The father of one of the families
was in the habit of balancing the father of another of the families
on the top of a great pole; the father of a third family often made
a pyramid of both those fathers, with Master Kidderminster for the
apex, and himself for the base; all the fathers could dance upon
rolling casks, stand upon bottles, catch knives and balls, twirl
hand-basins, ride upon anything, jump over everything, and stick at
nothing. All the mothers could (and did) dance, upon the slack
wire and the tight-rope, and perform rapid acts on bare-backed
steeds; none of them were at all particular in respect of showing
their legs; and one of them, alone in a Greek chariot, drove six in
hand into every town they came to. They all assumed to be mighty
rakish and knowing, they were not very tidy in their private
dresses, they were not at all orderly in their domestic
arrangements, and the combined literature of the whole company
would have produced but a poor letter on any subject. Yet there
was a remarkable gentleness and childishness about these people, a
special inaptitude for any kind of sharp practice, and an untiring
readiness to help and pity one another, deserving often of as much
respect, and always of as much generous construction, as the every-
day virtues of any class of people in the world.
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