Carl believed that he thought of nothing but work and the restaurants and theaters of civilization. No more rolling for him until he had gathered moss! He played that he was a confirmed business man. The game had hypnotized him for nearly a year. He whistled as he cleaned plugs, and glanced out at the eucalyptus-trees and the sunny road, without wanting to run away. But just to-day, just this glorious rain-cleansed November day, with high blue skies and sunlight on the feathery pepper-trees, he was going to sneak away from work and have a celebration all by himself. He was going down to San Mateo to see his first flying-machine! November, 1909. Blériot had crossed the English Channel; McCurdy had, in March, 1909, calmly pegged off sixteen miles in the "Silver Dart" biplane; Paulhan had gone eighty-one miles, and had risen to the incredible height of five hundred feet, to be overshadowed by Orville Wright's sixteen hundred feet; Glenn Curtiss had won the Gordon Bennett cup at Rheims. California was promising to be in the van of aviation. She was remembering that her own Montgomery had been one of the pioneers. Los Angeles was planning a giant meet for January. A dozen cow-pasture aviators were taking credulous young reporters aside and confiding that next day, or next week, or at latest next month, they would startle the world by ascending in machines "on entirely new and revolutionary principles, on which they had been working for ten years." Sometimes it was for eight years they had been working. But always they remarked that "the model from which the machine will be built has flown perfectly in the presence of some of the most prominent men in the locality." These machines had a great deal to do with the mysterious qualities of gyroscopes and helicopters. Now, Dr. Josiah Bagby, the San Francisco physician and oil-burning-marine-engine magnate, had really brought three genuine Blériot monoplanes from France, with Carmeau, graduate of the Blériot school and licensed French aviator, for working pilot; and was experimenting with them at San Mateo, near San Francisco, where the grandsons of the Forty-niners play polo. It had been rumored that he would open a school for pilots and build Blériot-type monoplanes for the American market. Carl had lain awake for an hour the night before, picturing the wonder of flight that he hoped to see. He rose early, put on his politest garments, and informed grumpy old Jones that he was off for a frolic--he wasn't sure, he said, whether he would get drunk or get married. He crossed the bay, glad of the sea-gulls, the glory of Mt. Tamalpais, and San Francisco's hill behind fairy hill. He consumed a Pacific sundæ, with a feeling of holiday, and hummed "Mandalay." On the trolley to San Mateo he read over and over the newspaper accounts of Bagby's monoplanes.