“And so do we! And so do we!” replied half a hundred voices confounded in one. 

 “No! It ought to be in front!” shouted Phil Evans. 

 “In front!” roared fifty other voices, with a vigor in no whit less remarkable. 

 “We shall never agree!” 

 “Never! Never!” 

 “Then what is the use of a dispute?” 

 “It is not a dispute! It is a discussion!” 

 One would not have thought so to listen to the taunts, objurgations, and vociferations which filled the lecture room for a good quarter of an hour. 

 The room was one of the largest in the Weldon Institute, the well-known club in Walnut Street, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U. S. A. The evening before there had been an election of a lamplighter, occasioning many public manifestations, noisy meetings, and even interchanges of blows, resulting in an effervescence which had not yet subsided, and which would account for some of the excitement just exhibited by the members of the Weldon Institute. For this was merely a meeting of balloonists, discussing the burning question of the direction of balloons. 

 In this great saloon there were struggling, pushing, gesticulating, shouting, arguing, disputing, a hundred balloonists, all with their hats on, under the authority of a president, assisted by a secretary and treasurer. They were not engineers by profession, but simply amateurs of all that appertained to aerostatics, and they were amateurs in a fury, and especially foes of those who would oppose to aerostats “apparatuses heavier than the air.” flying machines, aerial ships, or what not. That these people might one day discover the method of guiding balloons is possible. There could be no doubt that their president had considerable difficulty in guiding them. 

 This president, well known in Philadelphia, was the famous Uncle Prudent, Prudent being his family name. There is nothing surprising in America in the qualificative uncle, for you can there be uncle without having either nephew or niece. There they speak of uncle as in other places they speak of father, though the father may have had no children. 

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