right and sometimes he didn't. Dunham told him he'd better stick to
doubles until he'd had more practice, but Howard wouldn't have it, and
he kept right on. Prob'ly he thought Dunham was jealous of him. Anyhow,
he tried a triple one night at Chicago, in the Coliseum, and that was
the last triple he ever did try. He misjudged his time by a quarter of a
turn--that is, he turned three somersaults and a quarter instead of just
three--and struck the net so that he twisted his spinal column, and he
died a few weeks later. That last quarter of a turn killed him, and it
probably didn't take over a tenth of a second."
Here was something to think about. Precision of movement to tenths of a
second, with no guidance but a man's own intuition of time, and a life
depending on it!
"Can a man regulate the speed of his turning while he is in the air?"
"Certainly he can. That's the first thing you learn. If you want to turn
faster you tuck up your knees and bend your head so the chin almost
touches your breast. If you want to turn slower you stretch out your
legs and straighten up your head. The main thing is your head. Whichever
way you point that your body will follow. In our act we do a long drop
from the top of the tent, where you shoot straight down, head first, for
fifty or sixty feet and never move a muscle until you are two feet over
the net. Then you duck your head everlastingly quick and land on your
shoulders."
I asked Mr. Potter how long a drop would be possible for a gymnast. He
thought a hundred feet might be done by a man of unusual nerve, but he
pointed out that the peril increases enormously with every twenty feet
you add, say to a drop of forty feet. When you have dropped sixty feet
you are falling thirty-five miles an hour; when you have dropped eighty
feet you are falling nearly sixty miles an hour. And so on. It seemed
incredible that a man shooting down, head first, at such velocity would
wait before turning until only two feet separated him from the net.
[Illustration: CIRCUS PROFESSIONALS PRACTISING A FEAT OF BALANCING.]
"It can't be," said I, "that in one of these straight drops a gymnast is
guided only by his sense of time?"
Potter hesitated a moment. "You mean that he uses his eyes to know when
to turn? I guess he does a little, although it is mostly sense of time."
"You wouldn't get a man to do it blindfolded?" I suggested.
"Not a straight drop, no; but a drop with somersaults, yes."
"What, two somersaults down to the net, blindfolded?"
"Yes, sir, that would be easy. I tell you a man's eyes don't help him
when he's turning in the air. Why, Tom and I would throw that boy of
mine (Royetta) across from one to the other, he turning doubles, just
the same whether he was blindfolded or not. It wouldn't make any
difference.
"I'll tell you another thing," he continued, "that may surprise you.
It's possible for a fine gymnast to swing from a bar, say sixty feet
above the net, turn a back somersault--what we call a cast
somersault--then shoot straight down head first for thirty feet and then
tuck up and turn a forward somersault, landing on his shoulders. I
couldn't do it myself ever since I got hurt down in Mexico, but Tom
Hanlon could. I mention this to show what control a man can get over his
body in the air. He can make it turn one way, then go straight, and then
turn the other way."
After proper expression of wonder at this statement, I asked Mr. Potter
if something might not go wrong with this wonderful automatic time
machine that a gymnast carries within himself. Of course there might, he
said, and that is why there is such need of practice. Let a man neglect
his trapeze for a couple of months, and he would be almost like a
beginner. And even the best gymnasts, he admitted, men in the pink of
training, are liable to sudden and unaccountable disturbances of mind or
heart that make them for the moment unequal to their most familiar
feats.
"I'll tell you what accounts for the death of most gymnasts," he went
on. "It's changing their minds while they're in the air. That's what we
call it, but it's only a name. Nobody knows just what happens when a
gymnast changes his mind--I mean what happens inside him. What happens
outside is that he's usually killed.
"Now there was Billy Batcheller. He was a fine leaper, and could do his
two somersaults over four elephants or eight horses with the prettiest
lift you ever saw. He could do it easy. But one day--we were showing out
west with the Reynolds circus--as he came down the leaping-run he struck
the board wrong, somehow, and in the turn he changed his mind; instead
of doing a double he did one and a half and shot over the last horse
straight for the ground, head first. One second more and he was a dead
man; he would have broken his neck sure, but I saw him coming and caught
him so with my right arm, took all the skin off under his chin, and left
the print of my hand on his breast for weeks. But it saved him. And the
queer thing was he never could explain it--none of them ever can; he
just changed his mind. So did Ladell, who used to do doubles from high
bars down to a pedestal. He made his leap one night, just as usual--it
was at Toronto, in 1896, I think--and as he turned he changed his mind,
and I forget how he landed, but it killed him all right."
