He called this easy climbing!
"The only ticklish bit was just at the top, where two great stones, weighing about a ton apiece, swell out like an apple on a stick, and I had to crawl around and over that apple, which was four feet or so across. If it hadn't been for grooves and scrollwork in the stone I couldn't have done it, and even as it was I had two or three minutes of hard wriggling after I kicked off with my feet and began pulling myself up."
"You mean you hung by your hands from this big ball of stone?"
"I hung mostly by my fingers; the scrolls weren't deep enough for my hands to go in."
"And you drew yourself slowly up and around and over that ball?"
"Certainly; that was the only way."
"And it was at the very top?"
"Yes, just under the cross. It wasn't much, though; you could do it yourself."
I really think Merrill believed this. He honestly saw no particular danger in that climb, nor could I discover that he ever saw any particular danger in anything he had done. He always made the point that if he had really thought the thing dangerous he wouldn't have done it. And I conclude from this that being a steeple-climber depends quite as much upon how a man thinks as upon what he can do.
"A funny thing happened!" he added. "After I got over this hard place, I slid into a V-shaped space between the bulging stone and the steeple-shaft, and I lay there on my back for a minute or so, resting. But when I started to raise myself I found my weight had worked me down in the crotch and jammed me fast, and it was quite a bit of time before I could get free."