Let us quote more from M. Dumont’s own story: 

“My first desire to get off the earth happened while I was extremely young.

“One day while out in the Brazilian diamond fields picking the luscious white stones from the trees it suddenly occurred to me what a frivolous life I was leading.

“Diamonds, diamonds everywhere and not a place to pawn.

“I became restless.

“My father owned the diamond plantation so I went to him and explained what a tired feeling I had, and how I longed to rise in the world.

“Father at once turned about fifteen volts into his right shoe and I rose for a distance of four feet.

“I returned almost immediately, but this short flying trip made a deep impression upon my mind, and otherwise.

“Ten years later I left home just to convince my father that I could rise in the world without his kindly collaboration.

“One day while in New York I went up to the fifty-ninth floor of a sky-remover building.

“The elevator was extremely nervous that day.

“While coming down I was pained and surprised to observe that my stomach did not travel with me.

“I spoke to the charge d’affaires of the elevator about it.

“I complained bitterly to him about such an inhuman invention which rushed through space with a man’s exterior and left his interior to bump its way downstairs.

“The charge d’affaires of the elevator told me if I did not like it to get out and fly.

“That was the inspiration which drove me to build the flying machine.

“Two weeks later I went to Paris, because that is the flyest city in the world.”

[Illustration:  “B—­A Skin Game.”]

Beauty is only a skin game after all.

Bad beginners make bad finishers.

Birds of a feather flock together on the theatre hats.

Be sure you’re ahead—­then go right.

* * * * *

###
 B:  The second letter of the alphabet.  It is called a vocal labial
    consonant, which, no doubt, serves it right.
###

* * * * *

BAA.  To make a noise like a sheep.

BOW-WOW.  To make a noise like a dog.

BIFF.  To make a noise like a boxing glove.

[Illustration]

BAGGAGE.  Two shirts, some underwear, one suit of clothes, six collars and a hair brush which you lost somewhere between here and Chicago.

BAD ACTOR.  A man who is egged on by ambition and egged off by the audience.

BADINAGE.  Light or playful discourse.  For example.  “Why does a chicken cross the street?  Because the butcher.”

[Illustration]

BAR.  A place where men go to get a thirst so that they can go there again to quench their thirst.

BEETHOVEN’S SONATA.  An excuse some women use for beating the face off a piano.