Nation: Sit Down, Poppy, Sit Down!

A last warning before Karl Wallenda fell to his death

When Karl Wallenda was a boy in Germany, the story goes, he answered an ad asking for someone who could do a handstand. The ad did not say just where the handstand was to be done.

The prospective employer, a circus performer named Louis Weitzman, agreed to try the boy out. He led him up a ladder to a platform 40 ft. in the air. "Just walk behind me," said Weitzman as he started out on the high wire, "and when I bend a little,...