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 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.
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