houlders hung a rattlesnake fifteen feet long,
while a smaller specimen curled from each hand. The reptiles put their
cold, triangular faces against hers, they touched her lips, they
squirmed around her; she tied their tails together in elastic knots
that soon undid; they reared their heads above her black locks till she
looked like a stage Medusa, then laid themselves lovingly on her
shoulder, and hissed at the audience. Then she lay down on the stage
and pillowed her head on the writhing mass. She opened her black bag
and took out a tiny brown snake which she placidly transferred to her
bosom; then turned to a barrel into which she plunged her arm and drew
out a black, hissing coil of mingled heads and tails. Her keen,
goodnatured face looked cheerfully at the audience through it all, and
took away the feeling of disgust, and something of the excitement of
fear.

The lady and the pets retiring, Gerty's hour of glory came. She hated
singing and only half enjoyed character dancing, but in posturing she
was in her glory. Dressed in soiled tights that showed every movement
of her little body, she threw herself upon the stage with a
hand-spring, then kissed her hand to the audience, and followed this by
a back-somerset. Then she touched her head by anslow effort to her
heels; then turned away, put her palms to the ground, raised her heels
gradually in the air, and in this inverted position kissed first one
hand, then the other, to the spectators. Then she crossed the stage in
a series of somersets, then rolled back like a wheel; then held a hoop
in her two hands and put her whole slender body through it, limb after
limb. Then appeared Monsieur Comstock. He threw a hand-spring and gave
her his feet to stand upon; she grasped them with her hands and
inverted herself, her feet pointing skyward. Then he resumed the
ordinary attitude of rational beings and she lay on her back across his
uplifted palms, which supported her neck and feet; then she curled
herself backward around his waist, almost touching head and heels.
Indeed, whatever the snakes had done to Madam Delia, Gerty seemed
possessed with a wish to do to Monsieur Comstock, all but the kissing.
Then that eminent foreigner vanished, and the odors of his pipe came
faintly through the tattered curtain, while Anne entered to help Gerty
in the higher branches.

A double trapeze--just two horizontal bars suspended at different
heights by ropes and straps--had been swung fro