Page 15 - The Ashley Book of Knots
P. 15
THE ASHLEY BOOK OF KNOTS
One day a dozen years later, in Wilmington, Delaware, the chief
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contortionist of Barnum and Bailey's Circus slapped me on the back
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and hailed me so boisterously that the embarrassed young lady who
accompanied me made the error of attempting to continue her stroll
as if notloting unusual were happening. But by the time she finally
entered the big top, her circle of acquaintances had increased by
three and she proudly held a handful of photographs, inscribed and
autographed by the Contortionist, the Tattooed Man, and the Ex-
pansionist. "Chippet," the contortionist, was none other than the
ex-"Bender" of my own defunct-but-never-absorbed-or-amalgam-
ated circus, whom Barnum had succeeded in teaching to tie him-
self into a perfect FIGURE-OF-EIGHT KNOT. To this day I feel that
P.T. had crowded me a bit.
When I arrived at a proper age I went to sea and served my ap-
, , prenticeship in knots aboard the whaling bark Sunbeam. My chief in-
" , structor and the most quoted man in this volume was Captain Charles
W. Smith, then acting mate, who afterward became master of the
bark Lagoda, "the ship that never sailed" (the same being comfort-
- ably housed inside the New Bedford Whaling Museum). Under Cap-
tain Smith's tutorship I progressed rapidly in knots and marlingspike
seamanship to a point where even my teacher admitted that if I
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persevered and retained my health I might someday hope to grasp
the rudiments of the art.
When I had learned all that he offered I repaid him rather shabbily
for all his kindness by slipping forward in the dogwatches and pick-
ing up, at the forecastle head, three knots with which he was un·
familiar.
From that day I have continued to collect knots wherever I could
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- -- find them, and as unfamiliar sailors' knots became increasingly diffi-
- - ~ -~-'''' :: cult to find I wali attracted by the knots of other occupations. I
_ ...... ,...- ;.. ~ _ hobnobbed with butchers and steeple jacks, cobblers and truck
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- -_..-'" drivers, electric linesmen, Boy Scouts, and with elderly ladies who
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• knit. Mr. Ringling himself, I cannot recall now which of the several
brothers it was, took me about his circus and was pleased to be able
to dazzle me with a score of knots with which I was quite unfamiliar.
It was pleasant to talk to a brother showman again, and the meeting
was not one bit too soon, for almost overnight the interior of the
circus tent became a spiderweb of wire and turnbuckles instead of
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, hemp and blocks.
Will James, "the Lone Cowboy," showed me the THEODORE KNOT
__ -' one day while we were lunching with Joseph Chapin, then the Art
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-- -----:---. • Editor of Scribner's Magazine. In Boston I halted an operation to
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- see how the surgeon made fast his stitches. I have watched oxen
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- slung for the shoeing, I have helped throw pack lashings, I have fol-
lowed tree surgeons through their acrobatics and examined poachers'
traps and snares. But I never saw Houdini, never was present at a suc-
cessful lynching, and never participated in a commercial second-
story venture.
One spring soon after my whaling experience I spent several weeks
on an oysterman in Delaware Bay, having been commissioned by
Harper's Magazine to make a series of pictures of oyster culture.
(Several of these now hang in the Mariners' Museum at Newport
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