AIR LINES

In the broad daylight of Sunday afternoon a ball of fire dropped from the skies and landed on a roof in Harlem's darktown quarter. To distant observers this phenomenon must have had as awful portent as Bardolph's flaming nose, perhaps dire prediction of the approaching eruption of such active volcanoes as Mount Borah, Mount La Follotte and Mount Hiram Johnson. But distance lends enchantment and observers who were not distant noon pricked this loinantie bubble of would-be anthology. The meteor proved to be nothing but a negro, dressed like Mephistopheles in crimson tights and tunic and hitched to a parachute. Which does not mean that the awful voices of Mounts Borah, La Follette and Johnson will not "thunder as before."

Although the aviator failed miserably in giving the prosaic world a message from the skies, he opened a wonderful new field for advertising. The success of his parachute, a home-made product, advertised the parachute. The flaming tights did the rest; for they drew such a crowd that shop windows and iron railings along the street were broken. To this throng the aviator advertised by word of mouth a department store, an eye doctor, whose card he wore on his chest, and himself, whose card he passed around, as Lieut. Hubert Julian, M.D., the M.D. being translated by the lieutenant to mean mechanical draftsman. How much more effectual it would be to drop men into the Stadium between halves than to fly kites over it. Certainly the unsightly bill-board would fall before a determined army of sandwich men flying on the wings of the wind over hill and dale and down city streets.

Before advertisers can adopt this innovation, however, they must give pause for one consideration. What about city traffic. The advertisers would have to arrange some means for the safe landing of their sailing agents, because this very first exponent of the new art has, for his feat, been summoned to court on the charge of disorderly conduct.