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soothingly assured me that he was a "damned mutt."

colors and conditions of bedding which unfortunately in some cases were such unsightly sights that they lent neither enchantment to the view nor viewer.

the

But the unique charm of traveling on the elevated lies in its ever-changing panorama of faces and figures. There is nothing so unconsciously en

tertaining as a cosmopolitan crowd. I remember one morning, returning from a ramble over the docks, I boarded an elevated train filled with immigrants. Opposite me, buried in a mountain of cardboard suitcases and brightly colored bundles, sat an Italian couple with five freshly polished children all as much alike as five freshly polished

door-knobs. The entire family were sucking oranges, with a calm, vacant satisfaction, blandly indifferent of which direction they emitted the pips. But they were a wholesome looking family, unassuming and intelligent, with the brightness of hope in their earnest black eyes. So I forgave them for the erring pips.

Another morning, when I was traveling on the elevated, I found myself confronted by a number of oriental gentlemen, well groomed, stylishly dressed, talking excellent English, and looking anything but "childlike and bland." It seemed ridiculous to associate them with such a menial occupation as the laundry business. If they were descendants of the "Heathen Chinee," then they were certainly an up-to-date, prosperous looking generation. I have no doubt, though, they

inherited that remarkable ability of their famous ancestor, which had enabled him to know things "he did not understand." But that this "celestial" gift had failed in Poker was no reason it could not be adapted to considerable advantage in modern business. So I inferred that these oriental gentlemen had prospered accordingly.

Referring again to my sightseeing impressions in New York, I cannot say that I found an abundance of the artistic. New York is essentially imposing with its wonderful contrasts of height and immensity. It looks down upon you, frowning, from the skies, as if you were merely a flea that might be crushed in the flash of a second.

The easiest way to see New York is to lie on your back on the top of a taxi with a pair of field glasses and a parasol. (Continued next month.)

F

A Viking of the Air

By Minnie Irving

ROM the isolation of a ranch high place for himself among the famous

up in the Colorado Rockies, where the snow averages eight

feet deep at Christmas, and the thermometer drops to 40 deg. below, to tuning up big aerial war-craft for the great powers of Europe-all in less than a year, is the wonderful record of Victor Carlstrom, the most romantic and spectacular of the crop of 1915 aviators. This young Viking of the air first flashed into public notice last Thanksgiving Day, when he flew in a stiff gale from Toronto, Canada, to New York in a Curtiss military biplane R-2 tractor, 160 h. p., with a speed of 96 miles an hour, in 6 hours and 41 minutes, thereby winning the Aero Club's 1915 award for the notable flight of the year, and a permanent

birdmen of the world.

Mr. Carlstrom's achievement was all the more remarkable because he had but little previous experience in aircraft except at the Toronto aviation school. Unlike most airmen, he had not even tried his hand at automobile racing, but he took to the sky like a wild duck at migration time; the air is his native element, to cut figure 8's on the atmosphere his unfailing delight. On reaching New York (where he was hailed with enthusiasm by brother birdmen), he was at once enrolled as a member of the Aero Club. Later he was offered a position as principal instructor at principal instructor at the Atlantic Aeronautical Station at Newport News, Va., where he has been testing out

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Victor Carlstrom in Curtiss biplane starting on his record flight from Toronto to New York.

new flying machines of different makes up to date of present writing. One of those successfully tried out by him was a monster biplane for the Russian Government intended for use in the European war. This great machine carried 1,000 pounds in the air, attained a speed of 96 miles an hour, and climbed at the rate of 500 feet per minute. It takes a nervy man to handle such an air machine, a very Kiking of space, to ride such a monster safely at a height of 5,000 feet or more with the everlasting winds creating aerial currents and undertows above the clouds, as they always do along the South Atlantic coast. But Carlstrom jockeyed the big flier as if it was a feather, and tuned it up to the dernier cri of fitness and stability before passing it on as "air-broken, sound and steady," as a steed of the sky should be.

