, so shy I didn't hardly dare look up off the ground. After the formal reception I was taken around the campus by the Lady President, nice old lady with white hair and diamond combs in it. What seemed more than a million pretty girls kept dodging out of doorways and making snapshots of me. Good thing I've been reading quite a little lately, as the Lady Principal (that was it, not Lady President) talked very high brow. She asked me what I thought of this "terrible lower class unrest." Told her I was a socialist and she never batted an eye—of course an aviator is permitted to be a nut. Wonder if I am a good socialist as a matter of fact, I do know that most governments, maybe all, permit most children to never have a chance, start them out by choking them with dirt and T.B. germs, but how can we make international solidarity seem practical to the dub average voters,how!
Letter from Gertie to-night, forwarded here. She seems sort of bored in Joralemon, but is working hard with Village Improvement Committee of woman's club for rest room for farmers' wives, also getting up P.E. Sundayschool picnic. Be good for Istra if she did common nice things like that, since she won't really get busy with her painting, but how she'd hate me for suggesting that she be what she calls "burjoice." Guess Gertie is finding herself. Hope yours truly but sleepy is finding himself too. How I love my little bed!
A
UGUST 20, (1911, as before): Big Chicago meet over. They sure did show us a good time. Never saw better meet. Won finals in duration to-day. Also am second in altitude, but nix on the altitude again, I'm pretty poor at it. I'm no Lincoln Beachey! Don't see how he breathes. His 11,578 ft. wassomeclimb.
Tomorrow starts my biggest attempt, by far; biggest distance flight ever tried in America, and rather niftier than even the European Circuit and British Circuit that Beaumont has won.
To fly as follows: Chicago to St. Louis to Indianapolis to Columbus to Washington to Baltimore to Philadelphia to Atlantic City to New York. The New York Chronicle in company with papers along line gives prize of $40,000. Ought to help bank account if win, in spite of big expenses to undergo. Now have $30,000 stowed away, and have sent mother $3,000.
To fly against my good old teacher M. Carmeau, and Tony Bean, Walter MacMonnies, M. Beaufort the Frenchman, Tad Warren, Billy Witzer, Chick Bannard, Aaron Solomons and other good men. Special NY Chronicle reporter, fellow named Forbes, assigned to me, and he hangs around all the time, sort of embarrassing (hurray, spelled it right, I guess) but I'm getting used to the reporters.
Martin Dockerill has an ambition! He said to me to-day, "Say, Hawk, if you win the big race you got togive me five plunks for my share and then by gum I'm going to buy two razor-strops." "What for?" I said. "Oh I bet there ain't anybody else in the world that ownstworazor-strops!"
Not much to say about banquet, lots of speeches, good grub.
What tickles me more than anything is my new flying garments—not clothes butgarments, by heck! I'm going to be a regular little old aviator in a melodrama. I've been wearing plain suits and a cap, same good old cap, always squeegee on my head. But for the big race I've got riding breeches and puttees and a silk shirt and a tweed Norfolk jacket and new leather coat and French helmet with both felt and springs inside the leather—this last really valuable. The real stage aviator, that's me. Watch the photographers fall for it. I bet Tad Warren's Norfolk jacket is worth $10,000 a year to him!
I pretended to Martin that I was quite serious about the clothes, the garments I mean. I dolled myself all up last night and went swelling into my hangar and anxiously asked Martin if he didn't like the get-up, and he nearly threw a fit. "Good Lord," he groans, "you look like an aviator on a Ladies Home Journal cover, guaranteed not to curse, swear or chaw tobacco. What's become of that girl you was kissing, last time I seen you on the cover?"
August 25: Not much time to write diary on race like this, it's just saw wood all the time or lose.
