Victor A. Endersby

“ An accumulation of positive electricity repels an accumulation of negative—if indeed we can correctly use 'accumulation' for a negativity—and it is my idea that the earth is the container of a gigantic accumulation of this meta—or hyper-electricity which we are postulating; and our bodies contain a charge of the opposite sign."
"But, Doctor, the retention of a charge of static electricity by a body in the presence of one of the opposite sign requires insulation of the containing bodies; for instance, lightning is a breaking down of the air insulation between the ground and a cloud. ”

“ If so, it was by a reversal of polarity through an act of will. Those who did it—Yogis—believed in successive lives on earth. If they were right about the one, why not the other? Suppose one who had developed that power of will, carried it to another birth, where it lay dormant in the subconscious until set off uncontrolled by some special shock?"
Alice paled.
"Then Tristan might have been—"
"He might. Then again, maybe my brain is addled by this thing. In any case, the moral is: don't monkey with Nature! She's particular."
Tristan's vaudeville scheme was not as easily realized as said. ”

“ Having duly exposed to their own satisfaction the strong man's "wooden dumbbells," the snake charmer's rubber serpents, the fat woman's pillows, and the bearded lady's false whiskers (I don't know what they did about the living skeleton) , these fellows were now gaping before Tristan's platform, and growing hostile as their rather inadequate brains failed to cook up any damaging explanation.
"Yah!" yelled a long-necked, flap-eared youth, suddenly. "He's got an iron bar in that rope!" ”

“ It's only a matter of time and practise until I can stand the open. After all, it isn't any worse than being a steel worker or steeplejack. Even if the worst came to the worst, I'd rather be burst open by the frozen vacuum of interstellar space than to splash upon a sidewalk before an admiring populace—and people do that every day!"
Dr. Grosnoff, who was present, expressed great delight. His patient was coming along well mentally, at least. Alice sat down, trembling.
"But, good Lord, Tristan," I said, "what possible occupation could you follow?" ”

“ There was a sudden shriek, and the impact of a frantic body against mine, as Alice, whom I had quite forgotten, made a skyward running jump and clasped the arm frantically to her bosom with both her own. ”

“ The ordinary phenomenon of gravitation is no whit more mysterious, in all truth, than that which we were now witnessing—but we are born to it!
Dr. Grosnoff recovered in a manner which showed considerable caliber.
"Well," he grunted, "that being the case, we'd best be looking after him. Nervous shock, possible electric shock and electric burns, psychasthenia—that's going to be a long-drawn affair—bruises, maybe a little concussion, and possibly internal injury—that was equivalent to a ten-foot unbroken fall flat on his stomach, and I'll never forgive myself if.... Get me a chair!" ”

“ After which solid but unprofitable lesson in psychology, we dropped the last vestige of pride and tried a circus sideshow. But the results were similar.
"Nah, the rubes don't wear celluloid collars any more. Ya can't slip any wire tricks over on 'em!"
"But he can do this in a big topless tent, or even out in an open field, if you like."
"Nope—steel rods run up the middle of a rope has been done before."
"Steel rods in a rope which the people see uncoil from the ground in front of their eyes?" ”

“ Instantly he crouched on the ceiling, hiding his eyes, while the house rang with shriek after shriek of mortal terror, speeding the packing of the parting guests. Alice seized my arm, her fingers cutting painfully into the flesh.
"Jim," she screamed. "I see it now—don't you? His gravity's all changed around—he weighs up! He thinks the sky's under him!"
The human mind is so constructed that merely to name a thing oddly smooths its unwonted outlines to the grasp of the mind ”

“ I'm not hankering to furnish myself as an exhibit on the physiological effects of a lightning stroke—no, sir!"
"Rats!" said Tristan. "All that's a fairy-tale—trees being dangerous in a thunder-storm!"
The rain now beat through our thin summer clothing, as Tristan seized Alice's hand and towed her toward the spreading shelter. I followed them at first, then began to lag with an odd unwillingness. I had been only half serious in my objection, but all at once that tree exercised an odd repulsion on me ”

“ He's Always Up In The Air About Something, But You Can't Upset Him! Vaudeville To-night—The Bodongo Brothers, Brilliant Burmese Balancers—Arctic Annie, the Prima Donna of Sealdom, and Tristan LeHuber, The Balloon Man—He Uses An Anchor For A Parachute!" At last indeed the LeHuber family will have arrived sensationally in the public eye!
"There are," Alice raved, "two billion people on the earth to-day. Counting three generations per century, there have been about twelve billion of us in the last two hundred years. ”

“ In our case we are constantly in contact with the earth, and the charges would equalize."
"Please bear in mind, Jim, that we are not talking about electricity as now handled by man, but about some form of it as yet hypothetical. We don't know what kind of insulation it would require. We may be constitutionally insulated."
"And you think the fire-ball broke down that insulation by the shock to Tristan's system?" I asked. The logic of the thing was shaping up hazily, but unmistakably. "But, then, why don't we frequently see people kiting off the earth as the result of explosions?" ”

“ Why this ghastly absurdity?"
"From time immemorial," said Grosnoff, "there have been men who sought to excite the admiration of their fellows, to get themselves worshiped, to dominate, to collect perquisites, by developing some wonderful personal power or another. From Icarus on down, levitation or its equivalent has been a favorite. The ecstatics of medieval times, the Hindu Yogis, even the day-dreaming schoolboy, have had visions of floating in air before the astounding multitudes by a mere act of will. The frequency of 'flying dreams' may indicate such a thing as a possibility in nature. ”

“ Looking Alice and me over carefully, he gave us a each a nerve sedative and departed, leaving us with the feeling that here was a man of considerably wider learning than might be expected of a small-town doctor. In point of fact, we learned that this was the case. The specialist has been described as a "man who knows more and more about less and less." In Dr. Grosnoff's mind, the "less and less" outweighed the "more and more." ”

“ Tristan grew stronger physically; mentally, he was intelligent enough to help us and himself by keeping his mind as much as possible off his condition, sometimes by sheer force of will. Meantime, Dr. Grosnoff, realizing that his patient could not be kept forever tied in bed, had assisted me in preparing for his permanent care at home. The device was simple; we had just taken his room, remodeled the ceiling as a floor, and fitted it with furniture upside down. ”

“ Thus the warm comfort of the sun, which has cheered the heart of man from time immemorial, now took on an unearthly, unnatural semblance. I learned that he could never quite shake off the feeling that the houses were anchored into the earth, suspended only by the embedment of their foundations in the soil ”

“ Now it is obvious that if gravitation is a form of magnetism—and if so it belongs to another plane of magnetic forces than that which we know and use—then the objects on a planet must have the opposite polarity from that of the planet itself. Since the globe is itself a magnet, with a positive and negative pole, its attraction power is not that of a magnet on any plane, because then the human race would be divided into two species, each polarized in the sign opposite to its own pole ”

“ After the jump, he would arrive on the field suspended above the dirigible doing trapeze tricks. After that, in the show tent, he would go through some more of them, with a few hair raisers of his own invention, one of which consisted of apparently letting go the rope by accident and shooting skyward with a wild shriek, only to be caught at the end of a fine, especially woven piano wire cable attached to a spring safety belt, the cable being in turn fastened into the end of the rope. ”