Saturday Evening Mail, Volume 3, Number 8, Terre Haute, Vigo County, 24 August 1872 — Page 6

THA SK QOi) FOR 8 UNDA Jfow Gcd be thanked! thafc be has given— litest boon to saint and hlnner— A day of rest—one day in seven

Wliere toil is not the •winner B^t for the tired and Jaded brain, The wearied hand, on Sunday, *, Tint they might gather strength again, for toil rwuewed on Monday.

The rtierchant in hU counting room, The cleric oVr desk and ledger, .- ^The artbwn at forge and loom,

The dliclier and the taedger— Thf laborer who must toll and slave From early (Uwn on Monday, Until tne week sinks in its grave,

All cry, "Thank GoJ for feunday

The day that lift* the weighty chain Which all the week ham lound

Sleasures—my

$

-41

uk

That respite given to heart and brain, From thousand cures around us That In the tollfome roarth of life

So bids us take, for one day, Rest from the battle and the strife, Oh God be thanked for Sunday!

if thus bvall one day of rest Be hailed as respite tolely, How to the Christian, doubly bit*!,

Must be the Sabbath holy, As, In faith's light, he lifts his eyes To the brlgnt world where, one day* lie Iongs to spend beyond the hkles,

A bleit eternal Sunday!

[From Lipplnpott's Magazine.^

Balacchi Brothers.

AN INCIDENT IN THE LIFE OF AN ACROBAT.

"There's a man, now, that has leen famous in his time," said Davidge, as we passed the mill, glancing 'n.

at

Hiinny gap in tbo sido of the building. I paused incredulously. Phil's lion so often turned out 10 be Snug, the Joiner. Phil was my chum at college, "and in inviting ine borne to spend the vacation with

Turn,

I thought he had

fancied the resources of his village larger than they proved. In the two days since we came we had examined the old doctor's cabinet, listened superciliously to a debate in the literary club upon the Evils of the Stage, and passed two solid afternoons in the circle about the stove in the drug shop, where the squire and the Methodist parson, and even the mild, white-crayatted young rector of St. Mark's, were wont to sharpen their wits by friction. What more was left. I was positive that I knew the mental gauge of every man in the village.

A little earlier or later in life a gun or fishing-rod would have satisfied me. The sleepy,

Bunny

little market town

was shut in by the bronzed autumn meadows, that seut their long, grooping fingers of grass or parti-colored weeds drowsily up Into the very streets there were ranges of hills and heavy stretches of oak and beech woods, too, (through which crept glittering creeks full of trout. But I was just at the age when the soul disdains all aimless

game was man. I was

usy in philosophically testing, weighing, labeling human nature. "Famous,eh I said, looking after •the pursy figure of the miller, in his lloury, canvas roundabout and corduroy trousers, trotting up and down among the bags. ••That is one of the Balacchi Brothers," Phil answered as we walked on. "You've heard of them when you were a boy

I had heard of them. The great acrobats were as noted in their line of art as Ellsler and Jenny Lind in theirs. But acrobats and dansuescshnd been alike brilliant, wicked impossibilities to my youth, for I had been reared a Convenanter of the Convenanters. In spite of tho doubting philosophies with which I had clothed myself at college, that old Presbyterian training clung to mo in every-day life close to tny skin.

After that day I loitored about the mill, watching this man, whose life had been spent in one Godless theatre after another, very much as the Florentine

feasantslooked

after Dante when they

new he had come back lrom hell. I was on the lookout for the taint, the abnormal signs of vice. It was about that time I was fevered with the missionary enthusiasm, and in Polynesia, •where I meant to (but where I never did go,) I deolared to Phil dally that I tthould find in every cannibal tho halteffaced image ol God, only waiting to be quickened In grace and virtue. That was quite conceivable. But that a flashy, God-defying actor could be the ttame man at heart as this fat, goodtetnpored, gosslpplng miller, who joggod to the butcher's every morning for nis wife, a basket on one arm and baby on the other, was not conceivable. Ho was a close dealer at tho butcher's, too, though dribbling gossip there as everywhere a regular attendant at St. Mark's with his sandy-headed flock about him, among whom he slept corn10

ing wl

fbrtably enough, it is true, but with as "pious a disposition as the rest of us

Br how I watched this man,

week In and week out. It was a trivial matter, but it irritated me unendurablytofind that this circus rider had human blood precisely like my own it outraged my early religion.

