The Manitowoc pilot. [volume] (Manitowoc, Wis.) 1859-1932, 1882-03-23
CIRCUS APPARATUS AND
ACCIDENTS.

The most important business, after the
tents are up, is the formation of the ring
and the setting up of the gymnastic
machinery for the performances of the
acrobots.
The 'tring' is generally little more
than forty feet in diameter, and it looks |
like a rude enough affair, but its prepar-
alton calls for both care and skill. The
ground for it is leveled with nicely. The
barrier, circular mound of earth of
about one hundred and twenty five feet
inside circumference, is raised to a
height of somewhat over twenty inches
on its inner face. 1t must be thick, firm
and strong, to bear the hard blows of a
horses feet or the sudden leaning upon
of an elephant. 1t must, therefore, be
banked, and pounded with sledge.ham-
mers, until no strain to which it can be
subjected will break it down, and it must
retain no looseness nor unevenness, to
trip horse or endanger the life of
rider. 1t is the work of few hours
only, but there is man busy upon al
most every square yard of it while it is
rising.
As to the machinery for the acrobats,
simply as in the appearance of the up
rights and cross bars, they must be set
up with especial care, so as to leave no
possibility of their breaking down. The
performer using them must be able to
trust his appliances absolutely, or he
could never have the nerve and conf
dence to delight the crowd at the risk of
his neck. All his feats of skill and dar-
ing, moreover, have relation to the exact
distances at which he has practiced them,
and there must be no variation from
those precise measurements in the daily
adjustment of this machinery. He, or
she, as the case may be, IS sure enough
to meet with what are called accidents"
When "great show" recently came to
the city of Brooklyn, family group of
three persons sat down together in the
breakfast tent. They were acrobats of
unsurpassed agility and skill. A sad
faced woman, a young man of middle
size, a girl just entering her teens. There
had been four of them prior to recent
performance, but the ''star," an older
girl, the most daring of them all, had
"missed her motion" in feat of uncom-
mon peril, and had fallen upon the re-
ceiving net. "She was slightly injured"
all were told who thought to ask, but the
little group at the table knew that she
was dying. They performed their parts,
that day, as skillfully as ever, though
with so much more weight than usual to
carry, but when the exhibition was over
there were, indeed but three of them.
The fourth had gone forever.
Such an ''aocident" may come to the
best trained and most experienced per-
former, and yet it is mistake to suppose
the acrobats are necessarily short lived
race. The constant exercise, the out-of
doors lie, amount, IN TACT, to careful
observance of well known laws of health.
If professional athlete escapes the more
serious disasters which are continually
possible to him, it is his own fault if he
does not remain for many years man of
comfortable body.
His worst perils do not come to him in
the ring" but during the long months
when he is necessarily unemployed, and
when he has no immediate and pressing
need for careful training. For, in this
interval, he is in danger of relaxing his
habits of careful living, and very little
over-indulgence will put out of order
that wonderful machine,-his body, on
the perfect condition of which depends
his power to do the feats required of
him.