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- 5573
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-30T07:57:55.409Z
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- structure-extraction-lambda
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- 5494
- text
- THE LIGHTNING-ROD MAN.
What grand irregular thunder, thought I, standing on my hearth-stone
among the Acroceraunian hills, as the scattered bolts boomed overhead,
and crashed down among the valleys, every bolt followed by zigzag
irradiations, and swift slants of sharp rain, which audibly rang, like
a charge of spear-points, on my low shingled roof. I suppose, though,
that the mountains hereabouts break and churn up the thunder, so that
it is far more glorious here than on the plain. Hark!—someone at the
door. Who is this that chooses a time of thunder for making calls? And
why don’t he, man-fashion, use the knocker, instead of making that
doleful undertaker’s clatter with his fist against the hollow panel?
But let him in. Ah, here he comes. “Good day, sir:” an entire stranger.
“Pray be seated.” What is that strange-looking walking-stick he
carries: “A fine thunder-storm, sir.”
“Fine?—Awful!”
“You are wet. Stand here on the hearth before the fire.”
“Not for worlds!”
The stranger still stood in the exact middle of the cottage, where he
had first planted himself. His singularity impelled a closer scrutiny.
A lean, gloomy figure. Hair dark and lank, mattedly streaked over his
brow. His sunken pitfalls of eyes were ringed by indigo halos, and
played with an innocuous sort of lightning: the gleam without the bolt.
The whole man was dripping. He stood in a puddle on the bare oak floor:
his strange walking-stick vertically resting at his side.
It was a polished copper rod, four feet long, lengthwise attached to a
neat wooden staff, by insertion into two balls of greenish glass,
ringed with copper bands. The metal rod terminated at the top
tripodwise, in three keen tines, brightly gilt. He held the thing by
the wooden part alone.
“Sir,” said I, bowing politely, “have I the honor of a visit from that
illustrious god, Jupiter Tonans? So stood he in the Greek statue of
old, grasping the lightning-bolt. If you be he, or his viceroy, I have
to thank you for this noble storm you have brewed among our mountains.
Listen: That was a glorious peal. Ah, to a lover of the majestic, it is
a good thing to have the Thunderer himself in one’s cottage. The
thunder grows finer for that. But pray be seated. This old
rush-bottomed arm-chair, I grant, is a poor substitute for your
evergreen throne on Olympus; but, condescend to be seated.”
While I thus pleasantly spoke, the stranger eyed me, half in wonder,
and half in a strange sort of horror; but did not move a foot.
“Do, sir, be seated; you need to be dried ere going forth again.”
I planted the chair invitingly on the broad hearth, where a little fire
had been kindled that afternoon to dissipate the dampness, not the
cold; for it was early in the month of September.
But without heeding my solicitation, and still standing in the middle
of the floor, the stranger gazed at me portentously and spoke.
“Sir,” said he, “excuse me; but instead of my accepting your invitation
to be seated on the hearth there, I solemnly warn _you_, that you had
best accept _mine_, and stand with me in the middle of the room. Good
heavens!” he cried, starting—“there is another of those awful crashes.
I warn you, sir, quit the hearth.”
“Mr. Jupiter Tonans,” said I, quietly rolling my body on the stone, “I
stand very well here.”
“Are you so horridly ignorant, then,” he cried, “as not to know, that
by far the most dangerous part of a house, during such a terrific
tempest as this, is the fire-place?”
“Nay, I did not know that,” involuntarily stepping upon the first board
next to the stone.
The stranger now assumed such an unpleasant air of successful
admonition, that—quite involuntarily again—I stepped back upon the
hearth, and threw myself into the erectest, proudest posture I could
command. But I said nothing.
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