Not that even the most daring seeker after uniqueness fails to take numerous precautions for his safety.  No man is mad enough to set out along a tight-rope in hobnailed boots with out previous practice.  No woman who has not learned to swim has ever tried to swim the English Channel from Dover to Cape Grisnez.  Even the daredevil barber of Bristol insured himself, so far as he could, against the perils of his adventure.  He had an oxygen tank in the barrel which would have kept him alive for a time if the barrel had not been swept under the Falls, and he had friends patrolling the waters to recover the barrel.  Like the schoolboy who takes risks, he did not feel that he was going to get caught.  “I have the greatest confidence,” he said, “that I shall come through all right.”  His previous escapes must have given him the assurance that he was not born to die of danger.  Not only had he served through the war, but he had once plucked a woman from the railway line when the express was so near that it tore her skirt.  He must have felt that one man at least could live in perfect safety in the kingdom of danger.  He was probably less nervous as he crept into his barrel than a schoolgirl would be in getting into the boat on the chute.  He had we may be sure, his thrill, but was it the thrill of being in peril or the thrill of being conspicuous?  Some men, of course, there are who love danger for danger’s sake, and who would run risks in an empty world.  Men of this kind make good spies, and, in their youth, good burglars.  Theirs is the desire of the moth for the star—­or at any rate of the moth that feels it is different from every other moth and can successfully dare the candle flame.  To play with fire and not to be consumed is a universal pleasure.  The child passes its finger through the gas-flame and glories in the sensation.  It is like playing a game of touch with danger.  The triumph of escape gives one a delicious moment.  That is why many men invent dangers for themselves.  It is simply for the pleasure of escaping them.  There are boys who enjoy wrenching knockers off doors, not because knockers are an interesting kind of bric-à-brac, but because there is just a chance of being caught in the act by the police.  I once knew a youth who had a drawer filled with knockers.  He felt as proud of them as a young Indian would have been of an equal number of the scalps of his enemies.  They proved that he was a brave.  Every man would like to be a brave, though every man dare not.  I confess I never had much ambition to wrench knockers, but that may have been because I was perfectly content with the world as it is without making it any more dangerous.  I often think that people who put their heads into lions’ mouths do not realise what a dangerous place the planet is without any artificial stimulus.