Rail Splitter Brian Caplan, an aficionado of cartes-de-visite, just acquired this pair of English cartoon CDVs. One shows Jeff Davis performing at the circus, on “The Black Rope”. The companion carte shows Lincoln transversing “The Tight Rope” (a la Blondin) between Washington, D.C. and Richmond. While English photographers copied American portraits, we have never seen these before and suspect they might have originated in England. These cartes pre-date the more familiar “Rope-a-Dope”.