was very
fitting transportation for him, as his hundred and sixty pound lift
saved quite a bit of expense for helium!

He developed an astonishing set of tricks. After the jump, he would
arrive on the field suspended above the dirigible doing trapeze
tricks. After that, in the show tent, he would go through some more of
them, with a few hair raisers of his own invention, one of which
consisted of apparently letting go the rope by accident and shooting
skyward with a wild shriek, only to be caught at the end of a fine,
especially woven piano wire cable attached to a spring safety belt,
the cable being in turn fastened into the end of the rope.

Needless to say, Alice was unable to wax enthusiastic about any of
these feats, though she loyally accompanied him in his travels. She
would sit in the tent gazing at him with a horrible fascination, and
month by month grew thinner and more strained. Tristan felt her stress
deeply; but was making money so fast that we all felt that in a short
time, if not able to finance the discovery of a cure, at least he
could retire and live a safer life. And he found his ideal haven of
rest--in a Pennsylvania coal mine! Thus, the project grew in his mind,
of buying an abandoned mine and fitting it with comfortable and
spacious inverted quarters, environed with fungus gardens, air ferns
and the like, plants which could be trained to grow upside down; he
emerging only for necessary sun baths.

As time went on, I really grew accustomed to the situation, though
seeing less and less of Tristan and Alice; during summers they were on
tour, and in winter were quartered in Tristan's coal mine, which had
become a reality.

So one summer day when the circus stopped at a small town where I was
taking vacation, I was overjoyed at the opportunity to see them. I
timed myself to get there as the afternoon performance was over, but
arrived a little early, and went on into the untopped tent.

Tristan waved an inverted greeting at me from his poise on his
trapeze, and I watched for a few minutes. There was an odd mood about
the crowd that day, largely due to a group of loud-mouthed
hill-billies from the back country--the sort which is so ignorant as
to live in perpetual fear of getting "something slipped over," and so
disbelieves everything it is told, looking for something ulterior
behind every exterior. Having duly exposed to their own satisfaction
the strong man's "wooden dumbbells," the snake charmer