MAINLY ABOUT STONE.

Sun (Christchurch), Volume I, Issue 25, 6 March 1914, Page 3

MAINLY ABOUT STONE.

"THE WIZARD ' IN AUCKLAND.

SOME REMARKS ON " PUNKS." AND THE QUEEN'S CITY WEATHER. Of all the men it has ever been my privilege to call friend, Arthur Stone was capable of the finest display of indignation. His ' pet subject for in-( vective was Auckland weather, and if ever a man had cause to say things about the climate of that self-centred "Queen City of the North"—so finely sung in the yet unpublished poems of Albert Edward Glover—it was Arthur Stone.

Auckland Weather. *' The Wizardj" as he is knownm his native America, came .to Auckland during that historic period nearly a year ago, when our Dreadnought was visiting us. He brought with him a Bleriot monoplane of the latest type, and he ' had behind him a' splendid as an aviator. He was a pupil of the great Bleriot himself, and took his pilot's certificate in the days when they could not be picked off trees. His project was to give' exhibitions throughout the Dominion, just as that fine young New Zealander, Scotland, is doing now; but the fates were against him. Time after time when he advertised a public flight, the rain descended and the winds blew as they did

on that occasion when the house builded on sand came down with a crash. In between times, the days would be exasperatingly fine, and on tliese ( days Stone made some very pretty flights around Alexandra Park —but you should have heard him talk about the clerk of the weather on

exhibition days. Not being sufficiently versed in the great American language —which is, after all, hardly the tongue that Shakespeare spake —I cannot tell exactly what he said, but I*do know from the way he said it that he was

SCOTLAND'S CAUDRON BIPLANE.

sometimes to. be a trifle annoyed about things. The people who thought he should have gone up in a sixtyr-miles-an-hour gale he classed simpiy as "punks'' —-and left it at that. Exactly what a "punk" is I have never yet found out, but I am inclined to think that a "punk" is a person of the class of those Scotch dead-heads who practically forced young Scotland

to fly in Dunedin on Saturday last, against his better judgment. Being a Scot myself, it hurts me to have to say these things, but there can surely be nothing too bad to , say about- people who go on to an aviation ground with-

out paying and then deliberately drive a man into risking his neck. These are

the people; I think Stone meant when he referred to "punks."

Built Without Nerves. '' The Wizard'' was a very likable chap—one of the good Americans. They go to Paris when they die, don't they? He was a keen sport, and was tremendously enthusiastic. He was built without nerves, and, like the boy Horatio Nelson, he had to ask what fear was; he had never seen it. He would take the most startling risks in the air, and all his life, before ever he took up flying, he had made his living by doing upside-down stunts on a motor-bicycle inside a great globe. At the same time there were some things he wovtld not do. He absolutely refused, for instance, to travel round a racetrack in the big speed car which his chief mechanician, Percy Cornwell, had brought with him. Percy is a speedking. He has the fastest motor-car in Australasia, and the race described by THE SUN'S Sydney correspondent recently proves that his motor-boat —or hydroplane, as it really is—is also first in its class. He used to take me round ■4he race-track at 60 miles an hour, and once as we stepped down, Arthur Stone, who had been watching with interest all the time, remarked in the language of Chicago, 111., "Well, you are a pair of guys"—a "guy" being one who is not exactly right in the place where he carries his hat. He did not like boats, except in a dead calm —but he did not need anything like a dead calm to fly in.

Smash at Napier. As I have given the bald facts of Stone's story in these columns before, I need not go over ' them again now. Suffice it to say that after making several fine flights in various towns he met with a bad smash on the Napier racecourse, through striking a distance post. He wrecked his machine and broke his collarbone for the —I think—-twenty-seventh time. He had broken many bones before, and some of his ribs are missing. He used to get a stranger to" run his ha,nd along that collarbone to feel all;'the mends. "As straight as a chicken's hind leg," he used to say of it. Stoiie is now in Australia, and the last heard of him is that he is an entrant for the proposed aerial Derby at Sydney. He has many friends in New Zealand, who will wish him luck, and who would dearly love to have him back again in the '' little old Do-minion," as he called it.

The Auckland Pioneers. Although the first and only foreigner to fly in New Zealand, Stone was not the first man to make flights in Auek-

laud. About four years ago a syndicate imported a' Wright-Farman biplane, but the aviator was an unskilled amateur, and he broke the chassis more often than he left the ground. After a long period of inactivity the machine was .got going again last winter by Sandford and Miller, who-not only made some good short flights, but occasionally took a passenger. ■ That machine was also badly smashed in November last through trying to go through a wire fence iifeteatl of over it, as aeroplanes should do. Exactly how it is now I have not heard.

Hammond and Scotland. The recent flights of J. J. Hammond in Auckland were too widely advertised at the time to need any description here. Hammond has the distinction of being the first New Zealander to gain a pilot's certificate, and he has a good record .of flights to his credit. The machine he flew was the Bleriot monoplane Brittania, presented to the Domininion Government for defence purposes. And now, with us, we have the second New Zealand aviator, J. W. H. Scotland, who is billed to fly in Christchurch to-morrow. Scotland is quite a youth, but he is a fine flier, and he has a splendid machine, tie has flown well in the South, and to his credit stands the first cross-country flight in the Dominion—from Invercargill to Gore. The weather has been against him, but he left Timaru this morning for Christchurch. Good luck to him! s lIORI HENARE.