We talk a great deal ol tbo rose-col-ored lliosions in which youth wraps the world, and the agony it suffers as i,hey are stripped from its bare, hard rffcoe but tho fact is that youth (aside from its narrow, passionate friendships)

is usually apt to be acrid, and watery and sour in its Judgments and creeds— it has the quality ot any other unripe fruit it is middle-age that is just and tolerant, that has found room enough in the world for itself and all human flies to buzz out their lives good-hu-moredly together. It is youth who can see a tangible dovll in every party or sect opposed to his own, whose enemy 4s always a villain, and who finds treachery and falsehood In their end who is occasionally bored or indifferent: it is middle-age that has discovered the reasonable sweet justr milieu of human nature—who knows few saints perhaps, but is apt to find its friend, and grocer, and shoemaker* agreeable and honest fellows. It is these vehement illusions, these inherited bigotrios aud prejudices, that tear and cripple a young man as they are taken from him one by one. He creeps out of thorn a* a crab from the shell that has grown too small lor him, but he thinks lie has left bis identity behind him.

It jvas such a reason as this that made me follow tho miller assiduously and cultivate a quasi intimacy with bfm, in the course of which I picked the following story from him. It was told at direr* times, and with many interruptions and questions from me, But for obvions reasons I have made it continuous. It had its meaning to me, coarse and common though it was—the same which Christ taught in the divine beauty of Ma parables. Whether that moaning might not be found in the history ol every human life, if we had eyes to read it, ia matter tor question:

Brothers? And you've

wro tbey wsre known as The Adminble Crichtons of tho Ring. It waa George who got up thai name—I did not see the force of it. But •onwo mould dial in too much for as. Why I i# 4-

could show you notices in the newspapers that—I used to clip them out and stuff my pocket book with them as we went along, but after we quit the business I pasted them In an old ledger and I often now read them of nights. No doubt I lost a good many, too.

Yes, sir. I was one of the Balacchi Brothers. My name is Zack Loper. And it was then, of course.

You think we would have plenty of adventures? Well, no—not a great many. There's a good deal ot monotony in the business. Towns seem always pretty much alike to me. And there was such a deal of rehearsing to be done by day and night. I looked at nothing but the rope and George—the audience was nothing but a packed fiat surface of upturned, staring eyes and half-open mouths. It was an odd sight, yes, when you come to think of it. I never was one for adventures. I was mostly set upon shaving close through the week, so that when Saturday night came I'd have something to lay by I had this mill in my mind, you see. I was

married,

and bad ray wife—and a

baby that I'd never seen—waiting for me at home. I was brought up milling, but the trapeze paid better. I took to It naturally, as one might say.

But George—he had adventures every week. And as for acquaintances I Why, before we'd be in a town two days he'd b3 hail felloW-well-met with hair the people in It. That fellow could scent a dance or a joke half a mile ofl. You never see much wide-awake men now-a-days. People seem to me halt dead or asleep when I think of him.

Ob, I thought you knew. My part ner, Balacchi. It was Balacchi en ihe bills the actors called him Signor, and people like the manager—South—and we, who knew him well, George. I asked him his real name once or twice, but he joked it off. "How inanv names must a man be saddled with he said. I don't know it to this day, nor who he had been. They hinted there was something queer about his story, but I'll go my bail it was a clean one, whatever it was.

You never heard how Balacchi Brothers broKe up? That was as near to an adventure as I ever had. Come over to this bench and I'll tell it to you. You don't dislike the dust of the mill? The sun's pleasanter on this side.

It was early in August of '56 when George and I came to an old town on the Ohio, half city, half village, to play an engagement. We were under contract with South then, who provided the rest of the tronpe, three or four

S[adame

ostu re-girls, Stradi, our pianist, and Somebody, who gave readings and sang. "Concert" was the heading in large caps on the bills "Balacchi Brothers will give their athletic tableaux vivanls in the interludes," in agate below.

I've got to cover you fellows over with respectability here," South said. "Rope dancing won't go down with these aristocratic church goers."