"Did you ever have an experience of this kind yourself?" I asked.
"Not exactly," he answered, "and I'm thankful I haven't, but I came near
it once in Chicago. It was the night after Howard got hurt, and I guess
fear--just plain, every-day fear--was at the bottom of my feeling. My
wife and I were doing an act sixty feet above the ground, and without a
net. I would hang by my hands from a couple of loops at the top of the
Coliseum, and she would hang, head down, from my feet, her ankles locked
across mine, just a natural locking of the feet, with no fastenings and
only ordinary performing shoes.
"When I had her that way, a man below would pull a drag-rope and get us
swinging higher and higher, until finally we would come right up to a
horizontal. I tell you it was a hair-raising thing to see, but until
this night I had never thought much about the danger. I thought of it
now, though, as I remembered Howard's fall, and I got so nervous for my
wife that I felt sure something terrible was going to happen. I was just
about in the state where a man starts his act and can't go through with
it, where he changes his mind. And you'll be surprised to hear what gave
me heart to go on."
"What was it?"
"It was the music, sir; and ever since that night I've understood why
some generals send their soldiers into battle with bands playing. As we
stood by the dressing-room entrance waiting to go on, it seemed as if I
couldn't do it, but when I heard the crash of that circus band calling
us, and came out into the glare of light and heard the applause, just
roars of it, why, I forgot everything except the pride of my business,
and up we went, net or no net, and we never did our toe swing better
than that night. Just the same, I'd had my warning, and I soon got
another act instead of that one; and--" He hesitated. "Well, sir, to-day
I wouldn't take my wife up and do that toe swing the way we used to, not
for a million dollars. And yet she's crazy to do it."
IV
SOME REMARKABLE FALLS AND NARROW ESCAPES OF FAMOUS ATHLETES
AS we finished our talk, Mr. Potter asked me to call some evening at
their rooms, on Tenth Street, and see a family of trapeze performers in
private life. I was glad to accept this invitation, and looked in upon
them a day or two later. Like the other figures in these studies of
thrilling lives, they presented a modest, simple picture in their home
circle. There is nothing in the externals of lion-tamers,
steeple-climbers, divers, balloonists, or gymnasts to betray their
unusual calling. Nor is there any heroic sign in eye or voice or
bearing. They are plain, unpretentious folk, for the most part, who do
these things and say little about them.
In one room were Tom and Royetta playing checkers, while Clarence, the
"kid," weary, no doubt, from the morning's practice, lay on a bed
storing up resistance against the next day's shoots and twisters. In a
room adjoining were Mr. Potter himself and Mrs. Potter enjoying the call
of a lady acrobat, one of the famed Livingstons, trick bicyclists.
As soon as was fitting, I put the old question to Mr. Potter, the
question that always interests me, how it happened that he became a
gymnast, and he went back to his Western boyhood and the early longings
that possessed him to be a performer in the air. Plainly he was born
with the gymnast instinct, and he ran away from home to follow his
heart's desire. Then he told us how at seventeen he was traveling with a
ten-cent show, doing a single trapeze act in the ring and an out-of-door
free exhibition of tight-rope walking from canvas top to ground. Once he
went at a difficult feat so eagerly--he was always his own teacher--that
he fell clean off a trapeze sixty feet above ground, and by some kind
providence that watches over boys escaped serious injury.
[Illustration]
"It's queer about falls," said Mr. Potter. "It's often the little ones
that kill. Now, there I fell sixty feet, and you might say it didn't
hurt me at all. Another time, showing in Yucatan, I fell only forty
feet, and smashed two ribs. And the worst fall I ever had was fifteen
feet at the Olympia, in London. I was driving four horses in a tandem
race, and was thrown straight on my head. That time I nearly broke my
neck."
"Twenty-five feet is my best fall," put in Mrs. Potter, smiling. "I was
doing an act on the flying rings, and one of 'em broke. Remember that,
Harry?"
His face showed how well he remembered it. "Perhaps you won't believe
this," he said, "but when I saw her falling I couldn't move. I was
'tending her in the ring, and wasn't ten feet from where she struck. I
could have caught her and saved her if my legs would only have moved.
