though
his legs were not well socketed and might fall out on a change of gaits. I
have ridden on a camel in a side-show, but have found my only comfort in
his hump. I have stroked the elephant. In a solemn hour of night I have
gone downstairs to face a burglar. But I do not run singing to these
dangers. While your really brave fellow is climbing a dizzy staircase to
the moon--I write in figure--I would shake with fear upon a lower platform.

Perhaps you recall Mr. Tipp of the Elia essays. "Tipp," says his pleasant
biographer, "never mounted the box of a stage-coach in his life; or leaned
against the rails of a balcony; or walked upon the ridge of a parapet; or
looked down a precipice; or let off a gun." I cannot follow Tipp, it may
be, to his extreme tremors--my hair will not rise to so close a likeness of
the fretful porcupine--yet in a measure we are in agreement. We are, as it
were, cousins, with the mark of our common family strong on both of us.

There are persons who, when in your company on a country walk, will steal
apples, not with a decent caution from a tree along the fence, but far
afield. If there are grapes, they will not wait for a turn of the road,
but will pluck them in the open. Or maybe in your wandering you come on a
half-built house. You climb in through a window to look about. Here the
stairs will go. The ice-box will be set against this wall. But if your
companion is one of valor's minions, he will not be satisfied with this
safe and agreeable research--this mild speculation on bath-rooms--this
innocent placing of a stove. He must go aloft. He has seen a ladder and
yearns to climb it. The footing on the second story is bad enough. If you
fall between the joists, you will clatter to the basement. It is hard to
realize that such an open breezy place will ever be cosy and warm with
fires, and that sleepy folk will here lie snugly a-bed on frosty mornings.
But still the brazen fellow is not content. A ladder leads horribly to the
roof. For myself I will climb until the tip of my nose juts out upon the
world--until it sprouts forth to the air from the topmost timbers: But I
will go no farther. But if your companion sees a scaffold around a chimney,
he must perch on it. For him, a dizzy plank is a pleasant belvedere from
which to view the world.

The bravery of this kind of person is not confined to these few matters.
If you happen to go driving with him, he will--if the horse is of the kind
that dist