I remember how George was irrtated. "When I was my own agent," he said, "I only went to the cities. Educated people can appreciate what we do, but in these country towns we rank with circus riders."

George had some queer notions about his business. He followed it for sheer love of it, as I did for money. I've seen all the great athletes since, but 1 never saw one with his wonderful skill and strength, and with tne grace ot a woman, too, or a deer. »Now that takes hard, steady work, but he never flinched from it. as I did: and when night came, ana the people and the lights, and I thought of nothing but to get through, I used to think he had the pride of a thousand women in every one of his muscles and nerves—a little applause would fill him with a mad kind of fury of delight and triumph. South had a story that George belonged to some old Knickerbocker family, and had run off from home some years ago. I don't know. There was that wild, restless blood in him that no home could have kept him.

We wore to stay so long in this town that I found rooms for us with an old couple named Peters, who had but lately moved in from the country, and had halt a dozen carpenters and masons boarding with ibom. It was cheaper than the hotel, mid George preferred that kind of people to educated men, which made me doubt that story of his having been a gentleman. The old woman Peters was uneasy about taking us, and spoke out quite freely about it when we called, not knowing that George and I were Balacchi Brothers ourselves.

The house lias been respectable so far, gentleman," she said. "I don't know what about taking in them halfnaked, drunken play-actors. What do you say, Susy to her granddaughter.

Wait till yon see them, grandmother," the girl said gently. "I should think that men whose lives depended every night upon their steady eyes and nerves would not dare to touch liquor."

You are quite right—nor oven tobacco," said George. It was such a prompt sensible tmng for a little girl to sav that he looked at her attentively a minute, and then went up to the old lady smiling: "We dont look like drinking men, do we. madam?" "No, no. sir. I did not know that ou were the Italians." She was quite Justered and frightened, and said cordially enough bow glaa she was to have us both. But it was George she shook hands with. There was something clean and strong and inspiring about that man that made most women friendly to him on sight.

Why, In two days you'd have thought he'd never had another home than the Peter's. He helped the old man milk, and had tinkered up the broken kitcb-en-table, and put in half a dozen window panes, and was intimate with all tho boarders could give the masons the prices of job work at the East, and put Stoll, the caipenter, on the idea of contract-houses, out of which he afterward made a fortune. It Was nothing but jokes and fun and shouts or laughter when he was in the house even the old man brightened up and told some capital stories. But from the first 1 noticed that George's leye followed Susy watchfully wherever she went, though he was as distant and respectful with her as he was with most women. He had a curious kind of respect for women, George had. Even the Sllngsbys, that all the men in the theatre Joked with, he used to pass by as though they were logs leaning against tne wall. Tbey were the ture-girls, and anything worse the name I never saw.

There was a thing happened once on that point which I often thought might have given me a clue to his history if I'd follow it up. We were playing in one of the best theatres ia New York (they brought us into some dpersl, and the boxes were filled with fine ladies beautifully dressed, or, I might say, half dressed.

George was in one of the wings. It's a pretty sight," I said to him. "It's a shameful aight!" he said, with an oath. "The Sllngsbys do it tor their liriug, but these women—"

I had a sister, Zack, and there's

TERBE-HAUTE SATPR'PAY*EVEN1NtMAIL. AUGUST 24. 1872.

where I learned what a woman should be." "I never heard of your sister, George," said I. I knew he would not have spoken of her but for the heat Le was in.

No. I'm as dead to her, being what I am, as if I were six feet under ground."

I turned and looked at him, and when I saw his face I said no more, and I never spoke of it again. It was something neither I nor any other man had any business with.

So, when I saw how he was touched by Susy and drawn toward her, it raised her in my opinion, though I'd seen myself how pretty and sensible a little body she was. But I was sorry, for I knew t'wan't no use. The Peters were Methodists, and Susy more strict than any of them and I saw she looked on the theatre as the gate of hell, and George and me swinging over it.

