A DARING DEED.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXV, Issue 9124, 4 August 1888, Page 2 (Supplement)

A DARING DEED.

HANGING BY HE 11 TEETH TO A BALLOON A MILE HIGH.

We greatly doubt the moral right of Miss Leona Dare, the aeronaut, who ascended from the Crystal Palace recently, to risk her life, as she does, even for the sake of getting a living by the exhibition of her courage. According to her own account, which was verified by 60,000 spectators the othe.i day, she ascends a mile and a half into the air (3000 meters in her own estimate), hanging to a balloon by her teeth, which are unusually strong. An iron bar is attached to a trapeze suspended from the car, to one end of which an indiarubber mouthpiece or ball of that substance lias been fitted. Miss Dare puts her mouth over this, closes her teeth, and is carried up by the balloon, supported by her teeth alone. There she signals to two experienced assistants in the car, who lower a ladder, by which she ascends, being, of course, trained to all acrobatic feats, through a trap-door into the basket ; " then the basket is divided into two compartments by a shawl, and behind this partition I change my ballooning costume, which of necessity is very light, into an ordinary walking dress, so as to be able to go home without inconvenience when we descend." Miss Dare declares that she sutlers no inconvenience beyond a surging in her ears which lasts for some time after she has descended, and that through long exercise her teeth and jaws have be come exceptionally strong and trained to bear the excessive fatigue which it is plain must fall to their share, but it is obvious, nevertheless, that her life must be in the most extreme peril. She does not like the balloon, she says, to start " with a jerk"—a remark betraying her consciousness of a most ugly possibility. The slightest faintness, the smallest defect in the bar, the shock of a moment's toothache, and she would fall among the ' - ing crowddead, we can but trust, before she reached the ground, but in any event crushed out of all recognition.—Spectator.