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As one title on a cinema screen slowly fades out and another title slowly takes its place, so with the beginning of this week the name Lindbergh was gradually vanishing from the black, multi-column newspaper headlines, the name Byrd was gradually appearing in its stead. The man who had flown to Paris was being succeeded by the man who was planning to fly to Paris. Street-sweepers had cleared away the fragments of the telephone books that fluttered in shreds about Colonel Lindbergh in Manhattan. Street-sweepers were clearing away the petals of the roses that were thrown at him in St. Louis. Newspapers, ranged in rows on newstands, no longer looked like photograph galleries of a single face. Probably Colonel Lindbergh himself was glad when the last cheer was cheered and the last speech was spoken. "Never have I seen anything as hopelessly tired as that boy," said Historian Hendrik Willem Van Loonand the remark was made even before the St. Louis welcome. Toward the end of his receptions, indeed, Colonel Lindbergh appeared tired, gloomy, haggard. Asked how he felt one morning, he replied: "I don't know, I haven't read the newspapers yet." Some 18 medals have been given to him; he has been made a Colonel and a Boy Scout; at the Hotel Brevport, Raymond Orteig presented him with varicolored, hideously over-ornamented check for $25,000 the Orteig Prize for the New York-Paris flight. In the U. S. Embassy in Paris there is already a Lindbergh bust; in Detroit 100,000 special Lindbergh airmail stamps were sold in an hour. Then, too, he has received a gold, diamond-studded pass, entitling him to lifetime admission to all Shubert theatres. At the end, what he most needed was rest, sleep. "What will Colonel Lindbergh do now?" is the universal question, universally unanswered. It was said that he might make a nation-wide tour in the Spirit of St. Louis. The Ryan Aircraft Corp., makers of the Lindbergh plane, have already received orders for 20 similar ships. With such stimulation of increase in aviation, it was thought that Colonel Lindbergh might head a commercial-and-passenger aviation company, financed by his flight backers. At any event it seemed certain that Colonel Lindbergh would not abandon aviation for acting, would not appear either on screen or stage. There would be no feature films with Colonel Lindbergh flying over hill and dale to the rescue of a distressed cinema heroine; no vaudeville acts in which Colonel Lindbergh would appear before the Atlantic Ocean painted on a backdrop and climb into an airplane assembled and reassembled by brawny stagehands. Less the flight should be entirely free from commercialism, however, numerous business houses have sought permission to incorporate under the Lindbergh name, and soon there may be many a Lindbergh bootery, many a Lindy Shoe Shine Parlor. Advertisers, too, have "tied up," more or less securely, with the Lindbergh exploit. Aside from its emotional aspects, the Lindbergh flight was most important as an inspiration to increased interest in aviation. In speeches in New York City, Colonel Lindbergh repeatedly urged the creation of a great airport, like the Le Bourget field in Paris. He also emphasized the war-time importance of airplanes and (somewhat like onetime Colonel Mitchell of the army air service) said that airplane bombing had been brought to such accuracy that if 20 planes
