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Bonflon had informed us in brief, that, after ten years of patient and toilsome experiment, of disappointment, of perishing and reviving hope, he had at length achieved the grand object of his life. He had solved the problem of the navigation of the air.
What a world of new thought was forced upon us by the fancies and realities and charm and awe of our extraordinary condition, combined with the profound consciousness we could not fail to entertain of the effects which this crowning discovery of Messrs. Bonflon and De Aery must produce on travel, on commerce, on art, and the common destiny of mankind!
"And what an additional outlay of time and brains," thought I, "must have been required, to devise the scheme and construct the machine itself, so as to elevate the ingenious ideal into an absolute working reality!" These drawings, Mr. Bonflon informed me, were duplicates of others which had been privately deposited in the Patent-Office at Washington.
The ingenious inventors, as was clearly their right, had reserved it to themselves to choose the time and way of making their invention public, when it was to break on the world, some fine morning, like the discovery of a second moon performing its orbit round the earth. I sunk into a brown study. In the evening, Mr. Bonflon called again, as he had promised.
Above all this, Mr. Bonflon assured me, as aeronauts report, there is ever a smooth, quiet atmospheric sea.
Bonflon how it had been possible, with so many confidants and the prying propensities of the press, whose agents, like an invisible police, are everywhere, to keep the matter from becoming public, at least, to cover the affair so completely that no hint of the existence of his machine should have been given in any quarter, or of the vast changes which its introduction as a power in the world could not fail to effect.
The spectators, who had congregated by thousands, became impatient; and the mob, breaking in upon us, destroyed in an hour property which had cost us five thousand dollars and the labor of years." I felt obliged to sympathize with Mr. Bonflon. He had met with the usual fortune of public benefactors, and particularly of inventors.
Bonflon here pointed out, with great minuteness, the simple, but ingenious method devised for the inflation of this enormous machine, and the regulation of the gas; which I pass over, from an inability to render it intelligible by mere description.
Bonflon to case myself in flannels, with an armament at hand of outer winter clothing, proved well-timed; and yet a period of lassitude, verging on faintness, invariably followed every considerable exposure to the open air.
The station, or point of departure, Mr. Bonflon informed me, was a retired spot but a few miles out of the city of Baltimore; and he promised to be at hand at the proper time to accompany me in person, and see me safely on board the "Flying Cloud." I saw nothing more of Mr. Bonflon for several days.
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