g type of art.

What has become of them all, the graceful little lady of the slack
wire, those charming and lovely figures that undulate upon the air by
means of the simple trapeze, those fascinating ensembles and all the
various types of melodic muscular virtuosity?

We have been given much, of late, of that virtuosity of foot and leg
which is usually called dancing; and that is excellent among us here,
quite the contribution of the American, so singularly the product of
this special physique. Sometimes I think there are no other dancers
but Americans. It used to be so delightful a diversion watching our
acrobat and his group with their strong and graceful bodies writhing
with rhythmical certitude over a bar or upon a trapeze against a
happily colored space. Now we get little more in the field of
acrobatics beyond a varied buck and wing; everything seems tuxedoed
for drawing room purposes. We get no more than a decent handspring or
two, an over-elaborated form of split. It all seems to be over with
our once so fashionable acrobat. There is no end of good stepping, as
witness the Cohan Revue, a dancing team in Robinson Crusoe, Jr., and
"Archie and Bertie" (I think they call themselves). This in itself
might be called the modern American school: the elongated and elastic
gentleman who finds his co-operator among the thin ones of his race,
artistically speaking. I did not get to the circus this year, much to
my regret; perhaps I would have found my lost genius there, among the
animals disporting themselves in less charitable places. But we cannot
follow the circus naturally, and these minstrel folk are disappearing
rapidly. Variety seems quite to have given them up and replaced them
with often very tiresome and mediocre acts of singing.

How can one forget, for instance, the Famille Bouvier who used to
appear regularly at the fetes in the streets of Paris in the summer
season, living all of them in a roving gipsy wagon as is the custom of
these fete people. What a charming moment it was always to see the
simple but well built Mlle. Jeanne of twenty-two pick up her stalwart
and beautifully proportioned brother of nineteen, a strong,
broad-shouldered, manly chap, and balance him on one hand upright in
the air. It was a classic moment in the art of the acrobat,
interesting to watch the father of them all training the fragile
bodies of the younger boys and girls to the systematic movement of the
business while the mother s