; you could do it
yourself."

I really think Merrill believed this. He honestly saw no particular
danger in that climb, nor could I discover that he ever saw any
particular danger in anything he had done. He always made the point that
if he had really thought the thing dangerous he wouldn't have done it.
And I conclude from this that being a steeple-climber depends quite as
much upon how a man thinks as upon what he can do.

"A funny thing happened!" he added. "After I got over this hard place, I
slid into a V-shaped space between the bulging stone and the
steeple-shaft, and I lay there on my back for a minute or so, resting.
But when I started to raise myself I found my weight had worked me down
in the crotch and jammed me fast, and it was quite a bit of time before
I could get free."

"How much time? A minute?"

"Yes, five minutes; and it seemed a good deal longer."

Five minutes struggling in a sort of stone trap, stretched out helpless
at the very top of a steeple where one false move would mean
destruction--that is what Merrill spoke of as a funny thing! Thanks, I
thought, I will take my fun some other way, and lower down.

"You would be surprised," he went on, "to feel the movement of a
steeple. It trembles all the time, and answers every jar on the street
below. I guess old Trinity's steeple sways eighteen inches every time an
elevated train passes. And St. Paul's is even worse. Why, she rocks like
a beautifully balanced cradle; it would make some people seasick.
Perhaps you don't know it, but the better a steeple is built the more
she sways. You want to look out for the ones that stand rigid; there's
something wrong with them--most likely they're out of plumb."

"Isn't there danger," I asked, "that a steeple may get swaying too much,
say in a gale, and go clear over?"

"Gale or not," said Merrill, "a well-made steeple must rock in the wind,
the same as a tree rocks. That is the way it takes the storm, by
yielding to it. If it didn't yield it would probably break. Why, the
great shaft of the Washington Monument sways four or five feet when the
wind blows hard."

Then he explained that modern steeples are built with a steel backbone
(if I may so call it) running down from the top for many feet inside the
stonework. At Trinity, for instance, this backbone (known as a dowel) is
four inches thick and forty-five feet long, a great steel mast
stretching down through the cross, down inside the heavy stones an