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 figured up an estimate,
and said that about eight more rods scattered about
my roof would about fix me right, and he guessed five
hundred feet of stuff would do it; and added that
the first eight had got a little the start of him,
so to speak, and used up a mere trifle of material
more than he had calculated on—a hundred
feet or along there. I said I was in a dreadful
hurry, and I wished we could get this business permanently
mapped out, so that I could go on with my work.
He said, “I could have put up those eight rods,
and marched off about my business—some men
would have done it. But no; I said to myself,
this man is a stranger to me, and I will die before
I’ll wrong him; there ain’t lightning-rods
enough on that house, and for one I’ll never
stir out of my tracks till I’ve done as I would
be done by, and told him so. Stranger, my duty
is accomplished; if the recalcitrant and dephlogistic
messenger of heaven strikes your—”
“There, now, there,” I said, “put
on the other eight—add five hundred feet
of spiral-twist—do anything and everything
you want to do; but calm your sufferings, and try
to keep your feelings where you can reach them with
the dictionary. Meanwhile, if we understand each
other now, I will go to work again.”
I think I have been sitting here a full hour this
time, trying to get back to where I was when my train
of thought was broken up by the last interruption;
but I believe I have accomplished it at last, and may
venture to proceed again.]
wrestled with this great subject, and
the greatest among them have found it a worthy
adversary, and one that always comes up fresh and
smiling after every throw. The great Confucius
said that he would rather be a profound political
economist than chief of police. Cicero frequently
said that political economy was the grandest consummation
that the human mind was capable of consuming; and even
our own Greeley had said vaguely but forcibly
that “Political—
[Here the lightning-rod man sent up another call for
me. I went down in a state of mind bordering
on impatience. He said he would rather have
died than interrupt me, but when he was employed to
do a job, and that job was expected to be done in
a clean, workmanlike manner, and when it was finished
and fatigue urged him to seek the rest and recreation
he stood so much in need of, and he was about to do
it, but looked up and saw at a glance that all the
calculations had been a little out, and if a thunder-storm
were to come up, and that house, which he felt a personal
interest in, stood there with nothing on earth to protect