Careers of Danger and Daring
Careers of Danger and Daring
In "Careers of Danger and Daring" the author has first of all won the distinction of getting away from the commonplace, for one who reads Mr. Moffett's recounting of the curious things he has learned of ten curious careers will have added in large measure to one's knowledge of the lives of workers with few of whom the ordinary citizen is ever brought into contact. The author's friends among the steeple climbers, deep sea divers, and other danger courting workers, all have good stories to tell that go well with the author's interesting descriptions of their careers. It is a book any boy of pluck and nerve will cherish.
Book Excerpt
some people seasick. Perhaps you don't know it, but the better a steeple is built the more she sways. You want to look out for the ones that stand rigid; there's something wrong with them--most likely they're out of plumb."
"Isn't there danger," I asked, "that a steeple may get swaying too much, say in a gale, and go clear over?"
"Gale or not," said Merrill, "a well-made steeple must rock in the wind, the same as a tree rocks. That is the way it takes the storm, by yielding to it. If it didn't yield it would probably break. Why, the great shaft of the Washington Monument sways four or five feet when the wind blows hard."
Then he explained that modern steeples are built with a steel backbone (if I may so call it) running down from the top for many feet inside the stonework. At Trinity, for instance, this backbone (known as a dowel) is four inches thick and forty-five feet long, a great steel mast stretching down through the cross, down inside the heavy stones and ornaments, and ending in
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