where a man starts his act and can't go through with
it, where he changes his mind. And you'll be surprised to hear what gave
me heart to go on."

"What was it?"

"It was the music, sir; and ever since that night I've understood why
some generals send their soldiers into battle with bands playing. As we
stood by the dressing-room entrance waiting to go on, it seemed as if I
couldn't do it, but when I heard the crash of that circus band calling
us, and came out into the glare of light and heard the applause, just
roars of it, why, I forgot everything except the pride of my business,
and up we went, net or no net, and we never did our toe swing better
than that night. Just the same, I'd had my warning, and I soon got
another act instead of that one; and--" He hesitated. "Well, sir, to-day
I wouldn't take my wife up and do that toe swing the way we used to, not
for a million dollars. And yet she's crazy to do it."

IV

SOME REMARKABLE FALLS AND NARROW ESCAPES OF FAMOUS ATHLETES

AS we finished our talk, Mr. Potter asked me to call some evening at
their rooms, on Tenth Street, and see a family of trapeze performers in
private life. I was glad to accept this invitation, and looked in upon
them a day or two later. Like the other figures in these studies of
thrilling lives, they presented a modest, simple picture in their home
circle. There is nothing in the externals of lion-tamers,
steeple-climbers, divers, balloonists, or gymnasts to betray their
unusual calling. Nor is there any heroic sign in eye or voice or
bearing. They are plain, unpretentious folk, for the most part, who do
these things and say little about them.

In one room were Tom and Royetta playing checkers, while Clarence, the
"kid," weary, no doubt, from the morning's practice, lay on a bed
storing up resistance against the next day's shoots and twisters. In a
room adjoining were Mr. Potter himself and Mrs. Potter enjoying the call
of a lady acrobat, one of the famed Livingstons, trick bicyclists.

As soon as was fitting, I put the old question to Mr. Potter, the
question that always interests me, how it happened that he became a
gymnast, and he went back to his Western boyhood and the early longings
that possessed him to be a performer in the air. Plainly he was born
with the gymnast instinct, and he ran away from home to follow his
heart's desire. Then he told us how at seventeen he was traveling with a
ten-cent show, doing a single trapeze a