For an inventor, M. Santos-Dumont is a rather extraordinary character. The typical inventor--at least so we think--is poor, starts poor at least, and has a struggle to rise. M. Santos-Dumont has always had plenty of means. The inventor is always first a dreamer, we think. M. Santos-Dumont is first a thoroughly practical man, an engineer with a good knowledge of science, to which he adds the imagination of the inventor and the keen love and daring of the sportsman and adventurer, without which his experiments could never have been carried through. It would seem, indeed, that nature had especially equipped M. Santos-Dumont for his work in aërial navigation. Supposing an inventor, having all the mental equipment of Santos-Dumont, the ideas, the energy, the means--supposing such a man had weighed two hundred pounds! He would have had to build a very large ship to carry his own weight, and all his problems would have been more complex, more difficult. Nature made Santos-Dumont a very small, slim, slight man, weighing hardly more than one hundred pounds, but very active and muscular. The first time I ever saw him, in Crystal Palace, London, where he was setting up one of his air-ships in a huge gallery, I thought him at first glance to be some boy, a possible spectator, who was interested in flying machines. His face, bare and shaven, looked youthful; he wore a narrow-brimmed straw hat and was dressed in the height of fashion. One would not have guessed him to be the inventor. A moment later he had his coat off and was showing his men how to put up the great fan-like rudder of the ship which loomed above us like some enormous Rugby football, and then one saw the power that was in him. Brazilian by nationality, he has a dark face, large dark eyes, an alertness of step and an energetic way of talking. His boyhood was spent on his father's extensive coffee plantation in Brazil; his later years mostly in Paris, though he has been a frequent visitor to England and America. He speaks Spanish, French, and English with equal fluency. Indeed, hearing his English one would say that he must certainly have had his training in an English-speaking country, though no one would mistake him in appearance for either English or American, for he is very much a Latin in face and form. One finds him most unpretentious, modest, speaking freely of his inventions, and yet never taking to himself any undue credit. [Illustration: Severo's Balloon, the "Pax," which, on its First Ascent at a Height of about 2,000 feet, Burst and Exploded, Sending to a Terrible Death both M. Severo and his Assistant.] Santos-Dumont is still a very young man to have accomplished so much. He was born in Brazil, July 20, 1873. From his earliest boyhood he was interested in kites and dreamed of being able to fly. He says: