bridges and towering structures, monuments to the
skill of the builders who have passed this way. And if you will join a
group at one of these tables and speak them fair you may hear enough
tales of the lads who work aloft for many a writing. And up and down the
stairs move lines of bridge-men, all restless, one would say, and some
pass on crutches and some with arms in slings (there is a story in every
cripple), and you hear that New York has half a dozen one-legged
bridge-men still fairly active in service. It's once a bridge-man always
a bridge-man, for the life has its fascination, like the circus.

As I sat in a corner one evening with Zimmer and Jimmie Dunn and some of
the others, there came down from overhead a racket that almost drowned
our buzz of talk and the frequent ting of the bar register. The
bridge-men were in vigorous debate over the question whether or not the
interests of the craft call for more flooring on dangerous structures.
Some said "yes," some "no," and said it with vehemence. More flooring
meant less danger. That was all right, but less danger meant more
competition and less pay. So there you are, and the majority favored
danger with a generous wage.

"What kind of men make bridge-men?" I inquired.

"All kinds," said one of the group who was drinking birch-beer, "Some
come out of machine-shops, some out of locomotive works, I was a
'shanty-jack.'"

"Lots of 'em come from farms," added another. "I know one fellow tried
it who'd been a tailor. Said he changed for his health."

This struck the company as highly amusing.

"There's lots of 'em try it and quit," remarked Jimmie Dunn, who is one
of the oldest and also one of the youngest men in the guild. I had seen
him nearly killed a few days before by the sudden up-swing of a
sixteen-ton strut. "I knew a telegraph-pole climber who said he didn't
mind any old kind of a tower; he'd go up it all right and work there.
Well, he got all he wanted the first morning. Came down white as that
paper. Said he wouldn't stay up half an hour longer if they'd give him
the whole blamed bridge. Why, it gets _us_ fellows dizzy once in a
while."

"I'll bet it does," agreed the shanty-jack man. "I saw an old hand once
start to ride up a barrel of water one hundred and seventy feet on a
bridge over the St. Lawrence. The barrel was swung on a 'single runner,'
and you ought to have seen it spin with his weight tipping it lopsided!
Ain't any bridge-man going could