Bad wind to-day. Sometimes the wind don't bother me when I am flying, and sometimes, like to-day, it seems as though the one thing in the whole confounded world is the confounded wind that roars in your ears and makes your eyes water and sneaks down your collar to chill your spine and goes scooting up your sleeves, unless you have gauntlets, and makes your ears sting. Roar, roar, roar, the wind's worse than the noisiest old cast-iron tin-can Vrenskoy motor. You want to duck your head and getdown out of it, and Lord it tires you so—aviation isn't all "brilliant risks" and "daring dives" and that kind of blankety-blank circus business, not by a long shot it ain't, lots of it is just sticking there and bucking the wind like a taxi driver speeding for a train in a storm. Tired to-night and mad.
September 5: New York! I win! Plenty smashes but only got jarred. I beat out Beaufort by eight hours, and Aaron Solomons by nearly a day. Carmeau's machine hopelessly smashed in Columbus, but he was not hurt, but poor Tad Warrenkilledcrossing Illinois.
September 8: Had no time to write about my reception here in New York till now.
I've been worrying about poor Tad Warren's wife, bunch of us got together and made up a purse for her. Nothing more pathetic than these poor little women that poke down the cocktails to keep excited and then go to pieces.
I don't believe I was very decent to Tad. Sitting here alone in a hotel room, it seems twice as lonely after the fuss and feathers these last few days, a fellow thinks of all the rotten things he ever did. Poor old Tad. Too late now to cheer him up. Too late. Wonder if they shouldn't have called off race when he was killed.
Wish Istra wouldn't keep calling me up. Have Igotto be rude to her? I'd like to be decent to her, but I can't stand the cocktail life. Lord, that time she danced, though.
Poor Tad was [SeeTranscriber's note.]
Oh hell, to get back to the reception. It was pretty big. Parade of the Aero Club and Squadron A, me in an open-face hack, feeling like a boob while sixty leven billion people cheered. Then reception by mayor, me delivering letter from mayor of Chicago which I had cutely sneaked out in Chicago and mailed to myself here, N. Y. general delivery, so I wouldn't lose it on the way. Then biggest dinner I've ever seen, must have been athousand there, at the Astor, me very natty in a new dress suit (hey bo, I fooled them, it was ready-made and cost me just $37.50 and fitted like my skin.)
Mayor, presidents of boroughs of NY, district attorney, vice president of U.S., lieut. governor of NY, five or six senators, chief of ordnance, U.S.A., arctic explorers and hundreds like that, but most of all Forrest Haviland whom I got them to stick right up near me. Speeches mostly about me, I nearly rubbed the silver off my flossy new cigarette case keeping from looking foolish while they were telling about me and the future of aviation and all them interesting subjects.
Forrest and I sneaked off from the reporters next afternoon, had quiet dinner down in Chinatown.
We have a bully plan. If we can make it and if he can get leave we will explore the headwaters of the Amazon with a two-passenger Curtiss flying boat, maybe next year.
Now the reception fans have done their darndest and all the excitement is over including the shouting and I'm starting for Newport to hold a little private meet of my own, backed by Thomas J. Watersell, the steel magnate, and by to-morrow night NY will forget me. I realized that after the big dinner. I got on the subway at Times Square, jumped quick into the car just as the doors were closing, and the guard yapped at me, "What are you trying to do, Billy, kill yourself?" He wasn't spending much time thinking about famous Hawk Ericson, and I got to thinking how comfortable NY will manage to go on being when they no longer read in the morning paper whether I dined with the governor, or with Martin Dockerill at Bazoo Junction Depot Lunch Counter.
They forget us quick. And already there's a new generation of aviators. Some of the old giants are gone, poor Moisant and Hoxsey and Johnstone and the rest killed, and there's coming along a bunch of youngsters that can fly enough to grab the glory, and they spreadout the glory pretty thin. They go us old fellows except Beachey a few better on aerial acrobatics, and that's what the dear pee-pul like. (For a socialist I certainly do despise the pee-pul'staste!) I won't do any flipflops in the air no matter what the county fair managers write me. Somehow I'd just as soon be alive and exploring the Amazon with old Forrest as dead after "brilliant feats of fearless daring." Go to it, kids, good luck, only test your supporting wires, and don't try to rival Lincoln Beachey, he's a genius.
