Naval and military airmen predominate at the schools; but there are many civilians, also, who come to learn to fly. Some of them, after they are skilled, become professional pilots, being employed by an aeroplane company to demonstrate its machines: others, having money to invest, will buy one or two craft and start a flying school of their own; others again, after purchasing a machine, will take it abroad with them and give exhibition flights, visiting places if possible where aviation has not been seen before. Some men, adopting this plan in early days, had experiences which were the reverse of pleasant. High winds blew occasionally, thus preventing them from flying upon the day arranged; whereupon the spectators, having come long distances perhaps to see a man ascend, were so furious at their disappointment that they broke from their enclosures and wrecked the aeroplane in its tent. It happened sometimes, too, that a man--rendered foolhardy by the clamour of a crowd--would ascend when conditions were dangerous, and be blown to the ground and killed. But large sums of money were to be made by demonstration flights, and so pilots were found ready to run grave risks--ascending often from cramped and awkward grounds, and making flights over localities upon which, had their motors failed, they would have found no safe alighting point. Among those who meet at a flying school--instructors, pupils, and mechanics--there is a feeling of friendly regard; and most men, after they have learned to fly, look back upon their training with a feeling of regret that it is ended. There is good fellowship in the adventures of the day--much laughter, too, at the mistakes which are made; and some of them, without doubt, prove distinctly amusing. It happens occasionally, for instance, that a pupil will, after being given control of a machine for the first time, lose his head completely in a panic, and do just the things which he has been instructed to avoid. In gliding down from a flight, for instance, the engine should be switched off; but sometimes the novice--engrossed by his movements of the elevating lever--will forget all about his motor. Descending at a tremendous pace, and with the engine still running, he will strike the ground with a crash and crumple up his chassis; and then no one is more surprised than he is at what has occurred. It may happen also that a novice, when he is merely running a machine across the ground, will be seized by panic, or some form of mental paralysis. Perhaps he may fail to shift his rudder and so collide with some obstruction or another machine; or he may--as was the case with one pupil at a well-known school--simply sit helpless in his seat and allow his craft, with its motor running at full speed, to charge pell-mell into the fence which bordered the aerodrome. Then, standing up in the wrecked machine, and staring blankly at those who ran to him, he confessed that he had forgotten, utterly, each and all of the