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THE AIRSHIP COMING

Mysterious Western Flying Machine En Route to This City. TOUCH BASE AT LAST

Mr. Kasmar, of Chicago, Describes the Aerial Wanderer and Tells People to "Wait" -Snap Shots of the Craft While Flying Through Space Secured.

Chicago, April 13. An airship was discovered in the mind of a Sacramento, Cal., correspondent three months or more ago. Corroborative details were the strong factor of the story. The appearance of the ship by night over Sacramento, its journey with bird-like speed from Oroville, its lights of different colors, voices descending to earth from the heavens, and reputable eyewitnesses galore were given minutely. Within a week after the story's appearance in print, the ship was seen at no less than ten different parts of the State. The airship was next seen near Omaha, about a fortnight ago. There, other people saw in the heavens what they believed to be a flying machine, and their hallucinations were all duly chronicled and sent broadcast over the country. At last, the ship was seen in Kansas City, and there, no less a person than Gov. Leedy averred that he had beheld the monstrous thing.

The newspapers in Chicago gradually filled up with airship news, which finally increased until it took a department by itself and a special editor. Several points in Indiana and Michigan supplied one airship story each night, and from the town of Crown Point, Ind., a correspondent, made jealous by the space-workers at adjacent places, wired his Chicago newspaper: "Airship will be seen here tonight. Shall I send story?"

Meanwhile, the people of Chicago had become violently interested in the airship, and thousands of them swept the heavens every night with the naked eye, opera glasses, or telescopes. Their gaze encountered high up in the sky a brilliant white light, which shimmered and wavered, moving with a perceptible motion. Friday night, from 10 o'clock until after midnight, not less than ten thousand persons were upon the streets, looking at the slowly moving light and speculating on the sighting of the airship.

Attorney Max L. Kasmar, secretary of the Chicago Aeronautical Society, now comes forth with his official sanction and insists that the airship is no dream.

"We received word from San Francisco three weeks ago," says Kasmar, "that a party had started from there in an airship, and that they would stop in Chicago for the purpose of registration. The end of the trip is to be in Washington, D.C., where the ship will be brought to the earth and given up to inspectors. The car contains three persons, and I know one of them.

"The ship is not of steel, as some spectators in the West have declared, but of paper. There is the customary inflated gas reservoir, but the inventors have discovered the secret of practical propulsion. The only new feature of the propulsion is the fact that the posterior of the propeller is flexible and elastic, while the anterior is rigid. The fans have a peculiar twisting motion. President Octave Chanute, with other wealthy men, has furnished the money for the venture."

Not a few take stock in Mr. Kasmar's story, and a fair portion of Chicago's population really believes that an airship has been hovering over the city for the past three nights. However, the scientists of the Chicago and Northwestern universities will have none of it. Instead of the strange light in the heavens being a flying machine, they insist it is a temporary star, by the name Alpha Ononis. George W. Hough, professor of astronomy at the Northwestern University, said last night: "The star's appearance of flight is due to the fact that it lies comparatively close to the horizon, and the Earth, in its rapid axial movement, creates the optical illusion that the star is in motion as it constantly changes its position in the heavens. The marked peculiarity of this star lies in its colors. The lower section is blue, above that a pronounced reddish hue, and above the latter line merges into a lustrous white. This variation of colors and their apparent shiftings give rise to the impression of different lights, but all come from the same star."

The fact that the much-talked-of airship is a reality, and not a phantom, is apparently attested by two remarkable photographs, now in Chicago, which, it is alleged, were taken while the machine was in motion. Walter McCann, of Rogers Park, a town twenty-eight miles north of here, took two snap shots with his camera at what he believed to be the airship and secured two excellent negatives. It was early in the morning, and the vessel was scudding along at a rapid rate, but the pictures he secured are very good ones.

The work of Mr. McCann dispels any thought of an optical illusion. Three witnesses assert that they saw him take the photographs, which were obtained Sunday morning at about 5:30 o'clock.

Mr. McCann is a newsdealer in Rogers Park. It is his custom to get up very early in the morning, particularly on Sundays, to deliver the Chicago papers. In his store, he has a small camera, the property of his young son. When McCann sighted the strange object in the sky early Sunday morning, he at once came to the conclusion it was the airship that there had been so much talk about and that had set so many people to thinking. He rushed into his store, seized the camera, and secured a good picture of it. G.A. Oversocker, who was also looking at the ship, suggested a second snap shot, and the result was a much better negative.

The pictures developed from these plates were tested by acids and were pronounced genuine productions of an object in the air, and not the creations of a studio.

William Hoodlces and E.L. Osborn, the latter an operator in the telegraph office of the Chicago and Northwestern Railway Company in Rogers Park, saw McCann and Oversocker at the hour named and assert that they not only witnessed the photographing of the object in the air but saw the vessel.

The craft, according to the statement of all these witnesses, is an invention without wings or sails. All agree that the outlines of a man could also be seen. Through a glass, they were of the opinion they could see the man in motion, as though he were engaged in steering the vessel.

The upper part of the ship apparently consisted of a cigar-shaped silken bag, attached to which was a lightly constructed framework. In the center of this framework, the man was located. A propeller or rudder was attached to the framework, the latter being shaped like the hull of a ship, except that it was sharp at both ends. Apparently, the framework was composed of white metal.

Mr. McCann told his story at his store on Greenleaf Avenue.

"I had read for some days about the airship," said he, "but thought it must be a fake. Sunday morning, about 5:30 o'clock, I was attending to my usual duties when I saw a strange-looking object in the sky coming from the south. It looked like a big kite. It came nearer, and then I saw it was certainly not a balloon. Then I thought of the airship and ran for the camera. At the corner of Greenleaf Avenue and Market Street, I took the first shot, while a few minutes later, I took another further up the railroad tracks. It was 500 or 600 feet from me when I photographed it, and I saw it plainly. It went north a distance and then gradually turned east."