University of Virginia Library

EUROPE.

I had been absent in Europe attending to our Moscow office
of the Grand International Aerial Flying Company for thirty
years, when I jumped into one of our aerial floating palaces for
my summer trip.

Our aerial train was destined for Saratoga viâ Baden-Baden,
Margate, Long Branch, and the Adirondacks, and was propelled
through the air on the large wing system invented by a
descendant of one of the Hoes, whose grandfather had, years
before, invented the great cylinder printing press. I had heard
very little of America during the past thirty years, my American
letters simply referring to personal and family matters, the
wealth and growth of the Perkins family. Baden-Baden,
Luxemburg, and Wiesbaden, were held by the French, under the
Presidency of a son of the Duc de Chambord, after the war of
1891. Napoleon III, had settled at Hempstead Plains, on Long
Island, and all Europe was quiet. After spending a day at
Baden, and an afternoon at Margate and Brighton, in England,
we