Grant County herald. [volume] (Lancaster, Wis.) 1850-1968, 1879-06-19


Prom the London Telegraph. Msyll.
Times have unquestionably chang.
ed. Queens OF England no longer
patronize such sports as batting the
bear. Disputants like Mr.. &. A.
Freeman, on the one side, and Mr..
Anthony Trollope, on the other, have
agreed to differ on the subject OF fox.
hunting; cock, fighting is q thing Of
the past; the prize,ring is at an end !;
q certain amount of discredit has
been thrown upon pigeon.shooting
as an amusement, and merciless
scorn has followed those modern feats
of endurance which often degenerate
into mere exhibitions of physical suf
fering. The Society for the Proven
ton of Cruelty to Animals il 10 q
foorishing condition; the man who
would torment horae or q donkey,
fly q cat, or i'll treat q dog, would be
in danger Of the law; and yet there
are daily patronized and extensively.
advertised popular entertainments
and amusements fraught with danger
and instinct with horror. Supposinp
that another foreigner arrived in the
England of to-day, and, without over
emphasis Of exaggeration, described
what may be nightly seen 10 certain
music halls and circuses of the me.
tropolis and provinces, how should
we be prepared to meet the charge?
A descriptive writer with q ready
pen might bring serious Indictment
against the feverish taste for I'M
healthy excitement possessed by the
modern Engl;shman, to say nothing
OF his wife, daughters and children,
and coald easily prove his case by. a
visit TO music hall or a circus. It
seems impossible for any one to en-.
JOY few hours OF amusement with.
ont encouraging that distorted form
OF athleticism that may at any mo.
ment, and very often does, and in
broken bones and mangled limbs
The excitement consists in the mini
mum OF precaation and the maximum
OF danger. Strange as it may appear,
the honest artisan, who would as soon
dream of ill-tresting his cat or dog
as of wounding his child, consents to
be hustled out of the way at a music
hal, and disturbed from his seat, in
order that walters may drag heavy
nets across the room and arrange
the ropes, guides and pulleys to ena-
BILE some "star" performer or couple
of children to risk their lives. Amid
breathless excitement the parallel
bars are set in motion, the word of
command is given, and dropping, en-
veloped in sacks, from holes in the
ceiling, or propelled from cannon,
men, women and children, by their
skill on the one hand and disregard
OF danger on the other, feed that spirit
OF sensation which is provided by
spectators aud greedily swallowed
by spectators. But music halls are
not alone at fault. The circus, once
devoted to pure horsemanship,is now
disfgured with the unsightly trapeze;
and institutions OF great pretensions,
that begin with encouraging litera-
ture and high art, end with mounte.
banks bicycling upon tight ropes or
dancing over the jaws Of death upon
slack wire.
A painful accident has, in spite of
every precaution, happened to the
graceful and accomplished young lady
known as Zazel, who, either from the
roof or from cannon, takes one of
those "dives" that are supposed to
give the audience relish for whisky
and water, or bitter ale. The mas
tiers and tutors of young acrobats like
her have been in the habit of laugh
ing to scorn all who protested against
such exhibitions, and of pointing to
the net as an infallible safeguard
against accident. Forgetting the in.
ternal injuries, the disIocations, and
the shocks that may be caused by
these sudden leaps from the topmost
roof down to the very heads of the
spectators, they have emphatically
ridiculed the notion Of danger. But
for all that,in circus at Portsmouth,
Zazel has taken her leap and came
crashing through the net, in spite OF
every precaution on the part Of her
employees. "No bones were broken"
says the report, "but she was too se-
verely injured to appear last eve-
ming" and then rs added the INSULT
Gent explanation that "the ropes had
become weak through wear" We
may at once. in the interests of hu-
mainly, protest emphatically against
the validity of the excusethus offered.
When an unfortunate young lady, for
speculative purposes, is induced to
tumble headlong night after night
from a tremendous hight into a slack
net, it is patent 10 the most ordinary
common sense that the net must be.
come more or less injured by the
dead weight of such fall, and tc
neglect attention of the ropes of the
net is in itself an act Of carelessness
amounting to positive cruelty.
The Fate Of q Feline.