Now that airships are so much to the fore, this account of the meteoric career of the largest “dirigible balloon” ever constructed--larger even than Count Zeppelin’s unfortunate monster--will be read with interest. The inventor had an ambitious scheme for running luxuriously-fitted aerial liners between New York and San Francisco, but his first ship got no farther than the ascension ground. The photographs accompanying the article are particularly striking. Some time last year there came from the windy city of Chicago to the hardly less breezy San Francisco a man named John A. Morrell, who built a small airship with a balloon of insufficient size to lift the engines and netting. The craft got loose before the crew of twelve had taken their places and rose from a hundred to two hundred feet in the air, floating away in a southerly direction down the San Francisco peninsula and coming to rest at Burlingame, in San Mateo County, twenty miles from its starting-point. Nothing daunted by this mishap, Morrell organized the “National Airship Company,” incorporated under the laws of South Dakota, established offices in a leading street of San Francisco, and put forth a glowing prospectus, in which people were invited to invest their money in a sure thing--to wit, an airship a quarter of a mile long, already under construction, and intended to make regular trips between San Francisco and New York City, carrying passengers as comfortably as a Pullman car. The chairs in this remarkable craft were to be made of hollow aluminium tubes and to weigh only seventeen ounces; the bedsteads, of the same material, weighing twenty-seven ounces. The mattresses were to be inflated with a very light gas of a secret nature. Extravagant and fantastic though all this sounds, Morrell possessed the enthusiasm and glibness of the genuine promoter, contriving to obtain many thousands of dollars from credulous people in support of his wild project. [Illustration: MORRELL’S MONSTER AIRSHIP BEING INFLATED, READY FOR ITS FIRST ASCENT, IN THE PRESENCE OF A VAST CROWD. _From a Photograph._] The National Airship Company established shops in San Francisco, and went to work upon the airship, which was named “Ariel.” The construction was under the direction of George H. Loose, who has had considerable experience in building aeroplanes and airships. It was intended that Loose should be first officer of the aerial liner, but, when the time for making the first ascent came, Loose wisely threw up his job, because Morrell had disregarded his advice in the construction. [Illustration: A NEAR VIEW OF PART OF THE AIRSHIP, SHOWING ONE OF THE ENGINES AND PROPELLERS--NOTICE THE FLIMSY NETTINGS AND THE MATTRESSES INTENDED TO SUPPORT THE CREW. _From a Photograph._]