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.