The airplane began in the crude gliders of thirty
or forty years ago; but as soon as powered flight
had been achieved the glider was more or less for
gotten until the Germans started seriously to ex
periment with it after the war. They soon began to
discover of what amazing things it was capable.
The world was startled when they succeeded in
making flights lasting three or four hours; but last
August Kurt Schmidt rode the air currents over the
Rhine Valley for thirty-six and a half hours on end.
Mr. du Pont, in setting the new world’s distance
record, rode from Elmira right across the serried
ranges of the Alleghanies, losing his altitude (and
with It his power of continuing) only when he
reached the Jersey plain. But it was not the air
drafts from the mountains, it seems that kept him
up; it was the clouds. He "made use of” a moun
tain only once, he remarked at the end. It seems
a cheerfully disrespectful way to talk about moun
tains.
The Vice-President.
(New York Times.)
When Vice-President Coolidge was first asked
to sit in the Cabinet of President Harding he
manifested his customary reticence. One correspon
dent after another tried in vain to find out what
took place on that historic occasion. Finally one
of them, in despair, asked him where he sat at the
table. But the cautious Mr. Coolidge would not even
by so much reveal the secrets of the Cabinet room.
