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. THE DEATH PENALTY I