Page:The Fun of It.pdf/56

40 lacking in a plane. Flying is so matter of fact that probably the passenger taking off for the first time will not know when he has left the ground.

I heard a man say as he left a plane after his first trip, “Well, the most remarkable thing about flying is that it isn’t remarkable.”

The sensation which accompanies height, for in­stance, so much feared by the prospective air pas­senger, is seldom present. There is no tangible connection between the plane and the earth, as there is in the case of a high building. To look at the street from a height of twenty stories gives some an impulse to jump. In the air the passenger hasn’t that feeling of absolute height, and he can look with perfect equanimity at the earth below. An explanation is that with the high building there is an actual contact between the body of the ob­server and the ground, creating a feeling of height. But the plane passenger has no vertical solid con­necting him with the ground—and the atmosphere which fills the space between the bottom of the plane and the earth doesn’t have the same effect.

Many people seem to think that going up in the air will have some bad effects on their hearts. I know a woman who is determined to die of heart failure, if she makes a flight. She isn’t logical, for she rolls lazily through life encased in 100 pounds of extra avoirdupois, which surely puts a greater strain on that organ.

Seriously, of course, a person with a chronically weak heart, who is affected by altitude, should not