The 21 Balloons

The president’s train pulls into the station to the cheers of the awaiting crowds. The mayor’s staff rolls out a red carpet, a band plays, and the mayor greets Sherman. The professor is still weak, and the mayor and his chief surgeon help him walk down the carpet to the mayor’s carriage.

They ride to the Explorers’ Club, where a little girl presents Sherman with a bouquet of balloons. He’s helped into the club and onto the auditorium stage, where he is propped up in a bed. He says, “I am happy to be home again!” (38). Cheers break out. When he says he hasn’t been gone long but missed his city, the audience remembers that he has broken the speed record for an around-the-world trip, and the applause lasts a full five minutes.

The mayor quiets the audience, and Sherman begins his story. It’s ironic, he says, that the trip was so short, as he had hoped for a long, leisurely journey of exploration. For some years, he had wanted to visit other lands, and doing so in a balloon would give him the solitude he never enjoyed while teaching rooms full of “prankish students.