I don't think, though, that George saw how strong her feeling about It was, so after we'd been there a week or two he began to ask her to go and see us perform, if only for once. I believe he thought the girl would come to love him if she saw him at his best. I don't wonder at it, sir. I've seen those pictures and statues they've made of the old gods, and I reckon they put in them the best they thought a man could be but I never knew what real manhood was until I saw my partner when he stood quiet on the stage waiting the signal to begin, the light lull on his keen blue eyes, the gold worked velvet tunic, and his perfect figure. He looked more like other men in ordina ry clothing. George liked a bit of flash, too, in his dress— a red necktie or gold chain stretched over his waistcoat.

Susy refused at first, steadily. At last, however, came our final night, when George was to produce his great leaping feat, never yet performed in public. We had been practicing it for months, and South judged it best to try it first before a small, quiet audience, for the risk was horrible. Whether, because it was to be the last night, and her kind heart disliked to hurt him by refusal, or whether she loved him better than either she or be knew, I could not tell, but I saw she was strongly tempted to go. She was an innocent little thing, and not used to hide what she felt. Her eyes were red that morning, as though she had been crying all the night, Perhaps because I was a married man, and quieter than George, she acted more freely with me than him.

I wish I knew what to do," she said, looking up to me with her eyes full of tears. There was nobody in the room but her grandmother. "I couldn't advise you, Miss Susy," says I. "Your church discipline goes against our trade, I know." "I know what's right myself don't need church discipline to teach me/' she said sharply. "I think rd go, Susy," said her grandmother. "It is a concert, after all it is not a play."

The name don alter it." Seeing the temper she was in, thought it best to say no more bnt the old lady added: "It's Mr. George's last night. Dear, dear! how I'll miss him!"

Susy turned quickly to the window.

41

Why does he follew such Godless ways, then?" she cried. She stood still a good while, and when she turned about her pale little face made my heart ache. "I'll take home Mrs. Tyson's dress now, grandmother," she said, and went out of the room. I forgot to tell you Susy was a seamstress. Well, the bundle was a large one, and I offered to carry it for her, as the time for rehearsal did not come till noon. She crept alongside of me without a word, looking weak and done-out she was always so busy and bright, it was the more noticeable. The house where the dress was to go was one of the largest in the town. The servant showed us into a back parlor, and took the dress up to her mistress. I looked around me a good deal, /or I'd never been in such a place before but very soon I caught sight of a lady who made me forget carpets and pictures. I only saw her in the mirror, for she was standing by tho fireplace in the front room. The door was open between. It wasn't that she was especially pretty, but in her white morning dress, with the lace about her throat and her fair hair drawn back from her face, I thought she was the delicatest, softest thing of man or woman-kind I ever saw. "Look there, Susy! look there!" I whispered. "ttjs Mrs. Lloyd from New York. SheWnere on a visit. That is her husband and then she went down into her own gloomy thoughts again.

The husband was a grave, middleaged man. He had his paper up before his face, so that I had not seen him before.

You will go for the tickets, then, Edward she said. "If you make a point of it. yes," in an annoyed tone. "But I don mako a point of it. The musical part of the performance is beneath contempt, I understand, and the real attraction is the exhibition of these mountebanks of trapezists, which will be simply disto you. You would not encourage such people at home why would you here?" "They are not necessarily wicked." noticed there was a curious unsteadiness in her voice, as though she was hurt and agitated. I thought perhaps she knew 1 was there.

There is very little hope of any redeeming qualities in men who make a trade of twisting their bodies like apes," he said. "Contortionists and ballet-dancers and clowns and harlequins—" he rattled all the names over with a good deal of uncalled-for sharpness, I thought, calling them "dissolute and degraded, the very offal of humanity." I could not understand his heat until he added: "I never could comprehend your interest and sympathy for that special class, Ellinor."

No, you could not, Edward," she said quietly. "But I have it. I never have seen an exhibition of the kind. But I want to see this to-night, if you will gratify me. 1 have no reason," she added when bo looked at her curiously. "The desire is unaccountable to myself."

The straightforward look of her blue eyes as she met his seemed strangely familiar and friendly to me.

At that moment Susy stood up to go. Her cheeks were burning and her eyes •Dissolute and degraded 1" sparkling, she

ie said again and again, when we were outside. But I took no notice. As we reached the house she stopped me when I turned to go to rehearsal. "You'll get seats lor grandmother and me, Mr. Balaochi V* ahe said.

