Page:St. Nicholas (serial) (IA stnicholasserial402dodg).pdf/352



“ and I were sauntering down Broadway one day, when a man suddenly grabbed me by the arm. “Hello!” he cried, “are n't you the boys that blew in from the clouds up at the top of the ?”

“Why, how do you do, Mr. Hotchkiss,“ we both exclaimed.

“I’m well, thanks. But where have you been all this time? Why have n’t you been around to see me?”

“We have really intended to,” apologized Will, “but you know there is such a lot of interesting work going on in New York, and we have had so much to see—”

“So much to see? So you are still at it, are you? Mr, Squires told me about the narrow escape in the caisson, and I had about concluded that your experience there had cured you of some of your inquisitiveness.

“We have had a worse experience than that. We were in a pretty bad blow-out in one of the tunnels under the river.’

“You don't mean the time the fellow was blown through the river-bed?”

“Yes, we were right alongside of him when it happened; and then we were on the new bridge when it took fire.”

“What!"

“Yes, we had quite a time of it, dodging embers and red-hot bolts all the way down the tower.”

“Good gracious!” exclaimed Mr. Hotchkiss, “if I had known what ‘hoodoos’ you were, I would have ‘shoo-ed’ you right out of my building! Why, you are positively dangerous to have around! Come in here quick, before a cyclone strikes us, or a safe falls on our heads!” Mr. Hotchkiss hustled us into a restaurant. “I want you to lunch with me, and tell me the whole story of your experiences. Three narrow escapes in succession! and here I was just going to send you over to another job. Now, I don’t believe I dare assume the responsibility.”

“We have had some rather exciting times,” I admitted, “but I thought that they were very common in big engineering jobs.”

“There is real danger in all big work, but such a run of accidents as you have had is decidedly out of the ordinary; and if you keep on, you will get so bad a reputation that no one will want you around.”

“But how can we help it?”

“I don’t suppose you can. It is about time your luck turned, though. I ‘ll try you on this next thing, anyway, and see whether you can't come off without an accident. As a matter of fact, I can’t imagine what could happen this time.”

“What is the job?” asked Will, eagerly.

“There are all sorts of transportation systems in this town,’ began Mr. Hotchkiss, “to bring New York's teeming population to and from work every day. The trolleys, or surface lines, carry something like two million passengers per day, and the elevated railways nearly a million and a half, while the subways take in just about a million fares, But there is a transportation system here in this city that carries more than all the rest put together—eight million passengers per day.”

“Eight millions! What, here in New York?”

“Yes, in Manhattan alone.”

“Why, I thought there were only five million people all told in Greater New York.”

“People, yes, but I said passengers. One man could be a dozen passengers if he took a dozen trips in a day. Yes, sir, it is the greatest and busiest transportation system in the world, yet it does n't take in a single fare. What ’s more, it is one of the safest forms of transportation. Have you guessed what I am talking about?”

“It's too much for me,” I confessed.

“You don’t, mean the elevators, do you?” queried Will, “They are not any too safe, from what I hear,”

“That is exactly what I do mean, and I will prove to you that you are safer riding on an elevator than walking the street. On the average, there are no less than three hundred killed and many thousands injured on the streets of New York every year. In ten years, there have been only thirty-eight killed and two hundred and seventy injured in elevators in Manhattan, and when you consider that there are nine thousand passenger-elevators and sixteen thousand freight-elevators in the borough, running up-and down all day, the wonder is that the accidents are so few. Why, if you put all those elevator-shafts together, one on top of the other, they would reach five hundred miles in the air. That would give you a pretty good start toward the moon. And eight Rh