1895. [1] After distinguished service as colonel of volunteers in the Cuban and Philippine wars, this great soldier is now retired as major in the regular army. Before retirement he published two other books, _The Campaign of Marengo_ and _The Campaign of Santiago de Cuba_, both characterized by all the qualities so conspicuous in his first book—qualities that are themselves a fine result of “knowing one’s business.” 1912. A TRADE OF REFUGE 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.