24 MARK TWAIN'S SKETCHES. 



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 dic- 

 tionary. 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 has 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 tc) 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 it but sixteen 



lightning-rods " Let us have peace !" I shrieked. "Put up a hundred and 



fifty ! Put some on the kitchen ! Put a dozen on the barn ! Put a couple on the 

 cow ! — Put one on the cook ! — scatter them all over the persecuted place till it 

 looks like a zinc-plated, spiral-twisted, silver-mounted cane-break ! Move ! Use 

 up all the material you can get your hands on, and when you run out of lightning- 

 rods put up ram-rods, cam-rods, stair-rods, piston-rods — anything that will pander 

 to your dismal appetite for artificial scenery, and bring respite to my raging brain 

 and healing to my lacerated soul!" Wholly unmoved — further than to smile 

 sweetly — this iron being simply turned back his wristbands daintily, and said " He 

 would now proceed to hump himself" Well, all that was nearly three hours ago. 

 It is questionable whether I am calm enough yet to write on the noble theme of 

 political economy, but I cannot resist the desire to try, for it is the one subject that 