You're going, then, Susy Yes, I'm going." Now the house in which we performed was a user structure. A stock company, thinking there was a field for a theatre in the town, had taken a four story building, gutted the interior, and fitted it up with tiers of seats and scenery. The stock company was starred out, however, and lett town, and the theatre was used as gymnasium, a con­

cert-room or a church

e.by

turns^ Its

peculiarity was, that it was both exceedingly lofty and narrow, which suited our purpose exactly. is picked that night from dome to pit. George and I had rehearsed our new act both morning and afternoon, South watching us without intermission. South was terribly nervous and anxious, half disposed at the last minute, to forbid it, although it had been announced on the bills lor a week. But a feat which is successful In an empty house, with but one spectator, when vour nerves are quiet and blood coal. Is a different thing before an excited, terrified, noisy audience, your whole body at fever heat. However George was cool as a cucumber, indeed almost indifferent about the act, but in a mad bovish glee all dav about everything else. I suppose the reason was that Susv was going.

South had lighted the house brilliantly and brought in a band. And all classes of people poured iuto the theatre until it could hold no more. I saw Mrs. Peters in one of the side sehts, with Susy's blushing, frightened little face beside her. George, standing back amoug the scenes, saw her,too I think, indeed^ it was all he did see.

There was the usual reading from Shakespeare at first. While Madame was on. South came to us. "Boys." said be, "let this matter go over a few weeks. A little more practice will do you no harm. You can substitute some other trick, and these people will be none the wiser."

George shrugged his shoulders impatiently: "Nonsense! When did you grow so chicken-hearted, South It is 1 who have to run the risk, I fancy."

I suppose South's uneasiness had infected me. "I am quite willing to put it off," I said. I had felt gloomy and superstitious all day. But I never ventured to oppose George more decidedly than that.

He only laughed by way of reply, and wQiit off to dress. South *looked after him, I remember, saying what a magnificently-built fellow he was. If we could only have seen the end of that night's work!

As I went to my dressing-room I saw Mrs. Lloyd and her husband in one of the stage-boxes, with one or two other ladies and gentlemen. She was plainly and darkly dressed, but to my mind she looked like a princess among them all. I could not but wonder what Interest she could have in such a rough set as we, although her husband, I confess, did judge us hardly.

After the reading came the concert part of the performance, and then what South choose to call the Moving Tableaux, which was really nothing in the world but ballet-dancing. George and I were left to crown the wholo. I had some ordinary trapeze-work to do at first, but George was reserved for the new feat, in order that his nerves might be perfectly unshaken. When I went out alone and bowed to the audience, I observed that Mrs. Lloyd was leaning eagerly forward, but at the first glance at my face she sank back with a look of relief, and turned away, that she might not see my exploits. It nettled me a little, I think, yet they were worth watching.

Well, I finished, and then there was a song to give me time to cool. I went to the side scenes where I could be alone, for that five minutes. I had no risk to run in the grand feat, you see, but I had George's life in my hands. I hayen't told you yet—have I ?—what it was he proposed to do.

A rope was suspended from the centre of the dome, the lower end of which I held, standing on the highest gallery opposite the stage. Above the stage hung the trapeze on which George and the two posture girls were to be. At a certain signal 1 was to let the rope go, and George, springing lrom the trapeze acrqps the full'width of the dome, was to catch it in inid-air, a hundred feet above the heads ot the people. You understand The mistake of an instant of time on either his part or mine, and death was almost certain. The plan we had thought surest was for South to give the word, and then that both should count—One, Two, Three! At Three the rope fell and .he leaped. We had practiced so often that we thought we counted as one man.

When the song was over the men hung the rope ana the trapeze. Jenny and Lou Slingsby swung themselves up to it, turned a lew sommersaults aud then were quiet. They Avere only to give effect to the scene in their gauzv dresses and spangles. Then South came forward and told the audience what we meant to do. It was a leat, he said, which had never been produced before in any theatre, aud in which failure was death. No one but the most daring of all acrobats, Balacchi, would attempt it. ,Now. I knew South so well that I saw under all his confident, bragging tone he was more anxious and doubtftil than he had ever been. He hesitated a moment, and then requested that after we took our places the audience should preserve absolute silence, and refrain from even the slightest movement until the feat was over. The merest trifie might distract the attention of the performers and render their eyes ana hold unsteady, he said. He left the stage and the music began.

