Page:The Fun of It.pdf/241

Rh back for the expected grand climax of reappear­ance.

A longer span of activity than is allowed to most was Mrs. Graham’s privilege. She continued to make ascents for forty years and lived to see the heyday and decline of her kind of ballooning.

I have said little concerning the clothes of “The Only Female Aeronaut” of Victoria’s reign, as Mrs. Graham called herself. It is easy to see that ballooning offered to her and her sisters limitless scope for the use of all kinds of furbelows. Not only was the person of the aeronaut decorated but the craft as well. The beplumed and beribboned equipages were designed to harmonize with and en­hance the appearances of the performers. And vice versa. The silks and satins of the day carried right over into the very business of ballooning. It seems almost as if the spectacular side of aerial entertainment has never reached so high a pinnacle as it did during this fabulous period of balloon pageantry.