But there they were frozen, sir, and I just had to stand still and see
my wife come down smash on her head. Pretty tough, wasn't it? She lay
unconscious for two days--that was at Monette, Missouri. Oh, yes, I
remember it!"
I asked Mrs. Potter if she had ever been afraid, and she shook her head.
Never once, not even at Chicago, in the perilous toe swing, when even
the other gymnasts told her she would certainly be killed. She knew her
husband would hold her safe, and she really enjoyed that toe swing more
than any act they ever did.
"I'll tell you this, though," she admitted, "I would be afraid to do
these things with any one except my husband."
"Yes, and I'd be afraid to have her," added Potter. "Why, down in
Mexico, when I broke my ribs, there was a man--a fine gymnast, too--who
offered to take my place so we wouldn't lose our salary, but every time
I saw him practice with my wife it made me so nervous I called it off
and let the salary go."
In spite of these manifest hazards, Potter insists that there is no
healthier life than a gymnast leads. "We never are ill," he said, "we
never take cold, we travel through all sorts of fever-stricken countries
and never catch anything, and we always feel good. Look at that boy of
mine! He's seventeen years old, and he's got a chest on him like a man.
Thirty-eight inches is what it measures. Why, I can't find a coat
that'll fit him."
He went on to point out some plain advantages, in addition to health,
that ordinary citizens might derive from a moderate knowledge of trapeze
work. In a fire, for instance, a man so trained would have little
difficulty in saving himself and others by climbing and swinging. And
firemen themselves would double their efficiency by regular practice on
high bars.
Again, in case of a runaway, a man familiar with the trapeze knows how
and when to spring for the bridle of a plunging horse. Or should he find
himself almost under the wheels of a trolley-car, he could leap for the
platform rail and swing up to safety.
"I'll give you a case," said Potter, "where the training we get helped a
good deal. It was a season when I was working with the Barnum outfit; we
were showing in the East, and during the hippodrome races a little girl
got away from her people somehow, and the first thing anybody knew,
there she was out on the track, with three four-horse chariots not a
hundred feet off, and coming on a dead run. As the crowd saw the child
they gave a great 'Uff' in fear, and lots of women screamed. It wasn't
in human power to stop those horses, and it seemed as if the little tot
must be killed.
"She was about half-way across the track when I started for her. Lots of
men would have started just as I did, but very few would have gone at
just the right angle to save her. Most men would have tried to run
straight across, but I was sure the horses would trample me and the
child, too, if I tried that. So I took her on a slant, running across
and away from the horses, and I caught her little body as a gymnast
knows how, didn't waste any time at it, and then--hoo!--we were over,
with the breath of those horses on our necks. If it hadn't been for the
practice I've had judging time and distance, we'd both have been killed
that trip."
I come now to another occasion when I spent two profitable hours with
the St. Belmos, husband and wife, who for years past and in many parts
of the world have appeared in a trapeze act that calls for the greatest
nerve and precision of movement. As a climax to this act, St. Belmo
makes a leap and swing of forty feet over his audience, springing head
first through a circle of knives and fire that barely lets his body
pass, then catching a suspended trapeze that breaks away at his touch
and carries him on in a long sweep, then leaping again, feet first, from
this flying bar through a paper balloon, where he holds by his arms and
drops swiftly thirty-five feet to the ground.
I was surprised to find the hero of this perilous feat rather the
reverse of athletic in appearance. St. Belmo struck me as a pale, thin,
almost sickly man. Yet I judge it would fare ill with any one who tried
to impose upon him as an invalid. Over that spare form are hard,
tireless muscles, and for years to come St. Belmo feels equal to leaping
this obstacle of blades and flame.
Most people, I suppose, in watching this act would imagine the knives to
be of wood and tinsel, but I saw that they were of steel, and sharp,
heavy double-edged knives a foot long, murderous weapons made by St.
Belmo himself out of old saws. And fifteen of these, with points turned
inward, form the heart through which this gaunt yet rather genial
gymnast shoots his way.
[Illustration: THROUGH A PAPER BALLOON AT THE END OF A GREAT FEAT.]
