'_Go and be d----d!_' I yelled, furious at being thus victimized; but my angry and profane rejoinder was lost in the shout of laughter that went up from the assembled athletes. Natural abhorrence of jokes, practical or otherwise, is a trait among my people; it runs in the family, like wooden legs. I immediately sought the boss gymnaster and related the manner in which I had been introduced to his elevating establishment. I told him I had come there neither to be made a horse of by one nor an ass of by another. He pledged his word that the like should not occur again, and I was appeased. I first attempted the parallel bars, but they were never intended for men of my breadth. My hands giving way, I became so firmly wedged between the bars that it was necessary to cut one of them away in order to release me. A wag pronounced it a feat without a parallel. The horizontal bar next claimed my attention. I had seen others hang with their heads down, suspended by their legs alone, and the trick appeared quite easy of execution. I succeeded in suspending myself in the manner indicated, but--_revocare gradum_--when I attempted to regain the bar with my hands, it was no go. I was in a perspiration of alarm at once; my legs grew weak; my head swam from the rush of blood; twist and squirm as I would, I couldn't reach the bar with the tip end of a finger even. My head was four or five feet from the ground, so that a fall was likely to break my neck, and when my frantic efforts to clutch the bar with my hands failed, I shrieked in very desperation. Men came running to my aid. They raked the tan bark, with which the ground was strewn, in a pile beneath me, to break my fall as much as possible, and, relaxing my hold of the bar, I came down in a heap, rolled up like a gigantic caterpillar, and dived head and shoulders into the tan bark, where I was nearly smothered before I could be extracted. It was a terrible fright, but I escaped with a few bruises.