37-3,p34

All our Yesterdays...

From the book, "Juggling, or how to become a juggler, "

by Rupert Ingalese, 1921.

When I was a very young child, playing in the street in the little Yorkshire town where I was born, there came along the .pavement a being clad, it seemed to me, in nothing but an overcoat and slippers. Closer observation, however, revealed the fact that his flesh was covered with a thin stuff of some sort, nearly the colour of his skin, and clinging as closely to it.

Naturally I joined the little crowd that was following in his wake with wonder and delight. He presently came to a stop; and, dropping to the ground a half-filled sack he had been carrying, took there from a piece of carpet. This he spread upon the roadside, and emptied on to it the contents of the bag, consisting of glittering balls, metal rings and knives.

He then, with a dramatic air, threw off his overcoat and stood revealed to my astonished and admiring gaze - a JUGGLER, in all the glory of tights and spangles.

The impression made upon my mind by this "Solomon in all his Glory," and his wondrous performance has hardly faded yet. The man was only of medium height, but his bull-neck, his broad chest and muscles bulging like pictures I had seen of Roman gladiators, his dark defiant eye and his general air, conveyed the impression (to me at all events) of gigantic strength.

All that followed was like a beautiful dream: a blissful vision of a form clothed in gorgeous raiment, walking or standing amid a shower of glistening balls and gleaming knives. The dream was brought to a close by finding the performer standing beside me, cap in hand, begging coppers from the bystanders.

It seemed monstrous that such a thing could be, but I postponed consideration of the matter. Darting from the crowd I made all speed home, some distance away; and, obtaining what few pence my passionate entreaties could extort from my parents, I hurried back to find my Juggler gone. I ran up and down every street in the town to find him. Marvel to me it was that none of my playmates seemed to have heard of or seen him. He had indeed "gone from my gaze" as effectually as if the earth had opened up and swallowed him, or as if he had ascended into the clouds, from whence belike he had descended.

I never saw my Juggler more, though I sought hard for him in afteryears. Watching him as a child on that never-to-beforgotten afternoon, I was blind to what was visible enough to my mind's eye in later years.

The lines on his once handsome face told of hardship, suffering, and bitter disappointment. I have heard through all these intervening years the racking cough that shook his well-knit frame. and which he tried in vain to stifle. The poor fellow is probably gathered to his fathers ere this, and "Sleeps in the vault where all the Capulets do lie."

Peace to his ashes! May he rest in peace.

But if my Divinity had departed, he had left his influence behind him. "The heart of a Juggler was made that day. .. To become a strolling performer, clad in that resplendent and bespangled garb, wandering through green and shady lanes. emerging into towns and villages, to dazzle the eyes of crowds with my showy dress. to hear their out-spoken admiration of my powerful form and feats of strength, their murmurs of horror as the murderouslooking knives whirled gleaming through the air, and their loud cheers at its _lose: to be all this, to live all this, was to my conception the very acme of felicity, human or divine.