recision in the execution of
this personal manoeuvre which alone could render it safe to themselves
or impressive to the beholder. The owner of this accomplishment was
never apt to find himself much crowded with company, in the way either
of participants or spectators. Yet the art was a simple and harmless
one, pertaining more especially to youth, enthusiasm, and the fresh air
of high altitudes, which did ever evoke saltpetreish manifestations.

The evolution of the "double roll" is executed by taking a
six-shooter--let us hope not one of those pitiful toys of the
East--upon each forefinger, each weapon so hanging balanced on the
trigger-guard and the trigger itself that it shall be ready to turn
about the finger as upon a pivot, and shall be ready for instant
discharge, the thumb cocking the weapon as it turns; yet so that it
shall none the less be discharged only when the muzzle of the weapon is
pointed away from the operator's person and not toward it.

It is best for the ambitious to begin this little sport with an empty
weapon. Thus one will readily observe that the click of the hammer is
all too often heard before the whirl of the gun is fairly under way,
and while the muzzle is pointed midway of the operator's person; the
weight of the heavy gun being commonly sufficient to pull back the
trigger and so discharge the piece. When the ambitious soul has
learned to do this "roll" with one empty gun, he may try it with two
empty guns. If he finds it possible thus to content himself, it will
perhaps be all the better for him. To stand upright, with a gun in
each hand, even an empty gun, and so revolve the same while its own
cylinder is revolving, is not wholly easy, though when one has finally
gotten both hemispheres of his brain into accord with his forefingers,
he will ever thereafter be able to understand fully the double
revolution of the earth upon its axis and around the sun; provided
always that he is able to perform the "double roll" without hitch or
break, pulling right and left forefinger alternately and rapidly until
he has heard what in his tentative case must be a series of six double
clicks.

This performance with an empty six-shooter is but a pale and spiritless
form of the sport of high altitudes. Instead there should be twelve
reports, so closely sequent as to sound as one string of explosion.
Thus executed the game is a fine one, the finer for being risky. So to
stand erect, with an eight-i