e Madison
Square Garden tower. "It's hard getting over her," he said, "because
she's so blamed smooth. I guess I took three quarts of rust out of her
ball-bearings. You know she's a weather-vane, and turns with the wind."
I wondered how many New-Yorkers who see the Diana every day of their
lives have ever dwelt on the fact that she turns.

Talking of weather-vanes reminded my friends of a ticklish job they did
on St. Paul's steeple, in New York, when Merrill, standing under the
ball, held Lawlor on his giant shoulders so that Joe could lift off the
weather-vane on top and ease the shaft where it had jammed. With
Lawlor's weight and the weather-vane's weight, "Steeple Bob" held four
hundred pounds on his shoulders during those important minutes, and, it
might almost be said, stood on the dizzy edge of nothing while he did
it.

Finally, Lawlor expressed the opinion that there isn't any meaner job in
the business than a chimney.

"A chimney?" said I.

"That's what. I mean one o' them big ones you see on factories. We have
to scrape 'em and paint 'em just like steeples, and that means climbing
up the whole length inside. The climbing's easy enough on bolts and
braces, but it's something fierce the air you breathe. Why, I've gone up
a two-hundred-and-forty-foot chimney with a five-foot opening at the
bottom, and found the soot so thick about half-way up--so thick, sir,
that I've been almost stuck in it. Yes, sir, just had to shove my head
into an eight-inch hole and bore through black stuff, beds of it. And
mind, not a hole for air as big as a pin-head from bottom to top."

After bidding the men good night I reflected, with a kind of shame,
that I had drawn back from daring only once what they dare every day,
what they _must_ dare for their living. And I reasoned myself into a
feeling that it was my duty under the circumstances to go up that
steeple on the swing, as Merrill had proposed. Having begun this
investigation, I must see it through; and in this mind I went to the
church again the next day.

I found all hands on the "bell-deck" spreading out packets of patent
gilding for the ball which awaited its new dress, all sticky from a
fresh coat of sizing. Lawlor remarked that there was better gold in
these little yellow squares than in a wedding-ring. "It's twenty-four
carats fine," said he, "and about as thick as a cobweb."

As to my going up on the swing there was no difficulty. Lawlor would go
first, and be ther