“Caleb Cobweb,” of the _Christian Endeavor World_, gives the
following quaint advice:
Some workmen were repairing the Boston Elevated Railway. One
of them took a red-hot bolt in his pincers and threw it up to
another workman, who was to place it in the hole drilled for it.
The second workman failed to catch it, and it fell to the street
below. There it struck a truck-load of twenty bales of cotton,
a thousand dollars’ worth, that was passing at the moment. The
cotton instantly took fire, but the driver knew nothing of it.
The flames had made considerable headway when the cries of the
onlookers informed the driver of what was going on. He had only
enough time to leap out of the way of the flames and save his
horse. The Boston Fire Department was summoned and put out the
fire.
This is a fair sample of what happens every time one of us
workmen on the great edifice of human society misses a bolt that
is thrown to him. They are many--these bolts--and they come
thick and fast. They are red-hot, too, for they are duties that
are in imperative need of getting done. If they are not at once
stuck into the proper hole, and the top at once flattened out by
sturdy blows, they grow cool and useless. They can not be put
into the structure; or, if we go ahead and hammer them in, they
are not tight and they may bring about disaster.
No, there is nothing for it but to catch the bolts on the fly.
Let one fall, and some one gets hurt--or some thing, which in
the end, means some one. No one knows what will be hit when a
worker misses a red-hot duty that comes flying at him.
There is only one safety for the workman or for the rest of us:
Catch them!
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