“When they do the stilts, the young ones only dance waltzes and polkas, and so on. They have to use their hands for doing the graceful attitudes. My wife, as I said before, does the gun exercise besides dancing, and it’s always very successful with the audience, and goes down tremendously. The performances of the three takes about twenty minutes, I think, for I never timed it exactly. I’ve been at some fairs when we have done our performances eighteen times a-day, and I’ve been at some where I’ve only done it four or six, for it always depends upon what business is being done. That’s the truth. When the booth is full, then the inside performance begins, and until it is, the parade work is done. There are generally persons engaged expressly to do the parade business.
“I never knew my girls catch cold at a fair, for they are generally held in hot weather, and the heat is rather more complained of than the cold. My young ones put on three or four different dresses during a fair—at least mine do. I don’t know what others do. Each dress is a different colour. There is a regular dressing-room for the ladies under the parade carriages, and their mother attends to them.
STREET-PERFORMERS ON STILTS.
[From a Sketch.]
“Very often after their performances they get fruit and money thrown to them into the ring. I’ve known seven or eight shillings to be thrown to them in coppers and silver, but it’s seldom they get more than a shilling or so. I’ve known ladies and gentlemen wait for them when they went to take off their dresses after they have done, and give them five or six shillings.
“When we go to fairs, I always pack the young ones off to bed about nine, and never later than ten. They don’t seem tired, and would like to stop up all night, I should think. I don’t know how it is with other kids.
“I send my young ones to school every day when there is no business on, and they are getting on well with their schooling. When we go to a country engagement, then I send them to a school in the town if we stop any time.
“Ours is, I think, the only family doing the rope-dancing and stilt-vaulting. I don’t know of any others, nor yet of any other children at all who do it.