From that moment, Lucy took my Bible instruction in hand and carried it out through a series of Negro spirituals, with a technique that would have impressed Lt. Barrett Studley, the author of the _Flight Manual_. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in the fiery furnace vied with Joshua, as he fit de Battle uv Jericho, to bring me up to date on “de ole time religion.” Then one Sunday morning old Aunt Lucy invited me to witness a baptizin’ in a nearby bayou where a white-robed, black-faced preacherman, knee deep on a convenient sand bar, ducked his shouting converts. Next morning I noticed her flitting around my sword, where it stood in the corner, and heard her humming the second verse of the first song she had sung to me. “I’se goin’ to try on my long white robe, Down by the riverside; down by the riverside; down by the riverside. I’se goin’ to try on my long white robe, Down by de riverside— I ain’t a goin’ t’ study wah no moh!” Of an original class of some thirty students, only about twenty survived the rigorous course. The others either lacked the natural coordination essential to instinctive flying or failed on that other important requirement “correct reaction in emergency.” The first could be acquired by early athletic instruction, but the second seemed to be innate in some, wholly lacking in others. It was the unpleasant duty of the check instructor to detect the lack of that attribute before it could produce fatal results. But to men who had natural aptitude in the basic requirements, flying had an extraordinary appeal. There was all the intense satisfaction to be experienced through skill in any art, such as the smooth stroking of a tennis ball, the rhythmic swing of a golf club, or the exquisitely precise casting of a feathered salmon fly—all these were experienced by the student pilot, but with the added thrill that a mistake invited disaster. During the month of November I graduated from the seaplane beach and moved over into landplanes. My classmates, following the more leisurely normal course, remained behind. In landplanes, we used the new Consolidate NY’s and, while they had few of the pleasant flying qualities of the little N-9’s, they didn’t kill students in crack-ups.