A PREFACE AND AN APOLOGY. 
1 5 
The peft of an inventor’s life is that his faSis won’t 
accommodate themfelves to his theories . About the time 
I conftrudted my dragon-fly wings, I was feeing myfelf in 
the air, and flying about on them as lively as in earlier 
days I had feen myfelf bounced about on the india-rubber 
fhoes, and my impatience to get out into the country to 
put them on and try them, was fully as great as in the 
cafe of the fhoes. So I ftarted for the country, and from 
London went down to Maidenhead, putting up at an old 
farmhoufe on the downs. My brother-in-law, and the 
machinift who had made and arranged the mechanifm for 
my wings, were with me. For obvious reafons, I thought 
it fafeft to not try the performance in open daylight: fo 
about two o’clock in the morning we took up our pofi- 
tions on a hill near the houfe, for I concluded that for a 
jirjl experiment it would be glory enough to do it by 
running down hill, leaving for a time the more ambitious 
and pretentious up-from-the-ground method to the bird. 
It took my machinift, oh ! fuch a time to get thofe four 
great wings (nine feet long each) properly fixed on to my 
back and fhoulders ! (I can feel the weight of them now 
on my poor old back when I think of it.) But then there 
was glory before me, and what won’t a man (or a woman) 
do for glory ! The moments of wing-fixing feemed to be 
hours; and then, too, fpe&ators came, and I wanted no 
fpe&ators; they were, however, only horfes: they came 
neighing up, arranging themfelves in a great circle, each 