I went round to take my place in the gallery. George had not yet left his room. As I passed I tapped at the door and called, "Good

Iuck,

old fel­

low!" That's certain now, Zack," he answered, with a joyous laugh. He was so exultant, you see, that Susy had come.

But the shadow of death seemed to have crept oyer me. When I took my stand In the lofty gallery, and looked down at the brilliant lights and great mass of people, who followed my every motion as one man, and the two glittering, half-naked girls swinging in the distance, and heard the music rolling up thunders of sound, it was all ghastly and horrible to me, sir. Some men have such presentiments, they say I never had before or since. South remained on the stage perfectly motionless, in order, I think, to maintain his control over the audience.

The trumpets sounded a call, and in the middle of a burst of triumphant music George came on the stage. There was a deafening outbreak of applause, and then a dead silence, but I think every man and woman felt a thrill of admiration for the noble figure. Poor George! the new, tight fitting dress of purple velvet that he bad bought for this night set off his white skin, and his fine bead was bare, with no covering but the light curls that Sosy liked.

It was for Susy! He gave one quick glance up at her, and a bright, boyish smile, as if telling her not to be afraid, which all the audience understood, and answered by an involuntary, longdrawn breath. I looked at 8usy. The girl's colorless faoe was turned to George, and her hand* were clasped as though ahe saw him already*dead before her but she could be trusted, I saw. She would utter no sound. I bad only time to glanoe at her, and then turned to my work. George and I dared not take our eyes from each other.

There was a single bugle-note, snd

then trapeze. —, he steadied himself and slowly turned so as to front me. As he turned he faced the stage box for the first time. He had reached the level of the posturegirls, who fluttered on either side, and stood on the swaying rod jjoised on one foot, his arms folded, when in the breathless stillness there came a sudden cry and the words, "Oh, Charley! Charley!"

Even at the distance where I stood I saw George start and a shiver jpass over his body. He looked wildly about him.

To me! to me!" I shouted. He fixed his eye on mine and steadied himself. There was a terrible silent excitement in the people, in the very air.

There was the mistake. We should have stopped then, shaken as he was but South, bewildered and terrified, lost control of himself he gave the word.

I held the rope lo.ose—held George with my eyes—One! I saw'his lips move, be was counting 1 $

Two! His eye wandered, turned to the .JW 3* 8^C5 Three! Like a flash I saw the white upturned faces below me, the posture-girl's gestures ot horror, the dark springing figure through the air, that wavered— and fell a shapeless mass on the floor.

There w. a moment of deathlike silence, and then a wild outcry—women fainting—men cursing and crying out in that senseless, helpless way they have when there is sudden danger. By the time 1 had reached the iloor they bad straightened out his shattered limbs, and two or threo doctors were fighting their way through,the great crowd that was surging about him.

Well, sir, at that minute what did I hear but George's voice above all the rest, choked and hollo^v as it was, like a man calling out of the grave "The womeu, Good God! don't you see the women he gasped.

Looking up then, I saw those miserable Slingsbys hanging on to the trapeze for life. What with the scare and shock they had lost what little sense they bad, and there they hung helpless as limp rags, high over our heads. "Damn the Sllngsbys!" said I. God forgive me! But I saw this battered wreck at my feet that had been George. -m A 1_ 1 Even South stared stupidly up at tnem and then back at George. The doctors were making ready to lift him, and half ot the crowd were gaping in horror, and the rest yelling for ladders and ropes, and scrambling oyer each other, and there hung the poor flimsy wretches, their eyes starting out ot their heads from horror, and their lean fingers loosing their hold every minute. But, sir—I couldn't help it—I turned from them to watch George as the doctors lifted him.

It's hardly worth while," whispered one. But they raised him, and, sir—the body went one one way and the legs another.

I thought he was dead. I couldn't see that ne breathed, when he opened bis eyes and looked up for the SlinKSby». "Put me down," he said, and the doctors obeyed. There was that iu his voice that they had to obey him, though it wasn't but a whisper.

Ladders are of no use," he saifl, "Loper!" ""W Yes, George." '1 .v, s• "You can swing yourself up. Do it."

