It is true we stick a silk hat upon our heads, and put an eye glass on one of our orbits, and disguise the ladies of our family in pull back gowns and high heels; the love of the horrible is not even scotched, much less killed.
A Christian company sit and stand about the floor and galleries of some great building ostensibly devoted to the arts, to see the wonderful Zazel flirt with the King of Terrors.
They watch the graceful creature shot from a cannon, holding their breath as she flies through the air and alights safely in the net.
Then the poor girl, carrying her life in her hand, in obedience to the bond of service with her worthy master, walks along a wire as high from the earth as a low cloud in a hilly country, in peril of imminent death.
We do not pay to see the clever manner in which Zazel balances herself, because, if the feat were performed at a lower and safer altitude, there would be few, if any, spectators.
And this will apply with equal force to Blondin. His performances on the low rope were much more graceful and difficult, but they were not so popular as his high-rope feats.
It is the element of danger and the probability of an accident which gives piquancy to the exhibition.
It has been said that a gentleman of independent means attended for years Van Ambrugh’s exhibition of wild beasts, in the full expectation of seeing him one day devoured by one of the savage animals.
Some years ago, when a travelling blacksmith murdered six persons at a lonely habitation at Denham, the lane leading to the scene of the tragedy was thronged with the carriages of the nobility, the occupants of which offered large sums to the policeman in charge of the house for permission to see the dead bodies as they had fallen when struck down by the hands of their murderer.
The gate post at the entrance was probably cut away by persons who possessed themselves of a piece of the same as a trophy or memento of the tragical event.