Читать книгу Adventures and Recollections - Bill o'th' Hoylus End - Страница 23

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A visit to Pablo Franco’s circus, which came to Keighley, led me into the belief that with a little practice I should make a passable trapezist, or tight-rope walker. So when I got home the first thing I did was to procure some rope &c. With this apparatus I constructed a kind of trapeze and tight-rope in my bed chamber. I used to practice nightly just before jumping into bed. But my ambition was one night somewhat damped, when I fell from the bar and hurt myself. This small beginning ended badly for me; for my father learned that part of his homestead had been converted into a circus; he was, or pretended to be, greatly displeased with the discovery, and he straightway cut down the ropes and things. Then I had to find some other means of following up my practice. When you once start a thing it’s always best to go on with it. So I got a lad about the same age as myself into my confidence, and one Saturday we resolved to have a night’s “circusing” on our own account in a barn. We had had a fair round of trapezing, rope walking, turning somersaults and the like—wearing special costumes, you know, for the occasion—when in the wee sma’ hours of the morning the old farmer, who claimed the ownership of our circus—in other words barn—suddenly came upon us. He had evidently heard us going through our rehearsal. His unannounced appearance startled Jack and myself very much indeed. The old farmer bade us in language certainly more forcible than polite—to “Come down, ye rascals.” Jack and I naturally hesitated a little, but that irritated the farmer, and he said that if we wouldn’t come down he would fork us down—he was evidently thinking of hay-time. We two, perched on the haystack, did not take the words at all with a kindly meaning. However, I told Jack in an under-tone to pack up our clothes and get away, suggesting that I would spring down and tackle the old man. Jack obeyed and got away, and I seized the farmer and held him tightly in a position by no means agreeable to him. He soon promised that if I left loose he would let me go away. I released him and doubled after Jack, finally landing at Cross Lane Ends, where Jack was waiting for me. We put on our usual garments and departed each on his own way. During the day I went to a neighbour’s house. I was rather startled on seeing the old farmer there; but exceeding glad was I when he failed to recognise me. He was telling the family about two “young scoundrels,” and how one had attacked him in his own barn early that morning; he little thought that a little “scoundrel” in that house was the “attacker” he wished to get hold of. Little Willie Wright could not help but smile interestingly at the old man’s vivid description of the incident. That incident, I may say in passing, served to mark the termination of my career as a circus hand.