"_In default of the above, an injection of about four quarts and a half of sulphate of zinc may be used. The latter is even preferable, if the coffin will be more than forty days on the road._"
"Well," said the acrobat when I had finished reading, "what do you think of it all?"
"I think, my friend, that you must have been tempted more than once to leave this box in the cloak-room." [p256]
I smiled as I spoke, hoping to induce the Englishman to speak out; but the Serpent-man replied rather dryly--
"No, sir; such a temptation has never occurred to me: a gentleman keeps his word."
. . . . The performance of carpet acrobatics is something like a state of larva to gymnasts. They all aspire to take flight.
The first step in this elevation is the "bars."
The second, the glorious altitude, is "vaulting."
Any one who has put on the belt of a gymnast, if but for [p257] one trial, has practised on the single bar the following rudimentary exercises:--
1. _Breasting the bar_, which consists in gently drawing the body, without jerking it, to the level of the bar, by the contraction of the biceps.
2. _Circling the bar_--curling the body gently over the bar head forward, holding tightly with the hands.
3. _Simultaneous "upstart"_--the elevation of the body [p258] above the bar, with both arms through a spring from the back--"_temps de reins_."
4. _Alternative "upstart"_--one arm after the other.
5. _Upstart on one leg_, which has a corollary called _German upstart_ or _swinging_.
6. "_Cutaway up_," which is obtained by giving a strong spring, which throws the body forward, brings it back again in a natural swing, and is completed by an "upstart."
7. _Long swings or giant swings, forwards and backwards._ This is a series of rapid somersaults round the bar, executed with extended arms. At times they are so rapid that the body describes a succession of circles round the bar, like the arms of a windmill.
8. _Hough swings._ This exercise resembles the preceding one, but the bar is grasped below the kneecaps, without the assistance of the hands.
9. _Hands and feet swings._ This is performed backwards or forwards; the hands and feet are both placed on the bar, the hands outside, the feet inside.
This is a fairly complete list of the exercises of an amateur, but very few of them practise the whole series. They pause at the "upstarts," and at once pass to the _double bars_ or _parallel bars_, which possess the hygienic virtue of widely opening the chest and developing the biceps.