A Penny of Observation
AMBASSADORS TO THE MOON.
Fact is stranger than fiction only by dint of breaking all the rules of fiction. When it conforms to them—as when, for instance, a sequence of events is hailed as a Drama or a Romance of Real Life—it is found to be banal, ill-constructed, and, in strangeness, greatly inferior to drama or romance Proper. Last week, however, fiction was nearly beaten on its own ground. Since we read of the exploit of these two intrepid balloonists, ProfessOrs Piccard and Kipfer, the gilt is off Jules Verne's gingerbread, the earlier fancies of Mr. Wells are tainted with a pedestrian plausibility. There was no nonsense about Professor Piccard and Professor Kipfer. They looked like
scientists. They behaved like scientists. In no ordinary bal- loon, and wearing scientific hats, they ascended to the alarming height of ten miles above the earth. They passed through the stratosphere as lesser men pass through the Burlington Arcade. In the troposphere they were not abashed. They went on, and up. The cold was terrific, the danger appalling. And what was their reward ? They were " happily able to estab- lish that the conductibility of gases induced by cosmic rays increased with altitude." Who would have guessed it ? They came down at a place called Gross Gfirgl. We congratulate them. Indeed we do.
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