There is no security—even the life of a steeple-climber is held by a
precarious tenure. One cannot always be clinging to a spire in “the
intense inane;” one must sometimes descend to “this place of wrath
and tears” in order to eat and write poetry for the newspapers; and
then the manifold perils besetting a surface existence begin their
deadly work, and man that is born of woman is of few days and full of
surprises.
Once upon a time, ’tis said, a foolhardy steeple-jack took his life
in his hands and ventured down among us. Doubtless he wanted but
little here below; certainly he did not want that little long, for he
made acquaintance with a trolley car and passed away forthwith. If
in the moment of disaster “beneath thy wheels, O Juggernath,” it was
granted to him to hear the comforting “I told you so” of some fellow
craftsman in midheaven, how acutely he must have sympathized with us
unfortunates condemned to dwell in the midst of alarms from the cradle
to the grave!
Our hard lot must have touched him nearly; participation in its
disadvantages must have brought it home to his business and bosom with
a more compelling compassion than that of the tempest-tossed mariner
who prays, “God help the poor devils on shore such a night as this!”
In the consciousness of that sympathy—transient though it necessarily
had to be—let us take heart and hope, to confront the perils of our
environment. Let us walk our appointed ways among them with no less
circumspection, but a superior resignation.
We cannot all be steeple-climbers. We cannot all go down to the sea in
ships and know
The exulting sense, the pulse’s maddening play,
That thrill the wanderer on the trackless way
as he reflects on his immunity from the insistent vehicle, the stealthy
sewer gas, the subterranean steam boiler, the Conqueror Dog and all the
other maleficent agencies unknown to a life on the ocean wave.
Some there must be to till the soil (mostly malarial), some to hold
the offices, some to feed the dogs, some to tear up the streets,
and many—oh, so many!—to write poetry for the magazines. Ships must
be built for the happy, happy mariner, and steeples to exalt the
prudent climber above the perilous region of industrial discontent.
The timorous aviator, in pursuit of longevity must be supplied
with his apparatus. By rustic and urban industries soldiers must
be maintained in the security of service _in partibus infidelium_
where the devastating open coalhole comes not to execute its prank,
and missionaries outfitted to grasp the longevital advantages of
labor among the cannibals. In the formation of trusts to bring the
producer and consumer together in the poor-house we must toil in
the pestilential atmosphere of Wall Street. The necessity of making
“elevators” to dispose of the surplus population in our congested
cities is imperious.
Most of these needful activities have to be conducted on the surface
of the land, amidst the horrors of peace and the deadly devices of an
advanced civilization. It requires the greater and more courageous
part of the population to carry them on; only a few shrinking souls
can afford to seek safety on the steeples. But the lives of these
have a peculiar value to the millions engaged in the perilous trades
that go on below them. They are survivals of the time that was,
forerunners of the time to be. They serve to remind us of that blessed
barbarism—that golden age when our sylvan forefather gave himself a
chance to live out half his life; and in this dark period of transition
they foreshadow that brighter and better time when the land will be
studded with abundant steeples of refuge for all excepting condemned
criminals and enough ruffian officers of the law to operate, for their
extinction, a few of the more deadly appliances and modern conveniences
of civilization.
The steeple-jack is a precious possession—let him not be cast out. In
order that he may not be compelled to incur the perils of the street,
let him be clothed and fed with a kite.