t
their truth. Still, according to your own account, a man or woman runs
no danger from the lightning."

"I beg your pardon there, Willis; the electric fluid does not go out
of its way to attack a human being, but if one should-happen to be in
its way, it does not take time to request that individual to stand
aside, it simply passes through him, and leaves him or her, as the
case may be, a coagulated mass of inanimate tissues."

"What a variety of ways there are of getting out of the world!" said
Willis lugubriously.

"Again," continued Jack, "anything that happens to be in the vicinity
of the clouds when this interchange of courtesies is going on, is apt
to draw the storm upon itself, hence the continual war that is carried
on between the lightning and the steeples."

"Something like an individual coming within range of a cloud of
mosquitoes," suggested Willis.

"A learned German--one of us," said the scapegrace, laughing,
"calculated, in 1783, that in the space of thirty-three years there
had been, to his own knowledge, three hundred and eighty-six spires
struck, and a hundred and twenty bell-ringers killed by lightning,
without reckoning a much larger number wounded."

"And yet," remarked Willis, "I never heard of an insurance against
accidents by lightning."

"There are plenty of them, however, in Roman Catholic countries," said
Fritz. "Every village has one, and the charge is almost nominal."

"How, then, do these companies make it pay?"

"They find it answer somehow, and they never collapse."

"Then everybody ought to insure."

"Yes, but there are some obstinate people who do not see the good of
it."

"If my life had not already been forfeited, I should insure it. But
how is it done?"

"Well, you have only to go into a church, fall down on your knees
before the priest, he will make you invulnerable by a sign of the
cross; then, come storms that pulverize the body or crush the mind,
you are perfectly safe."

"Ah! that is the way you insure your lives, is it, trusting to the
priests rather than to Providence? For my own part, I should prefer a
policy of insurance--that is to say, if my life were of any value."

"Next to steeples," continued Jack, "come tall trees, such as poplars
and pines. Should you ever be caught by a storm in the open country,
Willis, never take shelter under a tree; face the storm bravely, and
submit to be deluged by the rain. Dread even bushes, if they are
isolated. An ent