ing out of a three or four storey window, feel as
if they were going to fall. This is their own fault, not the fault of
the window, for that is just like a parlour window, where they have no
sensation of the sort. A man sits peaceably enough on the top of a
tall, three-legged stool, and could hitch himself round and round, and
then get up and stand upon it erect for half a day, without any risk
of falling. Now, a steeple is much more securely fixed than a stool;
its top is as broad as a table; and there is nothing to prevent
anybody from standing upon it as long as he pleases, if he only will
not think he is going to fall. You go up half-a-dozen steps of a
ladder without fear, and then persuade yourself you can go no farther;
but there is nothing more dangerous in the next half-dozen, so far as
they are themselves concerned; nor in the next hundred, nor the next
thousand, for that matter. My secret consists in my _knowing_ all
this, although I feel that I have only described when, not how the
knowledge came. Perhaps you, who are book-learned, may be able to make
it out, and shew how it is that, when anything occurs to awaken the
mind, and enable one to work from knowledge, not habit, he is ten
times the man he was. Without this, I should have climbed a mast all
my life; but with it, I took to leaping up steeples by means of a
kite, in a way that makes many ignorant persons report that I manage
it by holding on by the tail.

But a man who goes up a steeple must take care how he behaves, for the
eyes of the world are upon him. He is not lost in a crowd, where he is
seen only by his next neighbours. That man must pull off his cap and
be affable; but he must not do even that to extravagance. When the
Queen was passing up the Clyde, an American seaman got on the
topgallant, and stood on his head. What was that for, I should be glad
to know? Suppose her Majesty was coming along Princes Street, just to
take the air like a lady, and look into the shop-windows, and I was to
go right up to her, and stand on my head--what would she say? I
surmise, that she would turn round to her Lord Gold Stick, and order
him to give me a knock on the shins. I know she would, for she is a
regular trump, and knows how people in every station should behave. I
am ashamed of that American: he is a Yankee Noodle!

It may be said, that the Queen has the same advantage as myself--that
she is up the steeple; but so is every ordinary bricklayer or empero