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. The plane passenger has no longer any 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
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