They also very kindly offered him a cigar, which he was obliged to
decline with thanks, for he did not smoke; but when they told him they
came from Scotland, he was not surprised to find them there, as Scotsmen
even in those days were proverbial for working their way to the top not
only of the cathedrals, but almost everywhere else besides. The "brither
Scots" were working to a previously arranged programme, the present item
being to smoke a cigar in the golden ball on the top of St. Paul's
Cathedral. When my brother began the descent, he experienced one of the
most horrible sensations of his life, for hundreds of feet below him he
could see the floor of the cathedral with apparently nothing whatever
in the way to break a fall; so that a single false step might have
landed him in eternity, for if he had fallen he must have been dashed
into atoms on the floor so far below. The gentlemen saw he was nervous,
and advised him as he descended the ladder backwards not to look down
into the abyss below, but to keep his eyes fixed above, and following
this excellent advice, he got down safely. He always looked back on that
adventure in the light of a most horrible nightmare and with
justification, for in later years the Cathedral authorities made the
Whispering Gallery the highest point to which visitors were allowed to
ascend.
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