rsaults down to
the net. All this was easy for him on the low bars, but when he got up
high--well, he hadn't the nerve to let go of the first bar after the
giant swing. He kept going round and round, and just stuck there. Seemed
as if his hands were nailed fast to that bar. We talked to him, and
reasoned with him, and he tried over and over again, but it was no use.
He could drop from the last bar, he could shoot from the middle bar, but
to save his life he couldn't let go of the first bar. I don't know
whether he was afraid, or what; but he couldn't do it, and the end of it
was, he had to give up the offer, although it nearly broke his heart."

And even acrobats accustomed to working at heights feel uneasy in the
early spring when they begin practising for a new season. The old tricks
have always in a measure to be learned over again, and they work
gradually from simple things to harder ones--a straight leap, then one
somersault, then two. And foot by foot the pedestal is lifted until the
body overcomes its shrinking. Even so I saw Zorella one day scratched
and bruised from many failures in the trick where Weitzel catches him by
the ankles. Here, after the long swing, he must shoot ahead feet first
as if for a backward somersault, and then, changing suddenly, do a turn
and a half forward, and dive past Weitzel with body whirling so as to
bring his legs over just right for the catch. And every time they missed
of course he fell, and risked striking the net on his forehead, which
is the most dangerous thing an acrobat can do. To save his neck he must
squirm around, as a cat turns, and land on his back; which is not so
easy in the fraction of a second, especially if you happen to be dazed
by a glancing blow of the catcher-man's arm.

II

ABOUT DOUBLE AND TRIPLE SOMERSAULTS AND THE DANGER OF LOSING HEART

IN talking with my circus friends I was surprised to learn that a
trapeze performer in perfect practice, say in mid-season, may suddenly,
without knowing why, begin to hesitate or blunder in a certain trick
that he has done without a slip for years. This happened to Danny Ryan
in the fall of 1900, when he found himself growing more and more
uncertain of his difficult pirouette leap, a feat invented by himself in
1896, and never done by another performer. Danny did it first when he
used to play the clown with the spring-board leapers who do graceful
somersaults over elephants and horses. With them would come Dan