"Artists" of the variety stage and the circus are always trying to
find something new, for the same old trapeze performances, trials of
strength, performances of rope dancers, etc., have been presented so
many times that anyone who invents an entirely new trick is sure of
making a large amount of money out of it; the more wild and dangerous
it is, the better. Anything that naturally stands on its feet but can
be made to stand on its head will be well received in the latter
attitude by the public. Some such thought as this must have been in
the mind of the man who conceived the idea of riding a bicycle on the
ceiling instead of on the floor. The "trick" originated with the Swiss
acrobat Di Batta, who, being too old to undertake such a performance
himself, trained two of his pupils to do it, and they appeared with
their wheel in Busch Circus in Berlin. The wheel, of course, ran on a
track from which it was suspended in such a way that it could not
fall, and the man who operated it used the handle bar as he would the
cross bar of the trapeze. One would think that the position of the
rider was sufficiently dangerous to satisfy any public, but the
inventor of the trick sought to make it appear more wonderful by
having the rider carry between his teeth a little trapeze from the
crosspiece of which another man hung.
[Illustration: BICYCLIST RIDING FROM THE CEILING OF A CIRCUS.]
Different colored lights were thrown on the performers as they rode
around the ceiling, and at the end of the performance first one and
then the other dropped into the safety net which had been placed about
sixty feet below them. We are indebted to the Illustrirte Zeitung for
the cut and article.
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