Mute Terror

They led Julius Shaefer, 10, onto Curtiss flying field, Long Island. They dragged him close to a plane. He tried to resist, digging his heels into the earth. His big brother climbed into the plane's cockpit to show that the monster would not bite. They lifted Julius into the machine. Trembling with mute terror he clung to his mother, who also trembled while they put a stout strap about the boy's waist and fastened it securely to the plane seat. They put double straps about his arms. He tried to scream. He strained at his fastenings, but could only force his hands slightly upward.

The plane went up, R. F. Cullman piloting. It roared, it swooped. It turned loops, it careened. It slipped sideways, it banked, it circled. Then it returned to steady earth. The 10-year-old boy was unbound and lifted out, speechless and faint.

Futile had been the attempt to cure the young mute by the sudden changes of air pressure incident to so wild an airplane ride. Such cures have occasionally resulted when deafness or vocal paralysis was functional. But not when either was organic, as in this case. Julius Shaefer was mute from a lesion in his brain. Yet, his mother, against the objection of her Dr. Samuel C. Reiss, had put her child through the ordeal, stubbornly faithful that science could cure all.