Somebody shouts, "Let go!" What an extraordinary sensation! Feel as if I had suddenly left digestive portion of my anatomy a mile below me. Have felt same sort of thing in crossing Channel. Look over edge of car. Appalling! Wish I hadn't been such a fool as to come. Ask Professional Aeronaut, "What would happen if a rope broke now?" He replies, sulkily, "your neck would break too." Not comforting. Question is--How long will this last without my being sea-sick? Also, How am I "assisting progress of Military Science?" Balloon calmer, and _not_ wobbling, thank Heaven! Begin to enjoy the view. How beastly cold it is up here, though! Passing over St. Paul's--suggest to fellow passenger that with a bomb, or better still a pistol, one could "pot" the Dome. Passenger (funny man) says, "Why not try a para_shoot_?" I laugh heartily, and nearly fall over side. Aeronaut, roughly, "wishes to goodness I'd keep still." _I_ wish to goodness he'd make the Balloon keep still--don't say this, however. Somewhere over Essex. See distant sea. Aeronaut says, "There's no end of a wind springing up." Heavens! Believe we are drifting out to sea! But I didn't want to "assist progress of _Naval_ Science"--only "Military." Tell Aeronaut this. He says, he's "just going down." Talks as if he were "going down" to breakfast--after "getting up," as we have done! Rather a good joke for mid-air. But is it mid-air? We are descending rapidly. Digestion this time left up in clouds. Tearing along over fields. Balloon pitching and tossing violently. Grapnel thrown out. Catches a cow. Cow runs with us. Idiot! Why can't it stand steady? Awful crash! Bump, bang, whack! Balloon explodes with fearful report. Yet no reporters present! Remember nothing more. Wake up, and find myself in Hospital of an Essex town. Query--Have I, or have I not, "assisted the progress of Military Science?" * * * * * OUR BOOKING-OFFICE. _The Marsh King's Daughter._ One of WARNE & CO.'S publications for children's amusement, but the illustrations by JESSIE CURRIE are too highly curried, or rather coloured, and the effect is hard and theatrical. By the way, Miss CURRIE'S genius is a trifle wilful; for example, take this situation, which she has chosen to illustrate,--"She ... pointed to a horse. He mounted upon it, and she sprang before him, and held tightly by the mane." Now, asks the Baron, taking for granted the "sprang" is for "sprang up," how would ordinary talent depict this scene? Why, certainly, by showing the girl mounted on the horse, holding on by the mane in front of the man, and the man up behind. Not so Miss CURRIE. She puts the good man--apparently an Amateur Monk--astride the horse, and she riding behind, holding lightly as it appears, with one hand the broad red crupper, and, with the other, probably, some portion of the Amateur Monk's dressing-gown. But genius must not be fettered.