THE FIRST STAGE.--Usually it will require over 25 miles an hour to raise the machine. The engine is set in motion, and now, for the first time a new sensation takes possession of you, for the reason that you are cut off from communication with those around you as absolutely as though they were a hundred miles away. This new dependence on yourself is, in itself, one of the best teachers you could have, because it begins to instill confidence and control. As the machine darts forward, going ten or fifteen miles an hour, with the din of the engine behind you, and feeling the rumbling motion of the wheels over the uneven surface of the earth, you have the sensation of going forty miles an hour. The newness of the first sensation, which is always under those conditions very much augmented in the mind, wears away as the machine goes back and forth. There is only one control that requires your care, namely, to keep it on a straight course. This is easy work, but you are learning to make your control a reflex action,--to do it without exercising a distinct will power. PATIENCE THE MOST DIFFICULT THING.--If you have the patience, as you should, to continue this running practice, until you absolutely eliminate the right and left control, as a matter of thought, occasionally, if the air is still turning the machine, and eventually, bringing it back, by turning it completely around, while skimming the ground, you will be ready for the second stage in the trials. THE SECOND STAGE.--The engine is now arranged so that it will barely lift, when running at its best. After the engine is at full speed, and you are sure the machine is going fast enough, the elevator control is turned to point the machine in the air. It is a tense moment. You are on the alert. The elevator is turned, and the forward end changes its relation with the ground before you. There was a slight lift, but your caution induces you to return the planes to their normal running angle. You try it again. You are now certain that the machine made a leap and left the ground. This is the exhilarating moment. With a calm air the machine is turned while running, by means of the vertical rudders. This is an easy matter, because while going at twenty miles an hour, the weight of the machine on the surface of the ground is less than one-tenth of its weight when at rest. Thus the trial spins, half the time in the air, in little glides of fifty to a hundred feet, increasing in length, give practice, practice, PRACTICE, each turn of the field making the sport less exciting and fixing the controls more perfectly in the mind.