Elbow-Room Part 33

I'll do the job cheap."

"Certainly you may, if you want to. I haven't the slightest objection," said Potts.

During the next half hour the man had his ladders up and his a.s.sistants at work, and at the end of that time the job was done. He called Potts out into the yard to admire it. He said to Potts,

"Now, that is all well enough; but if it was _my_ house, I'd have another rod put on the other side. There's nothing like being protected thoroughly."

"That's true," said Potts; "it would be better."

"I'll put up another, shall I?" asked the man.

"Why, of course, if you think it's best," said Potts.

Accordingly, the man went to work again, and soon had the rod in its place.

"That's a first-rate job," he said to Potts as they both stood eyeing it. "I like such a man as you are. Big-hearted, liberal, not afraid to put a dollar down for a good thing. There's some pleasure in dealin'

with you. I like you so much that I'd put a couple more rods on that house, one on the north end and one on the south, for almost nothin'."

"It would make things safer, I suppose," said Potts.

"Certainly it would. I'd better do it, hadn't I, hey?"

"Just as you think proper," said Potts.

So the man ran up two more rods, and then he came down and said to Potts, "There! that's done. Now let's settle up."

"Do what?"

"Why, the job's finished, and now I'll take my money."

"You don't expect me to pay you, I hope?"

"Of course I do. Didn't you tell me to put those rods on your house?"

"My house!" shouted Potts. "Thunder and lightning! I never ordered you to put those rods up. It would have been ridiculous. Why, man, this is the court-house, and I'm here waiting for the court to a.s.semble. I'm on the jury. You seemed to be anxious to rush out your rods; and as it was none of my business, I let you go on. Pay for it! Come, now, that's pretty good."

The people who were present say that the manner in which that lightning-rod man tore around and swore was fearful. But when he got his rods off of the court-house, he left permanently. He don't fancy the place.

Keyser had lightning-rods placed upon his barn three or four years ago; but during last summer the building was struck by lightning and burned. When he got the new barn done, a man came around with a red wagon and wanted to sell him a set of Bolt & Burnam's patent lightning-rods.

"I believe not," said Keyser; "I had rods on the barn at the time of the--"

"I know," exclaimed the agent--"I know you had; and very likely that's the reason you were struck. Nothin's more likely to attract lightnin'

than worthless rods."

"How do you know they were worthless?"

"Why, I was drivin' by yer in the spring, and I seen them rods, and I says to myself, 'That barn'll be struck some time, but there's no use in tryin' to convince Mr. Keyser;' so I didn't call. I knowed it, because they had iron tips. A rod with iron tips is no better'n a clothes-prop to ward off lightnin'."

"The man who sold them to me said they had platinum tips," remarked Keyser.

"Ah! this is a wicked world, Mr. Keyser. You can't be too cautious.

Some of these yer agents lie like a gas-meter. It's awful, sir. They are wholly untrustworthy. Them rods was the most rid.i.c.klus sham I ever see--a regular gouge. They wa'n't worth the labor it took to put 'em up. They wa'n't, now. That's the honest truth."

"What kind do you offer?"

"Well, sir, I've got the only genuine lightnin'-rod that's made. It's constructed on scientific principles. Professor Henry says it's sure to run off the electric fluid every time--twisted charcoal iron, gla.s.s insulators, eight points on each rod, warranted solid platinum. We give a written guarantee with each rod. Never had a house struck since we began to offer this rod to the public. Positive fact. The lightnin'll play all around a house with one of 'em and never touch it. A thunder-storm that'd tear the bowels out of the American continent would leave your house as safe as a polar bear in the middle of an iceberg. Shall I run you one up?"

"I don't know," said Keyser, musingly.

"I'll put you up one cheap, and then you'll have somethin'

reliable--somethin' there's no discount on."

"You say the old rod was a fraud?"

"The deadliest fraud you ever heard of. It hadn't an ounce of platinum within a mile of it. The man that sold it ought to be prosecuted, and the fellow that put it up without insulators should be shot. It's too bad the farmers should be gouged in this sort of way."

"And Bolt & Burnam's rod is not a fraud?"

"A fraud? Why, really, my dear sir, just cast your eye over Professor Henry's letter and these certificates, and remember that we give a _written guarantee_--a positive protection, of course."

"Just cast _your_ eye over that," said Keyser, handing him a piece of paper.

"Well, upon my word! This is indeed somewhat--that is to say it is, as it were--it looks--it looks a little like one of our own certificates."

"Just so," said Keyser. "That old rod was one of Bolt & Burnam's. You sold it to my son-in-law; you gave this certificate; you swore the points were platinum, and your man put it up."

"Then I suppose we can't trade?"

"Well, I should think not," said Keyser. Whereupon the man mounted the red wagon and moved on.

When Benjamin P. Gunn, the life insurance agent, called upon Mr.

b.u.t.terwick, the following conversation ensued:

_Gunn_. "Mr. b.u.t.terwick, you have no insurance on your life, I believe? I dropped in to see if I can't get you to go into our company. We offer unparalleled inducements, and--"

_b.u.t.terwick_. "I don't want to insure."

_Gunn_. "The cost is just nothing worth speaking of; a mere trifle.

And then we pay enormous dividends, so that you have so much security at such a little outlay that you can be perfectly comfortable and happy."

_b.u.t.terwick_. "But I don't want to be comfortable and happy. I'm trying to be miserable."

_Gunn_. "Now, look at this thing in a practical light. You've got to die some time or other. That is a dreadful certainty to which we must all look forward. It is fearful enough in any event, but how much more so when a man knows that he leaves nothing behind him! We all shrink from death, we all hate to think of it; the contemplation of it fills us with awful dread; but reflect, what must be the feelings of the man who enters the dark valley with the a.s.surance that in a pecuniary sense his life has been an utter failure? Think how--"

_b.u.t.terwick_. "Don't scare me a bit. I want to die; been wanting to die for years. Rather die than live any time."