Glad got a secretary for a couple days to handle all this mail. Hundreds of begging letters and mash notes from girls since I won the big prize. Makes me feel funny! One nice thing out of the mail—letter from the Turk, Jack Terry, that I haven't seen since Plato. He didn't graduate, his old man died and he is assistant manager of quite a good sized fisheries out in Oregon, glad to hear from him again. Funny, I haven't thought of him for a year.
I feel lonely and melancholy to-night in spite of all I do to cheer up. Let up after reception etc. I suppose. I feel like calling up Istra, after all, but mustn't. I ought to hit the hay, but I couldn't sleep. Poor Tad Warren.
(The following words appear at the bottom of a page, in a faint, fine handwriting unlike Mr. Ericson's usual scrawl.—The Editor):
Whatever spirits there be, of the present world or the future, take this prayer from a plain man who knows little of monism or trinity or logos, and give to Tad another chance, as a child who never grew up.
September 11: Off to Kokomo, to fly for Farmers' Alliance.
Easy meet here (Newport, R.I.) yesterday, just straight flying and passenger carrying. Dandy party given for me after it, by Thomas J. Watersell, the steel man. Haveread of such parties. Bird party, in a garden, Watersell has many acres in his place and big house with a wonderful brick terrace and more darn convenient things than I ever saw before, breakfast room out on the terrace and swimming pool and little gardens one outside of each guest room, rooms all have private doors, house is mission style built around patio. All the Newport swells came to party dressed as birds, and I had to dress as a hawk, they had the costume all ready, wonder how they got my measurements. Girls in the dance of the birds. Much silk stockings, very pretty. At end of dance they were all surrounding me in semi-circle I stood out on lawn beside Mrs. Watersell, and they bowed low to me, fluttering their silk wings and flashing out many colored electric globes concealed in wings and looked like hundreds of rainbow colored fireflies in the darkness. Just then the big lights were turned on again and they let loose hundreds of all kinds of birds, and they flew up all around me, surprised me to death. Then for grub, best sandwiches I ever ate.
Felt much flattered by it all, somehow did not feel so foolish as at banquets with speeches.
After the party was all over, quite late, I went with Watersell for a swim in his private pool. Most remarkable thing I ever saw. He said everybody has Roman baths and Pompei baths and he was going to go them one better, so he has an Egyptian bath, the pool itself like the inside of an ancient temple, long vista of great big green columns and a big idol at the end, and the pool all in green marble with lights underneath the water and among the columns, and the water itself just heat of air, so you can't tell where the water leaves off and the air above it begins, hardly, and feel as though you were swimming in air through a green twilight. Darndest sensation I ever felt, and the idol and columns sort of awe you.
I enjoyed the swim and the room they gave me, butI had lost my tooth-brush and that kind of spoiled the end of the party.
I noticed Watersell only half introduced his pretty daughter to me, they like me as a lion but——And yet they seem to like me personally well enough, too. If I didn't have old Martin trailing along, smoking his corn-cob pipe and saying what he thinks, I'd die of loneliness sometimes on the hike from meet to meet. Other times have jolly parties, but I'd like to sit down with the Cowleses and play poker and not have to explain who I am.
Funny—never used to feel lonely when I was bumming around on freights and so on, not paying any special attention to anybody.
October 23: I wonder how far I'll ever get as an aviator? The newspapers all praise me as a hero. Hero, hell! I'm a pretty steady flier but so would plenty of chauffeurs be. This hero business is mostly bunk, it was mostly chance my starting to fly at all. Don't suppose it is all accident to become as great a flier as Garros or Vedrines or Beachey, but I'm never going to be a Garros, I guess. Like the man that can jump twelve feet but never can get himself to go any farther.
