THE COFFEE PLANTATION
"You were right not to pay the forfeit; it is M. Deutsch who has paid it in your stead. Bravo! you well deserve the 100,000 franc prize.
"They play the old game now more than ever at home, but the name has been changed and the rules modified—since October 19, 1901. They call it now 'Man flies!' and he who does not raise his finger at the word pays his forfeit.—
Your friend,
This letter brings back to me the happiest days of my life, when I exercised myself in making light aeroplanes with bits of straw, moved by screw propellers driven by springs of twisted rubber, or ephemeral silk-paper balloons. Each year, on June 24th, over the St John bonfires, which are customary in Brazil from long tradition, I
inflated whole fleets of these little Montgolfiers, and watched in ecstasy their ascension to the skies.
In those days, I confess, my favourite author was Jules Verne. The wholesome imagination of this truly great writer, working magically with the immutable laws of matter, fascinated me from childhood. In its daring conceptions I saw, never
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