An invalid lady of seventy could have enjoyed all that
I did if only one could have got her into the passenger's seat. Getting
there was a little difficult, it is true; the waterplane was out in the
surf, and I was carried to it on a boatman's back, and then had to
clamber carefully through the wires, but that is a matter of detail.
This flying is indeed so certain to become a general experience that I
am sure that this description will in a few years seem almost as quaint
as if I had set myself to record the fears and sensations of my First
Ride in a Wheeled Vehicle. And I suspect that learning to control a
Farman waterplane now is probably not much more difficult than, let us
say, twice the difficulty in learning the control and management of a
motor-bicycle. I cannot understand the sort of young man who won't learn
how to do it if he gets half a chance.
The development of these waterplanes is an important step towards the
huge and swarming popularisation of flying which is now certainly
imminent. We ancient survivors of those who believed in and wrote about
flying before there was any flying used to make a great fuss about the
dangers and difficulties of landing and getting up. We wrote with vast
gravity about "starting rails" and "landing stages," and it is still
true that landing an aeroplane, except upon a well-known and quite level
expanse, is a risky and uncomfortable business.
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