December 1: Carmeau killed yesterday, flying at San Antone. Motor backfire, machine caught fire, burned him to death in the air. He was the best teacher I could have had, patient and wise. I can't write about him. And I can't get this insane question out of my mind: Was his beard burned? I remember just how it looked, and think of that when all the time I ought to remember how clever and darn decent he was. Carmeau will never show me new stunts again.
And Ely killed in October, Cromwell Dixon gone—the plucky youngster, Professor Montgomery, Nieuport, Todd Shriver whom Martin Dockerill and Hank Odell liked so much, and many others, all dead, like Moisant. I don't think I take any undue risks, but it makes me stop and think. And Hank Odell with a busted shoulder. CaptainPaul Beck once told me he believed it was mostly carelessness, these accidents, and he certainly is a good observer, but when I think of a careful constructor like Nieuport——
Punk money I'm making. Thank heaven there will be one more good year of the game, 1912, but I don't know about 1913. Looks like the exhibition game would blow up then—nearly everybody that wants to has seen an aeroplane fly once, now, and that's about all they want, so good bye aviation, except for military use and flying boats for sportsmen. At least good bye during a slump of several years.
Hope to thunder Forrest and I will be able to make our South American hike, even if it costs every cent I have. That will be something like it, seeing new country instead of scrapping with fair managers about money.
December 22: Hoorray! Christmas time at sea! Quite excite to smell the ocean again and go rolling down the narrow gangways between the white state-room doors. Off for a month's flying in Brazil and Argentine, with Tony Bean. Will look up data for coming exploration of Amazon headwaters. Martin Dockerill like a regular Beau Brummel in new white flannels, parading the deck, making eyes at pretty Greaser girls. It's good to begoing.
Feb. 22, 1912: Geo. W's birthday. He'd have busted that no-lie proviso if he'd ever advertised an aero meet.
Start of flight New Orleans to St. Louis. Looks like really big times, old fashioned jubilee all along the road and lots of prizes, though take a chance. Only measly little $2,500 prize guaranteed, but vague promises of winnings at towns all along, where stop for short exhibitions. Each of contestants has to fly at scheduled towns for percentage of gate receipts.
Feb. 23: What a rotten flight to-day. Small crowd out to see me off. No sooner up than trouble with plugs. Wanted to land, but nothing but bayous, rice fields, canebreaks, and marshes. Farmer shot at my machine. Soon motor stopped on me and had to come down awhooping on a small plowed field. Smashed landing gear and got an awful jar. Nothing serious though. It was two hours before a local blacksmith and I repaired chassis and cleaned plugs. I started off after coaching three scared darkies to hold the tail, while the blacksmith spun the propeller. He would give it a couple of bats, then dodge out of the way too soon, while I sat there and tried not to look mad, which by gum I was plenty mad. Landed in this bum town, called ——, fourth in the race, and found sweet (?) refuge in this chills and fever hotel. Wish I was back in New Orleans. Cheer up, having others ahead of me in the race just adds a little zip to it. Watch me to-morrow. And I'm not the only hard luck artist. Aaron Solomons busted propeller and nearly got killed.
Later.Cable. Tony Bean is dead. Killed flying. My god, Tony, impossible to think of him as dead, just a few days ago we were flying together and calling on senoritas and he playing the fiddle and laughing, always so polite, like he used to fiddle us into good nature when we got discouraged at Bagby's school. Seems like it was just couple minutes ago we drove in his big car through Avenida de Mayo and everybody cheered him, he was hero of Buenos Aires, yet he treated me as the Big Chief. Cablegram forwarded from New Orleans, dated yesterday, "Beanno killed fell 200 feet."
And to-morrow I'll have to be out and jolly the rustic meet managers again. Want to go off some place and be quiet and think. Wish I could get away, be off to South America with Forrest.
February 24: Rotten luck continues. Back in same town again! Got up yesterday and motor misfired, had to make quick landing in a bayou and haul out machine myself aided by scared kids. Got back here and found gasoline pipe fouled, small piece of tin stuck in it.
