Conservative Ballooning.
From Geneva, Switzerland, comes the good news of a balloon fastened to a railway. An Austrian got it up, the ingenious Mr. Balderauer. He laid a single rail up the sides of a very steep mountain near Salzburg. Then he placed a car on the rail, and fastened a balloon to the car, about thirty feet above it.
You get into the car, the conductor says, "All aboard"; the hydrogen begins to lift in the balloon, and off you —fly, shall we say?—up the mountain to the very top. If you are going too fast, there is friction to be applied to the rail. If the balloon should become cranky, it could be let go in a second, and an automatic brake would prevent the car from falling. The motion is smooth, as exhilarating as flight, and covers hundreds of feet in a few seconds. When the balloon has done its work, a water reservoir in it is filled from a stream at the top of the mountain, and then its own weight carries it down. Herr Balderauer is a regular Yankee.
The contrivance is not likely to be of immediate value to me, as a vehicle, but it has already proved useful to me as a suggestion.
For that is the way, I think, I must go ballooning, hereafter, in the mental realm. I must not allow my fancies to run away with me. I must lay a track for them, I must hitch them to a car, I must set them to work.
I think I'll get quite as much fun out of them, and then, there will be the price of the tickets!