My Airships/Concluding Fable
MORE REASONING OF CHILDREN
DURING these years Luis and Pedro, the ingenious country boys whom we found reasoning of mechanical inventions in the Introductory Fable of this book, have spent some time in Paris. They were present at the winning of the Deutsch prize of aerial navigation; they spent the winter of 1901-2 at Monte Carlo; had good places at the review of the 14th July 1903; and have broadened their education by the sedulous reading of scientific weeklies and the daily newspapers. Now they are preparing to return to Brazil.
The other day, seated on a café terrace of the Bois de Boulogne, they chatted of the problem of aerial navigation.
"These tentatives with dirigible balloons, so called, can bring us no nearer to its solution," said Pedro. "Look you, they are filled with a substance—hydrogen—fourteen times lighter than the medium in which it floats—the atmosphere. It would be just as possible to force a tallow candle through a brick wall!"
"Pedro," said Luis, "do you remember your objections to my waggon wheels?"
. . . .
"To the locomotive engine?"
. . . .
"To the steamboat?"
"Our only hope to navigate the air," continued Pedro, "must, in the nature of things, be found in devices heavier than the air—in flying machines or aeroplanes. Reason by analogy. Look at the bird. . . ."
"Once you desired me to look at the fish," said Luis. "You said the steamboat ought to wriggle through the water. . . ."
"Do be serious, Luis," said Pedro in conclusive tones. "Exercise common-sense. Does man fly? No. Does the bird fly? Yes. Then, if man would fly, let him imitate the bird. Nature has made the bird. Nature never goes wrong."