supporting yourself on your hands alone, the legs not touching; then backward, the same.  It will be hard to balance yourself at first, and you will careen uneasily one way or the other; no matter, you will get over it somehow.  Lastly, mount once more, kneel in the saddle, and leap to the ground.  It appears at first ridiculously impracticable, the knees seem glued to their position, and it looks as if one would fall inevitably on his face; but falling is hardly possible.  Any novice can do it, if he will only have faith.  You shall learn to do it from the horizontal bar presently, where it looks much more formidable.

But first you must learn some simpler exercises on this horizontal bar:  you observe that it is made movable, and may be placed as low as your knee, or higher than your hand can reach.  This bar is only five inches in circumference; but it is remarkably strong and springy, and therefore we hope secure, though for some exercises our boys prefer to substitute a larger one.  Try and vault it, first to the right, then to the left, as you did with the horse; try first with one hand, then see how high you can vault with both.  Now vault it between your hands, forward and backward:  the latter will baffle you, unless you have brought an unusual stock of India-rubber in your frame, to begin with.  Raise it higher and higher, till you can vault it no longer.  Now spring up on the bar, resting on your palms, and vault over from that position with a swing of your body, without touching the ground; when you have once managed this, you can vault as high as you can reach:  double-vaulting this is called.  Now put the bar higher than your head; grasp it with your hands, and draw yourself up till you look over it; repeat this a good many times:  capital practice this, as is usually said of things particularly tiresome.  Take hold of the bar again, and with a good spring from the ground try to curl your body over it, feet foremost.  At first, in all probability, your legs will go angling in the air convulsively, and come down with nothing caught; but ere long we shall see you dispense with the spring from the ground and go whirling over and over, as if the bar were the axle of a wheel and your legs the spokes.  Now spring upon the bar, supporting yourself on your palms, as before; put your hands a little farther apart, with the thumbs forward, then suddenly bring up your knees on the bar and let your whole body go over forward:  you will not fall, if your hands have a good grasp.  Try it again with your feet outside your hands, instead of between them; then once again flinging your body off from the bar and describing a long curve with it, arms stiff:  this is called the Giant’s Swing.  Now hang to the bar by the knees,—­by both knees; do not try it yet with one; then seize the bar with your hands and thrust the legs still farther and farther forward, pulling with your arms at the same time, till you find yourself sitting unaccountably on the bar itself.  This our boys cheerfully denominate “skinning the cat,” because the sensations it suggests, on a first experiment, are supposed to resemble those of pussy with her skin drawn over her head; but, after a few experiments, it seems like stroking the fur in the right direction, and grows rather pleasant.