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Some of the municipalities of the environs of Bayonne and Biarritz still organize stilt races, at the period of the influx of travelers; but the latter claim that the stiltsmen thus presented are not genuine Landese shepherds, but simple supernumeraries recruited at hazard, and in most cases from among strolling acrobats.
Stilt number one fell to the right, crash into the flower-stand, and chopped some of the best branches off the fuchsias; while stilt number two oh! unlucky stick! went crash down upon the great antique vase that stood in the hall upon a pedestal, knocked it off, and there it lay, shivered upon the marble floor.
The stilt walkers of Landes not only attain a great speed, but are capable of traveling long distances without appreciable fatigue. Formerly, on the market days at Bayonne and Bordeaux, long files of peasants were seen coming in on stilts, and, although they were loaded with bags and baskets, they came from the villages situated at 10, 15, or 20 leagues distance.
On all three walls the shafts in this storey stand on a kind of kerb or parapet, which is interrupted in the middle of each bay, and the stilt of the round arch is treated almost like a classical entablature, and has a moulding or cornice above it, while the uppermost part of the wall is thickened, thereby necessitating over each bay a comprising arch, which on the north wall is round, but on the other walls follows the shape of the three sub-arches, and forms a kind of upper order to them.
Insall was standing with his head thrown back, his eyes stilt seemingly fixed on the musket that had suggested his remark a pose eloquent, she thought, of the mental and physical balance of the man. She wondered what belief gave him the free mastery of soul and body he possessed. Some firm conviction, she was sure, must energise him yet she respected him the more for concealing it.
For it often happens that there are certain superiorities, as for example Scipio's in what I may call our set. Now he never assumed any airs of superiority over Philus, or Rupilius, or Mummius, or over friends of a lower rank stilt.
It was thus that Caroline, with Babie and Armine, was descending a hill on the other side of Belforest Park, fully employed in picking the way through the mud from stone to stone, when a cry of dismay came to them from a distance, and whilst they were still struggling towards a gate, which broke the line of the high hedge, the two Johns came back at speed, crying- "Mother, Mother Carey! come quick, here's Allen had a spill- came down on his shoulder -his stilt went into a hole, and he went right over; they think he must have broken something, he howls so when they touch him."
So he got his back up in the corner where the macintoshes and great-coats hung, and then put one foot in one stilt, and made a spring to get into the other, but gave his head such a crack against the brass hat pegs, that he came down quicker than he went up, and then rubbed his crown with a very rueful expression of countenance.
Arriving at the northern end, we shall find it reaching some four degrees north of the Polar Circle, though some of its headlands extend stilt further into the icy sea.
It was good fun on stilt day to see the greater part of the school mounted up high above the ground, and striding away at a rapid rate over the fields; to hear the shouts and shrieks of laughter, especially if any unfortunate wight put the end of his stilt into a ditch deeper than he expected, and, unable to draw it out again, dropped on his nose.