left the house.

CHAPTER IV.

UP IN THE AIR.

"Uncle Ith" was one of the city bellringers, and lived at the top of a
tower a hundred feet high, which vibrated with every stroke of the great
bell hanging midway between his airy perch and the ground. He was sixty
years of age, and had white hair, but he was as strong as younger men,
and could swing the clapper against the side of the great bell with a
boom that could be heard across rivers, and far into the peaceful
country, on quiet nights. His eyes were so sharp, that, without the aid
of a glass, he could read names on the paddle boxes of steamboats, where
the unassisted vision of most persons descried nothing but a blur. He
had done duty on that tower during the six years since it was built; and
he knew the section of the city which lay spread out beneath him as a
man knows his own garden. In the daytime, he could always guess, within
a street or two, the location of any fire in his district. He knew all
the smokes from a hundred factories, foundries, distilleries, and never
confounded them with the fires which it was his business to detect. The
presence of a new and suspicious smoke among the black stretch of roofs,
caught his eye instantly; and he could tell in a moment, by its color,
its speed of ascent, and the quantity of sparks accompanying it, whether
it came from a carpenter's shop, a stable, a distillery, a camphene and
oil store, or some other kind of building. In the nighttime, he knew the
lights which mapped out the squares and the streets within his range of
observation, almost as well as the astronomer knows the other lights
that shine down upon the sleeping city from the heavens. He could fix
the position of a fire by night rather better than by day, because he
had the red reflection of the flames on well-known steeples, and high,
prominent roofs to guide him.

Such were Uncle Ith's qualifications for his place; and he was so loved
and trusted by the firemen of his district, that no mayor, however beset
by applicants for office, had ever dreamed of removing him. In all of
Uncle Ith's limited relations with the world, he was esteemed an honest
man; and his word would have possessed the literal novelty of being as
good as his note, had necessity ever required him to borrow money. But
Uncle Ith was frugal, and made his small salary suffice for himself and
a family of seven motherless children.

He had one eccentricity--a complete indifference to n