Martin feels as bad as I do at Tony's death, tho he doesn't say much of anything. "Gosh, and Tony such a nice little cuss," was about all he said, but he looked white around the gills.
Feb. 25: Another man has dropped out, I am third but still last in the race. Race fever got me to-day, didn't care for anything but winning, got off to a good start, then took chances, machine wobbled like a board in the surf. Am having some funny kind of chicken creole I guess it is for lunch, writing this in hotel dining room.
Later: Passed Aaron Solomons, am now second in the race, landed here just three hours behind Walter MacMonnies. Three letters forwarded here, from Forrest, he is flying daily at army aviation camp, also from Gertie Cowles, she and her mother are in Minneapolis, attending a week of grand opera, also to my surprise short note from Jack Ryan, the grouch, saying he has given up flying and gone back into motor business.
There won't be much more than money to pay expenses on this trip.
Tomorrow I'll show them some real flying.
Later: Telegram from a St. L. newspaper. Sweet business. Says that promoters of race have not kept promise to remove time limit as they promised. Doubt if either Walter MacMonnies or I can finish in time set.
Feb. 26: Bad luck continues but made fast flight after two forced descents, one of them had to make difficult landing, plane down on railroad track, avoiding telegraph wires, and get machine off track as could hear train coming, awful job. Nerves not very good. Once when up at 200 ft. heighth from which Tony Bean fell, I saw his face right in air in front of me and jumped so I jerked the stuffings out of control wires.
March 15: Just out of hospital, after three weeks there, broken leg still in splints. Glad Walter MacMgot thru in time limit, got prize. Too week and shaky write much, shoulder still hurts.
March 18: How I came to fall (fall that broke my leg, three weeks ago) Was flying over rough country when bad gust came thru hill defile. Wing crumpled. Up at 400 ft. Machine plunged forward then sideways. Gosh, I thought, I'm gone, but will live as long as I can, even a few seconds more, and kept working with elevator, trying to right her even a little. Ground coming up fast. Must have jumped, I think. Landed in marsh, that saved my life, but woke up at doctor's house, leg busted and shoulder bad, etc. Machine shot to pieces, but Martin Dockerill has it pretty well repaired. He and the doc and I play poker every day, Martin always wins with his dog-gone funeral face no matter tho he has an ace full.
March 24: Leg all right, pretty nearly. Rigged up steering bar so I can work it with one foot. Flew a mile to-day, went not badly. Hope to fly at Springfield, Ill. meet next week. Will be able to make Brazil trip with Forrest Haviland all right. The dear old boy has been writing to me every day while I've been on the bum. Newspapers have made a lot of my flying so soon again, several engagements and now things look bright again. Reading lots and chipper as can be.
March 25: Forrest Haviland is dead He was killed to-day.
March 27: Disposed of monoplane by telegraph. Got Martin job with Sunset Aviation Company.
March 28: Started for Europe.
May 8, Paris: Forrest and I would have met to-day in New York to perfect plans for Brazil trip.
May 10: Am still trying to answer letter from Forrest's father. Can't seem to make it go right. If I could have seen Forrest again. But maybe they were right,holding funeral before I could get there. Captain Faber says Forrest was terribly crushed, falling from 1700 ft. I wish I didn't keep on thinking of plans for our Brazil trip, then remembering we won't make it after all. I don't think I will fly till fall, anyway, though I feel stronger now after rest in England, Titherington has beautiful place in Devonshire. England seems to stick to biplane, can't make them see monoplane. Don't think I shall fly before fall. To-day I would have been with Forrest Haviland in New York, I think he could have got leave for Brazil trip. We would taken Martin. Tony promised to meet us in Rio. I like France but can't get used to language, keep starting to speak Spanish. Maybe I'll fly here in France but certainly not for some time, though massage has fixed me all O.K. Am studying French. Maybe shall bicycle thru France. Mem.: Write to Colonel Haviland when I can.
Mustwhen I can.