Chambers's Repository of Instructive and Amusing Tracts (Volume 11)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1854 edition. Excerpt: ...a comrade below, watching his manoeuvres, moves adroitly the foot of the ladder, and the hero escapes being precipitated to the ground by an inch of space and an instant of time. Sometimes, however, the removal of the apparatus is inconvenient, or the stage is found to be too low to enable him to reach the top of the wall; but these difficulties do not induce a true Russian to be guilty of the folly of expending time in the construction of one edifice for the purpose of painting and stuccoing another. In this case, the wanderer of St Petersburg, if he chance to turn up his eyes, sees a pole projected from the roof of the house in question, with a man lying all his length, upon it, head downwards. If you marvel at the calm gravity with which the workman thus circumstanced uses his brush or his trowel under the eaves, you are told there is little or no danger, as a friend behind is doing him the kindness to hold him by the heels. 'During the intervals of labour, these men, like the coachmen and postilions, go to sleep wherever they happen to leave off work. But still, as if by a kind of natural perversity, they choose such situations for their repose as seem the least adapted in the world for such a purpose. A mason, for instance, does not lay himself down under the lee of one of the immense blocks of marble or granite on which he is working--he poises himself upon the extreme edge of the mass; or, if there is a marshy place in the immediate neighbourhood--for he will not trouble himself to go far in search of it--he disposes of his body upon the stones or planks which protrude from the mud. Sometimes the parapet of a bridge is the chosen couch--sometimes the outer ledge; but if a piece of wood projects from the steps of the quay over, or upon the...