The children of acrobats are equilibrists and jugglers from their birth. Stroll into a circus some morning during rehearsal, you will see all the corners filled with boys and girls, who, on every tightened rope and round the iron bars, are imitating the paternal exercises for their own amusement. I remember, one day in London, witnessing a curious scene in a seventh-floor garret. Under the roof two cords were stretched across the attic; a young boy was practising walking on one of them without a balance; on the other a monkey was faithfully copying the gestures of his companion. The professor had probably gone out to buy some tobacco; in his absence the two dancers silently continued their parallel work. I can tell you that acrobats learnt the value of mutual instruction before the schoolmasters! [p211]
The lowest step of equilibrist art is the _globe performance_. Walking upon the rolling ball, forward or backward, vaulting [p212] and dancing upon it, are the A B C of the profession. This old-fashioned accomplishment is, therefore, never used, unless some new invention is added to increase the difficulty.
This has happened with Lady Alphonsine and the Russian Frankloff, whom we saw walking upon the water at the Neuilly _fête_, standing upon a ballast-tub, which he rapidly turned round with his feet. Lady Alphonsine ascended a small spiral upon her globe. It resembled the winding turn upon a screw, and was twisted round a mast fifteen or eighteen feet high. The ascension is not so bad, but I assure you that the descent gives you some trouble. It is necessary to restrain the enormous wooden ball, always on the verge of escaping, and the feet patter frantically, vibrating like the sounding-board of a mandoline. Here the effect produced is out of proportion to the exertion forced upon the artist; and this performance has another inconvenience: if [p213] it be continued for too long it spoils the shape of the leg by undue development of the calf--two reasons why the globe should not be reinstated in the esteem of the public.
However, here as elsewhere, fashion rules the world, and _tight-rope dancing_, after falling into abeyance for a time, is now apparently returning to favour.