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After a while you came straying out alone. Now don't you remember? Don't you? Something quite sensational happened." "No!" "Well, I showed off what a great boy I was. I walked on the parapet of the villa wall. I bowed to my audience aged five with the grandeur of a tight-rope performer who has just done his best thriller as a climax to his turn."
Mix contrived to hold himself up to the public as a live reformer, but not a radical, and to the League as a radical but not a rusher-in where angels fear to tread. It required the equilibrium of a tight-rope walker, but Mr. Mix had it. Indeed, he felt as pleased with himself as though he had invented it.
We always make a point of asking a few questions in general. Here comes mademoiselle, the celebrated tight-rope dancer," etc., etc., and the thousand eyes which had been glued to my scarlet face were diverted to a new attraction. "I'll thrash that scoundrel within an inch of his life," I said to young Knickerbocker, who was sitting behind me beside his sister.
The girl, it seemed, had gone off with a company of circus-performers, and occasionally tidings of her came to the village, and fine stories were told of her glittering appearance as she rode on horseback in the ring, or performed marvellous feats on the tight-rope. The white-haired father now approached Ethan Brand, and gazed unsteadily into his face.
"I don't know," sez she, "I never knew much about your father's family." I didn't stay long at the Open Air Circus, though it wuz a big place and sights goin' on there; bare-backed riders, Japanese jugglers and acrobats, tight-rope walkers, elephants and camels with folks on their backs, with Arabians and East Indians in their native costumes takin' care of 'em.
The glimpse of sun-splashed path and red pine-stems drew Lenox aside from the open Mall; and horse and rider passed into the stretch of scented coolness at a brisk trot. The path, little more than six feet wide, was innocent of railing. But much riding in the Himalayas hardens the nerves to these tight-rope performances, which are part and parcel of life in the hills.
A tight-rope had been stretched across the Yellowstone River, and on this, clad in pink tights, balance-pole in hand, Signor Antolini had walked, high over the more or less raging flood. Do you ever tire of shows? I hope you don't. I don't, and offhand I can't think of many people who do.
"I don't dance in general; but to oblige X I mean, to have a better acquaintance, sir, with you I would dance on the tight-rope." There was a good-humoured, pleasant laugh at Spendquick's enthusiasm, and a general shaking of hands and pocketing of the invitation cards.
"Paradoxes are all very well in their way...." rejoined the Baronet. "Was that a paradox?" asked Mr. Erskine. "I did not think so. Perhaps it was. Well, the way of paradoxes is the way of truth. To test Reality we must see it on the tight-rope. When the Verities become acrobats we can judge them." "Dear me!" said Lady Agatha, "how you men argue!
It seemed to her that her face must wear the strained, propitiatory smile she had so despised in her youth on the faces of older woman, mothers of families. Now she knew from what it came . . . balancing perpetually on a tight-rope from which . . . Oh, her very soul felt crumpled with all this pressure from the outside, never-ending!
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