Before the flights, some of the neighbors had been puzzled by reports that the Wrights were working on a flying-machine. One man in business near the Wright shop had become acquainted with an inventor who thought he was about to perfect a perpetual motion machine; and this businessman promptly sent the inventor to the Wrights, assuming that he would find them kindred spirits. John G. Feight, living next door to the Wright home, had remarked, just before the brothers went to Kitty Hawk: “Flying and perpetual motion will come at the same time.” Now that flights had been made, neighbors didn’t doubt the truth of the reports--though one of them had his own explanation. Mr. Webbert, father of the man from whom the Wrights rented their shop, said: “I have known those boys ever since they were small children, and if they say they flew I know they did; but I think there must be special conditions down in North Carolina that would enable them to fly by the power of a motor. There is only one thing that could lift a machine like that in _this_ part of the country--spirit power.” Webbert was a spiritualist. He had seen tables and pianos lifted at séances! But even if the boys _had_ flown, what of it? Men were flying in Europe, weren’t they? Hadn’t Santos-Dumont flown some kind of self-propelled balloon? The one person who had almost unbounded enthusiasm for what the brothers had accomplished was their father. They found it difficult to keep a complete file of the photographs they had made showing different phases of their experiments, because the moment their father’s eye fell on one of these pictures he would pick it up and mail it to some relative along with a letter telling with pride what the boys had done. Two brothers in Boston sensed, however, that, if the scant reports about the Kitty Hawk event were based on truth, then something of great significance had happened. These men were Samuel and Godfrey Lowell Cabot, wealthy and influential members of a famous family. Both of them, particularly Samuel, had long been interested in whatever progress was being made in aeronautics. On December 19, the day after the first news of the flights was published, Samuel Cabot sent to the Wrights a telegram of congratulations. Two days later, his brother Godfrey wrote them a letter. In that letter Godfrey Cabot wanted to know if they thought their machine could be used for carrying freight. He was financially interested in an industrial operation in West Virginia, he said, where conditions would justify a rate of $10 a ton for transporting goods by air only sixteen miles. [Illustration: FIRST FLIGHT. The only picture made of man’s first flight in a power-driven, heavier-than-air machine, Kitty Hawk, December 17, 1903. The plane, piloted by Orville Wright, has just taken off from the monorail. Wilbur Wright, running at the side, had held the wing to balance the machine until it left the rail.]