It looks delightfully easy to the

mere spectator below on good old terra firma as he watches the airman rise gracefully as an eagle, and soar and dip, loop the loop, volplane and go through all the stunts of the lightwinged swallow-and some the swallow would never think of trying, but the man on the ground never realizes what a firm hand, steady eye, steel nerves and supreme courage, self-reliance and self-confidence are required to become an expert aviator. The brain, the eye and the hand must work in perfect unison. A single mistake means death, and above all there must be no thought of what has happened to others and may happen again while between earth and sky. Once give the imagination full rein, while in the air; once become hypnotized by the immensity above and around, and something like air-fright is likely to result-and the everlasting undoing of the flyer. I fancy few aviators like to

think when in the air of the mysterious fate of Albert Jewell, who was seen to ascend to a considerable height, but never seen again on earth. When I think of Jewell's last flight, I also think of Jules Verne's "Trip to the Moon," and the flattened body of the dog that followed the airship through space. I also think of an article, half romance, half fact, published in the Pall Mall Magazine a few years ago about an unfortunate aviator who got beyond gravity and was forced to travel in space in an endless circle until his bones and his machine disintegrated into dust. Not so very farfetched, after all, if we believe in the fourth dimension. The tale had an uncanny suggestion of what might have happened to Jewell-if science is to be trusted-and may happen to any other.

Lost Aviator

The birdman proudly took his seat,
The mighty outspread wings
Responsive to the engine, shook
Like eager, living things.
Upon those pinions, swift and strong,
It left earth's beaten track,
And rose into the pathless clouds,
But nevermore came back.

Oh, does it sail the upper air,
A tiny speck alone,

Beyond the atmosphere we breathe,
And gravitation's zone?

Oh is it anchored to a star?

Or has it found a crack

In Heaven's blue wall and ventured through?

It nevermore came back.
The aviator's dear ones watch,

With sad and tearful eyes,
Turned ever upward to the waste
Of wide, uncharted skies.
A derelict Columbus there,

Perhaps he drifts, alack!
And this must be his epitaph:

"He nevermore came back!"

There is little danger, however, that Carlstrom, the young Newport News aerial instructor, will ever take any such involuntary excursion into the infinite zone. The latest record he has captured is or altitude with a passenger, having ached 16,500 feet.

He is too much at home in the wonderful mach he he pilots ever to lose control of either his engine or his

nerves.

Like most of America's men in the limelight, Carlstrom is a Western man, and an ideal sailor of the sky, being over 6 feet tall, bronzed as a hunter, and clean-built as a Greek runner, altogether presenting a most romantic and dashing figure when armored and hooded in leather he seats himself in the aeroplane he loves. May he long continue to break in the racers of the air, and may he have many safe and successful voyages among the stars!

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Charles Keeler, Poet

What a man with faith in his message has done in New York and

E

the World Over

By Mira Abbott Maclay

Charles Keeler.

VERY poet is more or less a prophet-blessed with vision to see future outcome in present conditions; with ability to look straight into the heart of things and perceive truth and the relationship of the part to the whole-the infinite in an atom; and with more or less zeal for righteousness-a passion for making over the social and economic order.

Almost every poet, too, has in him something of the wandering bard. Blind Homer, they say, went from village to village, singing his tales to

those who cared to listen. The minstrel, troubadour, minnesinger-they are one in spirit, almost in blood.

And one in blood and spirit with them and a prophet among the prophets, is Charles Keeler, the Berkeley poet, who has returned to California for a summer tour at least, after a five year's absence-two abroad and three in New York City.

Mr. Keeler distinctly feels that he has a "message." Twofold it is: on the one hand, a rebuke to the sins of modern life-cynicism, pessimism, artificiality, the social wrongs that result in the drunkard, the harlot, the unfathered child. On the other, a constructive message-a plea for the simple life, a philosophy that reads final triumph and good rather than final destruction and doom into the vast vision that science given, succeeding cycles, worlds and suns without end.

And Mr. Keeler has faith-big faith -in this message, and feels an obligation to deliver it laid upon him. Poetry-lyrical and free in form as the poetic passages which mark so many great prose utterances-is his vehicle of expression, and (is it because the minstrel blood is there?) an inner compulsion has sent him forth to wander about the globe, reciting his poetry to audiences of diverse folks, tongues and color. A picturesque figure his-the West has produced few more

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So.

Late in the summer of 1911 Mr. Keeler set forth on his world-tour and readings, sailing first for the Orient. He had traveled considerably before

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