I asked St. Belmo about the accidents that he had suffered. Had he ever
struck the knives when leaping through? Yes, again and again. He had
torn his clothes to tatters on them, and lined his body with scars. But
that was years ago, when he was learning. Now he never touched the
knives. He could leap through them, eyes shut, as surely as a man puts a
spoon in his mouth without striking his teeth.
How about falls in the air? Well, he remembered two in particular, one
at Syracuse, where he missed the trapeze because some one was careless
in fastening a snap-hook that held it, and when he came through the
blades and flames head first, and reached for the bar, the bar had swung
away, and he plunged on smash down to the ground, and broke both legs.
"Didn't you look for the bar before you made the leap?" I questioned.
He shook his head. "I never see the bar for the dazzle of fire. I know
where it must be, and leap for that place. If it isn't there, why--" He
pointed down to his legs, and smiled ruefully.
He had another fall at Seattle, where he came down thirty-five feet and
put both his knees out of joint, all because he was thinking of
something else as he shot toward the balloon, and forgot to throw out
his arms and catch in the hoop. It was exactly the case of a man who
might walk over the edge of a housetop through absent-mindedness.
"Ever have a feeling of fear?" I asked.
"I don't know as you'd call it fear exactly," he began.
"Yes, it was fear, too," put in his wife, teasing. "I've seen your knees
shake so up on the pedestal that you almost tumbled off."
"No wonder my knees shook," protested St. Belmo; "they've been out of
joint times enough. Naturally, after an accident you feel a little queer
for a while; but I'll own up there was once I felt afraid, and it wasn't
long ago, either."
"I know," said his wife; "up at the Twenty-second Regiment Armory."
"That's right; it was in December. Remember when that bicycle-diver was
killed? His name was Stark? Poor chap! He was a friend of ours, and we
were there when it happened. You know, he got too much speed on the
incline, and struck the far edge of the tank instead of the water. That
was in the afternoon, and the same night we had to go on and do our act.
I looked at that tank, and then I said, 'Boys, I'm leary about this, but
I'm going to do my act. I'll come down somehow, boys; you watch me.'
Honest, I thought I was going to be killed, but I got through all
right."
Then he explained that the greatest danger in his act is neither at the
knives nor at the balloon, but in the swift drop after the balloon with
the hoop under his arms. This hoop, as it goes down, winds up a spring
overhead that acts as a break on the fall, though a very slight one.
Just before St. Belmo reaches the floor he lifts his arms above the hoop
and drops through it to the ground, but he must do that at precisely the
right moment, or he will suffer accident. If he drops through too soon
he will strike too hard, and may break his legs. If he does not drop
through soon enough, the hoop may jerk his arms out of the sockets. And
in spite of this formidable alternative St. Belmo assured me that for
more than a dozen years now he has made this drop continually, and never
failed once.
Think of a calling that requires a man to steer perpetually, by the
closest fraction of a shave, between a pair of broken legs and a pair of
dislocated arms! Fancy such an alternative as part of the regular
after-dinner routine! And then consider what marvelous precision must be
in these bodies and minds of ours when a man can face such a hazard for
years and never come to grief.
THE WILD-BEAST TAMER
I
WE VISIT A QUEER RESORT FOR CIRCUS PEOPLE AND TALK WITH A TRAINER OF
ELEPHANTS
WELL down on Fourth Avenue, below the bird-fanciers, the rat-catchers,
the antique-shops, and the dingy hotels where lion-tamers put up, is
"Billy's" place, the great rendezvous of the country for circus folk,
and here any afternoon or evening, especially in the dull winter-time,
you may find heroes of the flying trapeze, bereft of show-ring
trappings, playing monotonous euchre with keepers of the cages, or
sitting in convivial and reminiscent groups that include everything from
the high-salaried star down to some humble tooter in the band at present
looking for a job. All kinds of acrobats come to "Billy's," all kinds of
animal men, everybody who has to do with a show, barring the owners. If
a Norwegian wrestler wants to get track of an Egyptian giant he goes to
"Billy's." If an elephant-trainer needs a new helper he goes to
"Billy's." It is at once a club, a haven, a post-office, and a general
intelligence bureau for members of this wandering and fascinating
profession.
