Sketches New and Old | Page 6

but he was cool. He said he was sorry to disturb me, but as he
was passing he noticed that I needed some lightning-rods. I said, "Yes,
yes--go on--what about it?" He said there was nothing about it, in
particular--nothing except that he would like to put them up for me. I

am new to housekeeping; have been used to hotels and boarding-houses
all my life. Like anybody else of similar experience, I try to appear (to
strangers) to be an old housekeeper; consequently I said in an offhand
way that I had been intending for some time to have six or eight
lightning-rods put up, but--The stranger started, and looked inquiringly
at me, but I was serene. I thought that if I chanced to make any
mistakes, he would not catch me by my countenance. He said he would
rather have my custom than any man's in town. I said, "All right," and
started off to wrestle with my great subject again, when he called me
back and said it would be necessary to know exactly how many
"points" I wanted put up, what parts of the house I wanted them on, and
what quality of rod I preferred. It was close quarters for a man not used
to the exigencies of housekeeping; but I went through creditably, and
he probably never suspected that I was a novice. I told him to put up
eight "points," and put them all on the roof, and use the best quality of
rod. He said he could furnish the "plain" article at 20 cents a foot;
"coppered," 25 cents; "zinc-plated spiral-twist," at 30 cents, that would
stop a streak of lightning any time, no matter where it was bound, and
"render its errand harmless and its further progress apocryphal." I said
apocryphal was no slouch of a word, emanating from the source it did,
but, philology aside, I liked the spiral-twist and would take that brand.
Then he said he could make two hundred and fifty feet answer; but to
do it right, and make the best job in town of it, and attract the
admiration of the just and the unjust alike, and compel all parties to say
they never saw a more symmetrical and hypothetical display of
lightning-rods since they were born, he supposed he really couldn't get
along without four hundred, though he was not vindictive, and trusted
he was willing to try. I said, go ahead and use four hundred, and make
any kind of a job he pleased out of it, but let me get back to my work.
So I got rid of him at last; and now, after half an hour spent in getting
my train of political-economy thoughts coupled together again, I am
ready to go on once more.]
richest treasures of their genius, their experience of life, and their
learning. The great lights of commercial jurisprudence, international
confraternity, and biological deviation, of all ages, all civilizations, and
all nationalities, from Zoroaster down to Horace Greeley, have--
[Here I was interrupted again, and required to go down and confer

further with that lightning-rod man. I hurried off, boiling and surging
with prodigious thoughts wombed in words of such majesty that each
one of them was in itself a straggling procession of syllables that might
be fifteen minutes passing a given point, and once more I confronted
him--he so calm and sweet, I so hot and frenzied. He was standing in
the contemplative attitude of the Colossus of Rhodes, with one foot on
my infant tuberose, and the other among my pansies, his hands on his
hips, his hat-brim tilted forward, one eye shut and the other gazing
critically and admiringly in the direction of my principal chimney. He
said now there was a state of things to make a man glad to be alive; and
added, "I leave it to you if you ever saw anything more deliriously
picturesque than eight lightning-rods on one chimney?" I said I had no
present recollection of anything that transcended it. He said that in his
opinion nothing on earth but Niagara Falls was superior to it in the way
of natural scenery. All that was needed now, he verily believed, to
make my house a perfect balm to the eye, was to kind of touch up the
other chimneys a little, and thus "add to the generous 'coup d'oeil' a
soothing uniformity of achievement which would allay the excitement
naturally consequent upon the 'coup d'etat.'" I asked him if he learned
to talk out of a book, and if I could borrow it anywhere? He smiled
pleasantly, and said that his manner of speaking was not taught in
books, and that nothing but familiarity with lightning could enable a
man to handle his conversational style with impunity. He then