While a few men have done some great deeds in aeronautics which he did not accomplish, nevertheless Donaldson did more things never even undertaken by any other aeronaut that any man who has ever lived. Indeed, much of his work would be deemed by mankind at large downright absurd, hair-brained, foolhardy, and reckless to the point of actual madness; and yet no man ever possessed a saner mind than Donaldson; no man was ever more fond of family, friends, and life in general, or normally more reluctant to undertake what he regarded as a needlessly hazardous task. His boldest and most seemingly reckless feats were to him no more than the every-day work of a man of a strong mind, of a stout heart, and of a perfectly trained body, who had so completely mastered every detail of his profession as gymnast, acrobat, and aeronaut, that he had come to have absolute faith in himself, downright abiding certainty that within his sphere of work not only must he succeed, but that, in the very nature of things it was quite impossible for him to fail. Donaldson's story may well serve as an inspiration, as does that of every man who, with a cool head and high courage, takes his life in his hands for adventure into the world's untrodden fields. While he was regarded by average onlookers as little better than a "Merry Andrew," a public shocker, doing feats before the multitude to still the heart and freeze the blood, those whose fortune it was to know him intimately realized him to be a man of the most serious purpose, with a great faith in the future of aerial navigation. He seemed to be possessed by the conviction that it was one day to become wholly practicable and generally useful; for he was keen to do all he could to popularize and advance it, and to demonstrate its large measure of safety where practised under reasonable conditions. To many still living his memory is dear--to all indeed who ever knew him well, and it is to his memory and to the surviving friends who held him dear I dedicate this little story. Washington Harrison Donaldson was the son of David Donaldson, an artist of no mean ability of Philadelphia, where the boy was born October 10, 1840. The mother, of straight descent from a line of patriots active during the Revolution, gave the boy the name of Washington; the father, an ardent worker for General Harrison's candidacy for the presidency in the "Tippecanoe-and-Tyler-too" campaign, added the name of Harrison. It is not conceivable that this christening with two names so closely linked with notable deeds of high emprise in the early history of this country, had its influence upon the boy.