At all events, the equilibrium is destroyed, and, before it is established again, it requires but little dexterity to move the subject about in all directions without a great expenditure of energy.

The difficulty is not increased on seating two men, or three men, upon each other's knees (as shown in Fig.

4), since, in the latter case, the third acts as a true counter-poise to the first, and the whole pretty well resembles an apparatus of unstable equilibrium, whose centre of gravity is very high and, consequently, so much more easily displaced.
All these experiments require some little skill and practice, but are attended with no difficulty, and, upon the whole, do not merit the enthusiastic articles that have given the "electric" or "magnetic" girl her European reputation.
Strong people, whether tricksters or genuine athletes, or both, we shall probably have always with us.

But with the gradual refinement of the public taste, the demand for such exhibitions as fire-eating, sword-swallowing, glass-chewing, and the whole repertoire of the so-called Human Ostrich, steadily declined, and I recall only one engagement of a performer of this type at a first-class theater in this country during the present generation, and that date was not played.
There was still a considerable demand for these people in the dime museums, until the enormous increase in the number of such houses created a demand for freaks that was far in excess of the supply, and many houses were obliged to close because no freaks were obtainable, even at the enormous increase in salaries then in vogue.

The small price of admission, and the fact that feature curios like Laloo or the Tocci Twins drew down seven or eight hundred dollars a week, show that these houses catered to a multitude of people; and not a few of the leading managers of to-day's vaudeville, owe their start in life to the dime museum.
Among the museums that were veritable gold mines, I might mention Epstein's of Chicago; Brandenberg's of Philadelphia; Moore's of Detroit and Rochester; The Sackett and Wiggins Tour; Kohl and Middleton's; Austin and Stone's of Boston; Robinson of Buffalo; Ans Huber's, Globe, Harlem, Worth's, and the Gayety of New York.
The dime museum is but a memory now, and in three generations it will, in all probability, be utterly forgotten.