Page:The Fun of It.pdf/229

Rh she says, “I took three handfuls of malted milk tab­lets, one for each meal.”

Unlike Miss Law, Katherine Stinson encoun­tered trouble in landing. In deep mud, she nosed over and broke her propeller. Twice she repeated the performance in the week following, owing to the inadequacy of the field from which she was try­ing to take off. But she made New York eventu­ally and landed at a field on Sheepshead Bay.

Cross country trips of the simplest kind were unusual and dangerous experiences before 1920. In fact, it was generally the custom to ship airplanes by rail from place to place for the exhibitions which were the order of the day. From this fact one can get a measure of Katherine Stinson’s performance in the days when airplanes were never thought of as transportation means.

Two years after Katherine had soloed, Marjorie decided to fly. She was not quite eighteen when she presented herself at the Wright Brothers school in Dayton in June, 1914.

One of the Wright brothers looked over the youthful aspirant. “I’m sorry we can’t accept you until your parents wire their consent”, said he. If we can judge by Miss Stinson’s own account of the incident, we can visualize a very angry little fig­ure facing Mr. Wright. She confesses she had on her longest skirt, yet here was a man refusing the money she had brought for her instruction and really treating her as if she were a child.

After vigorously protesting, she consented to