A little incident, not generally known, illustrates the gentler side of his nature. He had been giving one of his trapeze exhibitions at Ithaca, New York, and was induced by some Cornell students to furnish them captive ascensions from the university campus. As if specially for the occasion, there came three days of delightful May weather with a propitiously quiet atmosphere. To the natural elevation of the location were added several hundred feet of rope, affording a bird's-eye view of Cayuga Lake, the town and far-famed adjacent scenery. Two or three hundred persons were "sent up," including several university professors. Donaldson was in his element, and kept everybody laughing at his jokes and amusing experiments. He had a crowd of children constantly at his heels, and in the intervals of waiting for pay-passengers would tumble them into the basket to the number of six or eight, and send them skyward screaming with delight and pelting him with a shower of hats and caps. Did their mothers know? Probably not, or there might have been screaming of a less joyous kind. One diminutive but intrepid youth of six won for himself the proud distinction of "our old experienced aeronaut," being generally used as ballast in making up a load. [Illustration: DONALDSON AND THE CHILDREN.] Donaldson's fondness for proving his nerve in the face of a doubting crowd led him into many difficulties, as it finally caused his death. Once, when about to make an ascension at Pittsburg with a balloon that had not been used since the previous season, his assistant, Harry Gilbert, noticed that the ropes attaching the netting to the concentrating-ring seemed rotten, and proposed to replace them with new. This Donaldson insisted would take too much time, but he was finally induced to allow eight of the sixteen to be renewed. While giving his customary trapeze performance high above the housetops the old cords began to snap, and before he could bring the balloon down every one of them had parted--a startling intimation of how his rashness might have resulted.