know how to make
ourselves, upon the smallest possible resources?

CHAPTER XXV.

LICENSED TO JUGGLE.

Some years ago a short iron-built man used to balance a scaffold pole
upon his chin; to whizz a slop-basin round upon the end of it; and to
imitate fire-works with golden balls and gleaming knives, in the public
streets of London. I am afraid his genius was not rewarded in his own
country; for not long ago I saw him starring it in Paris. As I stood by
to watch his evolutions, in the Champs Elysees, I felt a patriotic glow
when they were rewarded with the enthusiastic applause of a very wide and
thick ring of French spectators.

There was one peculiarity in his performance which distinguished him from
French open-air artistes--he never spoke. Possibly he was diffident of
his French accent. He simply uttered a grunt when he wished to call
attention to any extraordinary perfection in his performance; in
imitation, perhaps, of the "La!--la!" of the prince of French acrobats,
Auriol. Whatever he attempted he did well; that is to say, in a solid,
deliberate, thorough manner. His style of chin-balancing,
knife-catching, ball-throwing, and ground and lofty tumbling, was not so
agile or flippant as that of his French competitors, but he never failed.
On the circulation of his hat, the French halfpence were dropped in with
great liberality.

As the fall of the curtain denotes the close of a play, so the raising of
the square of carpet signifies the end of a juggler's performance; and,
when my old acquaintance had rolled up his little bit of tapestry, and
had pocketed his sous, I accosted him--"You are," I said, "an
Englishman?"

"That's right!" he observed, familiarly.

"What say you to a glass of something, and a chat?"

"Say?" he repeated, with a very broad grin, "why, yes, to be sure!"

The tumbler, with his tools done up in a carpet-bag closed at the mouth
with a bit of rope, and your humble servant were speedily seated in a
neighbouring wine-shop.

"What do you prefer to drink?" I inquired.

"Cure-a-sore," he modestly answered.

The epicure! Quality and not quantity was evidently his taste; a sign
of, at least, a sober fellow.

"You find yourself tolerably well off in Paris?"

"I should think I did," he answered, smacking his lips, "for I wos a
wagabon in London; but here I am an artiste!"

"A distinction only in name, I suspect."

"P'raps it is; but there's a good deal of difference, mind