I went. I remember the queer, stunned feeling I had my joints moved like a machine.

When I had reached the trapeze, he said, as cool as if he were calling the figures for a Virginia reel, "Support them, you—Loper. Now, lower the trapeze, men—carefully!'

It was the only way their lives could be saved, and he was the only man to see it. He watched until the girls touched the floor more dead than live, and then his head fell hack and the lite seemed to go suddenly out of him like the flame out of a candle, leaving only the dead wick.

As they Were carrying him out I noticed for the first time that a woman was holding bis band. It was that frail little wisp of a Susy, that used to blush and tremble if you spoke to her suddenly, and here she was quite quiet and steady in the midst of this great crowd. "His sister, I suppose?" one of the doctors said to her.

No, sir. If he lives I will bo his wife." The old gentleman was very respectlul to her after that, I noticed.

Now, tho rest of my story is very muddle, you'll say, and confused. But the truth is, I don't understand it myself. I ran on ahead to Mrs. Peters's to prepare his bed for him, but they did not bring him to Peters's. After I watched an hour or two, I found George had been taken to the principal hotel in the place, and a bed-room and every comfort that money could buy were there for him. Susy came home sobbing late iu the night, but she told me nothing, except that those who had a right to have charge of him'had taken him. I found afterward the poor girl was driven from the door of nis room, where she was waiting like a fiiithful dog. I went myself, but I fared no better. What with surgeons and professional nurses, and the gentlemen that crowded about with their solemn looks of authority, I dared not to ask to see him. Yet I believe still that George would rather have had old Loper by him in bis extremity than any or thepa. Once, when the door was opened, I thought I saw Mrs. Lloyd stooping over the bod between the lace curtains, and just then hor husband came out talking to one of the surgeons.

He said "It is certain that there were here the finest elements of manhood. And I will do my part to rescue him from the abyss into which he has fallen."

Will you tell me how George is, sir?" I asked, pushing up. ".Balacchi My partner

Mr. Lloyd turned away directly, but the suraon told me civilly enough that if George's lif£ could bo saved, it must be with the loss of ono or perhaps both of his legs. "He'll never mount a trapeze again, then," I said, and I suppose I groaned to think of George is helpless—

vuuU| EHXIU} auu A auMjsvsov A g»v for to think of George is helpless"God forbid!" cried Mr. Liuyu. sharply. "Now look here, my good man: you can lx\of no possible use to Mr.—Balacchi as you call him. He is in the hands of his own people, and he will feel, as they do, that the kindest thing you can do is to let him alone."

God forbid cried Mr. Lloyd

There wa3 nothing to be done after that but to touch my hat and go out, but as I went I heard him talking of "inexplicable madness snd years of wasted opportunities." "Well,sir, I never went again the words hurt like the cut o? a whip, though 'twan't George that spoke tbem. But I quit business, and hung around the town till I heard he was going to live, and I broke up contract with South. I never went on a trapeze again. I felt as if the infernal thing

1

was always dripping with blood after that day. Anyhow, all the heart went out of the business for me with George. So I came bitcJc hero and settled down to the milling, and by degrees, I learned to think of George as a rich and fortunate man.

I've nearly done now—only a word or two more. About six years afterward there was a circus came to town, and I took my wife and children aud went. I 'always did when I had the chance. It was the old Adam in me yet, likely.

Well, sir, among the attractions of the circus was the great and rivaled Hercules, who could play with the can-non-balls as other men would with dice. I don't know what made me restless and excited when I read about this man. It seemed as though the old

appe

don't know what I expected. But when he came from behind the curtain I shouted out like a madman, "Balacchi George! George!"

He stopped short, looked about, and catching sight of me, tossed up his cap with his old boyish shout then he remeinbered himself and went on with his performance.

He was lame—yes, in one leg. The other was gone altogether. He walked oil crutches. Whether the strength. had gone into his chest and arms I don't know but there he stood tossing about the cannon balls as I might marbles. So full ot hearty good humor, too, joking with the audience, and so delighted when they gave him a round of applause.

After the performance I hurried aiound the tent, and you may be sure there was rejoicing that made the manager and other fellows laugh.

