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Updated: July 17, 2025
The admiration that is given too readily is a sign of want of judgment; a poet ought not to be paid in the same coin as a dancer on the tight-rope. We all felt hurt when intrigue and literary rascality were preferred to the courage and honor of those who counseled Lucien rather to face the battle than to filch success, to spring down into the arena rather than become a trumpet in the orchestra.
Through age and weather, these stones have been considerably worn out, and are here and there disconnected, besides being slippery to an extreme degree; so that even in broad daylight, one has to keep all his wits about him, in this sort of tight-rope performance, not to find himself landed in the river down below, in which, however, there is no water running.
The tight-rope walker does not walk so freely or so well as any one else can walk upon a good road; and yet we like to watch him for the mere sake of the difficulty; we like to see his vacillations; we like this last so much even, that I am told a really artistic tight-rope walker must feign to be troubled in his balance, even if he is not so really.
He felt at the moment like a tight-rope artist might feel if suddenly, in the middle of the performance, the manager of the Music Hall were to rush out of the proper managerial seclusion and begin to shake the rope.
The morning was full of brisk fights between young men; provincials, foreigners and some Italians, volunteer enthusiasts. The noon pause was filled in by routine fights of old or aging gladiators nearly approaching the completion of their covenanted term of service. It ended with a novelty, the encounter of two tight-rope walkers on a taut rope stretched fully thirty feet in the air.
The girl was to execute a new step on the tight-rope, and when she appeared, led forward by Fanfar, and made the three deep "reverences," there was a hum of admiration. She was charming her delicacy was fairy-like. She lightly placed her foot on Fanfar's hand and sprang upon the rope. Standing there, she looked at Irène, who was leaning back with an air of indifference.
And as the tight-rope walker knows how to control the vibrations of his wire, so the violinist must master the vibrations of his strings. Each section of the string vibrates with a different quality of tone. Most pupils think that a big tone is developed by pressure with the bow yet much depends on what part of the string this pressure is applied.
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.
And wherever one of them came the people fell back in dread, and no one would touch it. It made him laugh, and he scoffed at the people and called them cowards and old women. Then he turned and saw the tight-rope, and said foolish people were daily wasting their money to see a clumsy and ignorant varlet degrade that beautiful art; now they should see the work of a master.
Yet it was under the auspices of such a man that Oldfield made several of her most brilliant successes, not forgetting the memorable appearance as Lady Betty. And all the while, no doubt, Mr. Rich was thinking how much more sensible an attraction would be an elephant or a tight-rope walker.
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