across the table and pulled him over to her by his collar.
Then she stretched him across her lap and laid into him with her slipper
till he howled as if he was a small boy who had gone in swimming on
Sunday and his mother had just found it out. It wasn't so much the
slipper that hurt him, though the Female Samson put all her muscle into
the operation, but it was the disgrace of the thing; and when you
remember that the Dwarf was forty-two years old, you can understand that
he felt that the woman had taken a liberty with him. However, the next
day he seemed to have forgotten all about it, and when the Giant
reminded him of the circumstance, which he did every little while, the
Dwarf would grin and say that we must let the women do what they liked,
for they were a superior sort of being.

"One of the Female Samson's best feats was done in company with the
Dwarf and the Giant. She had a horizontal bar fixed on the stage, about
ten feet above the floor. On this bar she used to swing head downwards,
just hooking her knees around it, as all the trapeze artists do. It
looks sort of uncomfortable, but it is nothing when you are used to it.
I had a trapeze chap once who would often go to sleep that way in hot
weather. He said that all the blood in his body went into his head, and
that made him feel sleepy, while it cooled off his body and legs.
There's no accounting for tastes, but as for me, give me a good bed
where I can stretch out, and I'll never ask to sleep on a trapeze bar.

"As I was saying, the Female Samson would swing on this bar, and then
she would take the Dwarf's belt in her teeth and hold him in that way
for five minutes. There was a swivel in the belt, so that the Dwarf
would spin round while she was holding him, which he didn't like much,
but which pleased the public. After she had swung the Dwarf she would do
the same act with the Giant. She had to be very careful not to drop the
Giant, for he was terribly afraid of breaking a leg, being, as I have
said, particularly brittle; but she always said that he was as safe in
her teeth as he would be if he was lying in his bed.

"It must have been about a fortnight after the Dwarf was sat on by the
Fat Woman, and a week or more after he had been corrected in public by
the Female Samson, that we had an unusually large evening audience, and
everybody was in excellent spirits. The Female Samson had swung the
Dwarf in her teeth, and after she had let go of him he had cli