Publisher's Synopsis
DURING the summer months of 1900-what blazing hot months, to be sure!-people on lower Broadway were constantly coming upon other people with chins in the air, staring up and exclaiming: "Dear me, isn't it wonderful!" or "There's that fellow again; I'm sure he'll break his neck!" Then they would pass on and give place to other wonderers. The occasion of this general surprise and apprehension was a tall man dressed entirely in white, who appeared day after day swinging on a little seat far up the side of this or that church steeple, or right at the top, hugging the gold cross or weather-vane, or, higher still, working his way, with a queer, kicking, hitching movement, up various hundred-foot flagpoles that rise from the heaven-challenging office buildings down near Wall Street. At these perilous altitudes he would hang for hours, shifting his ropes occasionally, raising his swing or lowering it, but not doing anything that his sidewalk audience could see very well or clearly understand. Yet thousands watched him with fascination, and a kodak army descended upon neighboring housetops, and newspapers followed the movements of "Steeple Bob" in thrilling chronicle.
