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We now go on to see the great salamander of Japan, an animal rare in this country, and quite unknown elsewhere, a great, cold mass, sluggish and benumbed, looking like some antediluvian experiment, forgotten in the inner seas of this archipelago. Next comes the trained elephant, the terror of our mousmes, the equilibrists, the menagerie.
Joyous jugglers, acrobatic artists, constrictorial contortionists, exquisite equilibrists, in their marvellous, mysterious, unparalleled performances. Umslopogus The Patagonian Chieftain The lowest type of human intellect This formerly ferocious fiend has so far succumbed to the softer wiles of civilization that he is no longer a cannibal, and it is now safe to put him on exhibition.
Many individuals have cultivated their senses so acutely that by the eye and particularly by touch they are able to perform almost incredible feats of maintaining equilibrium under the most difficult circumstances Professional rope-walkers have been known in all times. The Greeks had a particular passion for equilibrists, and called them "neurobates," "oribates," and "staenobates."
In 1814 there was a woman called "La Malaga," who, in the presence of the allied sovereigns at Versailles, made an ascension on a rope 200 feet above the Swiss Lake. In the present generation probably the most famous of all the equilibrists was Blondin.
Another class of equilibrists are those who maintain the upright position resting on their heads with their feet in the air. At the Hippodrome in Paris some years since there was a man who remained in this position seven minutes and ate a meal during the interval.
He squatted with his palms together and was a driveling idiot. The monk was discovered and escaped, but his temple was razed. Equilibrists.
We now go on to see the great salamander of Japan, an animal rare in this country, and quite unknown elsewhere, a great, cold mass, sluggish and benumbed, looking like some antediluvian experiment, forgotten in the inner seas of this archipelago. Next comes the trained elephant, the terror of our mousmes, the equilibrists, the menagerie.
Blondin would have been one of the latter. Antique medals showing equilibrists making the ascent of an inclined cord have been found. The Romans had walkers both of the slack-rope and tight-rope Many of the Fathers of the Church have pronounced against the dangers of these exercises. Among others, St. John Chrysostom speaks of men who execute movements on inclined ropes at unheard-of heights.
From all these, perhaps, and from other monsters likewise goblin shapes evolved by Nature as destroyers, as equilibrists, as counterchecks to that prodigious fecundity, which, unhindered, would thicken the deep into one measureless and waveless ferment of being... But when there are many bathers these perils are forgotten, numbers give courage, one can abandon one's self, without fear of the invisible, to the long, quivering, electrical caresses of the sea ...
That gentleman was a sort of Barnum, the director of a troupe of mountebanks, jugglers, clowns, acrobats, equilibrists, and gymnasts, who, according to the placard, was giving his last performances before leaving the Empire of the Sun for the States of the Union. Passepartout entered and asked for Mr. Batulcar, who straightway appeared in person.
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