"Pitch the balls," he said.
The largest of the three boys fastened a cushioned band, on which was a leather cup, around his head, the cup being on his forehead just between his eyes.
He took two wooden balls, two and a half inches in diameter, tossed them in the air twenty feet high, catching them in the cup as they came down. The shape of the cup was such as to hold the balls by suction when they fell. He never once missed. This is the most dangerous looking of all the tricks I have seen jugglers perform.
"Shooting stars," said the showman.
The boy tossed aside his cup and balls and took a string six feet long, on the two ends of which were fastened wooden balls two and a half inches in diameter. He set the balls whirling in opposite directions until they moved so rapidly as to stretch the string, which he then held in the middle with finger and thumb and by a simple motion of the hand kept the balls whirling.
He was an expert, and changed the swinging of the balls in as many different ways as an expert club-swinger could his clubs.
"Boy acrobats," called out the manager, as the manipulator of the "shooting stars" bowed himself out amid the applause of the children.
The two smaller boys threw off their coats, hitched up their trousers—always a part of the performance whether necessary or not—and began the high kick, high jump, handspring, somersault, wagon wheel, ending with hand-spring, and bending backwards until their heads touched the ground.
One of them stood on two benches a foot high, put a handkerchief on the ground, and bending backwards, picked it up with his teeth.
The two boys then clasped each other around the waist, as in the illustration, and each threw the other back over his head a dozen times or more.