This extraordinary troupe was taken to Paris by Nael Salsbury, a manager who is celebrated in every English-speaking country. It is commanded by an extraordinary man, Colonel W. F. Cody. Picture to yourself the most perfect type of trapper that you can imagine after reading _The Spy_ and _The Mohicans_. Born on the frontier, brought up on horseback, of chimerical courage, and unequalled skill in the management of horses and firearms, Colonel Cody is six feet high, and this fine body is crowned by the head of a stage musketeer. His curling hair falls upon his shoulders, and he has the moustache of an Aramis beneath the straight classical nose of an American. Colonel Cody’s warrior troupe has its female star, Miss Annie Oakley, called the “infallible little shot.” She is also a child of the frontier, where her name is as much feared as her bullet. And in fact she has accomplished wonders. One [p207] day at Tiffin (Ohio) she hit a fifty-centime piece held between a man’s finger and thumb at a distance of thirty feet. In February, 1885, she fired at 5,000 glass balls, which three projectiles threw up for her fifteen yards high; she broke 4,772 of them in nine hours, although loading the guns herself. Miss Oakley manages a horse quite as well as a gun. At a New Jersey fair she won four races out of five. “And Miss Oakley is rendered still more interesting,” says a biography from which I am copying, “by the fact that she is short, and only weighs 106 lbs.” Not one word more. The young girl is still unmarried. [Illustration] [Illustration] [p209] [Illustration] CHAPTER IX. THE EQUILIBRISTS. The equilibrists are the most artistic acrobats, the true Olympians. The gymnast excites our admiration by the marvellous development of his thorax and limbs, and by the epic relief of his muscles. The equilibrist does not require the same effort in his work. The beauty of the performance lies in the delicacy, variety, facility, and grace of the artist’s movements, and on this account women excel as equilibrists, for men cannot reconcile themselves to the suppression of their [p210] strength in the feats they achieve, and therefore take a second rank in equilibrium. They prefer special branches of the art, and are usually jugglers, bicyclists, or antipodeans. . . .