401

"DRAWN BY THE IDEA OF ITS GOING SO BLAMED FAST AND BEING
SO STRONG" 409

"CONVICTS HAD REVOLVERS ALL RIGHT THAT TRIP AND DENNY
THREW UP HIS HANDS" 413

CAREERS OF DANGER AND DARING

[Illustration]

THE STEEPLE-CLIMBER

I

IN WHICH WE MAKE THE ACQUAINTANCE OF "STEEPLE BOB"

DURING the summer months of 1900--what blazing hot months, to be
sure!--people on lower Broadway were constantly coming upon other people
with chins in the air, staring up and exclaiming: "Dear me, isn't it
wonderful!" or "There's that fellow again; I'm sure he'll break his
neck!" Then they would pass on and give place to other wonderers.

The occasion of this general surprise and apprehension was a tall man
dressed entirely in white, who appeared day after day swinging on a
little seat far up the side of this or that church steeple, or right at
the top, hugging the gold cross or weather-vane, or, higher still,
working his way, with a queer, kicking, hitching movement, up various
hundred-foot flagpoles that rise from the heaven-challenging office
buildings down near Wall Street. At these perilous altitudes he would
hang for hours, shifting his ropes occasionally, raising his swing or
lowering it, but not doing anything that his sidewalk audience could see
very well or clearly understand. Yet thousands watched him with
fascination, and a kodak army descended upon neighboring housetops, and
newspapers followed the movements of "Steeple Bob" in thrilling
chronicle.

That is what he was called in large black letters at the head of
columns--"Steeple Bob"; but I came to know him at his modest quarters on
Lexington Avenue, where he was plain Mr. Merrill, a serious-mannered and
an unpretentious young man, very fond of his wife and his dog, very fond
of spending evenings over books of adventure, and quite indifferent to
his day-time notoriety. I call him a young man, yet in years of service,
not in age, he is the oldest steeple-climber in the business, ever since
his teacher, "Steeple Charlie," fell from his swing some years ago in
New Bedford, Massachusetts, and died the steeple-climber's death.

I often saw books of the sea on Merrill's table, and accounts of whaling
voyages; and he told me, one evening (while through an open door came
the snores of his weary partner), about his own adventurous boyhood,
w