But George!--he had adventures every week. And as for acquaintances!
Why, before we'd be in a town two days he'd be hail-fellow-well-met with
half the people in it. That fellow could scent a dance or a joke half a
mile off. You never see such wide-awake men nowadays. People seem to me
half dead or asleep when I think of him.

Oh, I thought you knew. My partner Balacchi. It was Balacchi on the
bill: the actors called him Signor, and people like the manager, South,
and we, who knew him well, George. I asked him his real name once or
twice, but he joked it off. "How many names must a man be saddled with?"
he said. I don't know it to this day, nor who he had been. They hinted
there was something queer about his story, but I'll go my bail it was a
clean one, whatever it was.

You never heard how "Balacchi Brothers" broke up? That was as near to an
adventure as I ever had. Come over to this bench and I'll tell it to
you. You don't dislike the dust of the mill? The sun's pleasanter on
this side.

It was early in August of '56 when George and I came to an old town on
the Ohio, half city, half village, to play an engagement. We were under
contract with South then, who provided the rest of the troupe, three or
four posture-girls, Stradi the pianist, and a Madame Somebody, who gave
readings and sang. "Concert" was the heading in large caps on the
bills, "Balacchi Brothers will give their aesthetic _tableaux vivants_
in the interludes," in agate below.

"I've got to cover you fellows over with respectability here," South
said. "Rope-dancing won't go down with these aristocratic church-goers."