I soared as frequently
as I could. I substituted a motor-bicycle for the London train and took
my chances in the southward traffic, and I even tried what thrills were
to be got upon a horse. But they put me on made horses, and I conceived
a perhaps unworthy contempt for the certitudes of equestrian exercise
in comparison with the adventures of mechanism. Also I walked along the
high wall at the back of Lady Grove garden, and at last brought myself
to stride the gap where the gate comes. If I didn't altogether get rid
of a certain giddy instinct by such exercises, at least I trained my
will until it didn't matter. And soon I no longer dreaded flight, but
was eager to go higher into the air, and I came to esteem soaring upon
a glider, that even over the deepest dip in the ground had barely forty
feet of fall beneath it, a mere mockery of what flight might be. I began
to dream of the keener freshness in the air high above the beechwoods,
and it was rather to satisfy that desire than as any legitimate
development of my proper work that presently I turned a part of my
energies and the bulk of my private income to the problem of the
navigable balloon.
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