It was my fortune recently to spend an evening at "Billy's," and I had
as companion a veteran circus man, able to explain things. After taking
in the externals, which were commonplace enough save for "big-top"
celebrities ranged along the walls in tiers of photographs, we sat us
down where a man in a blue shirt was telling how a lioness and three
cubs got out of a cage somewhere one afternoon just after the
performance. It seems one of the cubs had been playing with a loose
bolt, and the first thing anybody knew, there they were, all four of
them, skipping about free in the menagerie tent. The story detailed
various efforts to get the lioness back into her cage--prodding,
lassoing, shouting--and the total failure of these because she would
neither leave her cubs nor let them be taken from her.
Finally, the situation grew serious, for the evening performance was
coming on, and it was quite sure there would be no audience with an
uncaged lioness on the premises. So it became a matter of business in
this wise--a lioness worth a few hundred dollars against an audience
worth a couple of thousand. Word was sent to the head of the show, and
back came the order, "Kill her." In vain the keeper pleaded for one more
trial; he would risk a hand-to-hand struggle with hot irons. The head of
the show said, "No"; the lioness was desperate, and he wouldn't have his
men expose their lives. It was a case of "Shoot her, and do it quick."
Of course, that settled it; they did shoot her, and as the blue-shirted
man described the execution I was impressed by his tenderness in
speaking of that poor, defiant mother, and then of the three little cubs
that "howled for her a whole month, sir, and looked so sad it made us
boys feel like murderers, blamed if it didn't!"
[Illustration: HOW THE LIONESS WAS CAPTURED ON THE OPEN PRAIRIE.]
Another man, with steely gray eyes and a stubble of beard, ventured the
opinion that they must have had a pretty poor quality of gumption in
that outfit, or somebody would have got the lioness into her cage. He
was mighty sure George Conklin would have done it. George was over in
Europe now handling big cats for the Barnum show. There wasn't anything
George didn't know about lions.
"Why, I'll give you a case," said he. "We were showing out in Kansas,
and one night a cage fell off the circus train, became unlashed or
something as she swung round a curve, and when we stuck our heads out of
the sleeper there were a pair of greenish, burning eyes coming down the
side of the track, and we could hear a ruh-ruh-r-r-r-ruh--something
between a bark and a roar--that didn't cheer us up any, you'd better
believe. Then George Conklin yelled, 'By the Lord, it's Mary! Come on,
boys; we must get her!' and out we went. Mary was a full-grown lioness,
and she was loose there in the darkness, out on a bare prairie, without
a house or a fence anywhere for miles."
"Hold on," said I; "how did your circus train happen to stop when the
cage fell off?"
With indulgent smile, he explained that a circus train running at night
always has guards on the watch, who wave quick lanterns to the engineer
in any emergency.
"Well," continued the man, "George Conklin had that cage fixed up and
the lioness safe inside within forty minutes by the clock. Do? Why, it
was easy enough. We unrolled about a hundred yards of side-wall wall
tenting, and carried it toward the lioness. It was a line of men,
holding up a length of canvas so that it formed a long, moving fence.
And every man carried a flaming kerosene torch. There was a picture to
remember, that line of heads over the canvas wall, and the flaring
lights gradually circling around the lioness, who backed, growling and
switching her tail--backed away from the fire, until presently, as we
closed in, we had her in the mouth of a funnel of canvas, with torches
everywhere, except just at her back, where the open cage was. Then
Conklin spoke sharp to her, just as if they were in the ring, and
snapped his whip, and the next thing Miss Mary was safe behind the bars.
It was a pretty neat job, I can tell you."
During this talk a broad-shouldered man had joined the group, and my
companion whispered that he was "Bill" Newman, the famous
elephant-trainer. Mr. Newman at once showed an interest in the
discussion, and agreed that there are times when you can do nothing with
an animal but kill it.
"Now, there was old Albert," said he, "a fine ten-foot tusker, that I'd
seen grow up from a baby, and I was fond of him, too, but I had to kill
him. It was in '85, and we were showing in New Hampshire. Albert had
been cranky for a long time--never with me, but with the other men--and
in Nashua he slammed a keeper against the ground so hard that he died
the next morning just as we were coming into Keene. That settled it, and
at the afternoon performance Mr. Hutchinson announced in the ring that
we had an elephant on our hands under sentence of death, and he was
willing to turn this elephant over to the local rifle corps if they felt
equal to the execution. You see, he had heard there was a company of
sharpshooters in Keene, and it struck him this was a good way to be rid
of a bad elephant, and get some advertising at the same time.