"Killed?--Sure, I've seen steeplejacks plunge to their doom on the pavement down there. It makes the rest of us sort of nervous, but that's nothing--you get over that feeling in a minute or two."

Flagpole-painter and steeplejack extraordinary, George B. Drew deliberately expelled a cloud of cigarette smoke from his mouth.

"Once two of us were perched on a ledge near the top of a huge factory chimney doing some cement work. Suddenly my partner lurched backwards and hurtled through space to die 200 feet below. He carried the guide rope with him, leaving me stranded.

"That was a time for iron nerves, I can tell you. With my rope gone, the slightest movement would have thrown me off my balance. After three hours they were able to lower another rope from the chimney top and take me off that ledge. I wouldn't be here now if I'd become jittery when the other fellow fell.

"Height is just an optical illusion," continued this man to whom altitude means nothing. "Anyone can look out of a 20 story window, but take the wall away and no one will go within ten feet of the edge. Tack a cotton cloth along that edge and people will bravely step up to it again."

Beginners are no good the first month, he explained, because they still want to use both hands to keep their balance. But after that they are willing to trust their lives to one hand and can do some work. "Cigarettes ease the nerves," he said, "and I'm a strong smoker. . . But stay away from liquor if you want to ride the girders.

"While working on the thirty-ninth story of the Chrysler building the other day, I had the great joy of accidentally dropping a full bucket of bright orange paint to the sidewalk hundreds of feet below. . . No, I never bothered to find out whether I hit anyone or not."