it more celebrated than any that ever--
["Now, not a word out of you--not a single word. Just state your bill
and relapse into impenetrable silence for ever and ever on these
premises. Nine hundred, dollars? Is that all? This check for the amount
will be honored at any respectable bank in America. What is that
multitude of people gathered in the street for? How?--'looking at the
lightning-rods!' Bless my life, did they never see any lightning-rods
before? Never saw 'such a stack of them on one establishment,' did I
understand you to say? I will step down and critically observe this
popular ebullition of ignorance."]
THREE DAYS LATER.--We are all about worn out. For
four-and-twenty hours our bristling premises were the talk and wonder
of the town. The theaters languished, for their happiest scenic
inventions were tame and commonplace compared with my
lightning-rods. Our street was blocked night and day with spectators,
and among them were many who came from the country to see. It was a
blessed relief on the second day when a thunderstorm came up and the
lightning began to "go for" my house, as the historian Josephus
quaintly phrases it. It cleared the galleries, so to speak. In five minutes
there was not a spectator within half a mile of my place; but all the high
houses about that distance away were full, windows, roof, and all. And
well they might be, for all the falling stars and Fourth-of-July fireworks
of a generation, put together and rained down simultaneously out of
heaven in one brilliant shower upon one helpless roof, would not have
any advantage of the pyrotechnic display that was making my house so
magnificently conspicuous in the general gloom of the storm.
By actual count, the lightning struck at my establishment seven
hundred and sixty-four times in forty minutes, but tripped on one of
those faithful rods every time, and slid down the spiral-twist and shot
into the earth before it probably had time to be surprised at the way the
thing was done. And through all that bombardment only one patch of
slates was ripped up, and that was because, for a single instant, the rods
in the vicinity were transporting all the lightning they could possibly
accommodate. Well, nothing was ever seen like it since the world
began. For one whole day and night not a member of my family stuck
his head out of the window but he got the hair snatched off it as smooth
as a billiard-ball; and; if the reader will believe me, not one of us ever
dreamt of stirring abroad. But at last the awful siege came to an
end-because there was absolutely no more electricity left in the clouds
above us within grappling distance of my insatiable rods. Then I sallied
forth, and gathered daring workmen together, and not a bite or a nap
did we take till the premises were utterly stripped of all their terrific
armament except just three rods on the house, one on the kitchen, and
one on the barn--and, behold, these remain there even unto this day.
And then, and not till then, the people ventured to use our street again. I
will remark here, in passing, that during that fearful time I did not
continue my essay upon political economy. I am not even yet settled
enough in nerve and brain to resume it.
TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN.--Parties having need of three
thousand two hundred and eleven feet of best quality zinc-plated
spiral-twist lightning-rod stuff, and sixteen hundred and thirty-one
silver-tipped points, all in tolerable repair (and, although much worn by
use, still equal to any ordinary emergency), can hear of a bargains by
addressing the publisher.
THE JUMPING FROG [written about 1865]
IN ENGLISH. THEN IN FRENCH. THEN CLAWED BACK INTO A
CIVILIZED LANGUAGE ONCE MORE BY PATIENT,
UNREMUNERATED TOIL.
Even a criminal is entitled to fair play; and certainly when a man who
has done no harm has been unjustly treated, he is privileged to do his
best to right himself. My attention has just beep called to an article
some three years old in a French Magazine entitled, 'Revue des Deux
Mondes' (Review of Some Two Worlds), wherein the writer treats of
"Les Humoristes Americaines" (These Humorist Americans). I am one
of these humorists American dissected by him, and hence the complaint
I am making.
This gentleman's article is an able one (as articles go, in the French,
where they always tangle up everything to that degree that when you
start into a sentence you never know whether you are going to come out
alive or not). It is a very good article and the writer says all manner of
kind and complimentary things about me--for which I am sure thank
him with all my
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