HOW IT FEELS TO FALL.

King Country Chronicle, Volume VI, Issue 494, 24 August 1912, Page 7

HOW IT FEELS TO FALL.

CIRCUS ACROBAT TELLS OF A

HAIR-RAISING EXPERIENCE

"'How does it feel to fall?" was asked of an acrobat who had had several hair-raising experiences. "It feels like something happening which I knew perfectly well was going to happen," he answered thoughtfully. "In my big fall, three years ago, when we were touring the West, I felt as if I had fallen before. The sensation was perfoctly familiar, although it was my first accident. Most of us have premonitions. For instance, I knew that on that night I was going to have a tumble. I always work without a net, but I was almost tempted to have one stretched. For fear that the others would talk about it, I did not, although I afterwards wished that I had. Of course, I fell. It' may be the sixth sense, or it may be a guardian angel that warns us.

"Whatever it is, there are few circus performers without a lively sense of it at times. When it gives the signal, the wisest thing to do is to lay off for a performance, regardless of consequences ; but I have never heard of anybody giving in to it like that.

'"The evening that I came nearest to passing in my checks I climbed to a little swinging trapeze up near the top of the tent,, and when I was about half through my act I felt a rope slip, and in less than a second I was plunging down head first and due to strike on a curb of the ring unless I could change my course. I did not lose consciousness ; instead, every faculty seemed more than ever alive. I realised, too,, that I must relax my muscles unless I wanted.to dc broken to bits.

"Thoughts of what would happen if I were killed flitted through my mind along with insurance, what my wife would do and say, who would do my act, and no end of things, all in less time than it takes to think of them now. Anybody who has dreamed of falling has a pretty clear idea how : .t feels to go off." —"Leslie's Weekly.'