"Enjoy em! Enjoy em! Why, bless your innocent soul, a feat ain't nothin'--won't dror a cent onless it's morally certain that the performer will break his neck. This woman I'm after draws crowds every night, because she _must_ kill herself. The trick is so dangerous that men make bets every night she will miss her lucky, and be carried out a corpse. I'm a goin' to have that woman, no matter what the salary is. She does this trapeze act, and then goes on in the first part of the minstrel entertainment after the big show. Oh, she's got talent into her." "But if the performance is so hazardous, and she should be killed, would it not entail a heavy loss upon you?" "Killed! Loss! Where was you born? My child, there never was a feat so dangerous that there ain't a thousand waitin' to attempt it, and they'll do it. When Mamselle Zhoubert gits killed, as she will, I'll hev to hold a lev-vee to decide atwixt the dozen who will want to take her place. I'll select one of 'em, give her a French name--yoo can't get on in the perfesh with a English name--and she'll go on and do it, and do it jist as well. And then wat an advertisement it is! This will be about the size of it:-- "The management begs to state that since the untimely death of Mademoiselle Zhoubert, at Cincinnati, it was doubtful if another lady competent to fill her place could be found. The feat was so difficult, so dangerous, and required such arduous training and such wonderful nerve, that it was feared that this leading attraction of the World's Aggregation would have to be omitted. There was only one other such artiste in the world--Mademoiselle Blanche, but she was engaged at the Cirque Imperial, Paris. The management knows no such word as fail, and a commissioner was dispatched at once to Paris, with unlimited powers to treat for this stellar attraction, this acme of talent. At an expense which would bankrupt any other establishment, conducted by narrow-minded managers who advertise more and perform less, she was secured and is now with us. Mademoiselle Blanche not only performs the original feat of the sincerely mourned Zhoubert, but adds to it one so much more dangerous as to make hers seem insignificant and commonplace. Mademoiselle Blanche will appear at each and every performance, all reports to the contrary notwithstanding." "That'll fetch 'em." "Dangerous feats! why, I run a whole season on a lion that had once eaten a keeper. The people come in crowds, expecting every day to see him make a breakfast of his trainer." "Was he actually dangerous?" [Illustration: THE DEATH OF THE TRAINER.] [Sidenote: THE TRAINER'S WIDOW.]