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.

My brief career as a gymnast terminated with the ‘ladder act.’  I felt unequal to the task of drawing myself up the ladder (which was slightly inclined from the perpendicular), as I had seen others do, but once at the top I believed I could lower myself down.  A purchase was rigged in the roof, by which I was hoisted to the top of the ladder, some thirty feet from the ground, when, grasping a round firmly with my hands, the purchase was disconnected from my waist belt, and I began the descent.  It was very severe on the arms, and I desired to rest myself by placing my feet on a round, but my protuberant paunch would not permit it.  When I had accomplished about half the distance in safety, a round snapped suddenly with the unusual weight.  I remember clutching frantically at the next, which broke as did the other; then followed a sensation of falling, succeeded by a collision as between two express trains at full speed, and I knew no more.  When I recovered consciousness, I was in my own bed, and four surgeons were endeavoring to set my broken leg with a stump extractor.  Gymnastics are a little out of my line.

    FAT CONTRIBUTOR.

Unlike BRUMMEL, we know who our fat friend is, and shall be happy to see him again.

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‘Talbot,’ of Washington, one of those who keep the many chronicles of government, gives us the following from his repertoire:—­