A Chosen Few: Short Stories. Frank Richard Stockton

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      “You don’t know how heavy and clumsy I feel,” said Mr. Gilbert, striving to keep up with us as we walked back. “If I had worn that thing much longer, I should never have been willing to take it off!”

      Janet had retired, but my wife went up to her room.

      “I think she has felt it as much as our boy,” she said, when she rejoined me. “But I tell you, my dear, I left a very happy girl in that little bedchamber over the garden.”

      And there were three very happy elderly people talking together until quite late that evening. “I shall write to Herbert to-night,” I said, when we separated, “and tell him to meet us all in Geneva. It will do the young man no harm if we interrupt his studies just now.”

      “You must let me add a postscript to the letter,” said Mr. Gilbert, “and I am sure it will require no knapsack with a screw in the back to bring him quickly to us.”

      And it did not.

      There is a wonderful pleasure in tripping over the earth like a winged Mercury, and in feeling one’s self relieved of much of that attraction of gravitation which drags us down to earth and gradually makes the movement of our bodies but weariness and labor. But this pleasure is not to be compared, I think, to that given by the buoyancy and lightness of two young and loving hearts, reunited after a separation which they had supposed would last forever.

      What became of the basket and the knapsack, or whether they ever met in upper air, I do not know. If they but float away and stay away from ken of mortal man, I shall be satisfied.

      And whether or not the world will ever know more of the power of negative gravity depends entirely upon the disposition of my son Herbert, when—after a good many years, I hope—he shall open the packet my lawyers have in keeping.

      [Note.—It would be quite useless for any one to interview my wife on this subject, for she has entirely forgotten how my machine was made. And as for Mr. Gilbert, he never knew.]