Strictly speaking, the work is not really and truly so extraordinarily hazardous as people seem to think--that is to say, if a man takes proper precautions. Steeple-climbing is very much like mountaineering in this respect: it is the foolhardy folk who get hurt, and those who are inexperienced or careless. Look at myself, for instance. I have been climbing since I was seven, and am now past thirty, and I have never met with an accident. But, then, I am a life-long abstainer and non-smoker, and I take no risks that forethought is able to provide against. Narrow escapes I have had in plenty, but they hardly count in my line of business. All dangerous trades involve risks to those following them. A rotten coping; a puff of wind, coming up unexpectedly from nowhere in particular; a loose brick, or a piece of decayed ironwork--any one of these may easily spell death. Then, too, there are what, for want of a better term, I may call "outside risks": outside the regular run of our hazards, that is to say. For example, I once came very near to losing my life through being attacked by a swarm of bees while repairing a tower at Culmstock, in Devonshire. I had to descend very quickly, but I returned at two o'clock in the morning and asphyxiated the lot while they were asleep. Incidentally, I secured for myself thirty pounds of very excellent honey. The insects had been there for years, having found their way into the interior through a cavity left by a scaffold-pole used in erecting the edifice. Another nasty experience that befell me occurred so recently as October, 1908. I was engaged to fell two lofty stacks at Millwall. They were each about a hundred feet high, and were known locally as the "leaning chimneys," being about four feet six inches out of the perpendicular. This peculiarity made the task of cutting into their bases a somewhat ticklish one, since it was difficult to say, even approximately, when they were going to fall. Also, of course, I had to perform the work on the side to which they were inclined. [Illustration: THE AUTHOR, MR. W. LARKIN, OF BOW, LONDON, WHO HERE RELATES SOME OF HIS MOST REMARKABLE EXPERIENCES. _From a Photo. by F. W. Pickford._ ] However, the first one toppled over all right, the "groaning" of the undermined mass, as it swayed ever so slightly to its fall, giving me timely warning of what was about to happen. But the second one collapsed far more suddenly, with the result that the "heel" of the falling portion actually "kicked" me clean off the base that remained standing! I fell fifteen feet, turning a complete somersault and alighting on all fours. I was somewhat shaken, but quite uninjured. The biggest job I have undertaken up till now has been the decorating and repairing of the Nelson column in Trafalgar Square. This was my Matterhorn, so to speak.