George hauled me off with him down the street. He cleared the ground with that crutch, and wooden leg like a steam engine. "Come! come along!" he cried "I'ye something to show you Loper."

He took me to a quiet boarding house, and there, in a cozy room, was Susy, with a four-year-old girl. "We were married as soon as I could hobble about," he said, "and she goes with mo and makes a home wherever I am."

Susy nodded and blushed and laughed. "Bpby and I," she said. "Do you see Baby She has her father's eyos, do you see?"

She is her mother, Loper," said George—just as innocent, and pure, and foolish—just as sure of the. Father in heaven taking care of her. They'vo made a different man of me in some ways—a different man'" bending his head reverently.

After a while I began: "You did not say with—" But Balacchi frowned. "I knew where I belonged," he said.

Well, he's young yet. He's the best Hercules in the profession, and has laid up a snug sum. Why don't he invest it and retire? I doubt it if he'll. ever do that, sir. He may do it. but I doubt it. He can't change his blood, and there's that in Balacchi that makes me suspect he will die with tho velvet gilt on, and in the height of good humor and fun with his audience.

THE NAMINO OF CHILDREN."' One of the most common, loolish,andi mischievous habits is that of naming/ babies after historic characters, or per-l sons who have achieved contempora-. neous distinction. The smaller the. chanee the children have of ever achieve ing any resemblance to those with whose title they are crushed from the first, the greater the likelihood of the' bestowal of such titles. A narrow and-, ignorant man, living in some rural and' semi-civilized region, is more inclined to call his boy, born under overy disadvantage of circumstances, after some celebrated poet or scholar, than a' wealthy ana cultivated citizen would be on whom fatherhood had fallen. A woman to whom late has always been unkind, whom poverty and toil have narrowed and vulgarized, blindly reaches out toward the ideal by stamping her graceless and commonplace daughter with a name acquired from a popular romance. It muy be said that fair names may exercise a favorable influence, and serve as models and patterns' for the namesakes. So they may, if there be any similarity or concord between the two but when there is not, when the two natures are opposite, perchance antagonistic, the heavy capital overweights and weakens the slender column. Names, to bo beneficial, and inspiring to their bearers, musteither find or oeget corresponding tendenvies.

The injury William Shakspeare, John Milton, George Washington, Daniel Webster and a hundred others have done at the baptismal font can never be reckoned. It is doubtful which would haye been better—that tbey should not have been born, or that thenominal wearers of their honors should not have been. I am sure hundreds of promising and naturally clevor boys have been spoiled by indiscretions of nomenclature. How can a sensitive and competent youth, with an ardent proclivity to and many gifts for literature, obey the bent of nis inclination when everbody is aware that he is William Shakspeare Jones, or Smith, or Brown, or anything else He inevitably shrinks from comparison, dreading lest his efforts, creditable as they may be, should be made contemptible thereby. Can a healthy, 1m-,

Jve,warm-blooded

tible thereby. Can a healthy, lad, with George "asbington thrust upon him, be exft

fected

to accomplish anything, knowng, as be must, that George Washington has always been portrayed as the most unnaturally perfect and momentous of mortals

Who shall say how many retiring, cloistered natures have been embittered by discovering in thoir first thinking years how ridiculous their parents had made them by styling them Napoleon Bonaparte Of course they only wrote their Initials, and then they were perpetually mortified to hear themselves called Nota Bene Wiggins i, DUl or Take Notice Simpson. bling over with animal spirits, and fonu of adventure, have doubtless been driven to vicious extremes by having. John Calvin or John Knox tacked to their patronymics. Tho entire law of their being prevented them from imitating those ascetic theologians, and so tbey deliberately become profligate from contradiction and from a vague sense of the wrong that had been put upon them. I have known Melancthons and Wilberforces to be thieves, and Solomons and Solons to be circus clowns and I make no question but the former went in disgust to the opposite extreme, or the latter were resolved to caricature the ancient sages by becoming the most melancholy of fools.—Galaxy.

A cotrirrBTJfAW visiting Shawano, Wisconsin, was hit on the bead by a block from one of the many buildings ing up in that place. It must have irt nim some, for he said ^I'na too big to cry but it hurts so tuWdarned bad I can't laugh."

urt nim some, for he said ?J'r g4kl