I asked Mrs. Potter if she had ever been afraid, and she shook her head. Never once, not even at Chicago, in the perilous toe swing, when even the other gymnasts told her she would certainly be killed. She knew her husband would hold her safe, and she really enjoyed that toe swing more than any act they ever did.
"I'll tell you this, though," she admitted, "I would be afraid to do these things with any one except my husband."
"Yes, and I'd be afraid to have her," added Potter. "Why, down in Mexico, when I broke my ribs, there was a man—a fine gymnast, too—who offered to take my place so we wouldn't lose our salary, but every time I saw him practice with my wife it made me so nervous I called it off and let the salary go."
In spite of these manifest hazards, Potter insists that there is no healthier life than a gymnast leads. "We never are ill," he said, "we never take cold, we travel through all sorts of fever-stricken countries and never catch anything, and we always feel good. Look at that boy of mine! He's seventeen years old, and he's got a chest on him like a man. Thirty-eight inches is what it measures. Why, I can't find a coat that'll fit him."
He went on to point out some plain advantages, in addition to health, that ordinary citizens might derive from a moderate knowledge of trapeze work. In a fire, for instance, a man so trained would have little difficulty in saving himself and others by climbing and swinging. And firemen themselves would double their efficiency by regular practice on high bars.
Again, in case of a runaway, a man familiar with the trapeze knows how and when to spring for the bridle of a plunging horse. Or should he find himself almost under the wheels of a trolley-car, he could leap for the platform rail and swing up to safety.
"I'll give you a case," said Potter, "where the training we get helped a good deal. It was a season when I was working with the Barnum outfit; we were showing in the East, and during the hippodrome races a little girl got away from her people somehow, and the first thing anybody knew, there she was out on the track, with three four-horse chariots not a hundred feet off, and coming on a dead run. As the crowd saw the child they gave a great 'Uff' in fear, and lots of women screamed. It wasn't in human power to stop those horses, and it seemed as if the little tot must be killed.
"She was about half-way across the track when I started for her. Lots of men would have started just as I did, but very few would have gone at just the right angle to save her. Most men would have tried to run straight across, but I was sure the horses would trample me and the child, too, if I tried that. So I took her on a slant, running across and away from the horses, and I caught her little body as a gymnast knows how, didn't waste any time at it, and then—hoo!—we were over, with the breath of those horses on our necks. If it hadn't been for the practice I've had judging time and distance, we'd both have been killed that trip."
I come now to another occasion when I spent two profitable hours with the St. Belmos, husband and wife, who for years past and in many parts of the world have appeared in a trapeze act that calls for the greatest nerve and precision of movement. As a climax to this act, St. Belmo makes a leap and swing of forty feet over his audience, springing head first through a circle of knives and fire that barely lets his body pass, then catching a suspended trapeze that breaks away at his touch and carries him on in a long sweep, then leaping again, feet first, from this flying bar through a paper balloon, where he holds by his arms and drops swiftly thirty-five feet to the ground.
I was surprised to find the hero of this perilous feat rather the reverse of athletic in appearance. St. Belmo struck me as a pale, thin, almost sickly man. Yet I judge it would fare ill with any one who tried to impose upon him as an invalid. Over that spare form are hard, tireless muscles, and for years to come St. Belmo feels equal to leaping this obstacle of blades and flame.