Don't sound heroic much, do they?
But, by God, when the floods come, the telephone girls die at their desks, still sendin' out warnings! And when a big fire comes, and there are lives to save, them triflin' cigarette-smoking, sassy, no-account boys run the elevators through hell and back as long as the cables hold! Every time!" The old man's eye kindled.

"Look ye there, now! Man, and have ye noticed that too ?" he cried triumphantly.

"Ye have e'en the secret of it.

We're good in emairgencies, the now; when the time comes when we get a glimmer that all life is emairgency and tremblin' peril, that every turn may be the wrong turn--when we can see that our petty system of suns and all is nobbut a wee darkling cockle-boat, driftin' and tossed abune the waves in the outmost seas of an onrushing universe--hap-chance we'll no loom so grandlike in our own een; and we'll tak' hands for comfort in the dark.
'Tis good theology, yon wise saying of the silly street: 'We are all in the same boat.

Don't rock the boat!'" * * * * * When Peter had gone, McClintock's feeble hands, on the wheel-rims, pushed his chair to the wall and took from a locked cabinet an old and faded daguerreotype of a woman with smiling eyes.